Langmaid Practice

Sunday 26 February 2012

Daring to Disagree with Albert E!

It’s sacrilegious to disagree with the great Albert, but here goes…

Although we can agree sympathetically with Einstein’s thought about the primacy afforded to reason, the truth is actually different. As Kahneman points out, 95% of what we do, say, think is actually generated pretty much automatically – out of an amalgam of sensory experience, past experience, affect (emotion) and intention. Kahneman calls this System 1 thinking – automatic, instantaneous and everyday. It has little capacity to weigh up evidence or to balance alternatives. Thus automatic responses, driven by affect, do rule the day – and hence it is extremely difficult to reason anybody out of an opinion or decision that they did not arrive at by reason in the first place.

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Posted by roy at 10:38 am. No comments