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Thinking, Fast and Slow: Difference between revisions
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{{a|book review|{{image|Thinking | {{a|book review|{{image|Thinking Fast and Slow|jpeg|}}}} | ||
===Present Company Included=== | ===Present Company Included=== | ||
This is a monster book packed with fascinating insights about how our cognitive systems process and render information. Its starting premise is that we have two discrete “systems” for mental processing. Daniel Kahneman, a cognitive psychologist who transformed himself into a Nobel Prize-winning behavioural economist, gives these the Dr. Seussian labels “System 1 and System 2”. | This is a monster book packed with fascinating insights about how our cognitive systems process and render information. Its starting premise is that we have two discrete “systems” for mental processing. Daniel Kahneman, a cognitive psychologist who transformed himself into a Nobel Prize-winning behavioural economist, gives these the Dr. Seussian labels “System 1 and System 2”. | ||
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It gets interesting for Kahneman where the division of labour between the systems isn’t clear cut. System 1 can and does make quick evaluations even where system 2’s systematic analysis would provide a better result (these are broadly the “bad” snap judgments of ''Blink''). But System 2 requires dedicated mental resource (in Kahneman ugly expression, it is “effortful”), and our lazy tendency is to substitute (or, at any rate, stick with) those “cheaper” preliminary judgments where it is not obviously erroneous to do so (and by and large, it won’t be, as System 1 will have done its work). Kahneman’s shorthand for this effect is WYSIATI: What You See Is All There Is. | It gets interesting for Kahneman where the division of labour between the systems isn’t clear cut. System 1 can and does make quick evaluations even where system 2’s systematic analysis would provide a better result (these are broadly the “bad” snap judgments of ''Blink''). But System 2 requires dedicated mental resource (in Kahneman ugly expression, it is “effortful”), and our lazy tendency is to substitute (or, at any rate, stick with) those “cheaper” preliminary judgments where it is not obviously erroneous to do so (and by and large, it won’t be, as System 1 will have done its work). Kahneman’s shorthand for this effect is WYSIATI: What You See Is All There Is. | ||
Kahneman invites the reader to try plenty of experiments aimed at illustrating his fecklessness, and these hit their mark: it is distressing to repeatedly discover you have made a howling error of judgment, especially when you knew you were being tested for it. This has massive implications for those who claim group psychology can be predicted on narrow logical grounds. The latter half of {{br|Thinking Fast and Slow}} focusses more on our constitutional inability to rationally adapt to probabilities and soundly wallops the notion of [[homo economicus]], the rational chooser each of us imagine ourselves to be. This is where Kahneman’s Nobel Prize-winning Prospect Theory and gets full run of the paddock. | Kahneman invites the reader to try plenty of experiments aimed at illustrating his fecklessness, and these hit their mark: it is distressing to repeatedly discover you have made a howling error of judgment, especially when you knew you were being tested for it. This has massive implications for those who claim group psychology can be predicted on narrow logical grounds. The latter half of {{br|Thinking, Fast and Slow}} focusses more on our constitutional inability to rationally adapt to probabilities and soundly wallops the notion of [[homo economicus]], the rational chooser each of us imagine ourselves to be. This is where Kahneman’s Nobel Prize-winning Prospect Theory and gets full run of the paddock. | ||
Kahneman draws many lessons (which, by his own theory, doubtless will go unheeded) for scientists, economists, politicians, traders and business managers: “theory-induced blindness”; how we become (irrationally) risk tolerant when all our options are bad and risk averse when all our options are good, and how we systematically underweight high probability outcomes relative to actual certainty. For those with nerves of steel there’s a real arbitrage to be exploited here. | Kahneman draws many lessons (which, by his own theory, doubtless will go unheeded) for scientists, economists, politicians, traders and business managers: “theory-induced blindness”; how we become (irrationally) risk tolerant when all our options are bad and risk averse when all our options are good, and how we systematically underweight high probability outcomes relative to actual certainty. For those with nerves of steel there’s a real arbitrage to be exploited here. | ||