We humans have two forms of thinking: fast and slow. Fast thinking involves our experience, habits, understanding of processes or things familiar to us. When we think quickly, we can often do other things simultaneously. Slow thinking involves reasoning or mathematics, takes longer and requires our full attention. Our fast thinking works fine for most things and most of the time. A lot of parts of our lives functions through habits. But most of the biases and errors result from applying fast thinking in situations where slow thinking is needed.
But slowing down to think more carefully about things takes energy and time. Our brains use a tremendous amount of our metabolic energy. So it is humans nature to save or store energy rather than waste it on unnecessary tasks. We are also much more comfortable using our fast thinking. It is a lot easier and comes naturally. It doesn’t require extra energy possibly needed for other things.
So, the more you are able to use slow thinking when it is really needed, the more you will be able to avoid simple mistakes.
Sven Franssen