Thinking, Fast and Slow

This is the Bias Bible. If you want to get a brief overview of how your brain works, and lots of information on how you aren't the rational actor you see yourself as, this is the book.


Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on human judgement covered in this book, and played a key role in the development of the field of behavioral economics. If you read one book on the brain, this is the one.

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 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.

This book contains endless knowledge and significant psychological experiments you definitely should read about.

Making decisions is complex, but trying to write a book about it seems even more so. But Kahneman executed it perfectly. His witful writing style got me to finish this (long-ass) book. I had a hard time getting through the third chapter because it was very technical, but the fourth chapter made everything right again. Great book, I recommend it to people who are interested in psychology (how we think and how we make decisions) and behavioural economics.

- PS: The Dutch translation isn't quite good, so I'd recommend the English book for Dutch speaking people.

This book is a fascinating look at decision making, it convinced me my life is much more driven by chance that I would like to admit. Key themes are to be on the look out for for when and how you might substitute an easy question in place of answering a hard question (without knowing it), how decisions are framed can dramatically alter the answer evening with professionals and experts, and that we're very bad at applying fully rational logic to decisions of probability. I highly recommend the book, it made me aware of many potential flaws we make around decisions - but my only compliant is that it offered few tools to improve how we make decisions.

J'avais entendu parler à plusieurs reprises, toujours de façon positive, de ce livre de Daniel Kahneman. J'ai fini par me laisser tenter et je viens de le lire.

Dans ce long essai, l'auteur expose le fruit de ses longues années de recherche en psychologie, autour du thème de la prise de décision. Son propos s'articule autour de la distinction entre deux “systèmes”, deux modalités de décision dans notre cerveau :

Le Système 1 est intuitif, rapide, mais soumis à des biais, des stéréotypes, des approximations, influençable par les circonstances, et donc capable d'erreurs de jugement.

Le Système 2 est analytique, précis, mais plus lent et parfois “paresseux” quand il valide les intuitions du Système 1 sans procéder à une analyse plus détaillée.

L'auteur détaille évidemment les caractéristiques de ces deux systèmes, sur le mode de fonctionnement, les avantages et les inconvénients de chacun. Il approfondit ensuite en exposant longuement les différents biais et phénomènes auquel le Système 1 est soumis et qui peuvent l'amener à se tromper.

Le contenu est souvent très intéressant, avec de nombreuses expériences qui illustrent le propos, mais l'auteur a tendance à être un peu bavard et à se répéter, ce qui peut rendre la lecture un peu laborieuse et rébarbative. Il faut soit prendre son temps entre chaque chapitre, soit au contraire passer rapidement certains passages qui ne font que reformuler des concepts déjà exposés quelques pages auparavant. Le début, quand l'auteur présente les bases de sa réflexion autour des deux systèmes, est passionnant et limpide. La suite est un peu moins plaisante, alternant des passages passionnants et d'autres plus laborieux. C'est en tout cas l'expérience de lecture que j'ai eu ces derniers jours.

L'ensemble est tout de même très intéressant et éclairant sur un sujet captivant et souvent méconnu. J'espère en avoir retenu une part conséquente, cela peut toujours être utile !

Just like all the classic Gladwells, this has been quoted and discussed and referred to so much that it's lost its wow factor entirely.

Still though, I believe we're morally obliged to work through our biases, so this is an essential resource / reference point.

Also, I will never forget the feminist bank teller case — everyone fails on this one!

I am happy this book is done. It was very informative but extremely long. I also listened to the audiobook which is normally fine, but really didn't work for this text. I felt I lost a lot in translation, as it were.

I also think I appreciated the first part of the book where introduction of the experiments took place. I liked hearing about practices that I could play out on my own. I'll recommend this to others, but surely with the caveat on length.

Meu Deus, que livro interminável e TEDIOSO!

Como em alguns livros de negócios que já me aventurei a ler, aqui a fórmula não muda: os conceitos básicos estão todos no capítulo 1 e são exaustivamente repetidos ao longo dos demais capítulos, tornando o livro repetitivo e cansativo ao extremo.

O resumo é o seguinte: o cérebro é dividido em 2 sistemas, um mais imediatista, chamado de Sistema 1; o outro, mais racional, responsável por analisar mais friamente as questões em busca de respostas inegavelmente mais elaboradas e corretas, o Sistema 2. Mas somos seres preguiçosos e tendemos a nos valer de intuições e análises mais superficiais que provém do primeiro sistema, o que nos leva a deduções e conclusões errôneas, quando a recomendação para seres dotados de inteligência como somos seria investir um pouco mais de tempo e usar o segundo sistema.

O conceito é interessantíssimo, e merece 5 estrelas. Mas é impossível dizer que a leitura é atrativa, então a menos que você vá debater com matemáticos ou discutir teoria Bayesiana com sua namorada, passe a leitura e fique com uma classificação honesta de 1 estrela.

This book is a more grounded & scientific companion to the book I read & recommended last year: “Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment” (2017) by Robert Wright. Both describe humans' thinking capacity the same: Instinct/emotional/“the elephant”/system 1 vs analytical/systematic/slow/“the rider”/system 2. A really interesting book to understand how we think about problems, and might help you think a little more carefully.

It seems humans consider much less information than we should when thinking. We make decisions using only trace amounts of information, while being convinced we are being super duper smart. This is a phenomenon that could lead to unhappiness and anxiety if confronted head one. Fortunately, were too dumb to realize this in the first place.

Advertisers and politicians know this stuff. We should know it too.

Kahneman documents the almost paradoxical differences between our “automatic” thinking (à la Gladwell's “Blink”) and our “rational” (prefrontal cortex) selves. How the automatic systems frequently trick us, and sometimes in dangerous ways.

Psychology, economics, and statistics all in one brilliantly accessible package.

This is by far the best book I have ever read. The author not only presents numerous examples, based on psychology studies, showing how our brain often fails to make rational decisions, but also provides solutions on how we can overcome these biases. Throughout the book, I learned how to avoid situations that may impair our ability to make more rational decisions.

This is a dense book and it took me a few months to get through, mostly due to me forgetting to pick it up, but the material is excellent. I've read a few books on biases and heuristics before and always enjoyed the material, but I felt like this book did a better job of really focusing on the repercussions of them and how they might affect you.

The ending is a bit of a letdown as the author concedes that he's not sure how to fix these problems, but being aware is an excellent start.