Thinking, Fast and Slow [Hardcover]

 

 

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Daniel Kahneman has produced an excellent book. He continues to build and expand on the famous paper he and Amos Tversky published in 1974 ("Judging Under Uncertainty", a copy of which is usefully appended to this book) and has since spawned innumerable books on the theme (eg Wray Herbert's "On Second Thought"), and even related themes like Nassim Taleb's "Black Swan". "Thinking Fast and Slow" is not a textbook; it is intended for the layman who wants to have a clear and deep understanding of man's cognitive functions. Most of Kahneman's studies will amaze readers not familiar with this subject. For example, when tested, it is still remarkable that the clinical judgments of trained professionals are less accurate than statistical predictions based on a few scores or ratings. Hence counsellors who interviewed students were less accurate in their predictions on the students' performance than statistical predictions using only a few denominators such as High School grades and aptitude test results. The reason Kahneman, a psychologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics was that his (and Tversky's) thesis was applied by economists to understand why economic and financial predictions so often go wildly wrong when they were (or so it was believed) so carefully and rationally made.

This review also hopes to point readers to a book I read as a student in 1967. It's called "Straight and Crooked Thinking" by R H Thouless. That book has so many similar points and Thouless was a teaching psychologist from Cambridge University in the UK. Although Thouless' book concerns flaws in the use of language and logic in thinking, it also discusses the effect of hidden bias and prejudice. Straight and Crooked Thinking has just been published in the 5th edition by R H Thouless' grandson, C R Thouless. The first was published in 1930. Kahneman's book will likely be as long lived.

And neither, for me, is dislike of this wonderful book an option. By the time Daniel Kahneman reassures the reader that the results of the various priming studies he has just been discussing are neither made up nor statistical flukes - and that "disbelief is not an option" - I was more than ready to take this as an avuncular and not an inquisitorial admonition. There is a warmth in the writing, and not only from scholarly passion for the subject. As well as being a masterly exploration of a fascinating part of human nature, this book is a tribute to a remarkable collaboration with Amos Tversky, and dedicated to his memory. That his name does not appear in the formal acknowledgements at the end of the book is no oversight: his spirit infuses the text, surfacing every so often in the plural subject "Amos and I" as Kahneman describes with relish some piece of scientific research they conducted together.

In a book that exposes errors we often don't realize we're making, it is fitting that the author himself fesses up. Kahneman admits that early in his career, like many psychologists, he was often guilty of choosing samples that were too small, getting results that made no sense and which - it eventually dawned on him - were actually artifacts of his research method: "My mistake was particularly embarrassing because I taught statistics and knew how to compute the sample size that would reduce the risk of failure". He learned to be wary of intuition and tradition, and, unlike most psychologists, went on to collect a Nobel prize, for work done with Tversky on judgment under uncertainty and prospect theory (published in two widely cited papers that are reproduced as appendixes).

Truly random errors can't be predicted, of course. The human mind, however, is somewhat more accommodating to scientific study in that it distorts reality in systematic ways, and these errors - or biases - "recur predictably in particular circumstances". A recurrent theme of the book centres on one particularly strong bias, towards causal explanations and away from statistical analysis. People "are prone to apply causal thinking inappropriately, to situations that require statistical reasoning". One clue to this tendency is that while even children are good intuitive grammarians, pretty much all adults (including professional statisticians) are poor intuitive statisticians. We prefer stories to sets of data, agency over chance, and we care more about coherence than either the quantity or quality of the data on which the story is based.

For someone who warns us to beware of stories, Kahneman's is a compelling narrative, at the heart of which are two characters who in turn entertain and exasperate, who sometimes work well together and who are sometimes in conflict, but without whom we would not be human. They go by the prosaic labels System 1 and System 2 and are vital for understanding how we make judgements and decisions.

In brief, the automatic System 1 and the effortful System 2 "respectively produce fast and slow thinking". System 1 is brilliant at identifying causal connections between events, while System 2, your conscious self, is the part of the mind that can concentrate on thinking a problem through. System 1 is always on, generating "intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes your way", and while it is never stumped it is "gullible and biased to believe". Given these aspects of System 1's character, the "laziness of System 2 is an important fact of life": System 2 ("in charge of doubting and unbelieving") could step in to stop you jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. It often fails to intervene, however, because it's often terribly busy and finds it hard to multitask. Besides, following "our intuitions is more natural, and somehow more pleasant, than acting against them". As for attitudes, "System 2 is more of an apologist for the emotions of System 1 than a critic of those emotions - an endorser rather than an enforcer".

"The measure of success for System 1 is the coherence of the story it manages to create. The amount and quality of the data on which the story is based are largely irrelevant. When information is scarce, which is a common occurrence, System 1 operates as a machine for jumping to conclusions."

