Audie and Connie: Odd couple of the mind
How Americans make sense of China has everything to do with how the human mind works. Last post I introduced System 1 and System 2. Today I take a look at how the future of humanity may depend on how each of us manages these two systems in our own minds.
System 1 is our unconscious system, performing crucial mental tasks for us, all in the background, out of our awareness. System 1 handles such varied tasks as face recognition, native-language comprehension and production, and most categorization, as well as countless others.
System 2 handles most of what we consider “thinking”: conscious deliberation and choosing. The mental models we use to understand the world are almost always used unconsciously, directed by System 1. In fact one definition of what any given person considers to be “the truth” is the sum total of the mental models we are using at any given moment. This isn’t how we normally think of “the truth,” but it helps explain why each person’s version of the truth is so unique.
System 1 is like an extremely smart lizard. Let’s call them Audie, for “automatic.” Picture a small lizard wearing a graduation cap. Audie is fast — so fast they’re usually just a blur, zipping here and there. They’re hard to watch because they move so fast, and because they prefers to do their work in the shadows. They’re capable of a lot, but at the end of the day they’re still a lizard.
Audie’s System 2 companion is Connie (for “conscious”). Connie is the most brilliant being you could imagine. When they’re at their best, they write some of the most moving poetry ever written. They can solve the most complex math problems, invent the most delicious recipes, and learn new languages faster than you’ve ever seen. Connie’s big problem, though, is that they’re rarely at their best. Mostly they’re lazy and slow. All things being equal they’d prefer to lean back in their La-Z-Boy by the fire, smoke their pipe, sip their tea, and drift off to sleep.
Most times this works just fine, because Audie is off boiling the water, throwing away the teabags, buying the tobacco, filling the pipe. Occasionally Connie musters enough gumption to write another poem or to cook a meal. When they cook, the vegetables are already chopped, the spices are measured, the pans are clean and ready to use. Connie doesn’t even need to think about the legwork: Audie’s doing it all. As a result Connie is quite pleased with their own abilities: they can’t help but think they and only they deserve credit for all their accomplishments.
If only Connie’s life were always so pleasant, though. More often than not the vegetables are the wrong vegetables, they’re cut to the wrong size, the skillet is too small, or the 2-mm food processor slicing blade is missing. The tobacco isn’t tobacco at all — maybe it’s thyme, or grass, or…feces? And all bets are off if Connie gets scared: in a split second everything is all over the floor and on the walls. And, as usual, Audie is nowhere to be found.
Connie finds themself surprised, time and again, at how unruly things are, and they wonder how they got to be this way.
Connie’s mistake? Letting a lizard run their life. Every now and again they have an inkling that there’s someone else involved. When they look around, where the light is shining, there’s nobody there. So Connie ventures off to the shadows with their flashlight. Problem is, Audie is a hundred lizard steps ahead, having raced off to an even darker place long before Connie’s flashlight can find them.
Connie quickly tires of such foolery and goes back to their happy-enough compromise: just let me laze around and I’ll take whatever shows up.
I am Connie. I am Audie. I am both, and so are you.
The good news in all this — very good news indeed — is that with practice and focused attention Connie can get to know a lot more about how Audie goes about their business. Connie will never be able to see how Audie does everything they do, but they can at least begin to understand that Audie is, fundamentally, a trickster, and that they shouldn’t put too much faith in the world Audie creates for Connie to perceive. The more Connie does this, the more they see that the world is largely Connie’s to create — if they spend less time in the recliner and more time keeping their eye on Audie, questioning Audie’s work, and molding the world to their own liking.
In short, through discovering System 1 (Audie) and System 2 (Connie), science has shown that human beings already have everything we need to create a peaceful future: if we realize the arbitrariness of the “truths” given to us by Audie and recognize the workings of Audie for what they are — the automatic conclusion-drawing of a frightened and threatened species — then we can put our energies into developing Connie, allowing us to step back and make thoughtful decisions about how to work our way through problems.
It's important to understand that we need Audie. They’re always working behind the scenes to make sense of the world for us. We couldn’t survive without a well-functioning Audie: warning us of danger is one of their most critical tasks.
It is Connie, though, who makes humans different from all other animals. Connie enables us to “go meta,” to reflect consciously on ourselves and on the world around us. Without Connie, Audie just goes about their business, making decisions about the way the world is, without any intervention. It is a closed system, condemned to learning only through the feedback mechanisms of pain and pleasure. This is an important kind of learning, but it can never get us the kind of high-level learning that will move human beings toward peaceful coexistence.
We need Connie and Audie working together. Audie will be there whether we want them there or not, and that’s a good thing: we need someone to warn us of danger, and to create a world of identifiable objects, sounds, smells and the like. And we need Connie to be vigilant about where Audie leads us astray, so that Connie can go about their business, clear-headed and confident. It will take a lot of hard work, but world peace is humanly possible.
In order for Connie to be truly effective, it is crucial that they gain an understanding of Audie and their workings. Audie rules us unless we:
Understand how they’re operating;
Note that their decisions are arbitrary;
Choose a way of seeing the world that is in line with our higher aspirations.
A key task, then, is laying bare Audie’s basic M.O. We have to know what we are dealing with if we want to gain mastery over it.
Everything about intercultural understanding has to do with Audie and Connie.