Thinking, Fast and Slow

I wish I could've finished this book, but it increasingly got harder to comprehend. Kahneman is an amazing scientist, but his writing is too challenging to read.

Good points are made and diluted by too long of a prose.

This book was interesting, and about 20 hours in length as an audiobook. Several ideas mentioned were over my head, and I caught myself not paying attention at times. The author discusses probabilities, economics, studies, and a multitude of other things about the two systems of thinking. Overall, a very interesting listen and in-depth, but wish I would have retained more.

The biggest virtue of this book lies in the questions it poses in front of the reader, and how the answer to almost every question continued to surprise me. This kind of on-the-go demonstrations of the flaws our biases and judgements made the book more interactive, and significantly easier for me to understand the concepts which could otherwise have been a little difficult to digest. In a nutshell, this book talks about how humans aren't completely rational, and the ways in which our judgements are different from statistical decision-making algorithms. It's amazingly coherent, and combines economics and psychology using simple terminologies that will not confuse the reader's mind. I would've loved to know more about why the two systems (and the two selves) Kahneman talks about actually exist, but I guess that wasn't the motive of the book; it's motive was to show how the division affects decisions of everyday life. Thinking, Fast and Slow takes mundane observations and extrapolates them to far-reaching implications in governmental policies, life satisfactions, public health and several other fields. After spending a good deal of time with it, I've realised how I'm not as smart as I thought I was, and this single realisation (if not all the intellectual enrichment) made the book absolutely worth it.

I've delayed this book for years, I knew I was going to like it and for different reasons I never bought it. I'm glad I finally did.
The book has so many concepts, ideas and examples to understand behaviour and human rationality that it was a tiring read. I did appreciate the immense effort the authors did to simplify concepts that could be abstract and difficult to assimilate.

There were a lot of things on the book that I had an intuition for, the beauty of the text is how the author puts a name to it and can pin pointed.

The core ideas are as followed - all of them very interesting and complex.

A - Two Systems of Thought (the core concept of the book, both systems follow the reader from beginning until the end):

System 1: Fast, intuitive, and emotional. Makes quick judgments based on heuristics and gut feelings. Efficient but prone to biases and overconfidence.
System 2: Slow, deliberate, and logical. Analyzes information carefully and makes reasoned decisions. Requires effort and attention, often lazy and easily overwhelmed.

B - Heuristics and Biases:

We rely on mental shortcuts (heuristics) to navigate the world, but these can lead to systematic errors in judgment (biases). Examples include loss aversion, framing effects, and the availability heuristic.
Understanding these biases can help us make better decisions by slowing down and thinking deliberately.

C - Prospect Theory:

Our decisions are not solely based on the expected value of outcomes, but also on the value we place on gains and losses. Losses loom larger than gains, leading to risk aversion and other predictable behaviors.

D - Overconfidence and Illusion of Control (I.E. trading)

We tend to overestimate our knowledge and abilities, leading to poor decision-making and an illusion of control over events. Recognizing our limitations and practicing humility can improve our judgments.

D - Framing Effects (the kind of behaviour we all have but can't name or clearly articulate):

The way information is presented can significantly influence our choices. Understanding how framing works can help us avoid manipulation and make more informed decisions.

E - Happiness and Choice Architecture (loved the examples of our wedding day vs how sad permanent injury / disabled people we think they are):

Kahneman explores the psychology of happiness and suggests strategies for designing "choice architecture" that promotes well-being. This includes avoiding decision fatigue, focusing on experiences over possessions, and anticipating future emotions.

A book with tons of wisdom on psychology and the way we think, a book I will go back to from time to time as I think and act in my everyday life.

Took me 5 months to complete, but every moment was worth it. This book hardly falls short of a Bible about 'Thinking'. How we make our choices, how marketers exploit our choices, how the media influences our decisions, how everything and everyone around us creates a bias in our thinking process - this book unlocks answers to all of this. The book also covers topics like Intuition, Overconfidence, Cognition, Surprises, etc. Reading this one might mean not having to read dozens of other. Oh, and btw, Kahneman is a 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics.

