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by kendalf89 612 days ago
System 1 and 2 are just another way of describing dual process theory, which existed long before Daniel Kahneman wrote, Thinking Fast and Slow, and is still the prevailing theory of mind in its category today. There were maybe 1 or 2 studies mentioned in that book that were not very replicable but other than that, the overall consensus by leading experts in that field is positive, from everything I've seen, which is impressive considering how old the book is now.

I have no idea if dual process theory is actually useful for teaching computers how to math, but it seems unfair to just dismiss it as pop science bunk.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

2 comments

> ...which is impressive considering how old the book is now.

The human mind hasn't changed all that much in the last ... countless millennia. If anything it'd be a quite concerning data point if we hadn't nailed down the introductory level points about how to be thoughtful.

The Wiki article you link gives an example from the 1600s of "the passions" vs "reason" so it certainly seems quite old. And when framed that way in particular has echos of "habitus" from sociology - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitus_(sociology) which I will paraphrase badly as "intuition [the passions] as shaped by social structure".

But all that seems largely descriptive rather than usefully predictive and more a representation of what we don't know than what we do.