Whenever I read cognitive psychology books, I often find myself questioning whether I truly understand what I’m reading. Pondering Confucius’s words, “True knowledge is knowing what you know and admitting what you don’t know,” I delved into the concept of ‘clues.’ I searched for summaries and YouTube videos, striving to grasp it, yet the concept remains elusive. A kludge refers to a kind of ‘psychological error,’ and I found it difficult to readily agree with the author’s claim that this is a product of human evolution. Just as it’s hard to believe that our sophisticated eyes, capable of detecting even faint light sources in darkness, evolved from earthworms, the explanation that the human thought system is the result of a ‘sloppy patchwork’ developed over long evolution felt somewhat speculative to me. However, rather than scrutinizing its origins, simply acknowledging that the human mind is that imperfect and vulnerable made reading this book worthwhile.

Our brains follow a ‘contextual memory system’ distinct from a computer’s data storage method. It’s fascinating how we might struggle to recall what we ate yesterday morning or our spouse’s phone number, yet can retrieve specific past events with precision, as if executing a database query. Furthermore, examples of the ‘halo effect’ and ‘broom effect’—where we judge a whole based on a fragmentary characteristic—along with the ‘anchoring effect’ and ‘confirmation bias,’ were easily observable through negotiation tables or extreme figures in politics. The disconnect between our instinctive ‘reactive system’ and our rational ‘deliberative system’ convincingly revealed how humans make harmful decisions despite knowing better. Had I not read 『HumanKind』, I might have been trapped by this book’s biased view that ‘the human mind is riddled with errors’. While defining the human mind as a ‘cludge,’ the author presents several alternatives to recognize this and make better judgments. This aligns with the ‘cheat key’ usage emphasized in Jecheong’s YouTube videos.

A metaphor I encountered in another book comes to mind: “If you walk through the desert and find an intricate watch, it’s reasonable to assume someone lost it. It’s hard to believe that minerals in the sand randomly combined over eons to form a watch.” The very act of labeling the human brain’s thought processes—more complex and mysterious than the physical body—as a ‘cludge’ because we cannot fully comprehend them, might itself be another ‘cludge’ revealing the limits of human intellect. Today, I rise again at 4:30 AM, writing and exercising to find order amidst my complex inner thoughts and prepare breakfast for my family, all to make the right decisions.