Hearing this title and its subtitle, some people may think it is a bit extravagant to say it. I'm not intelligent enough, and I'm not that smart. This question sounds like the trouble of smart people, and it has nothing to do with me. In fact, the English name of this book is What Intelligence Miss, which literally means "What was missed in the intelligence test".
We often see that many intelligence tests show that smart people make the same low-level mistakes as ordinary people. Suppose Newton, the originator of natural science, is one of the smartest people in the world. As a result, he was also cut by leeks. In the South China Sea stock bubble incident, he lost his salary for ten years and suffered heavy losses.
Why do smart people do stupid things? Did the IQ test miss anything? If so, what did it miss? The English subtitle of this book tells us that reason has been neglected.
We often talk about the word rationality, but I didn't fully understand what rationality means until I read this book. The so-called rationality is the best way to achieve the goal of life. In other words, rationality is a kind of thinking ability, which allows you to make the best decision, allocate intellectual resources in the best way and achieve life goals.
Lack of rationality will make smart people do stupid things, and even make ordinary people waste scarce precious resources. Therefore, surpassing IQ concerns everyone. It can be said that rationality is the booster of the right direction for those with outstanding intelligence, and it is a rare way for more ordinary people to surpass themselves.
Most importantly, rationality can be cultivated and learned. We spend a lot of energy on intelligence, and what we gain is probably just powerlessness, because we all know that half of IQ comes from heredity. Reason is different. Everyone can do better in becoming rational. Do you think it has anything to do with you?
The author Keith Sinew may be familiar to everyone. Yes, he is also the author of Say No to Pseudopsychology. Keith Sinew, a world-famous psychologist, has won the highest honor in the field of applied cognition in Canada-"Chairman of Canadian Studies".
Almost all his books are excellent, and the content discussed in them always revolves around the word "rationality".
You know, most people can't always be rational and calm in their daily life and work. So, below, let's talk about "rationality" in detail.
Cognitive scientists divide rationality into instrumental rationality and cognitive rationality.
The so-called "instrumental rationality" is to allocate limited resources, including psychological and physical resources, in order to maximize benefits. In other words, we can use the best way, take the shortest path and do what we want. If you always do things around a big bend and the effect is average, then you lack some instrumental rationality.
And "cognitive rationality" focuses on the consistency between personal beliefs and the real world. What does this mean? That is to say, you should objectively understand how the world works, and your views should be consistent with the real world.
For example, the world is obviously bright and dark, and its efforts are limited, but it is more useful. If you think that the world is gloomy, everything is doomed by IQ, and any effort is futile, so that you don't take action and wait for death, then you have no cognitive reason.
The very smart people we mentioned earlier make mistakes because they don't have instrumental rationality and cognitive rationality. At least when they make mistakes, they don't look at and solve problems in the most reasonable way.
Then let's dig deeper. What are the specific reasons why they can't or even don't want to solve the problem in the "most reasonable way"? Yanu introduced his classic theory-"triple processing mental model" here to explain.
? What is the "triple processing mental model"?
Let's start with the word "handle". You can imagine that our brain is like a factory. All kinds of external information we hear every day are raw materials. They must be screened, cleaned, forged and polished in our brain factory before they can become useful "information" or "spiritual products". This process is called "machining".
The "triple processing mental model" talks about three ways of cognitive process of human brain, namely autonomous mind, algorithmic mind and reflective mind.
What do you mean? Let's look at it one by one.
Let's look at the first one, autonomous thinking. It is also the operation of system one that we are familiar with in thinking, fast and slow. When our hands touch something hot or sharp, they will automatically retract. We can recognize different faces without thinking. We can easily understand most basic languages and understand the emotions in other people's expressions. It's all due to our independent minds.
Autonomous thinking is characterized by its fast execution speed, which does not require long-term careful thinking and consumes too much mental resources, and can immediately draw conclusions and act. Therefore, autonomous thinking is often called "default heuristic", which is the default way for human beings to start first when dealing with and thinking.
Autonomous mind is an important ability given to us by evolution, which is crucial for human survival, but this heavy mind is almost the same for everyone, and there is no difference. Moreover, its processing results are relatively rough, which can not meet our needs in many cases.
What does the second algorithm mind mean? In fact, it is a person's ability of memory, calculation and logical reasoning, which is often used to measure a person's "intelligence". The most typical scene where we start algorithmic thinking every day is the exam. When we get a topic, we first make a reasonable assumption, then calculate and analyze it step by step, and finally get the answer.
This type of psychological processing is slow and consumes a lot of brain power. It can only handle one task at a time and is the focus of consciousness.
