Book completed
Dec. 28th, 2025 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeThinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman and his long-time colleague, Amos Tversky, were renowned for their research on the many ways that humans are not “rational” in the sense of making the most logically consistent decisions. One part of their work, prospect theory, analyzed the many ways in which people make decisions about risk that depend on the context. A very simple example is that if you tell someone a surgery has a 90% survival rate, they will be a lot more likely to agree to undergo it than if they’re told it has a 10% fatality rate, even though both ways of putting it mean the same thing.
Another part of their work is more relevant to my own research, the dual-process models of cognition – or, as it says in the title, the “fast and slow” ways we think. Whenever we’re given information, we process it rapidly and automatically, using our emotions to guide us. Only if we have a special need to be careful and accurate are we likely to give it deliberate, conscious attention and think about it more methodically – and even then, our arguments tend to support our first, automatic, reaction.
In this book, Kahneman tells the story of his career and expands on these topics in great detail. Since I was already familiar with his work, I found the book an excellent way to fill in small gaps in my time – and I thus stretched out my reading of it over more than eight months. It’s also written in a style that makes it easy to pick up where one left off.
Many years ago, Kahneman spent a year at the small research institute where I work, a year he describes in this book as his “most productive year.” That was more than 20 years before my time, though. He is certainly our only Nobel laureate!
Another part of their work is more relevant to my own research, the dual-process models of cognition – or, as it says in the title, the “fast and slow” ways we think. Whenever we’re given information, we process it rapidly and automatically, using our emotions to guide us. Only if we have a special need to be careful and accurate are we likely to give it deliberate, conscious attention and think about it more methodically – and even then, our arguments tend to support our first, automatic, reaction.
In this book, Kahneman tells the story of his career and expands on these topics in great detail. Since I was already familiar with his work, I found the book an excellent way to fill in small gaps in my time – and I thus stretched out my reading of it over more than eight months. It’s also written in a style that makes it easy to pick up where one left off.
Many years ago, Kahneman spent a year at the small research institute where I work, a year he describes in this book as his “most productive year.” That was more than 20 years before my time, though. He is certainly our only Nobel laureate!
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