Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman
4.18 (527K)  •  2011

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Daniel Kahneman presents live in Talks at Google format, plus Q&A
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Spoiler: Defining an “effortful” task as something you can’t do while simultaneously making a left turn into traffic, Kahneman says that effortful tasks require “system 2” thinking. This type of thinking involves analysis and checking ourselves, which sometimes means checking the quick, intuitive answer that our “system 1” thinking has generated. He says there is no “magic” to intuition but that it is simply a form of recognition, of knowing something without knowing which cues led us to that knowledge.
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Spoiler: The author uses “2 + 2” as a simple example of “fast thinking,” also called “system 1 thinking,” or thinking in which the answer almost instantly emerges without effort or analysis. He uses “17 x 24” to explain more effortful thinking in which we have to produce the result, adding that self control is part of “system 2 thinking,” such as when we monitor ourselves to avoid expressing prejudice or bias. While animals use system 1 thinking, system 2 is “uniquely human.”

4 Minute Summary

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.

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Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman was an Israeli-American psychologist who pioneered behavioral economics. He won the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Vernon L. Smith, received the Lifetime Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A professor emeritus at Princeton, Kahneman also held honorary degrees from multiple universities.

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