Thinking, Fast and Slow

In order to write these comments I must set aside my natural system 1 mode of being (lazily automatic) and enter the far more arduous mode, System 2, and THINK for MYSELF. We don't spend as much time actually thinking in this mode as we would like to believe we do (which is itself a non-rational and emotionally based stance of System 1). Thinking is HARD WORK. Our brains and bodies are programmed to conserve energy as well as to protect us from . . . well . . . ourselves as THINKING not only uses a lot of energy but is often bewilderingly difficult and overwhelming. (As in, having to change your mind, admit you have no idea what to do, etcetera.) You know the difference between 1 and 2. The former tends to work smoothly and show more automatically and you like best being in that mode. Anything you prefer to put off or avoid doing altogether is probably a System 2 activity, from balancing your checkbook to deciding who to vote for or choosing the right school for your child or evaluating care for your grandmother. All of these choices most of you (including me) would love to leave to others. (And all too often do.)

Possibly the most crucial takeaway is accepting that we are not capable, not a single one of us, of making rational decisions all the time. Some may succeed more often than others, but really, no one. In fact, those who insist on rationality as the basis for all human endeavor are likely to be the most deluded of all. They want to believe themselves purely rational, but belief is emotionally based and not rational. Sorry.

Are you aware that the way a question is put to you affects how you answer it? (The researches call this 'focalism'.) So if you are asked to put a check in a box to donate your organs (on yr driver's license renewal) you are less likely to check that box. However, if you are asked to check that box if you DON'T want to donate your organs you leave the box blank. Why? Didn't you immediately have an ugh feeling for the former? I did. And pretty much no feeling at all at the second choice? I'm fine with that. You have to overcome an instinctive reluctance (System 1) to make the rational (System 2) choice. Or how about this. Are you aware that all unconsciously your answer to an unrelated question is affected by very recent luck or loss (literally, like finding a dime before someone asks you how you are feeling generally about almost anything, if it is a nice day or whatever.) Or that the way the Experiencing self, moment to moment, is supplanted by the story the Remembered self (which is a System 2 creation) has put together. (Official word is Duration Neglect and you add to it Peak-End Rule-that the most recent thing, the last thing in an experience is what you remember the most, both from System 1). System 1 is a mighty broth of basic instincts, deeply learned skills (driving would be one most of us share), habits that allow us all to make instant decisions, choices, opinions. Usually for the best, but not always. A useful acronym is WYSIATI (What You See Is What There Is) -- what you don't know or see before you, you don't (can't) include in your decisions. (Food labelling is fiendishly clever in this regard. As are many media outlets.) The reality of how we think and decide what to do with our lives is a complicated dance between the two and the better you are at recognizing which mode is needed, the better off you will be.

Much of the research involves having people choose between types of bets -- often bets that appear to be weighted one way or another because of the wording, but are either the same in outcome or biased the opposite of what your System 1 tends to be attracted to. System 2 has to be engaged to make the 'right' choice. I had difficulties with ALL of these questions as my instinct is to recoil (and I mean that) as I find betting and gambling so pointless (losing is the only outcome for the majority, duh) I couldn't wrap my head around any of it. I would likely have been dismissed by the researchers.

An intriguing find in the research is that as regards overall happiness or satisfaction our lives appear to depend on two foundations: Enough money for needs to be met -- curiously, more than that provides nothing, happiness and satisfaction flatten right out. The second piece is having goals and ambitions that are achievable (for some it is making money, btw). This fits in well with the (more philosophical) book on agency that I read not so long ago, by [[Agnes Caillard]]. Another undeniable factor is luck. Good or bad. Although the likelihood is, given the fact that this erratic thing, while beyond our control, tends to affect us all rather evenly--although in greater and lesser degrees depending on what risks a person takes, I would imagine. We must all take some, of course.

Another gem is that we tend to expect happiness from acquisition of material objects rather than from friendships and doing things with others. The officialese for this is using 'affective forecasting' that results in 'miswanting' (oh how I love that word!). Things never win out over fellowship. Take that to heart.

The end of each chapter has a kind of 'summary' in the form of statements that illustrate the points Kahneman just made and they are really helpful. He's a good writer, the clarity is stunning. I cannot recommend [Thinking Fast and Slow] more highly. It is a thoroughly System 2 read from beginning to end, so be patient with yourself if you do take it on. And please do.