In this process, there is a very important concept called cognitive decoupling. What does this mean? In fact, we can simply understand it as the ability of abstract thinking. It is a kind of cognitive decoupling that children pick up bananas and pretend to call people on their mobile phones. Coupling means connection. We know that the connection between two carriages of a train is called coupling. Decoupling means removing the connection. When a child makes a phone call with a banana, it means breaking the connection between banana and food, thus establishing a virtual connection between banana and phone.
Without this ability, we can't break away from intuition and understand complex concepts. This process of cognitive decoupling requires a lot of brain power. But the importance of algorithmic thinking to us is self-evident.
Thirdly, when we talk about reflecting on the mind, you can simply equate it with the "rationality" or "rationality" we have been talking about. It focuses on goals, beliefs related to goals and the best actions based on goals and beliefs.
Among these three kinds of minds, reflective mind is absolutely dominant, and it needs deeper, more comprehensive and calmer thinking than algorithmic mind. With these ideas, we can examine the gains and losses of our actions and decisions in independent thinking and algorithmic thinking, and make timely corrections and adjustments.
Let's imagine that there are three ways for a person to walk along the cliff by the sea, but she thinks that the abyss in the dark is a big road and walks off the cliff, so this is her algorithmic thinking.
However, there is another situation. If a person clearly knows that there is an abyss below or leaves a suicide note to jump off a cliff, then the problem is not her algorithmic mind, because she can accurately distinguish the abyss from the road and know the result of her actions. Then why did she do it? This is a problem with her reflexive thinking. There is something wrong with reflective thinking, which is often more serious than algorithmic thinking.
So how do these three mental models work continuously?
Let's give an example. For example, when you walk on the road and see a big clod on the ground, you consciously avoid it and don't trip, so your independent thinking is activated here. When you look back, you suddenly remember that the shape of this clod is a bit strange, so you observe it carefully and mobilize all your knowledge, and suddenly find that it is probably a cultural relic, using algorithmic thinking; When you are struggling with various treatment schemes, do you sell them, put them in jail, or hand them in to do your part for the protection of cultural relics? Finally, you rationally called the cultural relics protection department, which led to an unusual archaeological discovery. You were awarded the individual award for outstanding contribution to cultural relics protection, which shows that the reflective mentality is at work.
From the previous description, we can see that there is a clear hierarchical relationship between these three psychological models. When necessary, algorithmic thinking needs to suppress autonomous thinking in order to make a correct judgment. Reflecting on the mind also needs to suppress the algorithmic mind in order to maximize the goal.
If we compare autonomous thinking to grassroots workers and algorithmic thinking to senior brainworkers, then reflective thinking is the "big boss" of the above two. From the functional point of view, when necessary, the self-reflective mind BOSS can manage and supervise the first two mental ways to do his own job, rationally allocate brain power, and make rational judgments and decisions that are most beneficial to the owner.
When the reflective mind can't function normally, that is, when rational obstacles occur, there will be a phenomenon that smart people do stupid things.
So why don't reflective minds often work?
Because there are problems of "cognitive miser" tendency and "psychological program defect" in our brains.
First, let's look at the "cognitive miser". The so-called "cognitive miser" means that "human beings are extremely stingy when using cognitive resources and like to take shortcuts". Just be lazy if you can, and never pay more attention.
Cognitive miser, there are many forms of expression, and sometimes it is pure laziness. People's brains are naturally lazy. In most cases, they default to open an independent mental model that is easy and labor-saving, and respond to problems and changes with intuition and instinct. Most of the irrational phenomena mentioned in this book can actually fall into this category.
For example, the human brain is unwilling to take pains to fully consider all the possibilities and make a judgment just by thinking about it.
If you don't believe me, please listen to this question: Jack looks at Annie and Annie looks at George. Jack is married and George is unmarried. Excuse me, do any married people see unmarried people? A. what is it? B no? C not sure which answer you chose? The correct answer is A. But 80% of people will get it wrong. In order to get the correct answer, we need to analyze all possible situations of whether Anne is married or not. If Anne is married, the answer is A, because she is looking at unmarried George. If Anne is unmarried, the answer is still A, because married Jack looks at unmarried Anne. After analyzing all the possibilities, we will find that the answer A can be deduced from any situation. But most people rarely start real reasoning in their daily life. Seeing that the topic did not give Anne's marital status, we most easily gave the answer of "unable to draw a conclusion". People tend to look for obvious surface information, only make the simplest inference, and are unwilling to comprehensively process the information. But this will lead to errors. This is the so-called "incomplete selective reasoning" fallacy.
People's brains are often more inclined to maintain the status quo because they are lazy or unwilling to think hard and try to change. The so-called "let nature take its course" is actually "lazy". This is called the "use default value" fallacy. Cognitive miser sometimes manifests as thinking inertia. When making a decision, we are used to accepting all the toxic rules made by others and falling down step by step driven by the rhythm of others. Afterwards, I will think that I made my own decision after full consideration. The following "vivid effect", "frame effect" and "anchoring principle" all belong to this category.
