You know that I subscribe an English newspaper called 21st century every year. I like reading English newspaper, which gives my study a hand. A good idea comes to me that I would like to recommend you some good articles from English newspaper. Let’s study English together.

Our flawed reasoning

The more science discovers how the mind works, the less ratinal humans are revealed to be.

We make many important decisions, including choosing a mate and buying a car, based more on emotion than reason.

On top of that, our reason is often fatally（致命的） flawed（使有缺陷）-even for the smartest among us, as outlined by psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

He shows that the structure of our thinking,  guided by what he labels System 1 and System 2,  makes it impossible for us to be impartial（公平的） actors guided strictly by empiricism（经验主义）.

System 1 works without our even knowing it: answering simple questions, turning us toward a loud noise or reading the emotion in someone’s voice.

System 2 handles more complex intellectual tasks like analyzing two arguments, driving on a busy highway or solving long division.

Everyone’s brain functions this way, no matter our intellectual capability.

And as Kahneman shows, we make errors without being aware of them as a result of these mechanics（结构）.

Some examples:

Frequent advertising leads to a more favorable opinion of the person of things advertised.

Mood can determine whether you make a right or wrong logical decision.

People, including scientist, often search for information that confirms their own beliefs.

Part of the explanation lies in our narrow life experiences, which influence our intuition, expectations and belief systems in ways that cause our System 1 to make the wrong inferences.

In one telling experiment, kahneman turns scruting（详细审查） on himself. He started to suspect that he was grading exams incorrectly by reading each student’s answers in successive order.

He was right. He found that the strength or weakness of the first essay held a disproportionate（不成比例的） sway over his opinion of subsequent essays. So, for example, he would forgive flaws in second pieces when a student’s first answer was strong because he wanted to give the student the benefit of the doubt.

As a result, he stopped reading each exam from start to finish and instead broke them up.

The phenomenon he describes is apparent in how we ascribe（归结） uniformly positive or negative traits to people, regardless of facts. Think of Republicans who easily believed president Barack Obama was not born in the US.

The stuctural deficiencies（缺乏） in how we think should make each of us more humble, an as Kahneman hopes-spend time double checking the processes that lead to a decision.

While Kahneman describes how organizations can use knowledge of human fallibility（不可靠） to run more justly and more capably and analyze risk, why shouldn’t our knowledge of the human condition also apply to the size and scope of government?

If even the smartest regularly make big mistakes, often without knowing it, why should we trust 15 people to decide what Medicare should and should not pay for?(I am referring to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, part of 2009’s Affordable Care Act.)

A more powerful government is destined to more often make bigger and worse mistakes, silence its critics, and repeat its errors. It doesn’t matter if those who run it have the best intentions.