Emotions

“So, what do you do?” The innocuous cocktail party question lands like a philosophical challenge whenever I hear it. My internal response: Which identity would you prefer I present today? I could truthfully answer: Software Artisan Philosopher Amateur Blogger Author Investor Entrepreneur Human With Two Dogs Computer Person Techie Nerd Former Lyft Driver Autodidact Potato Farmer I could continue this list indefinitely, but you get the idea. The question assumes a singular professional identity—a neat categorization that rarely captures the multidimensional reality of contemporary lives.

Daniel Kahneman’s groundbreaking work Thinking, Fast and Slow presents a compelling dual-process framework for understanding human cognition—a model that distinguishes between two fundamentally different modes of thought. System 1 operates automatically, rapidly, and with minimal effort; it generates impressions, intuitions, and emotional responses without conscious awareness of its machinations. System 2, by contrast, allocates attention to effortful mental activities, engaging in complex computations, deliberate reasoning, and scrutiny of System 1’s outputs when necessary.