Programming, Fast and Slow
In 2012, Daniel Kahneman published “ Thinking, Fast and Slow ”. It’s one of those books that most Agile coaches and thinkers own, but very few have read. Because it’s not an easy read. It’s long, for a start. But it also goes into a lot of economics and psychology which, even for a popular science book, is hard. And it’s a book summarising a lifetime’s ground breaking, Nobel-prize-winning research. I read it over several months, and it was difficult. But I was already intrigued by these ideas. My brother lent me Julian Jaynes’ amazing “ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind ” many years ago, and the idea that we function in a largely non-conscious way has been rattling around my head ever since. The central hypothesis of “ Thinking, Fast and Slow ” is that our minds have distinct subsystems that work In very different ways. Our conscious mind is System 2. It can reason, plan, learn. But it is expensive. It uses up lots of energy, so our minds avoid using