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Alice was bored; bored with the doldrums of regular life; bored of books with no pictures.\u00a0 Out of boredom Alice is lured to follow the white rabbit down the rabbit hole.\u00a0 I imagine Alice would be similarly bored with the Daniel Kahneman\u2019s 400 plus page book (with very few pictures) Reading, Fast and Slow<\/em>.\u00a0 Kahneman\u2019s vast experience in economics, statistics, and psychology inform his 2 system (Fast Intuitive Thinking and Slow Effortful thinking), 2 selves (Experiencing and Remembering) framework for understanding thinking about thinking. Yeah, a rabbit hole in the making.\u00a0 But I, aka \u201cthis Alice\u201d, wasn\u2019t bored even without many pictures.<\/p>\n Reading Fast and Slow is a thorough fleshing out of psychological statistics as it informs how humans utilize impressions, intuitions, effort applied in cognition, experiences, and memory in their decisions and beliefs making. \u00a0Make no mistake, Kahneman is all about unpacking how and why we make mistakes in our thinking. Kahneman admits that his book is weighted heavily on presenting the types of biases that influence intuition (heuristics, stereotypes, anchoring effect, WYSIATHI et al.) He also makes clear that System 2, the Slow Thinking, rational part of our thinking system, has an important role in working to sift through our intuitions and impressions to lead us to new information, knowledge, beliefs.\u00a0 He notes that this process of thinking takes intentional effort, and yet the inclination is to be lazy.\u00a0 Kahneman\u2019s sense of humor and engaging subject matter was the white rabbit that led \u201cthis Alice\u201d down the rabbit hole.<\/p>\n I found myself going down all kinds of rabbit holes while reading this book. Thinking about rabbit holes lead me down the rabbit hole of Alice\u2019s rabbit hole where I came across an article by Kathleen Shultz. \u201cIn the original story, Alice falls for quite a while\u2014long enough to scout out the environment, grab some food off a passing shelf, speculate erroneously about other parts of the world, drift into a reverie about cats, and nearly fall asleep.\u201d[1]<\/a> Yes, I did a long fall through Reading, Fast and Slow. <\/em>\u00a0More than any book so far I found myself making all kinds of scriptural and theological connections, for instance, how does our system 2\u2019s behavior of escaping effort speak to the challenges of discipleship[2]<\/a>, system 2 being activated lead to system 1 to succumb to temptation \u2013 how does this impact our understanding of what happened during the temptations of Jesus[3]<\/a>, and do scriptures reflect the psychological awareness of \u201ccognitive ease\u201d, i.e. what happens when we give with a joyful heart?[4]<\/a>. Another rabbit hole, how can some of these biases be utilized for positive impact on church engagement, and more importantly ethical?[5]<\/a> I saw rabbit holes luring me to investigate more where Friedman and Kahneman connected on \u201clow pain thresholds\u201d[6]<\/a>, and the logic of Augustine\u2019s morality coercion undergirding \u201cThe Nudge of the 2 Selves\u201d[7]<\/a>, how I play Frozen FreeFall game on my phone, and just plain curiosity of why I would choose the take the road less travelled.<\/p>\n Last year we read Being Wrong<\/em> (also) by Kathleen Schultz.\u00a0 As Kahneman unpacked in section 5, humans confounding tendencies to believe that what we know is the correct truth while new information presented conflicts with our truth, I flashed to memories of reading her book.<\/em>\u00a0 This lead me down another rabbit hole to find my Facebook posts when I shared some of her quotes.[8]<\/a> This human truth, that we struggle with saying \u2019I\u2019m sorry, I was wrong\u201d has been a simmering pot for me.\u00a0 As our chronically anxious nation continues to be polarized over racism, Covid, masks, and vaccines I become more convinced of the importance that the biology, psychology, and (strangely) statistics around low thresholds of pain, and our tendencies to dig our heels in even when we are wrong, need to be a part of understanding our leadership in the places God has us.\u00a0 It means effort applied, self-differentiation, courage, risk, imagination, and love.\u00a0 All of this is overwhelming when I think about how to integrate it all.<\/p>\n Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/em> has so much to unpack.\u00a0 But as I said to Kayli, \u201cI woke up freaking out over everything I have to accomplish.\u00a0 Then I decided I really have to prioritize.\u201d This book will be one I come back to again when I have time to follow the white rabbit again. It was fun to slowly fall down the rabbit hole looking all around at what I could see in his book. I believe that as I ponder the questions raised, I will say what Alice would say, curiouser and curiouser.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/cultural-comment\/the-rabbit-hole-rabbit-hole<\/a><\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Section 3 \u2013 The Lazy Controller<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Page 41 \u2013 The Busy and Depleted System 2<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Section 5 \u2013 Cognitive Ease<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> Getting people to smile in order to be positively open to the worship experience, using the Anchoring index in fund raising, or priming to create generosity.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> \u201cThis is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easer one instead, usually without noticing substitutions\u201d Page 12; Loss Aversion pg.283<\/p>\n