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  • For most of us, thinking is at least somewhat unpleasant.

  • We try to avoid it, where possible.

  • For example:

  • I asked these guys how long does it take for the earth to go around the Sun.

  • - What do you reckon, cuz?

  • - Isn't it 24 hours ? - Obviously a day, yes.

  • Or take this problem

  • which has been given to thousands of college students.

  • You go into a toy store,

  • and there's a toy bat and a toy ball.

  • Together they cost 1.10$.

  • And the bat costs a dollar more than the ball.

  • How much does the ball cost ?

  • - Ten cents.

  • - We're all wrong aren't we?

  • - WHAT'S THE ANSWER ?

  • If you think about it for just a second

  • it's obvious that the ball can't cost ten cents,

  • because if it did, then the bat

  • would cost 1.10$ and the two items

  • together would cost 1.20$.

  • The correct answer is five cents.

  • Now, the point of these questions is not that they're difficult.

  • Any of these people

  • could have quickly check their answer if they wanted to.

  • The point is that they don't check

  • because thinking is uncomfortable.

  • It takes effort.

  • - Hey, the Earth doesn't take one day to get around the Sun.

  • - Takes like a year!

  • [LAUGHS]

  • Now, I think it would be easy to put these mistakes down to

  • stupidity,

  • and believe that you, being much smarter, could never fall into such traps.

  • But then I think you'd be fooling yourself.

  • I think these examples reveal blind spots in all of our thinking

  • due to the fundamental way that our brains work .

  • Now, one way of modeling how the brain

  • operates is as though there are two

  • systems at work

  • psychologists call them system one and

  • system two but maybe it's useful to

  • think of them as characters so let's

  • call system one Gun and system two Drew.

  • You are Drew. he represents your

  • conscious thought, the voice in your head.

  • "I am who you think you are"

  • he's the one capable of following instructions.

  • He can execute a series of steps.

  • If you are asked to calculate 13 x 17 in your head, for example,

  • he is the one who has to do it.

  • "can just use my calculator?"

  • no..."all right, um, seventeen times...."

  • Drew is lazy

  • it takes effort to get Drew to do anything

  • and he is slow but he's the careful one,

  • capable of catching and fixing mistakes...

  • "221".

  • Now meet system one Gun.

  • He is incredibly quick,

  • which he needs to be since he's constantly

  • processing copious amounts of

  • information coming in through your

  • senses. He picks out the relevant bits

  • and discard the rest, which is most of it,

  • and he works automatically without you,

  • Drew, being consciously aware of what

  • he is doing. For example when you spot

  • them text he reads it before you can

  • even decide whether or not you want to

  • read it

  • Gun fills in the gaps. For example, what

  • does this say?

  • Did you notice that the "H" in 'the'

  • 'A' in 'cat' are actually the same symbol

  • but you had no trouble reading it

  • because Gun made the correct, automatic,

  • assumption, so although Drew is unaware

  • of what Gun is doing, its Guns

  • perceptions that become the basis for

  • your conscious thoughts. The way I like

  • to think of it

  • each of these characters is related to

  • one of your main memory structures, Guns

  • automatic responses are made possible by

  • long-term memory, the library of

  • experiences you've built up over your

  • lifetime. In contrast, Drew exists

  • entirely within working memory so he's

  • only capable of holding four or five

  • novel things in mind

  • at a time. This is perhaps one of the

  • best-known findings from psychology. That

  • our capacity to hold and manipulate

  • novel information is incredibly limited

  • like when trying to remember a string of

  • random numbers. "6 7 5 5 3 1"

  • (offscreen)Yes! But we are able to overcome these

  • limitations if the information is

  • familiar to us. For example, let me give

  • you four random digits "7102". Now these would

  • normally take up most of your working

  • memory capacity just to remember, but, if

  • you reverse them, 2017, there now just one

  • thing the present year the process of

  • grouping things together according to

  • your prior knowledge is called chunking

  • and you can actually hold four or five

  • chunks in working memory at once. So the

  • larger the chunks

  • the more information you can actively

  • manipulate at one time. Learning is then,

  • the process of building more and bigger

  • chunks by storing and further connecting

  • information in long-term memory

  • essentially passing off tasks from Drew

  • to Gun. But in order for this to happen,

  • Drew first has to engage with the

  • information actively and effort-fully,

  • often multiple times. For example, when

  • you were first learning to tie your

  • shoelaces, you probably recited a rhyme to

  • help you remember what to do next

  • using up all your working memory in the

  • process. But after doing it over and over

  • and over again, it gradually became

  • automatic, that is, Drew doesn't have to

  • think about it anymore because Guns got it.

  • Musicians and sports stars refer to this

  • as muscle memory, though of course, the memory

  • is not the muscles

  • it's still in the brain just controlled

  • by Gun. "You can practice everything

  • exactly as it is, and exactly as it's written

  • but at just such a speed that you have to

  • think about and know exactly where you

  • are and what your fingers are doing and what

  • it feels like." Slow deliberate conscious

  • practice repeated often enough, leads to this:

  • I bet 99% of the time what appears to be

  • superhuman ability, comes down to the

  • incredible automation skills of Gun,

  • developed through the painstaking

  • deliberate practice of Drew. What's

  • interesting is, its actually possible to

  • see how hard Drew is working, just by

  • looking at someone. Try this task: I'm

  • going to show you four digits, I want you

  • to read them out loud and then after two

  • beats, I want you to say each number back

  • on the beat, but adding one to each digit.

  • So, as an example, 7 2 9 1 (beats in background)

  • should be...

  • 8

  • 3

  • 2

  • This is called the Add One task and it

  • forces Drew to hold these digits and

  • memory while making manipulations to

  • them. Now it's important to say the

  • numbers back on the beat. Try this one:

  • (beats in background at regular interval)

  • To make it harder, you can try adding 3

  • instead of 1.

  • Ready?

  • (beats in background at regular interval)

  • Now what you're unaware of, is that, as

  • you're completing this task, your pupils

  • are dilating. When Drew is hard at work,

  • as he is in this task, you have a

  • physiological response: including

  • increased heart rate, sweat production,

  • and pupil dilation.

  • Watch how the pupils of these participants enlarge as they

  • perform the Add One and Add Three tasks.