I’ve looked at one example of where Kahneman‘s thinking works at its most powerful. I’d like to dig a bit deeper now. It’s easier to understand more fully the strengths and weaknesses of Kahneman’s model of System 1 and System 2 thinking if we start with a concrete example. So, here’s rather a long – or do I mean tall? – story from sometime in 2008 to get us going.
The young girl slid the tray onto the table and placed the plate and the cafetière side by side.
‘What’s this?’ the man asked, picking up a purple hourglass with pink sand still running through it.
‘Oh, sorry!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m new here. I shouldn’t have brought that. It measures how long the coffee takes to brew.’
‘Ah! I didn’t know that,’ he said as he handed her the hourglass. ‘Can I have some milk instead?’
He stared blankly out of the window at the passers-by in the passageway outside as he waited for the milk. She came back in a couple of minutes and placed it on the table.
‘Sorry about that,’ she giggled.
‘That’s OK,’ he replied, unable to manage a smile.
Jack was really cheesed off. He was sitting in his favourite cafe, with a gleaming cafetière of his much-loved Ethiopian coffee nestling up against a tempting piece of Courgette cake, with his mood completely spoiled by the problem on his mind. It was his damn brother again. Why did Sam think he had a right to get bailed out of his self-inflicted difficulties simply for the asking?
He could hear the email that he had printed out rustling in his pocket as he leant forward to press down the plunger on the cafetière. If only he hadn’t read it yet. Still, he was always hopeful that a good coffee would improve his mood. He watched the stream of steaming coffee mingle with the milk in the white cup.
The first sip helped, though the second pouring would be better now the cup was warm.
His gut reaction to Sam’s request for help troubled him. His brother knew he didn’t drink. He tried to remember the last time he had tasted alcohol. He thought it was the half pint of bitter after his last game of squash. Somehow once he had started meditating, alcohol lost its appeal completely. It mucked your head up anyway so you couldn’t meditate properly, and in any case booze had stopped tasting as good.
But even after all the meditation he had done, he was sitting in the cafe feeling stressed.
Sam had asked for a ‘loan.‘ His tobacconist shop was losing money. He ‘just’ needed £20,000 to tide him over while he closed the tobacconist’s down and opened an off-licence in the next street. It was perfect, he said. The guy was retiring and wanted a quick sale so he could move up north to be with his daughter in time for the birth of his first grand child. Sam had a buyer in line for his own business and was getting a reasonable price even though the new laws about smoking in public places had hit the trade badly – but the price was not quite enough to cover all the costs of the off-licence. He just needed to pay off his debts and cover the shortfall and he would be fine.
Jack had hated Sam’s idea of opening the tobacconist’s in the first place as he regarded smoking as second only to drink as a legal evil. And in a way he was glad it was failing. But he was being asked to help finance a move towards selling drink which he hated even more. With an inward groan he took the email out of his pocket.
‘Hi, Jack. Long time no see. Hope all is OK with you and the family. How’s Stella and the kids?
‘Just needed to touch base with you. I’ve got a slight problem right now and I could do with your help. You know I’ve had this tobacconist’s for a while now. Things have got tight since the law changed and I’m not making enough to make ends meet.’
He could hardly bear to read it again. It had been four years since he had heard anything at all from Sam, and, now he had heard, it was because Sam wanted something. And something his younger brother should have known Jack wouldn’t want to give. He skipped to the end of the explanation.
‘Hope you feel able to lob me the £20,000. I’ll pay you back, you know that. It’s not like when you paid my fees at uni. I knew that was given to me ‘cos you knew how important my education was.’
‘Like hell it was a gift,’ Jack spluttered in his head. ‘I told you right from the start I wanted it back.’ He was aware he was grimacing to himself and tried to compose his face. The woman at the next table was giving him a strange look. He made himself calm down by counting ten breaths very slowly.
