Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman (2011)

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6 points·simonebrunozzi··3 comments

Danny work's has been foundational to behavioral economics. I have however struggled to find practical applications of Thinking Fast and Slow (TFAS). I find a lot of the research descriptive and not prescriptive i.e. works likes this rather than do this or don't do this. This is the same struggle with mental models (e.g. Farnam Street's writings), they are fun to read but almost impossible to apply. The only mental models that work are the ones that I have extracted from lived experience often at great cost.

How have people taken TFAS and put it into action in their work or daily lives?

The biggest difference it's made to me has been in my ability to identify when people are being driven by their heuristics (thinking fast) and making flawed or suboptimal arguments or decisions.

Once you know some of the thinking fast systems, what they're designed for and what triggers them into action then it becomes quite easy to spot them in action! Unfortunately I've not found it easy to spot them introspectively.

One of the things I took from the book, is that thinking fast is practically inevitable, for neurological reasons : it's effectively 'baked in' or at very least, deeply ingrained into the braing by the time one reaches adult hood.

My understanding of neuroplasticity leads me to think it could be unlearned, but would take extensive active practice.

Day to day, the best we can do perhaps, is to remain aware of how trivially easy it is to make poor judgement, and more troublingly, be deliberately primed to make poor judgements.

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