Summary: "Every significant choice we make in life carries with it some uncertainty." Thinking Fast and Slow, page 270 It would be difficult to exaggerate the influence and impact Daniel Kahneman has had on today's thinkers. His TED profile says, in part, "Widely regarded as the world's most influential living psychologist, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel in Economics for his pioneering work in behavioral economics — exploring the irrational ways we make decisions about risk." The list of books which are a direct or nearly direct result of his writing would be enormous. Even a partial list of his literary children and grandchildren here at Actionable Books is impressive: Drive, Freakonomics, How We Decide, The Luck Factor, Now, Discover Your Strengths, Outliers, Predictably Irrational, Uncertainty, The War of Art, Who Moved My Cheese?, A Whole New Mind. Kahneman's work, alone or with longtime collaborator Amos Tversky, is foundational to our understanding of ourselves. Credited with creating behavioural economics, the science of why we don't make sense when we think about money, he won the Nobel Prize in 2002. The prize is not awarded posthumously, so Tversky is not officially listed as a recipient, yet Kahneman considers it a joint prize shared with his friend Amos. His love and admiration for his collaborator and friendis evident throughout the book. I suspect it prompted the book's premise, our Golden Egg. Golden Egg Actors Cannot See What is Obvious to Observers "The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own." Thinking Fast and Slow, page 28 Though this weighty tome (500+ pages including appendices) is scientific in nature, Kahneman's thrust is pointedly human. A recurrent theme throughout is the immeasurable benefit of relationships. In a deep exploration of our fundamentally non-rational thinking, I was pleasantly surprised to be directed to friendship as, not just the primary source of happiness ("It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with the people you love and who love you") but a useful tool for self-exploration and personal growth. Kahneman introduces two systems, the two ways we think, which he simply calls System 1 and System 2. They are, essentially, our unconscious emotional self (System 1) and our conscious logical self (System 2.) System 1 is automated and intuitive. When you see two objects, System 1 determines which is closer, which is larger, which is human and which is not. You don’t have to do anything, it just happens. System 1 reads the emotions on another person’s face. When you see “2 + 2” it says “4” without the effort of calculation. When you see the phrase “the capital of France” it blurts out “Paris” without being asked. It’s reading these words right now. System 2 is cognition with intent. When you see “17 x 32” System 1 tells you this is a math problem, and even indicates whether you can solve it easily or will need a pencil or a calculator. If so, System 2 will be doing the work. Finding the shortest route to Duluth or defining “abstruse” or filling out your tax forms: all System 2 tasks. System 1 is always on, always looking for other answers, busy as a bee. It is everything we do automatically, instinctively, unconsciously, effortlessly. Because it is unconscious and effortless, it constantly serves up answers, whether we’ve asked for them or not. It creates our prejudices. It lets us drive without paying constant attention to every detail. System 1 tells us the couch we’re buying will fit in our living room because it looks so small in the showroom. It tells us that going 5 miles per hour over the speed limit will make up the 5 minutes we’re late for work. System 2 is lazy. So lazy, in fact, that we are incapable of fully escaping our heuristic biases. Even Kahneman, who knows these things better than any of us, admits that though he knows the facts,
