{"id":40987,"date":"2025-03-05T21:31:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T05:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=40987"},"modified":"2025-03-07T17:09:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-08T01:09:06","slug":"slow-thoughts-on-free-will-and-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/slow-thoughts-on-free-will-and-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow Thoughts on Free Will and Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman[1]<\/a> is a whale of a book. It is so filled to the brim with concepts, examples and studies, that to try and consume it in a week is impossible.<\/p>\n

System one and system two thinking remind me of a similar idea in recovery, the upstairs brain and the downstairs brain. The downstairs would correlate to system one. It\u2019s the reactionary part of us where all the trauma and experiences automatically cause all the systems to respond.\u00a0 The upstairs brain is where rational thinking comes in and a greater ability to process and discuss occurs. \u00a0Kahneman\u2019s version of System one puts it into a positive light, it is our intuition[2]<\/a>.\u00a0 In recovery this often has a negative overtone because it\u2019s hard to work through things when the automatic response if firing. It is the place where de-escalation needs to happen first to move the person into using the upstairs brain.\u00a0 Most things heard or seen when functioning in the reactionary downstairs brain is not received or understood.\u00a0 I appreciate Kahneman\u2019s two system brain because it shows how the two work together without one or the other being good or bad. \u00a0System one is our intuition expressed in automatic behavior and System two has more control over thoughts[3]<\/a>. This self-control allows us to process ways forward with the reactionary system calmed down and not wreaking havoc.\u00a0 This takes greater mental work though. \u00a0The cognitive effort can become too much, weakening self-control and causing people to make selfish choices[4]<\/a>. In any twelve step program you would be familiar with continued addiction being an outcome of selfish choices. So an addict becomes stuck in the cycle between upstairs and downstairs, making recovery exhausting.<\/p>\n

Association of ideas and priming\u2019s influence on our thinking and behavior seems to make us puppets of our environment.\u00a0 One experiment used words associated with old behavior that then led the participants to behave by walking slower. This showed the ideomotor effect of an idea influencing action[5]<\/a>. I have a hard time believing the universality of these results.\u00a0 There are so many layers of assumptions that need to be made to get a person from thinking \u201cold\u201d to then associate that to elders being slower (which may not be a characteristic that all people would think of old people), to then have your body unconsciously walk slow.\u00a0 There are too many cultural understandings, age categories and personal experiences that would skew such a general reaction. I feel like a lot of Kahneman\u2019s studies seemed to make these overgeneralized (or should I say overconfidence with its illusion of validity[6]<\/a>) results. When I did a google search on my questioning, I found a slew of articles critiquing the book on the difficulties of replicability of his studies. \u00a0This matters to me because the philosophy of free will and choice affects how we behave. \u00a0I started reading Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky[7]<\/a> which weaves together evolutionary adaptations that have humans behave the ways they do.\u00a0 It seems to be leading to a conclusion that we really don\u2019t have free will or choice, but are products of the experiences and biological changes of the far past.\u00a0 In Christian circles we debate predestination, in liberal social services we debate the ability that the poor can choose anything and in self-help we rely on the ability to choose our destiny. This idea of reactionary, unconscious influence on our behavior is a very important discussion.\u00a0 How much free will and self-efficacy do we really have? Are we just rats in cosmic cage being controlled by the divine? \u00a0How much agency do we have? These are essential questions in understanding our relationship to others and God and growth and freedom.<\/p>\n

Prospecting theory plays into the question of why we do what we do. We have an adaptation level that is our reference point for whether and how much something becomes a gain or loss for us. \u00a0\u00a0We come out as more adverse to loss then the risk to gain.[8]<\/a> We are more emotional and desire certainty more than the rationality of the utility principle implies. The experiencing self and the remembering self may have different ideas of preferences and interests making for irrationality of choice[9]<\/a>.\u00a0 Again, we see the inconsistency in our agency to choose.\u00a0 We remember the intense moments and the feelings connected to it, but not necessarily the linear facts, making us quite irrational in our behavior and desires[10]<\/a>.\u00a0 I hope that we have more agency and choice than being \u00a0products of our evolutionary history.<\/p>\n

After several of the readings on leadership I find myself longing for a read on the heart and passion of leadership. This book speaks to the inner self, but in context of economics. I care more about leadership that transforms lives as the goal of an organization then I do about the goal of a corporation for more efficiently run systems and making money.\u00a0 Though the principles of leadership and how we think and behave may be affective in all settings, I am losing the passion of why I lead.\u00a0 I get stuck in my head and find myself longing for inspiration.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow.<\/em> New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2013<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Kahneman 20<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Kahneman 44<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Kahneman 41<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>Kahneman 53<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Kahneman 209-210<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Sapolsky, Robert M.,\u00a0Behave: The Biology of Humans At Our Best and Worst.\u00a0<\/em>Penguin Press, 2017.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Kahneman 282-283<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Kahneman 384<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Kahneman 385<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman[1] is a whale of a book. It is so filled to the brim with concepts, examples and studies, that to try and consume it in a week is impossible. System one and system two thinking remind me of a similar idea in recovery, the upstairs brain and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3397,2052],"class_list":["post-40987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp04","tag-kahneman","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41104,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40987\/revisions\/41104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}