Monday, November 17, 2014

Thinking; Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman is an eminence  on Judgement and Decision Making.  Since mid-1970s, with Amos Tversky, he was among the first academics to research on "why we make "wrong" decisions".

Early studies from late 70's gave birth to the Prospect Theory - a behavioral economic theory stating that people make decisions based on the potential value of losses and gains rather than on the final outcome, and that people evaluate these losses and gains using certain heuristics. Such descriptive model tries to model real-life choices rather than optimal decision and awarded Kahneman with the Nobel Memorial Prize in 2002 for work with Tversky, who died before the award.

Drawing on decades of research, on his best seller book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", Kahneman goes on an exploration of what influences human thought.  Here is one of the bases of my master thesis; the so called System 1 and System 2, the fast and slow types of thinking, that become characters illustrating the psychology behind things we think we understand but that really don't, such as intuition.
 
The dichotomy between these two modes of thought - S1 fast, instinctive and emotional and S2 slower, more deliberative, and more logical - is basis for a substantial explanation of the cognitive biases associated with each type of thinking and its own processes. If you get to the full picture, the reading of this book will potentially change the way you think, not just about thinking, but about how we live our lives.
 
 
 
A talk on TED - The riddle of experience vs memory
 
An interviewn on SPIEGEL : Debunking the Myth of Intuition