It's funny how even after reading the answer to the bat-ball question months ago and forgetting it, I got it wrong again. I even took some time to think.
How can we make slow thinking less forgetful?
How can we make slow thinking less forgetful?
I've noticed that when I take the time to think slowly through problems, although the initial activation energy is higher, that I end up saving time in the long run. Also, I tend to end up with a higher percentage of correct answers. This trend tends to increase with the complexity of the problem.
Yes, you probably lose some time on the easy problems, but I look at it as a method of gaining net time over days, weeks, etc.
This, unfortunately, is tough to stick with. It's tempting to skip the easy steps along the way (and let our System 1 do all the work, leaving System 2 to collect dust).
[0] - This is still a working hypothesis that I will undoubtedly go back and forth on for the years to come.
The intuitive answer to the first problem is $.10 but if you take time to double check and add a dollar to that, you see it's wrong.
I don't think this is too different from programming... the time you take to re-read some code you just wrote and think like a compiler and mentally execute the edge cases, etc.
It's ok to do "fast thinking" if you verify, and go back and think through it properly if you fail (and hopefully over time learn to recognise what type of problems you know well enough for them to be worth making a "fast" attempt at first vs the ones you should just think through slowly from the outset.