Thinking, Fast and Slow (International Edition) (original 2011; udgave 2013)

I only read the first 100 pages or so, then skimmed most of the rest. it is intellectual interesting, but mostly it provides a working language to describe what we tend to sense about how humans think. it is scary to be reminded how easily we are manipulated, especially by words. I do wish he had addressed the idea of mob mentality. Ultimately, as a lay person I was merely a little entertained by this book. ( )

You are given the following problem:

1) You have the opportunity to learn some things about decision-making but must filter the 100 or so pages from 500 yourself to determine if any of them are new
2) 80% of a text reinforces early points made with different examples but must be read in order to have a complete picture of why it shouldn't have been read

Kahneman spend a lot of time and bandwidth telling us we make bad decisions and describing the different ways in which we make them - biases, heuristics, priming, framing, fallacies. Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational was published three years before this. It's an easier read, and one of which I observed in 2012 "... one of the chief complaints of the haters was his extrapolation of his findings (from the studies he included in this book) to the general populace. I see the complaint, but that doesn't discredit the points as they are presented in what should be seen as what it is: a popular science book, not an academic paper." Kahneman's book, however, is mired in academia with attempts at colloquial disguise. I’ve tried for years to get into this book, and now I am finally through it. The good thing is he’s arranged his points in small bites. The bad thing is each could have easily been a page. But that doesn’t sell books or win Nobels. The other bad thing is that the majority of this book is repetitious tedium.

This book has a noteworthy distinction of being the first "only" book on my "currently reading" list in more than two decades - I usually read three or more at the same time ...alternating between them, obviously. And with its tortuous completion, I now have for the briefest timebite no books on my list (to be corrected quickly after filing this.)

Selected highlighted bullets with no context:
"The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than our own."
"The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness."
"Restoring the level of available sugar in the brain had prevented the deterioration of performance."
"The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it."
[The model may be like the sensory maps our brains make.]

With context: Kahneman talks about Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, which I though seemed like it was written with the end determined first and then Gladwell searched for things to back it up. (One prevalent theme kept surfacing - definitive conclusion based on entirely subjective observations.) Kahneman and his research partner at the time disageed with Gladwell's conclusion on one story that experts who knew a scuplture was fake with intuition only could not have determined whether it was by systematic inquiry. But Kahneman recognizes that Gladwell doesn't attribute magic to expert intuition.In a later chapter he describes a massive failure of intuition: Americans elected President Harding, whose only qualification for the position was that he perfectly looked the part. Square jawed and tall, he was the perfect image of a strong and decisive leader. People voted for someone who looked strong and decisive without any other reason to believe that he was. And in 2016 T was elected because he didn’t. "An intuitive prediction of how Harding would perform as president arose from substituting one question for another."

"...some aspects of any professional's tasks are much easier to learn than others."Psychotherapists have many opportunities to observe the immediate reactions of patients to what they say. The feedback enables them to develop the intuitive skill to find the words and the tone that will calm anger, forge confidence, or focus the patient’s attention. On the other hand, therapists do not have a chance to identify which general treatment approach is most suitable for different patients.This is something most people embracing or promoting therapy do not seem to understand. One size not only doesn’t fit all, nor most,... it doesn’t fit many.

On trying to figure out why a project took many yearsBut this is what always happens when a project ends reasonably well: once you understand the main conclusion, it seems it was always obvious.Ernest Rutherford supposedly said that "All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial."

In one decision example, Kahneman poses a problem of two people who want to see a basketball game 40 miles away (which in the DFW metroplex is a walk in the park). One bought a ticket, the other got one for free. Blizzard blows in. Which braves the blizzard to see the game? Your answer is likely the immediate answer of almost everyone (the fan who paid...naturally.) A sunk cost problem, the rational brain has to thinkWould I still drive into this snowstorm if I had gotten the ticket free from a friend?” It takes an active and disciplined mind to raise such a difficult question.Something I know I am not good at is asking myself "Is my time worth...?" Like finishing a book I know has expended its value early. My stubborness often has a sunk cost fallacy nudging it on.

Characteristics of System 1, summarized by Kahneman:
- generates impressions, feelings, and inclinations; when endorsed by System 2 these become beliefs, attitudes, and intentions
- operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control
- can be programmed by System 2 to mobilize attention when a particular pattern is detected (search)
- executes skilled responses and generates skilled intuitions, after adequate training
- creates a coherent pattern of activated ideas in associative memory
- links a sense of cognitive ease to illusions of truth, pleasant feelings, and reduced vigilance
- distinguishes the surprising from the normal
- infers and invents causes and intentions
- neglects ambiguity and suppresses doubt
- is biased to believe and confirm
- exaggerates emotional consistency (halo effect)
- focuses on existing evidence and ignores absent evidence (WYSIATI)
- generates a limited set of basic assessments represents sets by norms and prototypes, does not integrate
- matches intensities across scales (e.g., size to loudness)
- computes more than intended (mental shotgun)
- sometimes substitutes an easier question for a difficult one (heuristics)
- is more sensitive to changes than to states (prospect theory)
- overweights low probabilities
- shows diminishing sensitivity to quantity (psychophysics)
- responds more strongly to losses than to gains (loss aversion)
- frames decision problems narrowly, in isolation from one anotherFYI, WYSIATI is What You See Is All There Is

Bottom line: My original "problem" is a obviously a contrived trick non-question. This is not the book to read. ( )

System 1 og system 2. Reptilhjernen og den dovne undersøkeren. Priming. Persepsjonsbevis til orientering, Den Kognitive Letthet og andre mekanismer.

A model for how we think. Either fast and lose or slow with the possibility of more correct decisions.
Thinking fast we risk jumping to conclusions, not see the broad picture, have planning fallacies, framing based decisions.
Thinking slow: we can step back and compare things. Look out side the box. Look at the problem from multiple framings.

I think this is a book that I will read again in a year or two. This is my second reading. ( )

Fascinating book, focusing on behavioral economics, psychology, and what makes us humans tick (or not). The book is dense (yes, it took me a very long time to get through it), but has lots of great examples, and the ending of each chapter gives you highlights and memorable phrases that illustrate the main points. ( )