"Vivid effect" means that people are easily attracted by compelling information. Compared with a news that hundreds of thousands of people were affected by the disaster, we will devote more sympathy to a particularly legendary accident protagonist on the Internet. Legends are more vivid because they have many details. The so-called "frame effect" means that "people often give different answers to questions with the same essence but different appearances". There is a story that a miser accidentally fell into the river, and the good-hearted man squatted on the shore and shouted, "Give me your hand quickly, and I will pull you up!" " "But the miser just refused to stretch out his hand. The good-hearted man was puzzled, and then suddenly woke up and shouted to the drowning miser, "I'll give you my hand, so come and get me!" ""Sure enough, the miser extended his hand to the good man. You see, according to the logic of the miser in the story, the result is that both hands are held together. "You give it to me" and "I give it to you" are two different expressions with completely different actions. The "anchoring principle" is also common, especially in commodity pricing and bargaining. We've talked a lot before. When I went out to travel, I saw a "jade bracelet" with a price of 5000 yuan in the tourist shop. After using bargaining methods such as "cut half when you meet" and "other people's homes are much cheaper than yours", the transaction was finally made in 500 yuan. In fact, the cost of this bracelet may only be 5 yuan. But because your estimate of the value of this bracelet has been anchored by the price tag from the beginning, do you think that even if it is not worth as much as 5000, there must be hundreds? This is a typical way for sellers to improve the anchoring value of the target goods in your mind by publicly pricing. It is worth mentioning that these thinking tendencies have long been listed as the core content of "consumer psychology" and have been used by businesses. Are you aware of these tendencies? Are they in the bureau?
There is also a cognitive miser who will show "you are right." Such as "our position deviation" is such a situation. In daily life, almost everyone tends to evaluate the objective situation from their own perspective, because it is too difficult to think from their own perspective and others' perspective at the same time, and there is too much information to be processed, which will make our cognition deviate from the objective facts.
Finally, we are likely to be defeated after careful consideration, because the advanced mental algorithm failed to suppress the low-level mental algorithm. In some cases, we can actually clearly feel the existence and struggle of multiple minds.
For example, reason tells you to finish the work at hand quickly, but instinct says, play for a while. The brain fought fiercely, and finally the little hand slid open the phone screen. This situation is so common that we have given this kind of fighting a special name, called willpower. Many times, we have tried our best to consider a big circle, and finally choose to believe the most indifferent instinctive choice and make up various reasons to "sophistry."
Finally, once again, we should not deny the role of cognitive miser. It has positive evolutionary significance. It is a subconscious module with evolutionary adaptability, which can help us make 99% simple decisions in life. However, it may also make us make mistakes in 1% of major decisions that need careful analysis.
You know, we will make thousands of decisions in our life, but there are only twenty or thirty decisions that control our life direction, such as where to go to school, what job to choose and where to buy a house. And cognitive miser will make us make mistakes in these crucial decisions.
So how can we overcome the influence of cognitive miser when necessary? The author taught us a method of using language content to suppress unconscious thinking. For example, if you are losing weight and your friend gives you a cake, your instinct will tell you to eat this cake first and eat less tomorrow. But reflecting on the soul will tell us the truth, and there will be challenges tomorrow. You may still make the wrong choice. So, you can tell the truth and tell yourself a rule: eating a cake today means that I may eat more every day, which will ruin my whole weight loss plan. Many catchy epigrams use this strategy to block the instinctive reaction of language. For example, there will be many tomorrows after tomorrow. But the problem is that if a person doesn't master the mental program related to the situation, all he can mobilize is instinctive reaction. This is another major source of rational obstacles-mental program defects. The so-called "mental program" refers to the rules, knowledge, procedures and strategies that people can extract from memory when making decisions and solving problems, and use them in the process of assisting decision-making and solving problems.
? If the human brain is compared to a computer, then "intelligence" is equivalent to the hardware of this computer, "rationality" is the operating system, and "mental program" is the software and program installed in the system to perform specific functions. Without hardware or operating system, computers can't be started, and without software programs, we can't perform specific functions and tasks. It can be said that it is the existence and advantages and disadvantages of these "mental programs" that fully widen the distance between people's ability to deal with problems.
The rational obstacles caused by problems in psychological procedures can also be divided into two situations: one is the lack of correct psychological procedures; A contaminated mental program.
Let's talk about the first situation first. When there is no correct mental program, you are completely at a loss when facing things or problems, and there is no (or insufficient) cognitive system and solution to this matter in your brain. It's like being hungry, but there is no rice in the bowl. To overcome the psychological barrier caused by this reason, the method is actually very simple, just like installing a computer, you can install whatever software you need. For the human brain, there are actually some "psychological packages" that must be installed, and these packages are crucial for us to live a good life. Among them, probabilistic knowledge and probabilistic thinking are the most important rational packages. Probability is the product of human's high rationality. Knowing this common sense of probability will save us a lot of detours.
