The Knowledge Illusion #3

Continuing about The Knowledge Illusion:

Causal reasoning serves as an infrastructure of thought, but that doesn't mean people are ideal causal reasoners. We shouldn't berate ourselves for not being ideal. Think about what it would take to make correct causal inferences in every situation, even unfamiliar ones. People do excel at causal reasoning, but tend to do it superficially outside their expertise.

The decisions we come to quickly and intuitively aren't the same as those we come to through careful deliberation. Intuition gives us a simplified, coarse, and usually good enough analysis, and gives us the illusion that we know a fair amount. But when we deliberate, we come to appreciate how complex things really are, and this reveals how little we really know.

Reasoning isn't limited to the brain. Our bodies support it. The authors use the example of a baseball player catching a fly ball. The trajectory of a ball can be calculated with mathematical equations, but the player doesn't do that (and hasn't enough time to). External aids support reasoning, too. Example are doing arithmetic on a chalkboard and writing things down to help develop and fine-tune one's thoughts.