Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - A 30-Minute Summary

By: Instaread Summaries

Narrated by: Jason P. Hilton

Length: 1 hr and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

With Instaread Summaries, you can get the summary of a book in 30 minutes or less. We read every chapter, summarize, and analyze it for your convenience. This is an Instaread Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Below is a preview of the earlier sections of the summary.

Introduction: In this book, Daniel Kahneman hopes to identify and understand errors of judgment and choice. He wants to provide a richer and more accurate vocabulary to discuss these errors. He worked with his colleague, Amos Tversky, doing research on intuitive statistics. The two of them had already concluded in an earlier seminar that their own intuitions were lacking. Their subjective judgments were biased, they were too willing to believe research findings based on inadequate evidence, and they collected too few observations in their own research. The goal of their study was to find out whether other researchers had this problem as well. Kahneman and Tversky found that participants in their studies ignored the relevant statistical facts and relied exclusively on resemblance. They used resemblance as a heuristic (rule of thumb) to simplify things when making a difficult judgment. Relying on this heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic errors) in their predictions. The research partners learned that people tend to determine the importance of issues by how easy they are retrieved from their memory. This is brought about in large part by the extent of coverage of the issues in the media. Kahneman presents a view of how the mind works, drawing on recent developments in cognitive and social psychology. He explains the differences between fast (intuitive) thinking and slow (deliberate) thinking. People have a limitation in their minds: an excessive confidence in what they think they know.

©2014 Instaread Summaries (P)2014 Instaread Summaries

Not worth the listen

I have read the full book and wanted to see whether it was possible to get the essence in the summary, but I don't think it is possible. First thing is that the summary is dry dry dry since it does not include the experiments that make the insights so memorable.

That was bad enough but the narrator then started butchering certain names like Bayesian, and even worse, he misread the word 'causal' for 'casual' which was repeated about ten times. They wasn't just irritating, it was confusing.

I just switched it off at that point.

good, but

good but very critical summary by the reader at the end...added no value. he seemed bitter and angry that he had to read the book

Not well executed and poor summary

Was this recording done in a cafe or house. When you can hear clinking of dishes in the background you have to wonder. My doubts seemed verified towards the end when the narrator stumbled around with words then snaps their fingers loudly and resets. Hello was this a direct read of a transcription on a single take? Even if not it feels like it at times. Furthermore some parts get repeated as in same sentence read more than once and the reading tone and cadence suggests the reader wasn't what part of the sentence to even emphasize. At the end we get a scathing reader focused review of the actual summarized book. At this point I am apt to dismiss out of hand that review since the summary is so poorly executed. In short I got a cursory overview of the book and a few themes and more confusion than less really and a feeling the summary might not have been good. In short I wasted my time and money. Maybe you'll get something out of it but I really didn't so consider yourself warned.

Summary is choppy and not easy to listen

The summary did get me interested enough to read the book but it was difficult to follow at points. Perhaps this partly due to the subject matter and how the book itself has been rewritten. Also this is my first instasummaey.

The narrator's voice was terrible !!

I was very disappointed from the reading. This is the second book from Instaread where the narrator's voice is hard to listen.

Poor Editing by Instaread

There's a recognizable error followed by a clapperboard sound around the 1 hour mark. Choosing to finish off the recording with a critical review of a book you didn't write and yet profit from seems tacky, if not offensive.

Don't bother

This summary is strikingly bereft of the substance that makes the original boor interesting and thought provoking. It consists of two major parts: an overview of the content of the original book, and a brief book review at the end. The first part -- the majority of the summary -- is barely more useful than reading the table of contents (and about as interesting). The second part (the book review) actually raises an interesting point: The original book creates two entities to personify the slow thinking and fast thinking parts of the brain, and then fails to use them to explain some of the more technical concepts.
Having read this review, you can now skip the summary.
One last comment: the narration is amateurish. He does not turn off his microphone when he gets a drink and does not fix / erase his errors, distracting from the content.

What a waste of time!

I learned nothing from this high level overview, although excited by the subject. Don't waste your time.

What was with that mean review at the end?

Where does Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - A 30-Minute Summary rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This was a summary of a book that interests me a great deal. The summary was fine as they go.

Any additional comments?

What was with the mean review at the end? I wasn't giving it my 100% attention so I am not sure who was giving it the review, but that was completely unnecessary and I felt rather inappropriate.

Short shrift for an important book

This is a so-so summary followed by a negative review of the best seller. A narrator who mispronounces key words and seems to not understand the subject gives a negative review to a Nobel Prize winner's ground breaking work. That is idiotic and highly inappropriate!
Instaread Summaries should focus on better quality summaries and eliminate reviews, especially those by clueless narrators.

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good narrative, poor book

as newbie on the topic I found some of the topics easy to understand. most of them required additional understanding, but by then the chapter was already explained on a whole new subject. additionally, I listen to audio books while commuting by car, so pausing in order to reflect on a chapter is not really an option

poor review

I have read the book and I don't agree entirely about the review. I enjoyed reading

nice audio book

I liked the projection of the reader's voice. It was very clear and made me desire to listen more and more. I liked the repeat of concepts in the section for takeaways. I also liked the content of the conclusion made about the book as a whole.