Think Slow (Week 32 of Wisdom)

There comes with technology both curses and boons – this has been true for every technological development throughout the ages. But the detrimental effects of today’s technology are more hidden from us.

Let us go back to the past for a moment, to a time when cars were first invented. Then, it was clear for people to see the disadvantages of such a technology because the effects were immediate. A car accident would result in more significant harm to a person than a horse accident ever could. And as cars became faster, the risk of injury went up even more.

The danger of an airplane or helicopter is clear, despite the improbability of a crash. The stark, bloody images that we witness live, or in the news, are hard to erase from memory. But the effects of digital technology take years to materialize. and therefore, far more insidious.

It is hard to assess precisely what sort of impact prolonged screen time has on cognitive and social health. Only after many years could we understand what was going on. Now we know that spending more time on screens can increase the chances of obesity, poor health, and a low quality of life. 1

It is not just the bad eating and lifestyle habits that you develop while spending too much time on the screen, but you also get the illusion that you are being productive. With twenty tabs open on your browser and 5 programs running in the background,it becomes hard for you to imagine anyone as cognitively accomplished as you throughout history.

But unfortunately, you have one processor, unlike computers. You cannot multi-task. Your mind is simply giving partial attention to different tasks that it has rank ordered automatically. 2

What you experience instead is continuous partial attention, when you switch from one task to the next. This is contrary to a more deliberate experience, that includes purposeful pauses and awareness of physical sensations or nagging sensations. The latter state, which is higher in awareness, is slower and effortful, but ultimately more productive.

The point is made at length in Deep Work: the only way to increase levels of mastery is to beyond your comfort zone, but an integral part of this adventure is to be more mindful about what you pay conscious attention to. The point of being aware of the different sensations in your body is to learn about how your attention can be directed, and when not directed, how it becomes becomes automatic. This is not to say that automatic attention is always bad. There are times for when fast thinking is more efficient than slow thinking, as Gerd Gigerenzer argues in Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart.

But today, cognition does not suffer from a lack of stimulation, but from overstimulation. In the same way that the bigger problem in the world is not that there is not enough food, it is that we have too much of it (more people die from overnutrition than malnutrition). The world has gone from having problems of scarcity to dealing with problems of abundance. Mental health suffers from overabundance of information.

In the age of information, the central question is not how to get access to the right information, but how to maintain enough attention to process it.

The speed of technology has warped the rhythm at which we process reality. We have become impatient. Notice how, when you turn on your laptop, or when you start your car, you are always struck by the feeling that “not enough” is happening. You are so used to web pages loading in milliseconds, to the astronomical speed of your smartphone, that the world around you, in comparison, is too slow.

But in those moments, when you take the time to do something slow, try to not be distracted by such an urge, try to be mindful of the artificial pull that has taken command of your psychology, and tame it.

In Thinking: Fast and Slow, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains how our brains are made up of two parts, the fast reptilian brain (system 1) and the slow, deliberate brain (system 2). He explains, throughout the book, the cognitive shortcuts that come from system 1 thinking. Such as when asked if you are satisfied with life, you will take the shortcut and think only about how you are feeling this moment.

But these cognitive shortcuts often lead to cognitive errors, including anchoring, loss aversion, and priming. Our brains are susceptible to being influenced one way or another when we don’t exercise enough effort to delineate between what is really true, and what is convenient. We jump to conclusions because it is in our nature to do so. And the problem, that has to do with our neurological wiring, has now become accentuated in the age of information.

The other mistake is to think that creative breakthroughs come from thinking for prolonged periods of time, or constantly feeding your brain information – it is instead the gap, the figurative space between the spokes of the wheel, that leads to creative insight. After working hard on a problem, the next thing to do is to stop, and do something completely different.

The internet and the mediums through which it is accessed has become a staple in the life of the individual, but it is unquestionably true, that it has taken advantage of his cognitive vulnerabilities. The need to think slow, to become less reactive, more deliberate, is not a life hack. It is the only course of action left to pursue, if one is interested in simply returning to normal.

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Related posts:

1. The Inflated Ego (Week 23 of Wisdom)
2. Negative Visualization (Week 10 of Wisdom)
3. Knowledge Is Not Understanding (Week 22 of Wisdom)
4. Mimetic Desire (Week 30 of Wisdom)