It would have been tolerable if Sam had made good use of his time at university. Their parents were both dead by then, and had never been rich enough to leave them anything in any case. They’d had to fend for themselves. Jack felt he had always taken that challenge more seriously than Sam. Instead of studying hard, Sam had spent more time in the pub than in the library and just scraped a third in modern languages, To add insult to injury he then got a job in a pub kitchen and trained to be a chef. That’s probably what made the idea of opening an off-licence so appealing now. He already knew the trade from the inside to some extent, not just from the wrong side of the bar.
Jack made himself read the email to the end.
‘I don’t know whether you know but Bryony’s not working now and we’ve got Jim, Ned and the baby to provide for. I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t really need a hand desperately, and there’s no one else I can ask.’
‘Too right,’ thought Jack. ‘None of the bums he knows has two pounds to rub together.’
He stopped himself. Sam always brought out the worst in him. He remembered how close they were when Jim was born. Though Jack had been bitterly disappointed at Sam’s choice of career, he was fond of Bryony. She was bit scatty and could spend money like there was no tomorrow, but she was a good mother to the kids. She had a warm heart and a great sense of humour. He smiled to himself as he remembered her imitation, almost where he was sitting now, of Meg Ryan’s deli moment in ‘When Harry Met Sally.’ The woman across the way smiled back. He didn’t really notice.
He wasn’t quite sure why they had drifted apart. Maybe it was partly because he had stopped drinking and taken up meditation. Sam couldn’t get his head round that, and Jack got very bored spending time with Sam and his friends once they were three sheets to the wind, which was most evenings, even after the kids were born. Bryony just put up with it and was grateful that the money he brought in was usually far more than he spent.
Jack felt caught between a rock and a hard place. Part of him was so narked with Sam for the way he seemed to use people and for the unprincipled choices he made that he just wanted to tell him to get lost. The other part thought of Bryony and the kids: it wasn’t their fault Sam was a waster. He ought to give something at least for their sake. On the other hand Stella would go through the roof if he handed Sam anywhere close to £20,000.
‘Have you gone out of your mind?’ he could hear her now. ‘You might as well start the bonfire with it!’
And the pendulum in his head went back and forth as he sipped his coffee and nibbled on his cake without really tasting either of them.
He tried to step back from his gut feelings into a higher place in his head and think about it more objectively. The problem was that his logical mind was not much better than his gut when it came to this situation. Pragmatism simply said that what mattered really was whether Sam could make a go of it in the off-licence and provide properly for his family. If he could, then supporting him would be justified and, if he couldn’t, Jack should use the leverage the loan would give him to get Sam moving in a better direction. The problem was that the information he’d found on the net about the off-licence trade suggested that it might just provide a good living in the right location and with the right approach.
Not that anything was certain when it came to setting up a business. He’d read somewhere that two out three small businesses died within five years. On top of that, his knowledge of Sam suggested strongly that he shouldn’t be in business at all because, unless money was growing on trees, he’d never make a go of it. Yes, maybe he really should try and steer Sam towards some form of paid work within his abilities.
But he knew where that would go.
‘I hate bloody cooking. It’s hard work for next to no money.‘
‘But you’re good at it. And you’ll get promoted pretty quick so the money will be good. You might even be able to start up somewhere like this place eventually.’
Deep down though he wondered whether he would have the heart to withhold the loan if Sam didn’t buy the plan.
His reading of Buddhist writings had taught him that he needed to go deeper into his mind to find wiser answers but he didn’t seem to be able to get past the blocks at the end of each pendulum swing. Anger versus pity. A good trade he disapproved of combined with Sam’s fecklessness. Don’t give him a penny. Give him a good leg up. There must be a way of getting past the stand off, transcending the conflict.
He found himself fruitlessly analysing the moral issues. What passed for compassion in his head said he should pay, for the kids’ sake. His version of wisdom said he shouldn’t because he’d be indulging Sam, he’d never learn from the consequences of his actions and it’d be throwing good money after bad. In any case it wasn’t fair as Sam hadn’t paid him back a penny of the money he owed for his education.
He shook himself. He tried counting his breaths again. He needed to go deeper, but how?
And that question along with many others will have to wait until next time.
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