System 2 Thinking is a slow, detailed, and deliberate mode of reasoning, differing from the fast and intuitive System 1 Thinking. It is used when we need to take time to think about a subject, requiring effort and logical processing. It is often described as slow, logical, lazy, and indecisive.
Characteristics
- Slow: Requires time to process multiple factors.
- Deliberate: Involves conscious effort and planning.
- Example: Deciding which movie to watch tonight involves considering OTT platforms, recent releases, Rotten Tomatoes reviews, and IMDB ratings.
Reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek-R1 are designed to emulate System 2 thinking, showing a “thinking process” before delivering an answer. This is often achieved through techniques like Chain-of-Thought Prompting and Inference Time Compute Scaling.
