We live most of our lives unconsciously, leaving little room for reflection and conscious thought. That small space, however, is where we can control our future - whether it’s deciding to invest in a mutual fund or getting angry about something on social media. The former triggers your System 2 but the latter goes straight to System 1 . Even when you’re in the conscious land of System 2, reasoning with facts, logic, game theory and behavioural predictions; the terra firma in which you operate is in fact a false edifice constructed with your beliefs.

If a thief picks your pocket and you notice him running away, you can either run after him or let him go. A choice like that will be result of a multiple factors, but lets simplify it to say that you will run if you can catch up to the thief . Now we have to step back and remind ourselves that we are not facing a physics problem where the velocities of you and thief are specified. Instead, you are here in the real world, where you assess mentally in a short time; how fast can I run, how fast does he look like he can go and how badly do I need my wallet . The answers to all these questions are already in your head in the form of pictures you have of yourself. You might think of yourself as a reasonably fast, the thief might appear like a tall clumsy runner, so might just run . Even if you are bad runner, you might be very angry and hope that with your fury you will run like the flash. You might be an over-informed person who reads too much and remember that thiefs get away in 93% of cases, so its not worth running . Plus you’d have to give up this awesome Mint latte that you just bought. None of these conclusions were derived from data, but from something more akin to feelings.

In a riff off Hume’s fork, we can treat reality as a combination of hard and soft facts. Hard facts are those that can be checked like temperature, money in bank account, and height . They are what they are, they follow logical order; and you can convert them into false/true statements. It’s either 32 degres or not. Soft facts are those that are perception-drive like laziness, confidence, and taste . Soft facts are completely malleable. A statement like “People who wake up early are successful” is easily negated by the fact that several night-owls are also successful . We think we are cool logical creatures living in a mostly orderly world, but the reality we swim in an ocean of soft facts where the opposite of a true statement is also a true statement . Beliefs drive behaviour but in a reflexive fashion. Fun fact: Even many hard facts are unknowable, this annoys a lot of the left brainy logical types like me 5 years ago.

So, in this belief driven world, it is imperative to always question your beliefs and find out if they are hard facts or soft facts.