Book Review: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Amazon.com

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
From the books' cover:

Major New York Times bestseller
Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012
Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 2011
A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title
One of The Economist’s 2011 Books of the Year
One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011
2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

The review:

As someone who is trying my utmost to catch up on reviews that have been piling up for literally years, I am using some lazy writer techniques lately.  Usually these are in the form of shorter and less in-depth reviews, but also often by borrowing synopses and even other people's commentary - where I find it helpful and relevant - and putting it in my own work.  Yes, it's a bad habit, and I promise to quit.  Eventually.

The author, Daniel Kahneman. / Source: TED.com

Having said that, here is the Wikipedia synopsis paragraph of Thinking, Fast and Slow, which sums up the point of Kahneman's book better than I could at the moment:

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a best-selling 2011 book by Nobel Memorial Prize winner in Economics Daniel Kahneman which summarizes research that he conducted over decades, often in collaboration with Amos Tversky. It covers all three phases of his career: his early days working on cognitive biases, his work on prospect theory, and his later work on happiness.

The book's central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The book delineates cognitive biases associated with each type of thinking, starting with Kahneman's own research on loss aversion. From framing choices to substitution, the book highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human judgment.
Synopsis of Thinking, Fast and Slow taken from Wikipedia.org

If you type "Thinking Fast" into Google Images, you get a surprising amount of material relating to this book.  I especially like the one above.  Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker," done in tortoise and hare style.  Nice. / Source: blackjackinfo.com

As for what I thought personally, I can say that it took the better part of the past summer for me to actually finish Thinking, Fast and Slow. I'd say it was a good book, but a bit slow in places. The mix of sociology, economics, psychology, and statistics made a fascinating blend. And the author’s emphasis on using deductive reasoning over gut feelings is pretty convincing.

I recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow, if you have the patience to wade through it. You might get a good indication of whether that will be a big deal for you by reading that Wikipedia summary I provided. If you felt like falling asleep before getting to the second paragraph, then I highly advise against Thinking, Fast and Slow for you.

A graphic summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow.  This describes the book's essential details better than I can, I'm afraid. / Source: greenbookblog.org

On the other hand, the book is incisive, and covers so much ground that you feel like you’ve really hit a lot of fascinating material by the time you are done. It is a shame it took me so long to read, and that I can describe so little of it in retrospect. I wouldn’t read it again myself, but only because it was not a true page turner for me. Then again, that may also be a symptom of my life as I was reading this book. I was finally coming out of the college mind-set, with a corresponding drop off in interest for scholarly materials. You know, I’ll miss that mind-set. But I don’t think it is all gone. Just dormant, mostly.

Oops.  I’m rambling here. If you choose to read Thinking, Fast and Slow, I hope you enjoy it, and get a lot out of it. I thought it was good stuff.

Learn more about Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, on Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Source: Lifehack.org

There was some wisdom to be found here, I thought.