Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thinking, Fast and Slow, is in a small way a depressing read, in that author Daniel Kahneman explains–as documented by years of research and studies–just how susceptible we are to leaping to the wrong conclusion, making clearly unwise choices and falling victim to blatant manipulation.
On a more positive note, Kahneman also shows how we can at least be aware of both how our brains work when making decisions and the ways it which our brains can be manipulated, whether through deliberate action or side effect.
The book lays out its essential premise, then builds on it in citing the many studies Kahneman and others conducted. The premise is that our brains run on two main systems, System 1 being fast, driven by emotion and intuitive, while System 2 is more deliberate, logical, but also kind of lazy, often letting System 1 win because doing all the background checks on what we impulsively think is right is just too much work. To our benefit, it turns out that System 1 is right most of the time.
The bulk of the book goes into detail about various ways we filter the world and how these two systems deal with what we find, whether it’s making a seemingly safe but sub-optimal choice due to loss aversion (we feel loss much more than we feel gains, something that can be used by companies or other agencies to steer us toward the choices they want us to make), or letting the last memory of an experience shape our desire to go through it again, even if that last memory is not representative of the experience overall.
This is a thorough book and the author does at times belabor the points being made. A few edits would keep all of the ideas presented intact while only losing some redundancy, but Kahneman’s writing style is completely accessible, so the difficulty is entirely in the length and not in the prose.
Recommended.
