Wednesday, 23 April 2025
Our two ways of thinking and the inhibition of the frontal cortex
The human brain is often described as having two main ways of thinking: one of them fast, automatic and unconscious, the other slower, more flexible and requiring conscious control. Each of them has its own benefits and drawbacks. The first—let’s call it “System 1”—is based on the sum of the habits, stereotypes and received ideas that we have acquired since childhood. System 1 doesn’t provide us with any ready-made solutions, but instead sends us down paths to possible or likely ones. In contrast, System 2, with its logical, rational thinking, is slower and more careful. It proceeds by deduction, inference and comparison. System 2 is what lets us see past our conditioning and beyond appearances.
But it’s really hard to apply this kind of critical thinking unless we first overcome the strong instinct to choose the first quick answer that inevitably comes to mind. Here’s a classic example: you’re on a cafeteria line, you’ve reached the desserts and you have to choose between an apple and a piece of chocolate cake. Obviously, you’re going to be very tempted by that cake, but if you have good self-control, you’ll end up taking the damn apple. You will have thus heroically resisted your instinctive attraction to sugar, which was an evolutionary advantage for your hunter-gatherer ancestors in an environment where calories were scarce, but can harm your health in today’s environment where foods with high concentrations of refined sugar are on offer everywhere.
The more general question that we may now ask ourselves as a society is whether we can collectively inhibit our instinct to consume as much as we can right away, and instead secure a pretty important longer-term benefit: a planet that can sustain life for generations to come.
From Thought to Language | Comments Closed
