Our brains have two speeds of cognition.

One is fast and intuitive. The other is slow and reasoned.

Our fast, intuitive mode is always on, every moment of our waking lives. It scans, it filters, it notices.

This Intuition can't weigh up the pros and cons of a decision, or do complex calculation. It can't think. Not in any way that we would consider as such.

It simply recognizes a pattern and jumps to a conclusion.

When Intuition needs to actually think about something, it makes a call.

The phone rings, and Reason climbs groggily out of bed to answer it. Reason would prefer not to have received this call.

Reason will have to do some work now. And Reason hates doing work.

Reason is slow and lazy, and everything it does takes real effort. Reason knows it only has so much energy in a day, and it tries to limit how much work it does. If Reason can avoid work, it generally will.

Reason arrives, takes in the situation, does the thinking it needs to do, then puts Intuition back in charge and returns to bed.

This dance happens at lightning speed over and over again in our minds throughout our waking lives.

Intuition takes in the world around us, makes thousands of tiny conclusions about it (Am I safe? Is that Jane over there? Am I hungry?), and disturbs Reason only when it's absolutely necessary.

Whenever Reason arrives to help, Intuition gives it a rundown of the situation as it sees it.

This is a critical point.

Intuition does not ask "what do you think?". It asks "do you agree?".

Often Intuition's conclusions are incorrect, based on bad information, or just nonsense. Intuition only cares about the patterns and familiarity.

But, as we explored in Part 1, that doesn't stop it from being very insistent.

To resist it takes effort. And Reason likes to avoid effort wherever it can.

During a Chess game, there are 3 levels of resistance our reasoned mind can give: shallow, trenched, and deep.

Shallow resistance is when Reason doesn't even get out of bed. Intuition reviews the patterns, jumps to a conclusion, and we do whatever it says.

Intuition thinks you have checkmate so you instantly play the move, only to find a long-distance bishop protecting the mating square.

Trenched resistance is when Intuition offers its conclusions and Reason decides what to do within those boundaries. There's depth to the thinking, but we don't stray outside the limits Intuition presents.

Intuition thinks you have checkmate but can't find the exact path. Reason can't find the mate either, so you just decide to play a normal, slower move instead. Later you realize you could have captured your opponent's rook for free on that turn!

Your Intuition asked "where's the mate?", so your Reason tried to answer that question. It never even occurred to you that you could just win material instead.

Deep resistance is when Reason opens its field of view further than Intuition's suggestions and finds what it thinks is the best move.

We feel informed by Intuition, but not controlled by it. We take our time, weigh up a number of options, and can explore ideas that don't initially jump out at us.

Each mode has its time and place.

We want shallow reason when we're under time pressure. We just have to play something, now!

We want trenched reason most of the time. The idea of candidate moves could be considered a form of trenched reason. Intuition gives us a few options to investigate, and Reason investigates those.

We want deep reason in critical moments. We don't want to be limited by what our Intuition tells us. We want to take the time we have and find the exact right move, whether that move jumps out at us initially or not.

They all have their place in Chess.

Where we go wrong is when we're at the wrong level of resistance on the wrong move.

Sadly, as with most of this brain stuff, we have limited control over which we are in at any one time.

The main factor governing that is what researchers call cognitive ease.

As Daniel Kahneman describes it in Thinking Fast and Slow:

"When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar... A state of cognitive strain... mobilizes System 2, which is more likely to reject the intuitive answer suggested by System 1."

When things feel easy and comfortable in a game, our intuition runs the show. When things feel difficult and challenging, our deeper thinking takes over.

This makes a certain kind of sense. When we're comfortable, there's less need for deep thinking. When we're under strain, we need our best thinking.

But Chess doesn't always work that way. The moments when we feel most comfortable are often the most dangerous. That winning position where we let our guard down. That familiar opening where we stop checking our moves. The opponent who seems much weaker and we stop taking seriously.

Cognitive ease is the enemy of deep resistance.

There are things we can do to stay out of cognitive ease when we need to. The simplest is just to be aware of it. Knowing that comfort can lead to shallow thinking is the first step to catching it.

Beyond that, we can build habits that interrupt our cognitive ease at key moments — habits that force Reason awake when it would otherwise stay in bed.

That's the topic of Part 6. But before we get there, we need to understand two more ways our Intuition leads us astray.

I'll see you in Part 3.

Here's to the journey,
Aiden