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Mastering Both Your Brains | System 1 vs System 2

12,073 views Wait, is this logic right? • Mar 16, 2023
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Slog Reference: System 1 vs System 2

Description

Lizard brain vs human brain. Let's expand on the thesis explained by the writings of Noble Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman in his book "Thinking, Fast & Slow". Let's understand what is a lizard brain and a human brain, or what is system 1 or system 2.
Let's learn how system 1 and system 2 differ from each other. How does this relate to Virat Kohli's fishing off the stumps? How this can help you defeat Roger Federer in tennis, build new habits, and understand how your brain actually functions?

More videos you might enjoy:
Believing is Seeing: https://youtu.be/bxx-My8J_kM
Fighting Misinformation: https://youtu.be/_NVtf7-GNAg
Sell Anything To Anyone: The Power of STORIES: https://youtu.be/ErIcgAEW0t0

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen to The FutureIQ Podcast on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Watch our episode on Goodhart's law: https://youtu.be/OU5W-b_e8a4
Learn how to think like a VC: https://youtu.be/OAAYnb9LUsU

Links:
Experiment 3: https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo
Color changing card trick: https://youtu.be/v3iPrBrGSJM

Book:
1. Thinking, Fast & Slow: https://tapthe.link/ThinkingF&S
2. Atomic Habits: https://tapthe.link/AtomicHabits
3. Blink: https://tapthe.link/Blink
4. Outliers: https://tapthe.link/outliers

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:10 Experiment 1
01:53 System 1 & system 2
05:50 System 1 vs system 2
07:42 Exceptions/errors
10:38 Example 2
12:50 When to use which?
17:00 System 1 (Change)
20:15 How does it help you?
24:15 Habits & expertise
30:18 Separation of concerns
32:00 Example 3
33:18 Welcome back

