TL;DR: we engage in fast thinking and slow thinking, mostly in fast thinking. The result of fast thinking triggers slow thinking. Majority of readers will read this title and glance at first sentence and arrive at a conclusion with their fast thinking, likely skipping the whole story altogether. 20% of readers will read on, thank you, but most likely will only use their fast thinking to decide what they are reading. Only 2% will bring in their slow thinking. A small portion of that may actually understand me :)

I picked up this book last weekend, “A Study of the Popular Mind”, by Gustave Le Bon. It is a classic book, but nevertheless it is the first time I ever learned of the author and his idea, so I find quite astonishing reading it.

First, let me try reiterate some of the ideas in the book.

A crowd presents very different characteristics from the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the person in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A crowd possess a collective mind that is different from an individual mind. A crowd obeys to impulses from all exterior exciting causes. A crowd is readily influenced by suggestion. Crowds do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and always go to extremes. Crowds are only cognizant of simple and extreme sentiments, only absolute truths or absolute errors. Crowds are not to be influenced by reasoning. The reasoning of crowds — if we still categorize it as such — is always of a very inferior order, in the appearance of analogy or succession. Crowds think in images. Crowds always have a religious shape. What works for a crowd is simple words that elicit images and illusions but not clear definitions that are repeated many times. What does not work for a crowd is any kind of reasoning that is beyond mere analogy. The leader of a crowd often started as one of the led, himself being hypnotized by the idea. The leaders we speak of are more frequently men of action than thinkers. The very instinct of self-preservation is entirely obliterated in them and so much so that often the only recompense they solicit is that of martyrdom. The means of action of the leaders are AFFIRMATION, REPETITION, CONTAGION.

Well, that is a much longer synopsis than I typically would give, many of the sentences are straight from the book. To summarize, when we, individuals, start forming a crowd, our conscious part of mind diminish and our primal instinct part of mind gather and are amplified. In the author’s word, we are hypnotized in a crowd.

Undeniably these observations seem to be true. Both history and current social events confirm them repeatedly. However, as an individual who is reading this, we find it unbelievable. We admit we are part of a crowd in numerous scenarios, but have we ever feel we have lost conscious, being hypnotized, and under illusions? It is unbelievable until we ask why — why we are different in a crowd?

There are two thinking processes of an individual mind: fast thinking and slow thinking. The fast thinking is the instinct, reflexes, and the simplistic from-1-to-10-scale type of thinking. The slow thinking is the reasoning, logic, and the self examining conscious type of thinking. It is often that we identify the slow thinking as the defining characteristic of humanity and often attribute fast thinking as simplistic and fallacious. In fact, we often only regard the slow thinking as real thinking. So it is not surprising that, when asked, we often estimate we, ourselves as individual, spend most of the time engaging in slow thinking. We think so we are. Is that correct?

Think about it, that cannot be true. Try do some complex math, the very signature exercise of slow thinking, and we will find ourselves extremely tired after merely minutes. Slow thinking is expensive! We don’t usually feel tired every few minutes because we only engage in slow thinking sparingly. Our daily thinking is dominated by fast thinking. To illustrate, ask yourself that do you support our president. You probably are recollecting a few images are rating each on a blue-to-red scale and then trying to *feel* the answer. Yes, there is some element of slow thinking — e.g. the effort of trying to recollect something — but most of the components are fast thinking. If, as a comparison, you are trying to write down your thinking as an article, then the mere *feeling* of the answer is no longer sufficient, and you will be engaged in a much larger portion of slow thinking. We don’t do that very often on our own, do we?

Nevertheless, the existence of slow thinking, regardless of size of the portion, is critical in the defining of our humanity or our individual consciousness. So the question is, how do we decide when to bringing in the slow thinking?

To answer that, we need reiterate how we do fast thinking. We always do fast thinking. But at some point the result of our fast thinking will decide that we *need* slow thinking. Where is such point? In the book “Thinking fast and slow”, the authors argue that our fast thinking process thinks in a gradient scale, e.g. 1 to 10. When the result of our fast thinking is 1 and 2, or 9 and 10, it is sufficient for us to move on to next fast thinking, which is to decide action based on that result. There is no need to bringing in slow thinking when we find the answer *obvious*. However, when the result of our fast thinking is 5, or 4 and 6, it is ambivalent and we can’t move on, so we bring in our slow thinking. We only engage in slow thinking when we find things uncertain. Slow thinking is expensive, so we only engage in it when it is worthwhile.

What this has to do with crowds? Well, I believe our biology are wired for getting along in a social environment. That is, social input is significant to us, and it equals or maybe it prevails other external input. So with the extra social input, our fast thinking may yield different answers than when we are input with external non-social events only. Let’s imagine that we need to decide which way to go at an intersection. On our own, let’s say it is not obvious. We have to recall our goal, objectives, energies, as well as assessment of potential barriers and difficulties ahead in each direction. Now with everything the same, except imagine you are among a crowd which is moving in a certain direction. There is only this extra social input that others are moving in a certain direction. Do you suddenly *feel* that one direction is much more probable than other directions? And when that intersection is not an isolated decision point but a succession of events the crowd has taken, the direction can easily become very obvious. So, our fast thinking yields unequivocal answers and we skip slow thinking. When the crowd direction is quite different from the direction the individual would make under individual circumstances, the individual appears (to a spacial or temporal outsider) to be hypnotized or under illusions, as is described by Gustave Le Bon.

This leads to the question, how do we keep ourselves in a crowd? The quick answer is we can’t. If our slow thinking is by-passed altogether, we can’t really consciously rescue ourselves to bring back slow thinking. However, there are remedies. For one, we need lower the cost of engaging in slow thinking. That means good sleep/rest, good nutrition, good heath. For two, we need lubricate the process of switching to slow thinking. That means try to exercise slow thinking as much as you can. That exercise is called dialectic (search it up). When we have the habit of bring in slow thinking, it lowers the threshold to switch. For example, previously we may skip slow thinking when fast thinking yield answers of 3 or 7, with exercise, we may get used to bring in slow thinking even when our fast thinking yield answers of 2 or 8. Third, and I think most importantly, is to learn as much as we can. Not to learn as much *knowledge* as we can — because unequivocal knowledge, one way or another, only assist our fast thinking to reach unequivocal answers — but to learn and realize as much as possible that how complicated the real world really is. That is, learn as much *wisdom* as you can. When you understand there is nothing that is one hundred percent certain, you would not reach a answer of 1 or 10 so easily. When you always find the answer uncertain, you naturally will bring in your slow thinking.

To disclaim, I am not advocating to be antisocial. Social inputs are important for us as part of the humanity. Through society, we multiply our strength and accomplish history. And to individual, through society we find our meaning of life. I am also not advocating to reduce the role of our fast thinking and replace most of our decision thinking with slow thinking. It is not feasible and we lose our efficiency. We don’t need one hundred percent slow thinking. All we need is the *existence* of slow thinking. We still want to feel the courage in a crowd, we still want to enjoy the excitement of a crowd. There is this state of *losing* one self and we often find it most desirable. However, we should not want to lose ourselves entirely. We want the existence of ourselves. We need to be able to have the existence of slow thinking in place to tell us to stop and think when the crowd is about to walk off a cliff.