***** and then some. show less

Daniel Kahneman is a psychology professor and the winner of a Nobel Prize in economics. In this book he delves into how the human mind works when we're evaluating situations, solving problems, and making decisions. In particular, he talks about two kinds of mental processing we employ. One, which he refers to as "System 1" (a phrase he emphasizes is simply a convenient label for a particular kind of thinking, not a physical thing that exists in your brain), works quickly, draws on associations between the problem before us and things we've seen before, simplifies complex problems to make them easier to handle, and produces results that just feel right. It's what we might like to call intuition. "System 2," on the other hand, proceeds show more slowly, logically, and analytically, for instance, when you're solving a complicated math problem. System 2 can be used to double-check on the intuitions provided by System 1, but it can also accept the conclusions System 1 feeds it and use those in its analysis. Or it can simply leave things to System 1 and never kick in at all.

Both systems are useful, even crucial, in their proper domains. Without System 2, we'd never pass calculus, and without System 1, we'd be like the proverbial centipede who couldn't walk because he couldn't keep track of what all his legs were doing. But relying on System 1 can lead us astray in all kinds of ways. And Kahneman shows us many of the ways it does that, as well as exploring the difference between real people and the idealized economists' model of human beings as perfectly rational agents invariably acting in their own best self-interest.

I thought most of this book was just really fantastic. I'd read a fair bit about this sort of topic before, and was a little afraid that it'd just hash over a lot of familiar ground for me, but, while I did get to be smug at having already developed the critical thinking skills not to fall for some of the trick questions designed to expose our irrationality, there was a lot here that I found really worthwhile and interesting, either because I was learning new things or because the already familiar concepts were just so wonderfully expressed.

I will say that there was one multi-chapter section of the book I felt slightly less satisfied with. Mostly, that involved a lot of examination of how people say they would respond to an offered gamble or deal, and whether their responses are rational or not. There was definitely some good stuff in these chapters, but I found them much less interesting, and somewhat harder to get through than the others. In part, that's probably because the way economics types approach these kinds of problems always kind of irritates me. Even when they're trying really hard, they always seem to me to fail to appreciate how real people feel about real money, treating it as some kind of contextless shiny thing that's just abstractly nice to have. It tends to leave me wanting to grab them by the lapels and say things like, "Of course the possibility of losing money that you already have feels more significant than the possibility of winning the same amount. People fear losing money for the same reason they fear losing blood. You have a limited amount of it, can only replenish it so fast, and you need that stuff to live." I mean, come on, guys.

Still, that may just be a personal quirk. Overall, it's an extremely valuable book, one that teaches some important, perhaps even utterly critical, lessons on the ways in which we can all be very, very wrong about things while being convinced we're completely, unquestionably right. Which is a perspective and a level of self-awareness that we desperately need more of in the world right now. I'd certainly like to force every politician to read it. show less

This was a bit of a mindblower. I'm always open to some counterintuitive conclusions, assuming the premises are reasonable and the logic is sturdy. And Kahneman's book is full of such ideas. But what was continually surprising was how much sense these revelations made. It's useful, though, to have labels to apply to them—confirmation bias, availability bias, the halo effect, etc. As the author himself points out, it's not necessarily going to change the way you act day-to-day. But it does at least give you a bit of insight and understanding, which I think gradually has some effect. And even if it doesn't, insight and understanding are worthwhile goals all on their own.

This novel was a solid read but was slightly let down by its long-winded commentary on unrelated topics and the insistence that economics expects rationality from humans. Yes, I got it the first time!
It is striking how much even slightly-well-off people will argue about the irrationality of the masses and how much 'thinking' instead of 'feeling' they are - only to expose themselves as hypocrites in the next five minutes of conversation. Thinking, Fast and Slow tells us why. It is heartening to find that it's possible to improve these facets of our personality to the point where we're not dictated solely by our intuition. In good news for pedants everywhere, Kahneman concludes that it's difficult, albeit doable, to spot yourself slipping show more into a hasty decision - but you can ask others to check if you're doing so.
The analogy of system 1 ('gut feeling') vs system 2 (rational, but lazy) and the experiencing self vs remembering self were remarkable psychological constructions, and I could see how Kahneman got his Nobel. All in all, this is not just a read for economists and psychologists - it should be essential reading for everyone if you can get past the verbiage. show less

Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman
Nov 24, 2011

I think this is, unqualifiably, a great book, not so much for its writing, although that is very good, but for its subject matter. The author won a Nobel for his experiments and thinking about decision making under uncertainty, developing what he calls prospect theory. The book is difficult to summarize, revealing as it does the results of many experiments showing how intuitive (the author calls it system 1) thinking is specialized for rapid decisions and abstracting data from background, often gets the decision wrong when compared to the slower, reasoned effort that is required (system 2). The intuitive decision system can be influenced by priming (one is more likely to respond in a show more certain way having been recently exposed to words or pictures favoring that response), and by neglect of logic and statistical thinking. The Linda problem illustrates that a logically less likely outcome of an individual being it two categories at once rather than in one is preferred because of a compelling description. Most people also neglect Bayes theorem, failing to recognize prior probability, and most people do not appreciate regression to the mean as an explanation for random events. The problem of small samples and loss aversion are also very powerful influences on decision making. I recommend this book to everyone who makes financial decisions, and to those with a scientific outlook on life show less

Sometimes you read a book that makes you stop and think and then changes the way you think. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is one such book. I started reading with my skepticism hat on as I do with most research based material. As I read, Kahneman's descriptions of how we think and how our thinking is affected by the world around us deeply resonated with me. I read Thinking, Fast and Slow like a textbook for a class, a chapter at a time, giving what I'd read time to sink in before moving on to the next chapter. His discussion of "framing" really made me stop and think about how many times I've been manipulated by the wording of an "offer" that mostly benefits the person making the offer. I also stopped to think about how show more often I make snap judgments attributing my thoughts to intuition based on experience. Thinking, Fast and Slow examines how our brains so often take the easy answer instead of engaging in more thought to find more accurate answers. How easy it is to accept what comes easy and ignore what requires mental engagement even as we fool ourselves into believing we've given a subject a good amount of thought, thought that basically reinforces what we already believe. Kahneman's research and findings are fascinating and offer a new approach to assessing our thoughts and our situations as well as marketing and the stock market. Thinking, Fast and Slow is a book that requires engaging what Kahneman refers to as System 2 thinking and giving the way you think some thought. I know that's what I ended up doing. Thinking, Fast and Slow is a book for anyone who is interested in how thinking works and why they think the things they do. show less

Our brains deal with the problems that confront us in daily life in two ways: the great bulk of them are handled by an associative, intuitive process that runs very fast and has a low energy cost, using a set of built-in heuristics to find the closest match to the problem we're confronted with in our memories of things that have happened before (rather like the way AI systems work, I suppose). Only when this level one system can't cope is the problem escalated to the much more costly mechanisms for rational, analytical processing of abstract ideas.

Back in 1969, the Israeli psychologist Kahneman and his late colleague Amos Tversky spotted that while this is an efficient way to deal with straightforward things like finding food and show more avoiding lions, it can lead us into making illogical choices when we are confronted with some of the more subtle problems of modern life. Our brains are lazy and often don't switch on the level two system until it's too late, so we can end up going with our immediate, intuitive response without thinking things through. We jump to conclusions, constructing causality where there isn't any, we don't cope well with statistical concepts (even if we are trained in their use), we underestimate the role of chance, we allow ourselves to be influenced by irrelevant factors that are there in front of us and ignore the stuff we can't see in that moment, and we are far too confident in our own opinions, amongst other things.

Kahneman's ideas — which are not universally accepted — have stirred up most dust in economics, where of course it is heresy to suggest that the choices humans make are anything other than free, rational, and selfish. He spends a lot of time on how we assess the desirability of investments, bets, insurance, and the like, and the many ways we get that wrong. But the ideas apply to all kinds of other areas as well, of course. He talks about things like the difficulty of predicting future performance in recruitment and staff reporting, or about the problems with subjective perceptions of pain and pleasure in things like clinical tests and quality-of-life studies. Kahneman doesn't go into the way people can be deliberately manipulated by triggering intuitive responses, but that's there in the background as well, naturally.

As always for a lay person reading a psychology book, there's a tendency to dismiss a large chunk of it as "just common sense" and another large part as "weird stuff that could only happen in a psychology experiment, not in the real world". But still, there's a lot that I feel it would have been useful to know earlier in my life, and maybe even to apply in practice. (Of course, at the moments when it was most relevant I was probably working with professional psychologists who did know all this stuff anyway, but they never explained it so clearly...) show less