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  • June 2020
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Ever since I could do puzzles, I hated puzzles. I have fond memories of reading, writing, and doodling on rainy days while my sisters opted to assemble 3,000 piece pictures of hot air balloons — with enthusiasm. My sisters, who are now two Wharton-educated business majors, urged me to participate in their ‘think-tank’ activities, but their invitations ceased once I threw tantrums during the puzzle-making process. In spite of my frustrations, my mother always praised my creative ability; she called my siblings “math heads” and insisted that my literary talent was out of my sisters’ league. However, as my math anxiety grew, I assumed my middlechild role: publishing poems and avoiding Rubik’s Cubes along the way. As a Boston University Ed.M. candidate, my academic strengths diverge from my siblings', but my sentiment towards puzzles remains constant. Recently, I recognized that what bothers me about puzzles, most of all, is how eager I am to be good at puzzles! Reading Thinking, Fast and Slow helped me realize two important truths: Firstly, my sisters are not a representative sample of the American population; it is inherently difficult for humans to think rationally and statistically (p. 5). Furthermore, Kahneman’s differentiation of rationality from intelligence offered a valid explanation for the varied intellectual strength and the unanimous academic achievement of both me and my sisters (p. 47). According to Kahneman, researchers at the University of Oregon found a correlation between cognitive control and nonverbal test scores, but the study did not mention verbal test scores. My ‘cognitive ease’ in solving the flower-syllogism in comparison to the mathematical bat-and-ball problem only furthered my notion that cognitive control differs from intelligence (p. 52). Thinking Fast, and Slow led me to reason that varied types of intelligence exist, and although my sisters may possess a stronger ‘System 2’ than me, their academic aptitude could still reign comparable to mine. Aside from offering me personal satisfaction, reading Thinking Fast, and Slow restimulated my interest in the new Netflix documentary, “Take Your Pills.” The film addresses the heightened Adderall usage on college campuses and targets changing social roles as a key influence of the epidemic. In Kahneman’s chapter titled the “Lazy Controller,” he states that according to the ‘Law of the Least Effort’ people strive to maintain focused attention without exerting self-control (p. 39). Evidently, students who abuse Adderall take the pill, un-prescribed, in order to maintain focused attention with little mental discipline. As the documentary states, students abuse Adderall due to the false pretense that it improves academic performance, but, as explained in Thinking Fast, and Slow, a direct relationship between cognitive attention and intelligence does not exist (p. 69). Consequently, just because Adderall makes students focus more, does not mean that Adderall makes student learn more. Yet, according to Kahneman, one could argue that the stimulant of Adderall may boost students' moods, which, in turn, could induce students’ cognitive ease and brain function. I would be curious to hear Kahneman's views on student Adderall abuse as well as his theories on the drug's impact on the brain functioning of forthcoming generations.

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