The Language of Systems

System 1 and System 2 are so central to the story I tell in this book that I must make it absolutely clear that they are fictitious characters. The sentence is understood more easily if it describes what an agent, System 2, does than if it describes something as being or having a certain property. Automatic system takes longer to say than System 1 because anything that occupies your working memory reduces your ability to think. You should treat System 1 and System2 as nicknames, like Bob and Joe, identifying characters that you will get to know over the course of this book.