Book completed
Jul. 18th, 2020 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeRationality and the Reflective Mind, by Keith E. Stanovich. I tried that read-an-academic-book-in-a-single-day thing again, and it worked out well again. I skimmed the few pages that were about the brain.
If you saw my last blog post, you'll know that psychologists think in terms of two parts of the mind that are important for decision-making - the mental shortcuts and the more effortful thinking. I'd heard that this book was about ways to divide that "more effortful thinking" part into two functions, an algorithmic one and a reflective one, with the latter being used for simulations. I thought, "ah, like perspective-taking, as in empathy." So what I typed just now wasn't actually incorrect, but my inferences didn't match what the book is about. For him, these aren't just two different ways we think, but rather, his reflective part is the part we use to govern our more algorithmic part. IQ tests measure the algorithmic part. The reflective part is more in charge of deciding what we should think about, more abstract, able to think about hypotheticals.
So that leaves me back where I started. If the reflective part is running these simulations, using the algorithmic part, where does empathy fit in? It's a simulation that doesn't involve analyses so much as use the very emotions and vividness that the mental shortcuts do, just... hypothetically. He never addresses this in the book. Maybe I'll need to ask him.
J. and I took a walk to the far end of our neighborhood park and discussed the book the whole way, which was fun.
If you saw my last blog post, you'll know that psychologists think in terms of two parts of the mind that are important for decision-making - the mental shortcuts and the more effortful thinking. I'd heard that this book was about ways to divide that "more effortful thinking" part into two functions, an algorithmic one and a reflective one, with the latter being used for simulations. I thought, "ah, like perspective-taking, as in empathy." So what I typed just now wasn't actually incorrect, but my inferences didn't match what the book is about. For him, these aren't just two different ways we think, but rather, his reflective part is the part we use to govern our more algorithmic part. IQ tests measure the algorithmic part. The reflective part is more in charge of deciding what we should think about, more abstract, able to think about hypotheticals.
So that leaves me back where I started. If the reflective part is running these simulations, using the algorithmic part, where does empathy fit in? It's a simulation that doesn't involve analyses so much as use the very emotions and vividness that the mental shortcuts do, just... hypothetically. He never addresses this in the book. Maybe I'll need to ask him.
J. and I took a walk to the far end of our neighborhood park and discussed the book the whole way, which was fun.