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.

(If this is overwhelming and you want an accurate, but less in depth alternative, I also highly recommend Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.)

All about how people make decisions and generally comprehend the world around them - massively informative and worth the slog.

Few books have explained more to me than Thinking Fast & Slow.

I had to stop reading this book because it was just so difficult to get through.

The Why
I wanted to read this book because it just has sooo many recommendations. I don't have an example of lists-of-books-to-definitely-read where this book is not featured on. As I could get it secondhand at a bargain I bought it and started reading it.

What it's about
Daniel Kahneman is a researcher who has done tons of research on human decision making and thinking, together with his colleague and friend Amos.
Most of this research focuses on the human's two types of thinking; Type 1 which is fast and mostly subconscious, and Type 2, which is slower and more deliberate.
The book explains the differences in these two modes of thinking and what kind of effect this two-mode of thinking has on human decision making. One such example of an effect is what is called the Availability Bias, which I notice a lot in daily life surrounding the choice for Nuclear power. Disasters such as Fukushima and Chernobyl come easily to mind, so the risk of a nuclear disaster is assessed to be higher than it actually is (with newly designed plants almost zero).

How its written
I'm really interested in the books subject; Cognitive Bias and how persons make decisions (and how to make better decisions myself). Unfortunately this book explains these Biases and Heuristics by way of describing experiments. So there were researchers, they did a certain experiment and they found this and that.
Super dry and non imaginative.

Verdict
For me the writing style makes it too boring to read for extended periods of time. I plan to skimp through this and highlight the different heuristics and will dive deeper into a specific section if I want to further my knowledge of a specific heuristic.
If you're more of an “easy-reader” I suggest Factfulness by Hans Rosling, which is soooo much more entertaining to read. Het bestverkochte boek ooit (met deze titel) by Sanne Blauw for the Dutchies amongst you, which focuses on faults in our use of numbers.
Also the podcast from Jordan Harbringer with Gabriel Weinberg is focused on Cognitive Biases, but then with a lot of real-world examples thrown in.

One of the greatest book I've read, abandoned because my Gramedia Digital's subscription is unfortunately over.

A lot of interesting information about cognitive biases and how the brain works when thinking. How we have an intuitive quick process capacity as a well as a lazy more demanding brain. It's interesting that he mentions libertarianism at the end of the book. I'm not quite sure he is putting together one of the major concerns of libertarians which is that the actors in the State don't always have the best in mind for the people.

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.

Bastante interesante, lleno de información nueva (para mi).
En algunos puntos si como que no se, me hace dudar de los argumentos que usa, pero la idea es que si te hace pensar, de alguna manera, quieras o no, te hace ver las cosas de forma diferente. Ya solo al final si como que se repiten los temas, a lo mejor para hacerte acentuar lo ya visto durante el libro.

Interessantissimo saggio sulla capacità della nostra mente di cadere trappola di molteplici illusioni cognitive con tantissimi esempi che aiutano a capire concetti molto complessi. Un'opera che ha risvolti importanti in tantissimi campi soprattutto economici. 9

Often repetitive, but generally insightful

I enjoyed exactly the first 30% of the book. It got very tedious around the 50% mark and only more so right until the end

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 !

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.

I read this book senior year of college and am never going to read it again, but I wanted it on my Goodreads lol.

This book was super interesting, it genuinely changed the way that I think about stats that people cite and the way that I read. Lots of the stories/examples felt like that card trick at the start of Now You See Me where the movie actually guessed my card because he knew exactly what I was thinking!

Age range: 18+
Complex and probably boring.

Didn't finish. Along with the known problem in one of the chapters (2?), the treatment is too academic for my needs at the moment. I can see myself revisiting in the future.

I finished this on audio book as it's easier to digest while spoken. There's a lot to process here. If you liked nudge or any of Micheal lewis' books or even freakonomics then this is a good book for you. 

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.

Lots of interesting thoughts about human behavior. The writing style is breezy and easy to understand but suffers from typical “soft” science writing - invent a concept and then name it; for example, let's call this “fixated framework theory”.

This is a book about the process of thought- about how we make ourself understand the world around us, and how we usually do a pretty bad job of it. The book is interesting if you are really ready to invest your time and effort. I found it a very long but rewarding read.

This was a mammoth read, taking about 4 months (put it down for 3 bc it hurt my brain). I'm really glad I chewed through.
The basic premise of the book is that we (human beings) believe we are entirely rational, and make choices reflecting our rationality - but there is an extremely substantial amount of evidence that confirms how wrong this is. This doesn't mean that people are irrational, but we are not “rational” by the definition used, and frequently make decisions that are in contradiction to what is ‘rational' simply because of the way information is presented, and how we are feeling at the time.

A fun example is that when assessing the decisions made by judges granting bail applications, there was a significant correlation between how close the Judge was to lunch-time and how many bail applications were granted. The hungrier they were, the less likely they were to grant a person bail. This goes against a whole lot of beliefs we hold about ourselves, and so this book fully popped the lid for me lol

Pretty dense read though, google some summaries and then hone in on specific chapters if you don't want to read the whole thing! Yahoo

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.

Amazing. I took notes and still couldn't capture all the learning in here. It's incredible how often this book applies to things I'm doing and to conversations I'm having. It will be read again and again.

A model for how we think. Either fast and lose or slow with the possibility of more correct decisions.
Thinking fast we risk jumping to conclusions, not see the broad picture, have planning fallacies, framing based decisions.
Thinking slow: we can step back and compare things. Look out side the box. Look at the problem from multiple framings.

I think this is a book that I will read again in a year or two. This is my second reading.

This was a blast from the past from my masters in economics, but I still enjoyed it cover to cover because it made a lot of concepts very tangible and puts decision shortcuts and effects like preference reversal into societal context as opposed to merely claiming irrationality. No wonder it is such a popular book.

There are a lot of good things in this book, but overall, it is not well written. There's an incredible amount of repetition and redundant content. The author is clearly a great researcher but not a gifted writer, but he should have partnered with someone who can actually write a book like this in an interesting way, like Malcolm Gladwell