First of all, we should think more about the hypothesis that others say is not true. Alternative hypothesis is a statistical concept, which you can simply understand as "reverse thinking". This mental program calls on us not to always start from unilateral conditions, but to learn to think from the opposite of these conditions. So sometimes this principle is also called the "opposition hypothesis". For example, there is a restaurant near your home, but I haven't been there since I heard it's not delicious. One day the boss accosted you and said that 95% customers said the food in the store was delicious. What should you think at this time? You can't follow the boss's thinking, only consider the probability that a great restaurant will be praised by 95% of the guests, and also consider the probability that a poor restaurant will be complained by 5% of the people. After all, people will make up their minds after eating bad things most of the time, and they will never come back later. Few people will give bad reviews specifically.
Next, pay special attention to "falsifiability". A scientific conclusion should not only be deduced from the front that it is valid, but also from the back that it is not. For example, if someone tells you that portraits painted by mental patients have particularly large eyes, you should verify that portraits painted by people who are judged to be mentally ill have particularly large eyes, and portraits with normal eyes are painted by mental patients. In a word, remember that everything you are not allowed to question is problematic.
Finally, talk about "conditional probability inversion", which is close to what we often call "putting the cart before the horse". In some specific situations (such as medical scenes), people often simply and rudely reverse the conditions and conclusions, thinking that the same is true. To give a simple example, we say that patients with colds have a high probability of showing symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, but this does not mean that the vast majority of coughing and sneezing are due to colds.
These "spirit bags" mentioned above are "necessary for installation" and solve the problem of "no food in the bowl" when we are very hungry; Another situation is that the rice in the bowl has gone bad. Corresponding to "mental program" is to install a polluted mental program. Such as cults, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes and other scams, they are like virus programs disguised as portable applications, occupying your key cerebral cortex with their own toxic thinking patterns, and making you have distorted and wrong understanding and judgment of the objective world.
An important reason why people are often deceived by polluted mental programs is that polluted mental programs are usually wrapped in fascinating stories, and then they have "extremely attractive complexity". Therefore, we can see that members of the MLM organization can usually give you a series of seemingly complicated and rigorous calculation formulas. At this time, if we relax our vigilance, coupled with the greedy nature of people, there will be brain poisoning and downtime.
This book has been criticized by some people that it only asks questions, but does not provide solutions. In fact, when we know enough about the problem itself and its causes, the solution is actually in front of us. The significance of theoretical scientists lies in providing us with a universally applicable theoretical framework, allowing us to conduct self-analysis and self-excavation under this framework of truth, and finally find the most suitable solution for ourselves. Therefore, to sum up, in order to avoid becoming a "cognitive miser", we must look for the implementation plan according to the opposite of these stingy performances. Specifically, when thinking and analyzing problems, we should overcome the inertia of thinking, always keep a cautious attitude, think twice before you act, and ask ourselves more: Have I been lazy on this issue, and have I considered the negative situation? For "mental program obstacle", we should install the correct mental program and avoid loading the wrong mental program. Just like walking. First of all, you should learn to walk correctly. Then, when you set foot on the road, try to avoid the mud pits that appear one after another in the middle of the road, and keep a distance from those people or things that refuse to question or falsify, which may be deceptive. Specifically, the experience of learning and tutoring in our adolescence is actually that your family, society and country are trying to install a cognitive system and mental model for you. When we leave school and enter the society, we still have to learn for life to install a super firewall that can identify all viruses. Jobs once said, "Stay hungry and stay stupid", which is translated into Chinese as "thirst for knowledge, modesty and stupidity", which is probably the basic criterion for cultivating a rational life.
Finally, I want to end my reading of this book with the mental model advocated by Charles Munger. Charles Munger's most admired life creed is only three points:
1. Simplify complexity. It is necessary to cultivate the analytical ability of simplifying the complex and reeling, not to be lazy, not to be frightened by the normal complexity, and not to be attracted by the twisted complexity;
2. Eliminate knowledge blind spots. Curiously absorb and establish a correct understanding of everything in the world, and try not to leave an opportunity for the invasion of polluted psychological programs;
3. Multiple scientific perspectives. When we really encounter problems, we should not be flustered, paralyzed or blindly confident, but learn scientific analysis methods from multiple angles and dimensions;
Everyone has irrational aspects and moments. Jonathan Barron said that when we say that a person is irrational, we are not accusing him of hopelessness. On the contrary, we urge him to make positive changes. Yes, finally, I want to tell you that you still have a chance to be a better yourself, whether you are smart or ordinary, as long as you are willing to cultivate your own rationality.