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Megan Baxter's Reviews > Thinking, Fast and Slow
Thinking, Fast and Slow
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Thinking, Fast and Slow is just okay. It's being marketed as a book on psychology (and economic psychology, in particular) for the layperson. I'm not sure if other laypeople agree, but this wasn't really for me. And it's not that the prose is too technical (okay, sometimes it is) but rather that Kahneman is stuck somewhere between academic technicalities and clear expressive prose.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
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Reading Progress
October 31, 2012
–
Started Reading
October 31, 2012
– Shelved
November 10, 2012
–
Finished Reading
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Nov 10, 2012 07:14AM
I saw the author give a long interview on Charlie Rose several months ago. I cannot remember his premise, but it sounded fascinating and he spoke fluently and probably talks better than he writes. Good review.
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There are parts of this book that are fascinating, and even the bits that were a slog were well worth reading. But they were a slog....Sounds like a good interview - I wonder if it would be online somewhere?
Megan wrote: "There are parts of this book that are fascinating, and even the bits that were a slog were well worth reading. But they were a slog....
Sounds like a good interview - I wonder if it would be onlin..."
Yes, as a matter of fact. CHarlie Rose has a huge archive on his website and it is all free.
http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view...
Sounds like a good interview - I wonder if it would be onlin..."
Yes, as a matter of fact. CHarlie Rose has a huge archive on his website and it is all free.
http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view...
It's 30 minutes long.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/inter...
I send this new link because the last one was confusing if you are unused to the Rose site navigation.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/inter...
I send this new link because the last one was confusing if you are unused to the Rose site navigation.
Awesome, thanks! I will take a peek.
I've read many pop-sci books written in a similar way; overly complicated and verbose where short and simple would be more appropriate. Could you quote a snippet or two of the example you mentioned, and your simpler alternative?
I took the book back to the library, so I don't have it on me, but the one example is about people given a biography of a politically active student and then having to rate things in the order of most likely a number of statements about her future life. Two of the statements (separated by several other statements) are: "Linda is a bank teller" and "Linda is a bank teller who is active in the feminist movement."People invariably rank the second as the more likely. And he talks very opaquely about why. Finally, the penny dropped. For all the talk about probabilities, and people's resistance to being wrong on this answer, the fallacy he was referring to but not identifying precisely was this:
Although the second option appeals to the story of what we know about Linda, if people are looking seriously at probabilities, the first is obviously more likely. Even if we presume that a young woman who is politically active in university will remain politically active after she graduates, the probability of the first statement includes both the intuitively agreeable answer that Linda remained politically active, but it also includes any Lindas who abandoned their former beliefs.
I could probably make that more elegant if I took more time, but trust me, it's about a hundred times more understandable than the way he danced around the topic in the book.
Opaque? He is as clear and concise as can be about the complexity behind such a simple mistake! There are no simple explanations in this book, and for Kanheman to be as lucid as he is throughout is quite the feat. Of course you're not going to understand every experiment he lays out the first time (I certainly didn't--I'm still mulling over how being told that a certain piece of music explains your mood affects conclusions about how mood is directly related to intuitive/suspicious thinking), and--this is purely conjecture--I would guess Kanheman would be thrilled that you've summarized the Linda problem so clearly for yourself.
Exactly! You just spelled out what I felt about this book, I'm on page 100. Not planing to give it up, but I seriously skipping details, especially on those prose.
Did not find the prose opague myself...
I have left a message on your blog and would like to find you on Booklikes. I am Margitte there as well.It is probably a matter of time before Amazon buys out various other book sites too. But the blogging community might be a bit more difficult to control. However, I also feel lost there. You need to add widgets to your blog to get it populated with followers and email updates and stuff.
Who are you on booklikes, Margitte? I'm meganbaxter.booklikes.comUnfortunately, yes. That's why I have my reviews all on booklikes, and am slowly populating them over to my blog as well.
Megan wrote: "Who are you on booklikes, Margitte? I'm meganbaxter.booklikes.comUnfortunately, yes. That's why I have my reviews all on booklikes, and am slowly populating them over to my blog as well."
I will find you, or try, I am very new there. Here is one of my posts there (cross-posted from GR)
http://margitte.booklikes.com/post/66...
