Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

An extraordinarily rich and generous summary of the results of a remarkable lifetime of investigating the way that we humans actually think. ( )

This book examines interesting ideas, but the author won the Nobel prize for economics, not literature. Dull writing.

An aspiring novelist must be a stubborn, irrational, plodding fool. A successful novelist is a lucky, stubborn, irrational, plodding fool.
This book explains why most novels are never completed or, if completed, never published.
A complex, long-term, open-ended project is a risky venture. Odds are so grim the creator engages in self-deception just to keep hope alive during the creative process. Probability insists that 1) the project will never be finished, 2) if finished, it will take years longer than predicted, and 3) if finished, it will never be used for its intended purpose, publication. Yet writers keep starting novels. Self-deception is a powerful force.

"I eventually learned three lessons.... The first was immediately apparent: I had stumbled onto a distinction between two profoundly different approaches to forecasting, ... the inside view and the outside view. The second lesson was that our initial forecasts ... exhibited a planning fallacy. Our estimates were closer to a best-case scenario than to a realistic assessment. I was slower to accept the third lesson, which I call irrational perseverance: the folly we displayed ... in failing to abandon the project. Facing a choice, we gave up rationality rather than give up the enterprise." Kindle location 4196

Those of us who aren't behavioral psychologists call it lazy thinking. Or knee-jerk decision-making. Kahneman's enlightening book explores the different ways our brains work. Right from the very first pages, he lays out an understandable road map, suggesting that there are two distinct "systems" at play. System One is the more intuitive, emotional thinking process that requires minimal effort. System Two is the more analytical process that requires far more "brain power."
Plowing through this book will require readers to put on their System Two thinking caps. I agree with some reviewers who suggest that the points could have been made more effectively in far fewer pages. But the fact that I incorporated some of Kahneman's research into my college communications course the same week that I started reading the book is a clear indicator of how much I value his concepts. My students enjoyed some of the brain-teasers (my phrase, not Kahneman's) that illustrate how impulsive, lazy thinking can taint our decisions. ( )

Highly entertaining look at behavioural economics. This book helped me think (at least until my "system 2" got tired) about my own cognitive biases and the emotions behind some of my decisions. Mr. Kahneman's work is a tribute to the power of story-telling. Our "System 1", or intuitive brains, construct stories based on past experience. Narratives have become popular in management training on leading change.

I know colleagues without any background in economics or psychology found some of the text difficult, but Mr. Kahneman gives lots of real-life examples that provide insights for everyone. ( )