Part of a series of reflections on Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow

In the third section of the book, Kahneman describes a fundamental disconnect between the remembering self and the experiencing self inside each of us. The disconnect is most clearly illustrated by thought experiments, e.g the amnesic vacation:

At the end of the vacation, all pictures and video will be destoryed. Furthermore, you will swallow a potion that will wipe out all your memories of the vacation.

How would this prospect affect your vacation plan? How much would you be willing to pay for it, relative to a normally memorable vacation?

Chapter 37: Life as a Story - Thinking Fast and Slow

5% less? 50% less? Would you even go?

My kneejerk reaction was to question whether I would even go. What does that mean? It means that I place a heavy emphasis on my memory of my experiences. The remembering self wants a good story to tell!

It also means that I treat my experiencing self with little more than indifference. I would enjoy the vacation I am sure, but if I can’t remember it, it doesn’t matter? Will I simply dismiss living in the moment?

Kahneman cites a couple other examples of this disconnect. For instance, we remember episodes of pain mostly by how strong it was at its most intense, and how it felt in its last moment. (The peak-end rule.) We suffer from what’s called duration neglect, which causes us to choose longer durations of pain, so long as its last moments were not so bad.

This is, from a outside point of view, clearly crazy.

Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and my experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me. - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

This was a disturbing thought. I am a unreliable narrator of my own life! When I stop and contemplate my actions, all I have access to are the reports from the remembering self. My decisions will therefore be consistently skewed to the benefit of the remembering self, at the expense of the experiencing self.

Ambition, viewed in this framework, belongs solely to the remembering self. It is the remembering self that envisions a particular future, and sets the course for the experiencing self to follow. It is this ambition of the remembering self that enables great achievements and memorable stories.

However, this disconnect between the remembering self and the experiencing self is also how the ambitious can lose sight of the moment-to-moment experience of being alive. This is how people can work for decades in storied careers and wake up wondering why they feel so unsatisfied.

You may have weaved a great story, but did you have a good life? Tonight, I am distrustful of my narrator.