#futureIQ #braingames

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Transcript

did you know that all of us have two brains a lizard brain and a human brain and today we're going to tell you how to use them both effectively okay so I am going to show you an image on the screen just for one second take a look okay yeah okay all right what can you tell me about this image yeah so there was a woman she had her mouth open she looked like she was either angry or going to shout at someone yeah probably had some sort of an issue with her husband and she was trying to tell him not to cook eggs with too much salt because the kids don't eat okay okay wait that's my wife yeah
all right now let's look at the next one okay what can you tell me about this ah can you give me some time because I'm not really good at speed math and I but if I were to give you a piece of pen and paper that was a multiplication obviously yes if I were to give you a piece of pen and paper you would be able to do that of course yeah yeah it would take you a little a few seconds a minute maybe right yeah that were your two different brains right the brain which can work with a piece of paper and do that complex calculation that is your human brain okay that has evolved only recently okay whereas
the brain the part of your brain which in a sub second was able to tell you so many things about the face of that woman just from just one image right that part of your brain we have gotten from the dinosaurs okay so this is like the innermost layer of our brain I mean that's why lizard brain and that's why human brain correct yeah in the literature this is typically referred to as system one which is the lizard brain and system two which came later which is the human brain right so you would have heard terms like prefrontal cortex and so on so our I have heard them but they don't make any sense to me the things that make us human
right ability to do language ability to form complex social structures all of that comes from our human brain right thinking brain but a lot of things that are needed in day-to-day life like emotions like instincts that come from the lizard brain system one okay so what decides when system one brain or the lizard brain is in control and when system two or the human thinking brain is in control yeah so to understand that I think I need to explain one thing to you which is that system one is very fast it is automatic you don't even have to think about it it all happened automatically if you remember right yeah I basically looked at the woman and decided
that she was yelling at her husband and system one is continuously going on it is the one that deals with emotions it is the one also that understands stereotypes okay so when you see a shady looking person the fact that you have already decided that person is Shady that has come from your lizard brain and you are not really in control of it it's unconscious okay whereas system two is very slow you have to take extra effort to actually start using system two right multiplication doesn't happen automatically especially 17 * 24. I remember the numbers I don't remember the result I don't even know the results also most of the time you don't use your system to you think you
are like a thinking person but you are not really right um all the logic the calculations are from your thinking brain okay and all your conscious thought comes from there no you are under them Misconception that most of your brain is this thinking brain but in reality most of it is system one okay the thing is system one takes point one second to respond to anything if I do this you reacted I did in less very slowly but yeah that's because I'm not okay I felt that I've had my eyes closed if there was a normal person they would have reacted much faster or if they had their eyes open they would have reacted much faster so point
one second system one a takes that's all whereas system two the thinking brain does not even get started for 0.7 seconds okay okay okay which means that any situation you are in um immediately system one first takes a look at it right so someone decides then system one will usually just react okay in most situations once in a while system one will say you know what this is not my thing okay and for example when you saw that multiplication system one you know when we when our brain evolved in the savannas when we were hunting deer and running various animals wolves multiplication was not a thing right so system one says I don't know give it over to system two
okay so usually that's what is happening system one comes on first takes a look might just handle the situation itself okay once in a while it might decide to send it upstairs to system two and then system 2 which 0.7 seconds later is going to wake up that one decides okay fine let me do something about it okay couple of things here this seems like it could run into problems it seems like you can't always trust system one or when because I'm trying to think if system one drives most of our day-to-day behavior when should we trust system one and when should we not yeah so first of all I think it is important to note that
it is best when they work together okay as a team so I want to give you an example of that okay suppose you were not an example an analogy okay suppose you wanted to go across town at a high traffic time okay okay and you have two people one is an experienced old-time driver who can drive very well who can weave through traffic very well and there is a non-driver who knows how to use Google Maps well right okay the best way to get get across town is for the Google Maps person to decide which route is the best and then the driver to weave through the traffic and drive faster right yeah yeah if either of them by themselves
wouldn't do as good a job right so the driver is your lizard brain and the Google Maps person is your thinking brain yeah okay make sense makes sense so basically it always helps when you manage to get both system 1 and system 2 the lizard brain and the human brain working in tandem in collaboration with each other one handing over tasks to the other that or the other can do with ease so to speak correct yeah well that's why it's always system one who takes the first look and hands over the complex tasks to systems to do okay but that doesn't always work acha so let me give you an example right this many of you might
know this but suppose I told you that a bat and a ball together they cost 110 rupees but the bat is 100 rupees more than the ball so quickly how much did the ball cost 10 bucks right most people answer that especially if you don't give them time to think correct that's but the reality if the ball is 10 bucks and the bat is 100 more then bat is 110 and the total would be 120 so that's the wrong answer correct right it's 5 and 105. correct what happened here was that system one thought this was an easy enough problem I answered it on its own especially because I said quickly yes okay that quickly did throw me off because
I was actually trying to set up the equation you know the whatever it is called yeah but of course you know you're not going to be asked such problems I hope not but this kind of an error happens very often where system one just decides it knows how to handle a situation whereas it probably didn't that's where all our biases come from all our blind spot comes from and you must have heard right that humans are not really rational they take all kinds of bad decisions especially when probabilities are involved all of that comes from system one being overconfident ah all right yes yeah I can sense a lot of situations in my life where my system one thinking system one
