how to you win the nobel prize in economics ?
you'd think that it would help to be an economist
not so if you're as wise and smart as dan kahneman

can you deflate a theory that has been around for 2 centuries ?
if you do, you might expect some push back and a few enemies
dan kahneman is more than up to the task in his great book

the text is often dense and didactic and academic
it's built to survive the scrutiny of his enemies
he wants to tell you the truth more than make you laugh

people are relentlessly complex,feeble and paradoxical
dan kahneman's life taught him this at an early age
he then applied that wisdom to experimental psychology

all the jargon and descriptions of experiments can be a bit much
cognitive / thoughtful VS. intuitive / perceptive
remembering self VS. experiencing self
slow / effortful VS. fast / automatic
type 2 thinking VS. type 1 thinking
what you don't know VS. what you can see
cognitive strain VS. cognitive ease

lately m. gladwell et. al. have ripped off kahneman's ideas
my bet is that this doesn't bother him too much
he's more focused on the truth and what makes him happy

it takes some type 2 thinking to get through this book
the strain however is more that worth it
the text will likely be the foundation of our policies and lives

G.B. Shaw "... if you are going to tell people the truth - you
better make them laugh - otherwise they will kill you ..."

Keats Concept of Negative Capability "... man is capable of
being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without any
irritable reaching after facts and reason ..."

A good reader but you will get more benefit from this book if you open the pdf file (that is in your audio library under this book title) so you can have access to pictures, graphes and other written info that is referred to in the audio. A pretty good audio book overall.

It's a well presented non-fiction audio. The pdf file makes it better than the actual book.

Yes. there was just so many things packed into this book. I actually bought the print copy so I could ake notes in the margin. I will listen to it again to squeeze out even more jewels.

You must listen to the book and then refer to the diagrams. It takes relection.

Clearly one of the top non-fiction works of the time.

I think the audio version is excellent. You definitely have to re-listen to sections from time to time, as you think through things, and the diagrams need to be accessed via the PDF. Not a big problem, since there are only a dozen or so.

Excellent presentation of the way the mind grapples with the world – where it cuts corners, when that is good, when it is bad.

No, definitely not.

Posted as one of the best books of 2011, Thinking Fast and Slow explores the working of the mind on two levels; System 1 – fast and intuitive and System 2 deliberate. Along the way, Daniel Kahneman summarizes and explains the literature related on thought and decision making. He certainly covers a lot of material. Insights jump out on page. I particularly found sections on human judgment, anchoring, and the relationship between emotion and evaluation of risk very interesting and helpful. His explanations for intuitive behavior and regression to the mean are exceptional. That said, the novice to this literature will not get lost for Kahneman carries the reader along almost effortlessly. There is much for the reader to learn here. The narration of Patrick Egan is excellent.

I would strongly recommend this book because it forces one to look at our own decision-making. It provides a framework to understand rational and non-rational decisions. We are capable of both, but we need to nudge ourselves in the direction of more rational decisions.

Some of the examples of research that shows how non-rational we can be even when being told of our errors.

Characters are not part of this book.

I would have liked to gone on a little longer at times. When I got home from work, I wanted to keep listening and sometimes set in the car because there was a point or idea being clarified.or finished.

Read it or listen to it. I may buy the print copy so I can use some parts in a class with students.

After some interesting examples and speculations, the inevitable conclusion of the author is that humans are fundamentally broken and need help making the better decisions (nudging). This is of course to be executed by ..... humans. exactly. But the humans of the executive branch carry the name: 'state/institution' and are less fallible, like priests who could sell the peasants some holiness to get them into heaven. Institutions carry an excess of rationality that can be transferred to the underlings through their nudging machinery:'drones, guns, jails, tasers, taxes and bombs'
Institutions, he says act more slowly and deliberately, so more rational. Giving more power to less people (to people in institutions from people outside institutions), makes the whole situation more stable. That is unless the few that rule the many, turn out to be megalomaniacs that can not believe they make errors. If we look at Hitler,Stalin,Mao, and 200 million deaths by institutions in the past 100 years, it seems to me there is something wrong with the rationality of institutions.
Of course he makes the straw-men at libertarians that it requires rational, perfect people, but that real life, fallible people need to be ruled by ..... real life fallible people. But these people wear the institutional magical cloak, so what could possible go wrong?

Thus have we arrived at a situation in which the institutions are helping us to eat healthier and make better choices by the FDA, who raids organic food stores with drawn weapons, eehhh I mean nudging machinery, and all FDA posts are now occupied by Monsanto employees as much as all financial regulation is controlled by Goldman Sachs. Big parhma completely controls what drugs you use (more and more). But the government educates your children, so what do they know? Your money is counterfeited at a gigantic scale by the federal reserve institution, etc. etc.
The author concludes there is much interests among the world megalomaniacs to nudge according to his scientific method.
I'm positive he can look forward to ample research funds provided by the thieves that like to nudge their underlings.

If you too want to make easy money and don't mind licking the heels of those in power: Scientific justification of their hell fire nudging will keep the dough rolling in.

I would need to get past first chapter to answer
.

Performance

Anyone.

No. Cannot get past first chapter due to terrible reading.

The actually interesting part of this book is buried in tons of statistical information - most of which has nothing to do with thought processing. In the 24 + hours of listening, I appreciated about 3 hours of content - only finishing the book because of the excellent narration! Patrick Egan is an amazing narrator!

Makes psychologists appreciate statistics, and statisticians appreciate psychology. Unlike novels you don't have to read every word for word. Audiobook seems like a lecture or a real expert explaining the book. The book does have diagrams, but the author has written it so well that you can make a mental copy of the diagram if you think about it enough. Statistics and psychology go hand in hand. Statistics shows who makes certain decisions and psychology explains why. Great book if you're interested in the psychological aspect of it. Lots of experiments that anyone can try in real life.

Author has won a noble prize and this book was featured on the Colbert Report