The hardest book I've ever read. It was almost like a textbook.

A dense yet superb book on how the brain works and its logical fallacies. Took me a while to get through it but learnt a tonne, highly recommend.

A book with tons of wisdom on psychology and the way we think, a book I will go back to from time to time as I think and act in my everyday life.

The human brain is programmed to adjust to speed and stress. Learn to use left and right brain thinking. Try to employing the premortem tactic. Mind creating your thoughts based on evidence than intuition and avoiding having bias. Avoid influence. Decide to focus more on evidence rather than bias. Have structured impression over intuition and assumption. “What You See Is All There Is” (WYSIATI)

Can't really fault this book much. Daniel writes with clarity and an engaging tone. This book is a real treatment of the subject material though weighing in at 400 pages. Most psychological nuances and biases are covered, and perhaps sometimes there is a little too much repetition and detail. Overall though, a deserved best-seller and a one-stop read to understand just how fallible your weak mind actually is!

A tiring and overly long read. Luckily, the book is divided into numerous chapters to facilitate reading and separate it into digestible chunks, but unfortunately, only to an extent. Many previously discussed topics are revisited here, without providing more context. Kahneman presents himself as the know-it-all person, trying to show us all how wrong we are. The book also touches 3, only vaguely connected between each other, points, with the "system 1/system 2" being, to me, the only interesting one. Other two I regret wasting my time on. I'm disappointed to have been wanting to read this book for such a long time, because of many positive reviews I heard previously. It wasn't as satisfying and educating as it could have been.

Pretty interesting book. I read it while on vacation in Asia. A lot of the facts are extremely interesting but the book itself wasn't really a game changer for me. Perhaps if I was more into statistics or an expert in the field I would've enjoyed the book a little more.

A surprising victim of the replication crisis. Only about 10% of the claims have been struck down, but that's a bad attrition rate for just 5 years. Effects strongly promoted in this that have so far been strongly questioned by failed replication: - The Florida effect (words connotating old age make you walk slower) - Money priming (thinking about money makes you selfish) - Cognitive disfluency and its purported system 2 benefits - Ego depletion - Hungry judges certainly don't give harsher sentences by two-standard-deviations. - And anti-hot-hand views. (I don't know what the general attrition rate of claims in nonfiction is, though. Another reason to disfavour books from immature sciences.) It is a great book, wise and practical. It is just hard to tell what parts of it will not decay.

All you need to know about this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica... … which is a shame because there are a lot of great ideas here.

Fantastic research, valuable mental models with political, social, and life implications.

En agosto ya puedo decir que este es uno de mis libros del año. Kahneman, que ganó el Nobel de Economía, es un psicólogo, que junto con Tversky, desmontó la teoría del Homo Economicus, una entidad que los teóricos de la economía tenían como base. Kahneman nos muestra en un libro brillante, profundo, lleno de sorpresas, y resultados de sus experimentos cómo el ser humano no es tan racional como creíamos, o cómo lo es, pero no cuando tomamos muchas de nuestras decisiones.

That was definitely the best book I have ever read. It took me so long to finish it, but I don't feel like it says anything bad about the book, what's more, I even feel that's the way you should read it if you really want to understand it (ok, maybe don't read as slowly as I did, but take your time!). Reading "Thinking, fast and slow" was eye-opening for me - it definitely changed the way I think, plan, experience and perhaps, work. I really couldn't recommend it more.

I didn't think it was possible to put such a rich history of research of judgment and decision making into a really easy to read package. I've read many of the papers cited in this book and I couldn't imagine them being able to be presented in this way. I recommend anyone interested in Judgement and Decision making.

Valuable reference. All told, could have been shorter.

Das Buch ist inhaltlich super, aber über weite Teile sehr trocken.

Once you've read this book you won't be able to stop seeing The Code to the Matrix…

It’s good, but imho could be shorter, with less examples.