My guess is that regression to the mean has not set many pulses racing (examinations apart), and yet it provided Kahneman with "one of the most satisfying eureka experiences" of his career, when he "stumbled onto a significant fact of the human condition: the feedback to which life exposes us is perverse. Because we tend to be nice to other people when they please us and nasty when they do not, we are statistically punished for being nice and rewarded for being nasty." Performance varies, and the chance element will both regress to the mean and be ignored: a golfer who has a good first day in a competition is likely to do less well on the second (despite all the praise), and a golfer who has a bad first day is likely to improve (despite all the flak). Most spectators and commentators ignore statistics and rely on intuition to predict the scores on the second day, and as a result will "tend to be overconfident and overly extreme". It goes without saying that golf tournaments are not the only situations when intuitive predictions "need to be corrected because they are not regressive and therefore are biased".

This book will be of interest to anyone who has woken up this morning, and is therefore experiencing, first hand, the push and pull of fast and slow thinking. Psychologists, however, should be warned about a potentially demoralizing conclusion: despite Kahneman's evident enthusiasm for his subject, it seems "that teaching psychology is mostly a waste of time". Reading this book most certainly isn't, although I do have a couple of further health warnings regarding this review: (a) I haven't quite finished reading the whole book and (b) I've just begun a chapter entitled "The Illusion of Understanding"...

If you're a fan of psychology books, you've probably heard of Daniel Kahneman. The guy has a Nobel Prize in economics, making him one of the most famous living psychologists around. He knows what he's talking about and fills this book with a huge amount of information about how the mind works.

The central thesis of the book is that we humans are almost two separate entities. One side of us is instinctive, impulsive and relies on making fast judgements and quick impressions. The other side of us is more deliberate and allows us to (sometimes) overrule this more gutsy side of us. Throughout the book, Kahneman provides study after study after study to illustrate these two side of the mind.

Unfortunately, I found the book more long-winded and meandering than I would have liked. Kahneman provides lots and lots of examples, but sometimes goes into too much detail or swamps us with too much information. Occasionally, for example, the book comes across slightly more as a memoir that would be interesting for him to have written rather than a book that is aimed at educating and entertaining a wide readership.

In addition, Kahneman may be a highly decorated scientist, but he's not a natural writer. He assembles sentences with clauses and sub-clauses that sometimes hamper their comprehension. That doesn't mean that I didn't understand the book, but I did sometimes have to read sentences several times to get precisely the point that he was making.

For content, this book cannot be beaten. There's a huge amount in this hefty book. But the fact that it is so comprehensive made it (for me) a less enjoyable read. In trying to squeeze absolutely everything about the brain and mind into one book, I felt that there was too much to take in. Taking some of the content OUT to make the book more focused would have made it a more enjoyable read in my personal opinion.

Other psychologists have covered similar ground in an easier-to-read fashion, including Richard Wiseman 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot, Rob Yeung I is for Influence: The new science of persuasion: Mastering the Art of Influence, Daniel Pink Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and Daniel Nettle Personality: What makes you the way you are.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting
This was a very interesting and readable book by one of the founders of "Behavioural Economics." Despite winning the Nobel Prize for Economics (with Amos Tversky),he isn't... Read more

Published 1 day ago by The Emperor

3.0 out of 5 stars Thinking Well, Thinking Poorly
You are at the cinema watching the latest film. Fifteen minutes before the end, the projector explodes and the screening is terminated prematurely. Read more

Published 13 days ago by M. D. Holley

5.0 out of 5 stars seminal book
This an absolutely compelling book, that has been reverberating in my mind since I first picked it up. Read more

Published 14 days ago by Don Panik

5.0 out of 5 stars Awful truth: investment choices no better than the flip of a coin
Thinking fast and slow by Kahneman is an absolute gem ! By taking substantial investment data over several years he concludes
1) as a group, private investors make poor... Read more

Published 14 days ago by Noswen

5.0 out of 5 stars How Decisions Vary from "Rational" Models and How to Avoid Decision Mistakes
"And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,
Nor decide by the hearing of His ears;
But with righteousness He shall judge the poor,
And decide with equity for... Read more

Published 15 days ago by Donald Mitchell

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lifetime of Research, Summarized
Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is an excellent and extremely thought-provoking book. It is long, but so is Kahneman's career, and for once, the length of the book is... Read more

Published 17 days ago by J.Tuomas

3.0 out of 5 stars Slightly Mixed Bag
I dont normally write reviews but felt I should with this book.

Im probably your average reader - an interest in psychology and to some degree, self help/improvement... Read more

Published 28 days ago by Ice Cream Boy

5.0 out of 5 stars Insights that will blow your mind.
(Apologies for the mediocre English)

This is one of the most interesting books I have read in months. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Hcim

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and important
I think I am beginning to bore my friends, family and co-workers with the number of times I begin a sentence: "Actually, I read something fascinating the other day, in a book... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Pardo

5.0 out of 5 stars Important
It isn't often I use the word 'important' to describe a book, but it's an adjective that is more than valid in this case. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mr. Michael Heron

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