Engineers Shouldn't Think Too Fast

Engineers, being human, have the same innate characteristics as all humans. One of these is that we have two thinking modes, intuition and analysis. The intuition mode, system 1, is automatic and acts with great confidence, while the analysis mode, system 2, requires conscious activation and would typically rather not be activated because it is lazy. System 1 uses a range of heuristics that leads to certain biases in our thinking. Sometimes these heuristics and biases produce glaring errors. As engineers, we must be vigilant so that system 1 does not act alone in inappropriate situations since the mistakes that it tends to make could produce serious errors in environments where we do not have significant experience. Encouraging an awareness of these dangers is the purpose of this paper.