The brain is sometimes called the most complex machine in the known universe. But the thoughts that it outputs putter along at a trifling 10 bits per second, the pace of a conversation
The book delineates rational and non-rational motivations or triggers associated with each type of thinking process, and how they complement each other, starting with Kahneman’s own research on loss aversion. From framing choices to people’s tendency to replace a difficult question with one which is easy to answer, the book summarizes several decades of research to suggest that people have too much confidence in human judgment. Kahneman performed his own research, often in collaboration with Amos Tversky, which enriched his experience to write the book. It covers different phases of his career: his early work concerning cognitive biases, his work on prospect theory and happiness, and with the Israel Defense Forces.
In the book’s first section, Kahneman describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts:
System 1: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious.
System 2: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious
Kahneman describes a number of experiments which purport to examine the differences between these two thought systems and how they arrive at different results even given the same inputs. Terms and concepts include coherence, attention, laziness, association, jumping to conclusions, WYSIATI (What you see is all there is), and how one forms judgments. The System 1 vs. System 2 debate includes the reasoning or lack thereof for human decision making, with big implications for many areas including law and market research
So, while it is true System 2 thinking is sluggish at best, a great deal of our mental labor is handled by System 1. The System 2 processing takes more resources and more time, but produces more accurate results.
Much of our modern intellectual infrastructure is intended to off-load tasks from System 2 to System 1, allowing us to rely on heuristics instead of the plodding manual labor of information processing. You don’t need to mentally track the time of day when you can just remember to glance at a clock. You don’t need to have every recipe memorized when you can consult a cookbook page number. You don’t need to do higher level math when you can just plug numbers into an Excel spreadsheet.
In theory, direct human augmentation could further refine this process. You don’t need to “do math” as a System 2 task, just invoke your link to an internal calculator instinctively as a System 1 task.
But in practice we simply don’t know enough of how the human brain works. The latest edition of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape discusses this problem with Jeff Lichtman, a National Academy of Sciences neurologist who is working to physically map the wiring of brains of simple species.
How do neural networks form and invoke one another? What work do individual neurons do internally and what needs to be part of a composite process of neurons acting in concert? How is information encoded in the brain and retrieved? How is action invoked? There aren’t good answers to any of these questions. Certainly not good enough to start shoving silicon and steel into anyone’s heads with the intent of improving cognitive processes.
Thank you! The human cranial brain and its ability to function, to interact with and to affect the rest of the brain cells and systems distributed throughout the human body is apparently being ignored in favor of focusing on anything and everything else? Human brain augmentation happens naturally. It’s called “practice” and “experience”; proficiency, competence, flow, mastery… Learning in novel ways and environments.
Ionic fields already affect the various brain-cell clusters. There is no need to insert foreign objects.
Human brain augmentation happens naturally. It’s called “practice” and “experience”; proficiency, competence, flow, mastery… Learning in novel ways and environments.
I mean, it would be very cool if you could Matrix-style transfer patterns of behavior from one person to another, rather than relying on verbal and written imprecision. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have a language installed in their head overnight, rather than spending months of continuous work to become somewhat conversational?
Ionic fields already affect the various brain-cell clusters.
Sure. Just ask anyone who has touched a high voltage line.
Human communication is non-verbal; body-language, tone of voice, facial expression, eye contact and movement, gaze, presence. Why write, say anything, when one can show an image, point, or just look, knowing the Other is attentive, curious and interested in communication.
Why write, say anything, when one can show an image, point, or just look
A picture is worth a thousand words, sure. But generating a complex and nuanced image is often far more technically difficult than producing equivalent text.
There is a lot of information that can potentially be lost in an image, while a block of technical writing is easier to parse and cite.
Human visual processing is extremely low resolution. 8-bit, if I remember correctly.
What you’re imagining has to do with imagination, not vision or sufficient comprehension for communication.
This is a matter of competency and ability; generating an image, producing equivalent text, parsing, citing, don’t you think? Systems need to be image-generators, or text generators; image-interpreters, text interpreters…
Perhaps examine the taxonomy of AI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking%2C_Fast_and_Slow
So, while it is true System 2 thinking is sluggish at best, a great deal of our mental labor is handled by System 1. The System 2 processing takes more resources and more time, but produces more accurate results.
Much of our modern intellectual infrastructure is intended to off-load tasks from System 2 to System 1, allowing us to rely on heuristics instead of the plodding manual labor of information processing. You don’t need to mentally track the time of day when you can just remember to glance at a clock. You don’t need to have every recipe memorized when you can consult a cookbook page number. You don’t need to do higher level math when you can just plug numbers into an Excel spreadsheet.
In theory, direct human augmentation could further refine this process. You don’t need to “do math” as a System 2 task, just invoke your link to an internal calculator instinctively as a System 1 task.
But in practice we simply don’t know enough of how the human brain works. The latest edition of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape discusses this problem with Jeff Lichtman, a National Academy of Sciences neurologist who is working to physically map the wiring of brains of simple species.
How do neural networks form and invoke one another? What work do individual neurons do internally and what needs to be part of a composite process of neurons acting in concert? How is information encoded in the brain and retrieved? How is action invoked? There aren’t good answers to any of these questions. Certainly not good enough to start shoving silicon and steel into anyone’s heads with the intent of improving cognitive processes.
Therein lays the rub.
Thank you! The human cranial brain and its ability to function, to interact with and to affect the rest of the brain cells and systems distributed throughout the human body is apparently being ignored in favor of focusing on anything and everything else? Human brain augmentation happens naturally. It’s called “practice” and “experience”; proficiency, competence, flow, mastery… Learning in novel ways and environments.
Ionic fields already affect the various brain-cell clusters. There is no need to insert foreign objects.
I mean, it would be very cool if you could Matrix-style transfer patterns of behavior from one person to another, rather than relying on verbal and written imprecision. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have a language installed in their head overnight, rather than spending months of continuous work to become somewhat conversational?
Sure. Just ask anyone who has touched a high voltage line.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4244194/
Human communication is non-verbal; body-language, tone of voice, facial expression, eye contact and movement, gaze, presence. Why write, say anything, when one can show an image, point, or just look, knowing the Other is attentive, curious and interested in communication.
A picture is worth a thousand words, sure. But generating a complex and nuanced image is often far more technically difficult than producing equivalent text.
There is a lot of information that can potentially be lost in an image, while a block of technical writing is easier to parse and cite.
Human visual processing is extremely low resolution. 8-bit, if I remember correctly. What you’re imagining has to do with imagination, not vision or sufficient comprehension for communication. This is a matter of competency and ability; generating an image, producing equivalent text, parsing, citing, don’t you think? Systems need to be image-generators, or text generators; image-interpreters, text interpreters… Perhaps examine the taxonomy of AI.