Thinking, Fast and Slow

Speaking of Reversals
“The BTU units meant nothing to me until I saw how much air-conditioning units
vary. Joint evaluation was essential.”
“You say this was an outstanding speech because you compared it to her other
speeches. Compared to others, she was still inferior.”
“It is often the case that when you broaden the frame, you reach more reasonable
decisions.”
“When you see cases in isolation, you are likely to be guided by an emotional
reaction of System 1.”

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Frames and Reality
Italy and France competed in the 2006 final of the World Cup. The next two sentences
both describe the outcome: “Italy won.” “France lost.” Do those statements have the same
meaning? The answer depends entirely on what you mean by 
meaning
.
For the purpose of logical reasoning, the two descriptions of the outcome of the match
are interchangeable because they designate the same state of the world. As philosophers
say, their truth conditions are identical: if one of these sentences is true, then the other is
true as well. This is how Econs understand things. Their beliefs and preferences are
reality-bound. In particular, the objects of their choices are states of the world, which are
not affected by the words chosen to describe them.
There is another sense of 
meaning
, in which “Italy won” and “France lost” do not
have the same meaning at all. In this sense, the meaning of a sentence is what happens in
your associative machinery while you understand it. The two sentences evoke markedly
different associations. “Italy won” evokes thoughts of the Italian team and what it did to
win. “France lost” evokes thoughts of the French team and what it did that caused it to
lose, including the memorable head butt of an Italian player by the French star Zidane. In
terms of the associations they bring to mind—how System 1 reacts to them—the two
sentences really “mean” different things. The fact that logically equivalent statements
evoke different reactions makes it impossible for Humans to be as reliably rational as
Econs.