( ... tālāk ... )INTERVIEWER: Can you describe the two–system theory?
KAHNEMAN: Many of us who study the subject think that there are two thinking systems, which actually have two very different characteristics. You can call them intuition and reasoning, although some of us label them System 1 and System 2. There are some thoughts that come to mind on their own; most thinking is really like that, most of the time. That’s System 1. It’s not like we’re on automatic pilot, but we respond to the world in ways that we’re not conscious of, that we don’t control. The operations of System 1 are fast, effortless, associative, and often emotionally charged; they’re also governed by habit, so they’re difficult either to modify or to control. There is another system, System 2, which is the reasoning system. It’s conscious, it’s deliberate; it’s slower, serial, effortful, and deliberately controlled, but it can follow rules. The difference in effort provides the most useful indicator of whether a given mental process should be assigned to System 1 or System 2.
Like many other Jews, I suppose, I grew up in a world that consisted exclusively of people and words, and most of the words were about people. Nature barely existed, and I never learned to identify flowers or to appreciate animals. But the people my mother liked to talk about with her friends and with my father were fascinating in their complexity. Some people were better than others, but the best were far from perfect and no one was simply bad.
In one experience I remember vividly, there was a rich range of shades. It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others — the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.
The first essay, written before I turned eleven, was a discussion of faith. It approvingly quoted Pascal's saying "Faith is God made perceptible to the heart", then went on to point out that this genuine spiritual experience was probably rare and unreliable, and that cathedrals and organ music had been created to generate a more reliable, ersatz version of the thrills of faith. The child who wrote this had some aptitude for psychology, and a great need for a normal life.
The questions that interested me in my teens were philosophical — the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the reasons not to misbehave. But I was discovering that I was more interested in what made people believe in God than I was in whether God existed, and I was more curious about the origins of people's peculiar convictions about right and wrong than I was about ethics. When I went for vocational guidance, psychology emerged as the top recommendation, with economics not too far behind.
— Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize Biography (2002)
My thesis is that Latvia has become a failed state lite™. It is nothing like Somalia or Zimbabwe, the infrastructure functions, the trains run, there is 24/7 electricity, telecommunications, internet, food, water, heat (unless the bills have not been paid). The problem is political and societal, and, of late, economic along with the rest of the world. [..] Had Latvia started saving for worse times in 2006 or 2007, had it privatized fixed network operator Lattelecom and mobile operator LMT when Sweden’s TeliaSonera offered to pay around 500 million LVL, the country would still have a potential budget deficit, but a much smaller one and a war chest of several hundreds of millions with which to avoid cutting salaries for police, health and education workers. Although, on the other hand, such a windfall revenue would probably have found its way into the pockets of the ruling elite or have been squandered in other ways. That is the way of failed state Latvia — prosperity is to be stolen or squandered, poverty and austerity apportioned among those services most essential to sustaining a functioning civil society. [..] Latvia will leave the crisis weaker and more prone to stagnation. The corrupt elite will find itself sucking juices from an increasingly dessicated economic corpse.
— Juris Kaža, Why “Failed State Latvia”?
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