07 - A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions

Описание: With little evidence, System 1 fills gaps and decides quickly: what you see is all there is. Kahneman summarizes this idea with WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is). The chapter shows how confidence can be high even when information is insufficient.

The WYSIATI principle is one of the most important insights in the book. System 1 excels at constructing coherent stories based on available information, but it doesn't pause to consider what information might be missing. It builds the best possible interpretation of the available data but ignores the possibility that critical information is absent. This leads to overconfidence: conclusions feel right because System 1 has constructed a coherent story, regardless of whether that story is based on sufficient evidence.

Kahneman explains that WYSIATI facilitates achievement and coherence but also produces systematic errors. It helps explain several cognitive biases: overconfidence (because we base judgments on coherent stories constructed from available information, ignoring what we don't know), framing effects (because different presentations of the same information activate different associations), and base-rate neglect (because System 1 focuses on the specific case and ignores statistical information that isn't immediately salient).

The chapter presents research showing that people make confident judgments based on very limited information. In one study, participants made personality judgments about strangers after watching silent video clips just a few seconds long. These judgments, made with high confidence, were barely more accurate than chance—but people didn't recognize their uncertainty because System 1 had constructed compelling impressions from the available fragments of information.

A troubling implication is that experts are also vulnerable to WYSIATI. Even when people have access to extensive information, they don't automatically consider what might be missing. Doctors make confident diagnoses without considering alternative possibilities, judges make sentencing decisions without accounting for missing context, and investors make predictions without properly considering uncertainty. The coherence and confidence of the story System 1 constructs is not a reliable indicator of its validity.