Thinking, fast and slow
2011
- intuition
- thought and thinking
- reasoning
- decision making
- long now manual for civilization
- thinking
- kognition
- 77.32 intelligence, creativity
- reason
- cognition
The story
In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous 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. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.
What it’s like
Dense but unhurried nonfiction prose, written as a lively conversation with the reader rather than a lecture, so the page feels more like being walked through a series of clever experiments than reading a textbook. Its voice is precise, wry and self-questioning, with short illustrative vignettes (a bat and ball, a restaurant bill, a coin-flip puzzle) that pop up like small puzzles to pause over. The sensory world is the mind itself: quick, reflexive jolts of certainty set against slow, effortful deliberation, rendered in plain, clear sentences with almost no decorative imagery. The mood is curious, lightly humorous and faintly humbling, the feeling of catching yourself in an error and being pleased to see it. Pacing is steady and chaptered, easy to dip into for a few pages at a time on a commute or over coffee, and it suits a thoughtful afternoon, a long flight, or anyone who enjoys ideas explained with patience. Intensity is zero: no violence, no sexual content, no fear, just gentle, occasionally tense moments of realising one's own judgment has been fooled. Written for curious readers who want to understand their own decision-making, and for anyone who likes popular science that respects their intelligence.
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