Danny Kahneman Revisited: Thinking Fast And Slow

I'm a long time fan of Danny Kahneman. I collected as many links to Danny's audio and video
talks as I could find back in May of 2008. It remains a good collection and I recommend you check
it out. In the meantime however, Danny released his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, and I've been
excited to read all the great reviews. Not only that, but Danny's book tour resulted in quite a few
audio interviews. I've collected as much as I've found in this post and will updated it as more comes
in. Enjoy!

 

LessWrong.com: The Cognitive Science of Rationality 12 September 2011
Wired, Jonah Lehrer: The Science Of Irrationality October 18, 2011
The New York Times, Daniel Kahneman: Don't Blink! The Hazards of Confidence October 23, 2011
New York Post, Kyle Smith: Think vs. blink October 23, 2011
The New Yorker, Jonah Lehrer: Is Self-Knowledge Overrated? October 25, 2011
The Wall Street Journal, Christopher Shea: Daniel Kahneman's Politics October 28, 2011
The Economist: Not so smart now Oct 29th 2011
The Chronicle, Evan R. Goldstein: The Anatomy of Influence November 8, 2011
Vanity Fair, Jaime Lalinde: The Quiz Daniel Kahneman Wants You to Fail November 8, 2011
Financial Times, William Easterly: Thinking, Fast and Slow November 5, 2011
The New York Times, Jim Holt: Two Brains Running November 25, 2011
Freakonomics: Daniel Kahneman Answers Your Questions November 28, 2011
Sam Harris: Thinking about Thinking November 29, 2011
The Boston Globe, Jesse Singal: "˜Thinking, Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman December 04, 2011
Cleveland.com, Karen R. Long: Daniel Kahneman makes 'Thinking, Fast and Slow,' a mind-blower December 11, 2011
The New York Review of Books, Freeman Dyson: How to Dispel Your Illusions December 22, 2011
The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman: Daniel Kahneman: 'We're beautiful devices' 14 November 2011
The Independant: 'We're blind to our blindness.   24 November 2011
Vanity Fair, Michael Lewis: The King of Human Error December, 2011

The Marvels and the Flaws of Intuitive Thinking Edge Master Class 2011 (Danny on video for 1:21 + lengthy notes)

Audio
At the LSE Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman in conversation with Richard Layard November 15, 2011
New York Public Library Daniel Kahneman In Conversation with David Brooks December 16, 2011
Forum- A World of Ideas Making Better Judgements Daniel Kahneman,   Ngaire Woods,   Julian Baggini November 19, 2011

 

 

Daniel Kahneman – A Bat and a Ball Cost $1.10

Daniel KahnemanRIP Danny. Thank you for your insights and stories. I'm glad of the opportunity to know your work. You made a difference.

[Update 9/8/2010 A paper Danny co-authored, "Income's Influence on Happiness" has just been released.]

… the bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Daniel Kahneman KNOWS that the first thought that entered your head was $.10–even if you're a Computer Science major at MIT. But that's the wrong answer.

Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling On Happiness" led me to Nicholas Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness". Both books cite the work of Danny Kahneman. I blogged a bit about him here. I have been rummaging around the internet looking for whatever I can find on Danny and his work and have come up with some excellent content. But let me give you a taste of the sort of fascinating facts you'll hear in Danny's lectures first.

In a study Danny (I don't know him personally but after listening to all these lectures, I feel as though I do. He could no doubt name the cognitive bias this suggests) mentions in one of his talks, people are asked how much pleasure they derive from their car. They are then asked enough questions about the car to determine its blue book (resale) value. It turns out that there IS a correlation between the amount of pleasure the subject reported and the dollar value of the car. i.e. Yes, that late model BMW in the garage DOES give you more pleasure than my 20 year old Honda would. BUT! They then go on to ask the subject if they find their commute to work pleasurable, and guess what?– nobody does!. It turns out that the ONLY time people derive pleasure from their car is when they are THINKING about it.

From Wikipedia:
With Amos Tversky (Kahneman's longtime research partner, with whom he would have shared the Nobel prize had Tversky not died in 1996) and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973, Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982), and developed Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). He was awarded the 2002 the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in Prospect theory.

Major Contributions:

  • anchoring and adjustment -describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
  • availability heuristic -where people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within a population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind.
  • conjunction fallacy -when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a general condition that contains the specific condition. (i.e. You think you're MORE likely to die in an air disaster brought on by a terrorist event, than you are to die in ANY kind of air disaster).
  • framing (economics) -reversals of preference when the same problem is presented in different ways. (10% fat vs. 90% fat-free!)
  • loss aversion -the tendency for people strongly to prefer avoiding losses than acquiring gains. (Why New Yorkers stay in New York for the culture, and Angelenos stay in LA for the weather!!).
  • peak-end rule – we judge our past experiences almost entirely on how they were at their peak (pleasant or unpleasant) and how they ended.
  • prospect theory -how people make choices in situations where they have to decide between alternatives that involve risk.
  • reference class forecasting -predicts the outcome of a planned action based on actual outcomes in a reference class of similar actions.
  • simulation heuristic – people determine the likelihood of an event based on how easy it is to picture mentally. (Why we buy lottery tickets.)
  • status quo bias -in other words, people like things to stay relatively the same.

Media – Most of these lectures have a fairly long-winded intro. Skip ahead if you don't need the background info.

Explorations of the Mind – Well-Being: Living and Thinking About It. (YouTube)

Conversation With History – Intuition and Rationality. (YouTube)

Conversation With History – Intuition and Rationality. (Audio)

Explorations of the Mind – Intuition: The Marvels and the Flaws. (YouTube)

Nobel Prize Lecture. (YouTube)

Update March 2009- Kahneman and Taleb on the same stage discus the crash. (YouTube)

Update March 2010. From the February 2010, Ted Talk Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory. (YouTube)

Found a few more DK links.
A Perspective on Judgment and Choice 24pg. PDF doc. on the subject of his Nobel Prize.
The Allais Paradox Wired magazine 10/10 (Archive)

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