brain caused me to take a lot of decisions that let's just say I should not have taken but it it basically now sounds to me like letting system one take charge of your life is a very bad idea are you saying that Navin not really okay okay one thing you have to understand is that system one is really good at the things it does well okay okay that woman I showed you for a fraction of a second what color was her hair black right was she like say Indian no she seemed Middle Eastern so many things you picked up right I could probably ask you five more questions and you would answer them all correctly right there are so
many things system one in point one second it is doing system one is good at things involving other humans their their expressions their emotions it is also good at things like this right yeah moving things because on the Savannah when the Wolves were attacking it terrifies me when he tries to punch me of course I'm going to flinch so you know when a wolf is coming at you yeah so sizes of things things coming at you all of these are things that system one is very good at in fact let me give you one more example here okay um here do you see this road traffic right suppose you are standing here okay okay I'm very red and I ask you that you have to
quickly cross the road do you think you would be able to make it yeah there is no there is nothing in front of the maroon car yeah and the bikes are all looking the other way there is one by coming this way but far away I'll be passing what about the white car too far away okay and on the wrong side but I will probably be either in the middle or past yeah you gave me a complex explanation of why you would be able to cross right did you think of all of that before saying yes no I thought of that while trying to explain why I said yes correct so the decision that you can
cross happened in 0.1 second okay think of what all system one did in that point one second right it recognized all these things the cars the people the two wheelers it recognized that these two wheelers are pointing in the wrong direction it recognized that car it knew your speed what speed you can cross it it's new the speed of the white car it knew that these two cars were stationary okay imagine how many calculations were going on and now compare that to the 17 into 24 that I asked at the beginning yeah that is actually much less in terms of calculation than all of this that I just did so yeah it makes sense system
one did take charge immediately and give me a result that was useful conversely okay Converse okay if you had to use system two to cross the road you would be dead because in 0.7 seconds you're thinking okay what am I going to do so I'd be standing right there and not moving at all if I were using system two I'd be like actually I'm touching into 24. actually you're right very likely you would just be immobile you would not be able to do anything in your life because you know system two is just too slow for day-to-day things okay okay so yeah I mean basically you need to know what system one and system two are
good at right so let me see if I have some um so is there like a is there like a guideline as to when a system one and when I should use system one and when I should use system two because it seems like most of the time my human brain and my lizard brain know exactly when to kick in yeah but it also seems like at there are points where I should force one or the other to kick it yeah so I will give you two examples I mean in each direction right situations where system one kicks in when it shouldn't and it's just situations system two kicks in where it should not kicks in but you're using system two you're
being forced to use system two because system one threw up its hands all right let's go with the first one where does system one kick in where it shouldn't no but before that let me make sure you understand what is system one good at and what a system two good at right okay so system one is good at distances estimating them and you know suddenly if a sound comes we're figuring out from this looking at images right editing visual and muscle memory something we call muscle memory like so basics of driving is all system one I mean you don't need to think while you're driving right you're you're talking to somebody there and you're listening to a podcast and so on right I
wish more people did think while driving though here is an interesting one two plus two four that was system one under data calculation so we have to think of how that happened right and even simple answer bread and butter right so again that happened automatically again system one yes earlier I lied I said calculations and languages system too but if two plus two have done so many times that it is initially four as in I don't have to calculate two plus two it's just I know it absolutely absolutely that is important we will come back to that later okay in fact that is one of the important takeaways of this episode okay what system two is good at most important is
paying attention where to pay attention system two decides that okay so you know in a crowd if you have to pick out your friend that's a system two or if I tell you while watching the basketball game count the number of passes okay so that counting you are going to use system to attention there so wherever deliberate measurement or attention or focus is required system to kicks in especially if it is a kind of activity that wouldn't happen in the African Savannah yes we our Hardware was created in the African Savanna we are like making minor updates to the software for the last hundred thousand years Okay so all right but just let's go through a few more
examples right when you hear a sound what was that sound off right that takes system two if you're walking faster than normal and you want to sustain that pace that takes system to thinking so regular walking you can have conversations without thinking about it but fast working you have to focus on your walking and your conversation slows down right sounds to me like this is going into the territory of mindfulness I don't know it's a very far-fetched thing but no no absolutely true mindfulness is trying to reduce system one actions and making sure that everything that is happening system two should be paying attention to right all right so mindfulness is basically bringing in system to where you are normally
accustomed to let system one or your lizard brain do its thing correct because system one does things and you don't even realize it has done it mindfulness makes you realize what you have done okay so tell me something what are um the weirdest places in which you see like a reversal of these two systems yeah um but before that just so we understand right I want to give some real life complex examples of system one working very well okay if there are any women in the audience you'd know that there are some men you just have a feeling about and then you start avoiding them right not me I hope so but I mean this is true you ask
any woman yeah she has a feeling right and there are some men she'll feel safe around right yeah if you ask them to explain why they feel like that they will not be able to explain okay right because that decision was made by System One an example so system one system two there is a book called Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman okay Nobel Prize winner in Psychology in that he's given a lovely example there was an actual fire and a team of firefighters went in and the team leader the most experienced firefighter right they were in a kitchen and they were controlling the fire there and suddenly he said you know what we need to get
