Theoretical biologist here. I worked in evolutionary biology and sociobiology before moving more into social dynamics, just to contextualize this.

I have to disagree with the author.

Kahneman’s work absolutely discredits the Enlightenment’s idea of rationality, which itself was the philosophical foundation of homo economicus.

If you put his experimental work together with that of Metzinger (philosopher at Gutenberg) and Sapolsky (neuroscientist at Stanford), you end up with a very strong argument that supports the rejection of free will. He also seems to conflate evolutionary plausibility for System 1 taking precedence with it being rational. The behavior of a paramecium (swim toward food and away from poison) is also a hardcoded response, as is an ant’s response to a pheromone. They were shaped by the same kinds of evolutionary factors that the author attributes to System 1 reactions. But Kahneman’s work isn’t about that. It’s about letting someone’s appearance or projected confidence influence how smart or correct you think they are.

I’d argue that System 2 belongs largely to the prefrontal cortex, which indeed brings information to bear and can act as a check on System 1 (eg the amygdala) but that still does not imply a homo economicus type of rationality. While I think awareness of biases does potentially affect the number of situations where the PFC can intervene, it doesn’t imply that the output of the PFC is not deterministic. It just gives a person the opportunity to use more complex computation rather than an “instinctive” reaction.