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You may not realize it but your brain actually processes information in two very distinct ways.
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Like, when you look at this photo, you instantly know she has blonde hair, is visibly angry and likely has some choice words to yell.
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Without any effort you experienced fast thinking, but if you look at the following problem something different happens.
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Sure, you immediately know it's a multiplication problem and you knew you could solve it if you had the energy, but didn't.
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If you do try your muscles will tense, your pupils will dilate, and your heart rate will increase.
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Now you've experienced slow thinking.
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These two systems of fast and slow thinking dictate much of our perception and reaction in life.
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Take these lines for example, it's clear that they're different lengths, but if you measure them they're actually the exact same length.
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Even now that you know, system one, or your fast thinking can't stop seeing the illusion because it acts automatically.
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A similar effect is seen here, which figure is the largest?
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Again, they are all the same size,
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but the suggestion of perspective and depth causes your system one to interpret the picture as three-dimensional even though it's on a flat two-dimensional surface.
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It's making quick work of the available information and so you're conscious system two, or slow thinking,
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must compensate after the fact and choose not to believe your intuition or instinct.
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Want to see your system two in action?
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I'll show you a string of four digits, you read them aloud and add one to each of the original digits.
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If the card reads 3795, the correct response would be 4806.
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We'll then go to the next card and you will do the same followed by the next card.
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Ready? Go.
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Few people can cope with more than four digits, but even harder is add three.
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The interesting bit is that though your pupils would have dilated you often become effectively blind when you fully engage system two.
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Did you notice the colour of the text change?
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Or how about the fact that the numbers completely changed when I put them off to the side?
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Listen to the following puzzle.
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A bat and a ball cost one dollar and ten cents. The bat cost one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
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Chances are your system one intuition was yelling "ten cents", but this appealing system one answer we know is wrong.
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In fact, the correct answer is five cents.
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Even if you worked out the correct answer, you likely thought of ten cents along the way.
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System one is trying to work out an answer as quickly and seamlessly as possible which is extremely beneficial in everyday life.
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If every activity required full mental effort, it would be exhausting.
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But knowing this allows us to understand that not all of our first impressions are correct.
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How many animals of each kind did Moses take into the ark?
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So, few people detect what is wrong with this question and that it has been dubbed the the Moses illusion.
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In fact, Moses took no animals, Noah did.
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Again, our brain invests as little resources as necessary, so that things run quickly and smoothly.
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Because Moses is not abnormal in the biblical context, system one unconsciously detects an association between Moses and ark, and quickly accepts the question.
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In a similar way, system one generates context without you knowing.
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Reading each of the following may seem fairly simple, "ABC" "Ann approached the bank" and "12, 13, 14"
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But your brain actually interpreted these ambiguous statements without you ever knowing.
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You could have read it as "A 13 C" or "12 B 14", but your brain created the context unconsciously.
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Also, you likely imagined a woman with money on her mind walking towards a building with tellers,
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but if the sentence before this was "they were floating gently down the river" the entire scene would have changed because "bank" is no longer associated with "money".
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Without an explicit context, system one quickly generates one based on previous experience.
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In this case, you've likely visited more banks than rivers and so the context is resolved accordingly.
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This ties into a concept called "priming".
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For example, if I said "wash", how would you complete this word fragment?
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Most would see "soap", but had I just shown you the word "eat" you'd be more likely to see "soup".
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In this way, both eat and wash prime your thoughts.
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Though system two likes to think that it's in charge and knows what's going on, the truth is that priming effects have even been shown to affect and modify behavior.
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These arise in system one and you have no conscious access to them.
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If you'd like to learn more about the thinking systems in your brain,
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check out the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, which covers it in great detail.
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I'll put a link in the description which you can check out.
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Got a burning question you want answered?
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Ask it in the comments, or on facebook and twitter, and subscribe for more weekly science videos.