out of here and they all got out of here and a few seconds later the roof collapsed at that time he wasn't able to explain why he felt we need to get out but his probably his brain picked up on signals that he had experienced over his career yeah later on he was able to explain that the fire had become awfully quiet but at the same time his ears were hotter than normal and things like that but all those were after the fact right so this is the time before that yeah the book you said was thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman we'll put that in the description for you to check it out so uh let's talk about how this can be a
problem right where the systems mess up so one is that you see a car ad okay and there's a beautiful woman in there right the voiceover is talking about the features of the car the mileage it gives and how it is very affordable and things like that right yeah what is happening do you think here the voiceover is basically appealing to my system to brain exactly trying to tell me to consider the car on Purely practical and pragmatic grounds correct and I am listening to it hopefully and you know when you decide to buy that car how did that decision happen you are convinced that it was because of the mileage and the price and all of that of course I am convinced right
but not necessarily in the example of a car because you spend way too much time thinking about it but in a lot of advertising works by appealing to your system one right the visual things which go directly into system one without going to your system too right they help your system one make the decision all right fine I like the woman in the car yes I agree you think she's right next to the car so if I was in the car yes I agree yeah so I damn it yeah but I mean a lot of advertising is that the advertisers are trying to trick your system one into taking a decision which goes against what your system two would suggest some
things just sell yeah anybody in the advertising industry would tell you that yeah it just sells um so I do want to talk about you know how does this help you yes please yeah so I think first you should know when to trust system one because like the firefighters right second you should know that there are people out there trying to trick your system one okay okay this would be at all advertising this would be political leaders this would be conmen this would be godmen all of them are appealing to your system one without you realizing it right so keep that in mind pause I'm a little worried that we are using advertising in conman in the same sentence one
still works I'm not going to cut this part of course you're not going to cut this part out but hello let's at least don't make it blatant well see that is one of the important things to note that unless you're extra extra careful just knowing all of this doesn't change anything this decision still gets taken by System One okay so okay you have to learn how to be that extra extra careful okay okay so um the third thing I want you to know is that changing the behavior of system one is extremely difficult let me give an example of that okay so when imagine okay there is like an important India Pakistan match and there is a
bowler who builds an outswinger outside the off stump Kohli goes after it Nix it gets caught one billion people grown and say why didn't he leave it he does this every time right yes by now I'm sure Kohli has also heard of this problem that he has of fishing outside the off-stump yes why doesn't it do anything about it because fishing outside the off stump is handled by System One why when a fast bowler balls of ball right from the time he releases it to the time it reaches the batter half a second yeah and system two takes how long 0.7 seconds so did you just reduce Cricket to a system one versus system two problem I I am going
to reduce it further and I will bring God into the picture Okay so the thing is that um Kohli does not have time to think Kohli knows that he's not supposed to fish outside the off stump, which Kohli? the human Kohli. Achha, the lizard brain, remember. Lizard Kohli sees some object moving fast towards so we are going to get a lot of Virat fans in the comments how dare you call him lizard. Huh? But what he's trying to say is lizard brain versus thinking human brain it's not like Virat wasn't thinking but it's System One versus system so but the important point I was trying to make is that with so much riding on it and the best people in the
world helping him it's still difficult for him to make a change right system one changing system one takes a lot of effort so two things I want you to remember related to that is one be kind to others right try to see if you see somebody making if you see Virat fishing outside the off-stump be kind to him no no I'm now talking about your co-worker who does that same stupid mistake every time right ask yourself is that a system one error in that case be kind right second is that instead of co-worker think of yourself there's a whole bunch of mistakes you make over and over and over again be kind to yourself right this is for
example habits okay you know you have to go on a diet right system two knows all the rules of what you are allowed to eat what you're not allowed to eat and why but who makes the decision of what to eat system one right so be kind to yourself yes right so basically I can now blame all of my diet mistakes on system one I will do that no no so where I am coming from is that there are ways to teach system one and you need to learn those right and where can I learn those so for example Atomic Habits by James Clear is a book all about how to kill bad habits and start
good habits okay how to overcome your deep rooted system one and replace it with conscious system two behavior and then make that system no no no no you can't replace you can't have system two doing anything like this right system two is too slow oh what you have to do is you have to replace one system one Behavior with a different system so all of this is explained in that book techniques are there so Atomic Habits by James Clear look at that you hit up on just one of the examples there which is you can't just get rid of a habit you have to replace a habit with a different habit okay so that's an example and I think we have talked about
Atomic habits in another episode so go check that one out we'll put it somewhere yeah yeah so the fourth most important thing I want to get at right is forget habits right in general think about expertise okay so Kohli we said the bad thing about Kohli's fishing outside the office term but all the good things also all the amazing shots all of those are because of system one do you think he was born with that because in the savannah somehow using a bat was useful no again with the Savannah no right what happened was that he spent hundreds of hours doing the same thing again and again and again until that system to thinking became system
