Gambling. Biking. Memories.
Daniel Kahneman, a celebrated author and Nobel Laureate in Economics, introduced a simple yet profound model to understand how we process and remember our experiences. He proposed the existence of two selves within us, the remembering self and the experiencing self. The experiencing self is deeply engaged in the present moment, absorbing the sensations and emotions as they happen. Imagine the intense burn in your calves and thighs as you bike up a steep mountain, the rhythmic sound of your breath, and the careful balance you maintain over rocky paths. Conversely, the remembering self reflects on these experiences, constructing stories based on their overall impact, focusing on the peaks, starts, and finishes rather than the minute-by-minute sensations. It remembers the exhilaration of reaching the mountain’s summit, being drenched in sweat, or the few, unforgettable moments of a serene beach vacation. Unsurprisingly, it is the remembering self that predominantly influences our future decisions. From a theoretical standpoint, the remembering self represents a compressed version of the experiencing self, like a large language model such as ChatGPT is simply a lossy-compression of tonnes of web pages returned by Google/Bing. Let me now illustrate with a couple of examples, how some of the most fascinating real-world systems reside at the crossroads of these two selves.
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Slot machines. An unmissable feature of any casino, contributing significantly to Las Vegas’s revenue. They represent what’s known as a “small bet”, a low risk with potential for high reward, recommended whole-heartedly by risk management experts. While, poker and blackjack are for the virtuosos of probability theory out to beat the house and their equals, slot-machine is for the drunken joes among us, just looking to have a good time with a small amount of money.
A slot machine exemplifies a design that captivates both the experiencing self and the remembering self. The consistent flow of small rewards prevents significant losses as you enjoy your gin and tonics, while the rare but substantial payout, offering gains of 100:1, etches a memorable “highlight of the trip” into your mind. This vivid memory proves compelling enough to draw you back to the casino the next time you find yourself in Las-Vegas.
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“Who-dun-it” : murder-mysteries. The well written ones, appeal to both the selves. The twists and turns engage the experiencing self, while the grand revelations (of the unlikely killer) etch themselves into our memory, compelling us to recommend the book to friends. Typically, these narratives present us with a perplexing puzzle: a murder, a missing person, a lost file, each posing a conundrum. Enter the problem-solver, the detective endowed with superpowers of reasoning. What truly leaves a lasting impression are the mind-bending reveals, the lingering uncertainty on the identity of the culprit until the final few pages. Yet, it is the trials faced by the detective, the mistakes they make along the way, the red herring they could have avoided, unraveling the layers of the puzzle with their skills, that keeps us eagerly turning the pages.
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Now that we understand Kahneman’s principle deeply, I would like to assert, that this principle transitively applies to the design of almost all engaging human-computer interaction systems. For example, Twitter is an engaging information network, because it serves both your selves. The steady flow of human thoughts keeps one consuming and scrolling. Whereas, the occasional breaking news with people’s reactions, makes you share and comment. The consumption and scrolling serves the experiencing self and the participation followed by its feedback serves the remembering self. The key then, is to tease apart these levers in any story you are telling, or any system you are designing to better balance the experience.
A word of caution, they may not be apparent with a cursory look.
References:
- A more detailed look at how thrillers work: https://amoghmahapatra.org/2023/07/08/sleight-of-mind/
- Kahneman’s masterpiece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
Amogh Mahapatra's Writings 