An idea came to me recently while reading Thinking Fast and Slow

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An idea came to me recently while reading Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. TL;DR it's a book about heuristics and cognitive biases in decision making, that sums up over 30 years worth of psychological research. Daniel Kahneman is a famous researcher in that field, and he even won a Nobel prize in economy (there's no Nobel prize in psychology, so us shrinks gotta keep stealing prizes from other fields) for figuring out the precise issues with rational-choice model in economy and correcting it (has mostly to do with loss aversion).

One of the most crucial ideas that the book keeps coming back to over and over again is the two-system model of mind. Kahneman posits that human cognition is governed by two semi-independent systems, System 1 & System 2. System 1 is a fast, automatic, associative "mind" that works on the basis of heuristics (mental shortcuts), and is pretty much always active. This is the system that most people use, for example, when deciding which political candidate to choose - instead of using some algorithm that would take into account policies, consistency of opinion, past behaviour, etc..., they substitute the question of: "who is the better candidate for the position" with: "which candidate do I like more" and then work out that one and use the answer for the first one as well (substitution heuristic). System 2 on the other hand is the rational, logical, step-by-step "mind" that's very lazy and is on average used very rarely. We use System 2 for example when working out advanced mathematical problems (i.e. algebra).

Anyway, the idea that came to me was that keeping Kahneman's two-system model in mind (pardon the pun), the platonic Dialogues can be seen as a struggle between the System 2 and System 1. Socrates is in a way an exemplar of the System 2 - he tries to engage his interlocutors in dialectic, and through it break down every single problem into small individual claims that can be examined, and from there on build up a hierarchy of true claims that will result in a useful true statement. Socrates' interlocutors on the other hand, and especially Sophists, embody in their thinking the System 1 - they are unwilling to engage in dialectic because they find it annoying and tiring (compare the inherent laziness of System 2) and they'd rather engage in behaviour that favours the System 1, such as the oration of long-winded speeches.

What do you think about this?