ABSTRACT
Daniel Kahneman calls thinking he sees as hard and slow by the name “System 2.” He also sees this kind of thinking not only as demanding, but also something most of us try to avoid. “The evidence is persuasive,” he says, “activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant.” No wonder then that he tells us that when given half a chance, the brain’s System 2 would rather turn itself off than get down to business. Is this true? How then are we to understand the seemingly frivolous sorts of thinking popularly called daydreaming, self-reflection, fantasizing, and the like fit into this humorless picture of human nature and the brain? More to the point, does turning the energy consumed by System 2 down low whenever possible actually happen routinely inside the human cranium? Can we rule out the possibility that rather than saving metabolic energy for a rainy day, say, whenever possible, what’s not being used gets invested instead in other ways by the human brain? Say, in doing the kinds of creative things that in this book we like to call collectively Alice?
