I am not a fan of the book “Thinking Fast and Slow.” I bought and read the book in college on the recommendation of some “Best Leadership Books to Read” list. I truly remember nothing from reading it, except that Kahneman says we have 2 ways of thinking. A part of our brain, system 1, thinks quickly and another part of our brain, system 2, thinks slowly/deliberately. You will often see system 2 thinking used in reference to LLM-based reasoning.

In the age of information, I think we’ve all got system 1 down pretty well. Scrolling on Twitter or TikTok, or interacting with ChatGPT or Claude are exercises in our ability to use system 1. What about system 2? I find it ironic that we are trying so hard to teach LLMs how to use system 2, while our collective system 2 atrophies. Think about how much of your time is spent not thinking. We live in the era of boredom fillers that rob us of the desire to think.

Thinking is a cognitive process involving the manipulation of information to form ideas, solve problems, and make decisions

LLMs offer a new way to manipulate information. LLMs are probably the best information manipulators we’ve ever had. You have access to all of humanity’s knowledge at the speed of some NVIDIA GPU. But, it is still your responsibility to slow down and think step-by-step about the information they’re presenting to you, and then use this information to form your own ideas, solve your own problems, and make your own decisions. Remember, everybody has access to these tools. Your ability to use an LLM doesn’t necessarily make you special! Now, more than ever, it is important to exercise your ability to deliberately think.

I believe it is increasingly rare that you will have an LLM present you with a solution that is blatantly wrong. For example, I find most generated code is surface level correct. The tendency when working in this kind of environment is to accept the solution in front of you and move forward. We are so used to being bottlenecked by our ability to generate new information (or in this case: new code), that we forget our job is not to generate information - our job is to solve problems, and hopefully not introduce new ones.

Claude is a wizard, and his greatest trick is convincing you to accept his changes without scrutiny. Remember, you are the responsible party when things go wrong. It’s okay to stop and think.