Quotes About Mental

One of the significant discoveries of cognitive psychologists in recent decades is that switching from one task to another is effortful, especially under time pressure. The need for rapid switching is one of the reasons that Add-3 and mental multiplication are so difficult.

intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

The defining feature of System 2, in this story, is that its operations are effortful, and one of its main characteristics is laziness, a reluctance to invest more effort than is strictly necessary. As

most effortful forms of slow thinking are those that require you to think fast.

mental life—today I would speak of the life of System 2—is normally conducted at the pace of a comfortable walk, sometimes interrupted by episodes of jogging and on rare occasions by a frantic sprint. The Add-1 and Add-3 exercises are sprints, and casual chatting is a stroll.

when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.

anchoring effect. It occurs when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity

But System 2 is not merely an apologist for System 1; it also prevents many foolish thoughts and inappropriate impulses from overt expression.

coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it.

Now suppose that at the end of the page you get another instruction: count all the commas in the next page. This will be harder, because you will have to overcome the newly acquired tendency to focus attention on the letter f.

One of the tasks of System 2 is to overcome the impulses of System 1. In other words, System 2 is in charge of self-control.

Failures of detection followed the same inverted-V pattern as the dilating pupil. The similarity was reassuring: the pupil was a good measure of the physical arousal that accompanies mental effort, and we could go ahead and use it to understand how the mind works.

Even in the absence of time pressure, maintaining a coherent train of thought requires discipline.

Modern tests of working memory require the individual to switch repeatedly between two demanding tasks, retaining the results of one operation while performing the other.

Conscious doubt is not in the repertoire of System 1; it requires maintaining incompatible interpretations in mind at the same time, which demands mental effort. Uncertainty and doubt are the domain of System 2.

I still take great pleasure in playing around with philosophical questions, the ones that [Bertrand] Russell is the first to admit have no unequivocal answers. . . . I guess this quality makes me a Cerebral Hedonist, although some would say it makes me a mental masochist.

We have our own personal demons to deal with.

That's not the kind of thing crazy people do, her muddled thoughts insisted. That's the kind of thing crazy people see.

You can simply enjoy being a self-respecting athlete at any age or any skill level. The goal is to be able to run freely and joyfully for the rest of your life, and for you to enjoy the full range of benefits that running offers—physically, mentally . . . and, yes, spiritually.

Nothing can drive one closer to his own insanity than a haunting memory refusing its own death.

Maybe you're going insane." "Maybe," agreed Kernel. "I was joking." "I wasn't.

Are you all right?' Fitz had asked him. 'I mean, it's not just that you're going mad on us, it's like you're going mad on us in different ways, like different people are doing it. .

Everyone has a breaking point, turning point, stress point, the game is permeated with it. The fans don't see it because we make it look so efficient. But internally, for a guy to be successful, you have to be like a clock spring, wound but not loose at the same time.

Free-flowing thoughts can be our greatest asset when we are in a creative mode, but when an unruly mental process limits our awareness, the mind becomes an oppressor.