To Think, or Not to Think. That is the question.
Kahneman's close examination of how people think and rely on their guts and/or forebrain to do their thinking for them. He shows fascinating examples of experiments on how people makes judgements, assess risks, bargain, negotiate; how logic get short-circuited by emotion and biases that we are sometimes not even aware of.
While the book describes many experiments and even gives the reader/listener a chance to vicariously experience what his subjects went through, it also has some practical value: 1. He briefly describes some countermeasures for eliminating "thinking errors" like jumping to conclusions or relying on an "availability heuristic" to determine the probability of an event; 2. And briefly describes some of the socio-political implications of this research can be used and abused.
I recommend this good read as a kind of primer for those wary of being influenced by corporate and government propaganda anywhere in the world.
Overall it´s a good read but it took me some time to get through it. It´s not exactly a book you can read on the ferry from and to work. You actually have to sit down and study it and think about it. I´m a very fast reader and had to force myself to slow down a number of times to actually understand and absorb the context.
I´m gonna read it again in a few months even though it did not make it in my top 10 list.
By giving, we gain
1 week ago
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