one what is it what is that thing about how you need 10 000 hours to become an expert 10 000 hours of deliberate practice right any expertise requires system one thinking okay let me take a simple example okay when you learn driving okay some of you might not have learned driving think about bicycling okay when you start your system two is doing everything right oh I should turn like this this is what I should do I should try to press the brake and what happens is that you mess up why why do you mess up very bad why because I'm trying to do everything at once I I don't know where the clutches where the gear is where the
steering is where the window is where the person is there are people no there are two problems here one is that system two has a very limited capacity it can do just of one or two things at a time you increase the number of things and it drops second remember system two takes point seven seconds to react to anything on a bicycle 0.7 seconds to for your balance you've Fallen already yes right so how do you actually learn what you do is you repeatedly do the same thing over and over again until it becomes system one right today if you are on a bicycle or in a car you don't even realize what is happening
right you're driving without thinking about it you're talking to people you don't even know when you weave through traffic right yeah the talking to people part I don't like and I hate people who do that so so like this all expertise I mean basic expertise would say you know 10 standard maths two god-like expertise Sachin Tendulkar's batting comes from pushing system to patterns down to system one if you ask Sachin Tendulkar's coach points out one of the reasons he is God is because he used to spend an insane amount of time in the Nets that's true same thing but no you know you are not Sachin Tendulkar how is this info useful to you everything you do right the reason why you have
multiplication tables in school is because higher level maths which requires system 2 cannot be done unless multiplication is in system one the reason why you have root learning in school is because until the basics are stuffed in system one you can't do more complex thinking okay wait a second oh that is the sound of parents coming in the comments and saying thank you to Navin I hear you you're welcome yes so and 10,000 hours right yeah to become an expert World level expert you have to put enough things into system one and that takes that much time one important concept there is that you need deliberate practice which is that you know you're practicing X once that
has become automatic then you need to practice the next level oh then that becomes automatic then you practice the next level so you have to keep increasing your level also somewhere you can't practice the wrong thing enter this if you practice the wrong kind of servant once it goes into system one you're never going to fix your serve right so two things needed are somebody else needs to keep telling you are you doing the right things and you have to keep increasing your level which is why Ramakant Achrekar was as important as Sachin spending time in the Nets yes yes yes yes one important phrase I want to leave you with right is that all of this deliberate
practice should be at the time of practice okay when you are on the field or whenever you are doing the thing in reality let system wanting let system one take over right okay practice analytically perform instinctively right wonderful wonderful mantra for everybody practice analytically perform instinctively instinctive if you want Roger Federer to mess up a service what you have to do is you have to ask him while you are serving are you breathing in or breathing out and then he starts thinking of that he's going to mess up because suddenly now he's serving using system two instead of system one now all I have to do is find Roger Federer and challenge him to a match
so that I can win a point by forcing him to use system 2 instead of system one by asking this question thank you so much Roger call me so yeah that's that's the basic idea right so books or articles or places on the web where people can learn more about system one system to one you've already said is Atomic Habits by James Clear is there anything else the main one is of course Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman which I already mentioned Blink by Malcolm Gladwell isn't that where he said the 10 000 hours thing or was it another no that was a different book okay but blink is also important so for example he's got
a lot of examples where in a blink of an iron decision happens which obviously he's talking about yeah and we'll put all of these resources in the description of this video so do check them out and do read them any questions of course you can always shoot them to us so before we go ah I want to just give a fun example okay the one of the funniest places where I've seen the system one two thing play out okay so there is a video you can find it on YouTube we'll put a link here okay psychologists created this video and they showed it to people and the people were told there is a basketball game that is being shown and in that
you have took there are half the one team is in white one team is in Black you have to count how many times the people in white passed the basketball when people watch it and they count the number of passes and at the end you ask them how many passes they say yes they give the correct answer then they ask them did you if you are actually going to be a part of this experiment then I would recommend that you pause the video here go check that video out follow the number of passes between the people count them the video has instructions so just follow the instructions follow the instructions then come back after you've done the whole thing we'll put
the link in the description again go follow the video and when you are done with that video come back and this is what Navin is going to tell you then they ask them did you notice a man in a gorilla suit walk past the screen and the surprising answer is that a very large fraction of people do not notice an entire gorilla guy walking across the screen yeah why if you remember I talked about system two counting the basketball passes requires system to noticing somebody like this also requires system 2 and your system 2 is not capable of handling both at the same time so when I watch the video for the first time this is what actually happened with me I was
counting the passes and then there was a sudden noise and I happened to look at the noise and then looked back and I saw the gorilla pass by and I'm like wait what video am I watching and I couldn't make head or tail of it and when the answer was revealed at the end I realized oh I was only able to spot the gorilla because I happened to take my attention away from the video otherwise there was no chance I would have noticed that by the way also you are lying because you didn't take the attention away there was a noise and your system one took over I said noises is system one yes when a noise comes system one takes over your
system two got paused so when you came back your system two was not engaged then it again engaged so that's what happened so the overall thing that I'm getting from this is is that system one is Uber powerful Ultra powerful and it is in our advantage it's in our best interests to use that power to channel that power to in in things that we do on a daily basis right so um by the way it is possible that we spoiled the gorilla example for you um so sorry about that but to make up for it we will also give you a link for the color changing card trick example okay do check it out try
that also in the description and it is it's a very fun video so you'll enjoy it trust me I am Shrikant this is Navin and this was future IQ