In particular, what I'm calilng system 1 does not generally use complex sentence structure or long utterances, and the referents of its "sentences" are almost always concrete nouns, with its principal abstractions being emotional labels rather than conceptual ones.
Yep, it mostly uses nouns, simple verbs, relatedness catgegorizations ('because') , behavior categorizations ('should', 'avoid with this degree of priority'), and a few semi-abstract concepts like 'this week'. Surprisingly, I don't often 'see' the concepts of good or bad - they seem to be more built-in to certain nouns and verbs, and changing my opinion of a thing causes it to 'look' completely different. (That's also not the only thing that can cause a concept to change appearance - one of my closest friends has mellowed from a very nervous shade of orange to a wonderfully centered and calm medium-dark chocolate color over the course of the last year or so.)
I consider "should X" and "deserve X" to both be emotional labels, since they code for attitude and action towards X, and so both are well within system 1 scope. When used by system 2, they may carry totally different connotations, and have nothing to do with what the speaker actually believes they deserve or should do, and especially little to do with what they'll actually do.
For example, a statement like, "People should respect the rights of others and let them have what they deserve" is absolutely System 2, whereas, a statement like "I don't deserve it" (especially if experienced emotionally) is well within System 1 territory.
Hmm... heh, it actually sounds like I just don't use system 2, then.
However, since you claim to be able to observe system 1 directly, this would seem to put you in a privileged position with respect to changing yourself - in principle you should be able to observe what beliefs create any undesired behaviors or emotional responses. Since that's the hard part of mind hacking IME, I'm a bit surprised you haven't done more with the "easy" part (i.e. changing the contents of System 1).
I have and do, actually, and there's very little that's 'undesirable' left in there that I'm aware of (an irrational but so far not problematic fear of teenagers and a rationally-based but problematic fear of mental health professionals and, by extension, doctors are the only two things that come to mind that I'd change, and I've already done significant work on the second or I wouldn't be able to calmly have this conversation with you). The major limitation is that I can only see what's at hand, and it takes a degree of concentration to do so. I can't detangle my thought process directly while I'm trying to carry on a conversation, unless it's directly related to exactly what I'm doing at the moment, and I can't fix problems that I haven't noticed or have forgotten about.
I'm going to be putting together a simple display on conceptual synesthesia for my Neuroversity project this week... I'll be sure to send you a link when it's done.
I've been thinking more about this... or, not really. One of the downsides to my particular mind-setup is that it takes a long time to retrieve things from long-term memory, but I did retrieve something interesting just now.
When I was younger, I think I did use system two moderately regularly. I do vaguely remember intentionally trying to 'figure things out' using non-synesthetic reasoning - before I realized that the synesthesia was both real and useful - and coming to conclusions. I very distinctly remember having a mindset more than once of "I made...
A currently existing social norm basically says that everyone has the right to an opinion on anything, no matter how little they happen to know about the subject.
But what if we had a social norm saying that by default, people do not have the right to an opinion on anything? To earn such a right, they ought to have familiarized themselves on the topic. The familiarization wouldn't necessarily have to be anything very deep, but on the topic of e.g. controversial political issues, they'd have to have read at least a few books' worth of material discussing the question (preferrably material from both sides of the political fence). In scientific questions where one needed more advanced knowledge, you ought to at least have studied the field somewhat. Extensive personal experience on a subject would also be a way to become qualified, even if you hadn't studied the issue academically.
The purpose of this would be to enforce epistemic hygiene. Conversations on things such as public policy are frequently overwhelmed by loud declarations of opinion from people who, quite honestly, don't know anything on the subject they have a strong opinion on. If we had in place a social norm demanding an adequate amount of background knowledge on the topic before anyone voiced an opinion they expected to be taken seriously, the signal/noise ratio might be somewhat improved. This kind of a social norm does seem to already be somewhat in place in many scientific communities, but it'd do good to spread it to the general public.
At the same time, there are several caveats. As I am myself a strong advocate on freedom of speech, I find it important to note that this must remain a *social* norm, not a government-advocated one or anything that is in any way codified into law. Also, the standards must not be set *too* high - even amateurs should be able to engage in the conversation, provided that they know at least the basics. Likewise, one must be careful that the principle isn't abused, with "you don't have a right to have an opinion on this" being a generic argument used to dismiss any opposing claims.