Thinking, Fast and Slow

hardcover, 499 pages

English language

Published Dec. 11, 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-27563-1
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Goodreads:
11468377

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4 stars (20 reviews)

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a best-selling book published in 2011 by Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman. It was the 2012 winner of the National Academies Communication Award for best creative work that helps the public understanding of topics in behavioral science, engineering and medicine.The book summarizes research that Kahneman conducted over decades, often in collaboration with Amos Tversky. It covers all three phases of his career: his early work concerning cognitive biases, his work on prospect theory, and his later work on happiness. The integrity of many of the priming studies cited in the book have been called into question in the midst of the psychological replication crisis, although the results of Kahneman's own studies have replicated.The main thesis is that of a dichotomy between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. …

11 editions

Good insights

5 stars

  • There is a fast thinking System 1 which is used most of the time and acts immediately and a slower working System 2 which does more analysing
  • There is e.q. the need to always do pattern matching and find a reason behind something - like why a stock price changed
  • The halo-effect is described. If a teacher reads two essays from the student and the first one is better, then the second one is getting a better grade even though it could be shit
  • The law of small numbers is interesting. In smaller sample sizes, the outcomes are likely more extreme. E.g. smaller schools are more likely to be way worse or way better than bigger schools - not because the schools are actually better, but because there are too few people for a good statistic.
  • The Anchor effect is also explained. When a question has an anchor like "is …

Review of 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

The Goodreads "star" method of reviewing lends itself to a particular fallacy. I'll call it the self-selected evaluator's bias. I've mentioned this before in other reviews but this seems to be the place it belongs and (statistically speaking) you probably haven't read any of my other reviews. (Come to think of it, statistically speaking you aren't reading this one, but I digress.)

Imagine someone writing a review of Star Wars. If you bothered to watch it in the first place and are now bothering to write a review of it, I can predict that you liked it a lot and that you generally enjoy Science Fiction. You are not a random reviewer, but a self-selected biased one. (You could argue with this--I found myself continually arguing with Kahneman's certain pronouncements throughout reading T, F & S as I will hereafter refer to the book--but you'd still have to admit, my …

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