Jan-Maat's Reviews > Thinking, Fast and Slow

This book had me laughing and smiling, more than many a book described in its blurb as side-splittingly funny or something similar because I recognised the cognitive disillusions described in this book as my own and in any case I am the kind of person who if they fall into a good mood wonders if it's due to the pint and the pie that was eaten earlier.

In my case the preacher wasn't talking to the choir, but I had been to the church before and enjoyed the services. It doesn't set out to be a new book full of new discoveries. It's a comfortable round up of research, investigations and thought, polished off with a couple of Kahneman's early articles as appendices. If you've read The Halo Effect ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers(which puts some of these cogitative delusions in a business context, it has an excellent anecdote about the failure of a Lego product), or something along those lines you'll be familiar with some of the ideas here.

By now I'm quite comfortable accepting that I am not rational and that other people aren't either and that statistical thinking is alien to probably to almost everybody and Kahneman's book happily confirms my opinion. And few things make us as happy as having our own biases confirmed to us.

There are however a couple of problems. Firstly there are some people who apparently are wedded to the notion that people are entirely rational. They either will not read this book, read and reject it or indeed read it, accept it's findings but mentally note them as curious aberrations that don't affect their belief - this is discussed in the book.

More seriously society is organised on the tacit assumption that we are not only capable of being rational but will put the effort into doing so when required. Unfortunately studies demonstrating the effect of meals on Judges reviewing parole cases (like the state pawn broker in Down and out in Paris and London they are more lenient after lunch and harsher beforehand and once they get hungry again) or voter behaviour which turns out to be influenced by where the polling booth is located. This makes me wonder. My polling station used to be in the Adult Education Centre, now that's been closed down, if the polling centre was moved to the police station would my voting habits transform into those of a Fishin', Huntin' and Floggin' Tory who froths at the mouth hearing the words 'illegal immigrants'? Maybe I need a snack.

Much in the book is useful, 90% fat free does sound better than 10% fat, there's a lot to be learnt here in how to describe or state a problem to push people towards certain responses by framing or anchoring the information you give. Of course this happens to us all the time as it is.

One of my favourite of Kahneman's examples comes from when he was working with Israeli flight instructors. They were convinced that shouting and swearing at trainee pilots was the best method of improving their performance - experience proved it - when a pilot under performed they swore at him and on the next attempt the trainee would do better. Plainly shouting works. Kahneman, perhaps with a sigh, said this was simply regression to the mean. After poor performance what ever they did would be followed by improved performance, swearing and shouting have no magic power. To demonstrate he had the instructors throw balls of paper over their shoulder's into a waste paper bin and tracked the results on a handy black board showing that performance varied up and down irrespective of swearing. Still I wonder if returning to work the instructors developed an enlightened instruction method or if they rapidly regressed to the mean and shouted and swore again.

I used to think that politicians answered a different question to the one given by the interviewer in an attempt to be evasive. Post Kahneman I wonder if this is just the natural tendency of the brain to substitute an easier question for a harder one. Who knows.