ABSTRACT
The major difference between the standard approach and its alternatives is how they approach two facts: first, that people make very fast unconscious responses, or act in ways that require very fast unconscious and introspectively inaccessible mental operations; second, that once in place, these operations are, at least sometimes, difficult to change or replace. Modules perform the same tasks that can be done explicitly, like dead reckoning, but in a fast, mechanical way, which is possible because the task has been broken down into simple components. The psychological literature on cognitive load, on the demands placed on working memory, has shown that the poor, the elderly, people in a confusing novel situation, and many other circumstances are forced to think, in the sense of slow thinking, harder and with more difficulty. Schooling is a case of designed affordances, and is a useful example. Designed affordances are fraught with unintended consequences.
