Unlock the Power of Cognitive Thinking: Fast and Slow

J.kJ.k: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman is a groundbreaking exploration of the mind's two systems and how they shape our judgments and decisions. It delves into the biases and heuristics that influence human thinking, offering valuable insights into cognitive psychology. The book is widely praised for its accessible explanations of complex concepts, making it a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the intricacies of human thought processes and decision-making.

India on Oct 22, 2023

Akki: I kind of want to cut this book in half, praise the first part, and stick the second part in some corner to gather dust. Not that the second part is bad, mind you; the entire book is well-written and obviously the product of someone who knows their field. There’s just a lot of it. Thinking, Fast and Slow is kind of like a guest who shows up to your party and then dazzles everyone with an impromptu, 15-minute oration on the geopolitical situation in South Ossetia; and, everyone applauds and turns to go back to their own conversations, only for the guest to launch into another story about the time they parachuted into the Balkans to break up a nascent civil war, a story which is followed quickly by a similar tale of a visit to Southeast Asia…. Well, I think you catch my drift. Daniel Kahneman spins an interesting tale of human psychology and the way our brains interpret and act on data. But the book overstays its welcome by a few hundred pages.

Kahneman’s thesis breaks our decision-making systems into two pieces, System 1 and System 2, which are the respective “fast” and “slow” of the title. System 1 provides intuitive judgements based on stimulus we might not...

India on Apr 19, 2019

Shilpa: This book is an absolute gem. Expect an academic, textbook like detailed read though. Nonetheless, eye opening & thought provoking like any book ought to be.

I bought a 2nd copy to gift a friend from Alpha Retail and the quality was terrible. I suspect it was a pirated copy. The lines were misaligned, paper quality poor & stitching on spine visible. Wish I’d not picked this seller!

India on Nov 09, 2018

John B. Robb: This is an invaluable book that every person who considers him/herself educated should read - even study. Indeed, it is a scandal that mastering the material in this book isn't considered an essential component of a high school education.

The author was awarded the Nobel in Economics for his work on what he calls decision theory, or the study of the actual workings of the typical human mind in the evaluation of choices, and the book itself presents the findings of many decades of psychological studies that expose the endemic fallacious thinking that we are all prone to, more or less. The lives of all of us could be improved by lessons learned from this book, not just individually, through self-education, but also on the large scale, if the large scale decision makers in this society in and out of government could be educated as well. In fact, it is largely because these large scale decision makers are no better than the rest of us in their ability to think straight and plan well, that society is as screwed up as it is, and that essentially all of its institutions are diseased and corrupt. The lesson there, however, is that decision making needs to be returned to the...

United States on Aug 31, 2015

Edward B. Crutchley: This book starts by being intriguing and stimulating, and deserves to be read. The chapters are short, the writing is clear, the arguments supported by examples of behavioural studies, and each chapter usefully ends with a few colloquial statements that sum up what has been said. However, halfway through, the book appears to lose itself, whether by fault of verbosity, repetition, loss of structure of argument, fewer references to work by others, or just sheer volume, I’m not sure. In any case, the reader finishes the book thinking of the cited example of the scratch at the end of disc that dominates the memory of the whole. Where was the editor in all this?

The first part of the book is worth it, however. It turns out that we possess two types of thinking, default System 1 (fast) and System 2 (slow). Between them they determine how we react and make decisions. The book exposes many behavioural studies concerning the relationship between psychology and economics, and the competition between these two disciplines to explain people’s actions and decisions, including a brief mention of the new discipline of neuroeconomics.

According to the author, we are primitive in...

United Kingdom on Jan 27, 2015

Joseph Augustine: Stemming from the author's Nobel prize winning scholarly research on the simplifying short-cuts of intuitive thinking (systematic errors) and then decision making under uncertainty both published in Science Journal, the book is a series of thought experiments that sets out to counter the prevailing rational-agent model of the world (Bernoulli's utility errors) that humans have consistent preferences and know how to maximise them.

Instead, Prospect Theory shows that important choices are prone to the relativity of shifting reference points (context) and formulations of inconsequential features within a situation such that human preferences struggle to become reality-bound. In particular our decisions are susceptible to heuristic (short-cutting) or cognitive illusory biases - an inconsistency that is built in to the design of our minds, for example, the 'duration neglect' of time (less is more effect) in recounting a story by the Remembering Self, as opposed to sequentially by the Experiencing Self. Prospect Theory is based on the well known dominance of threat/escape (negativity) over opportunity/approach (positivity) as a natural tendency or hard wired response towards risk...

United Kingdom on Oct 13, 2013

Graham H. Seibert: When you come late to the party, writing the 160th review, you have a certain freedom to write something as much for your own use as for other readers, confident that the review will be at the bottom of the pile.

Kahneman's thesis is that the human animal is systematically illogical. Not only do we mis-assess situations, but we do so following fairly predictable patterns. Moreover, those patterns are grounded in our primate ancestry.

The first observation, giving the title to the book, is that eons of natural selection gave us the ability to make a fast reaction to a novel situation. Survival depended on it. So, if we hear an unnatural noise in the bushes, our tendency is to run. Thinking slow, applying human logic, we might reflect that it is probably Johnny coming back from the Girl Scout camp across the river bringing cookies, and that running might not be the best idea. However, fast thinking is hardwired.

The first part of the book is dedicated to a description of the two systems, the fast and slow system. Kahneman introduces them in his first chapter as system one and system two.

Chapter 2 talks about the human energy budget. Thinking is...

United States on Mar 15, 2012