Daniel Kahneman has died

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I&#x27;m not one to give an exaggerated eulogy nor rhapsodize about all those &quot;Books with a white cover and a weird picture&quot; -- but I will say I read thinking fast and slow for the first time last year, after decades of resisting, and felt it covered some generally profound ideas that still are relevant as ever and not widely understood.<p>(Though at some point, maybe the 2nd half of the book, drags on and you can skip most of those chapters. If you don&#x27;t have time for that, I&#x27;m sure chat GPT can give you a taste of the main premises and you can probe deeper from there.)

Although many of the results in Fast and Slow didn&#x27;t hold up, Kahneman was always refreshingly open and honest about that, and keen to identify the limits of knowledge.<p>Which surely is one of the best things you can say about a scientist.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Daniel_Kahneman" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Daniel_Kahneman</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kahneman.scholar.princeton.edu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kahneman.scholar.princeton.edu&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;obituaries&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;27&#x2F;daniel-kahneman-dead&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;obituaries&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;27&#x2F;daniel-...</a> | <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;tZY2w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;tZY2w</a> (&quot;The Washington Post: Daniel Kahneman, Nobel-winning economist, dies at 90&quot;)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2024-03-27&#x2F;daniel-kahneman-psychologist-who-upended-economics-dies-at-90" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2024-03-27&#x2F;daniel-ka...</a> | <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;MpDes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.today&#x2F;MpDes</a> (&quot;Bloomberg: Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist Who Upended Economics, Dies at 90&quot;)

I remember years ago Penn Jillette talking about his book &quot;Thinking Fast and Slow&quot;. And I was like why is a magician talking about a book written by an economist?? Well, read it and you&#x27;ll understand why it fits so well with their brand of magic. Dr. Kahneman expresses in words what&#x27;s going on in your brain while watching someone like them perform.

kahneman was such a fascinating personality. Other than &quot;Thinking fast and slow&quot;, I highly recommend &quot;The Undoing Project&quot; by Michael Lewis about Kahneman and Tversky&#x27;s incredible journey changing the standard economic theory.<p>Some interesting talks with Daniel Kahneman<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edge.org&#x2F;adversarial-collaboration-daniel-kahneman" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.edge.org&#x2F;adversarial-collaboration-daniel-kahnem...</a><p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;replicationindex.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;02&#x2F;reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails&#x2F;#comment-1454" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;replicationindex.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;02&#x2F;reconstruction-of-a-...</a> Kahneman himself reponds in the comment sections to a very critical piece about his work.

Fantastic book - I certainly had to read it slowly, not fast.<p>Two things bothered me about it though - firstly, it landed shortly before the reproducibility issues of such research became more widely known.<p>Secondly - towards the end of the book, it espouses the idea that using some methods of psychlogical and behavoural manipulation is at worst a net neutral, especially if there was nothing to see of the manipluation in question. After all, who can argue against organ donation being opt-out by default, or similar?<p>To me, this is like a magician claiming that there was no sleight of hand, as we were free to look wherever we liked during their performance. Denying the presence and capabailities of tools of manipulation is, in my opinion, incredibly dangerous, and the worst of its outcomes has been very publicly played out in recent years.

Let us not forget his collaborator, Amos Tversky, who died young in 1996, and who certainly would have been a co-prize-winner had he lived.

Kahneman&#x27;s impact on economics can&#x27;t be understated. The subject was becoming a fairly absurd and dogmatically prescriptivist practice before Kahneman stirred it up along with a a relatively small number of colleagues.<p>To a large extent, it&#x27;s still dogmatic and prescriptivist, but unorthodox opinions (not just limited to behavioral economics) are more accepted &amp; considered following Kahneman&#x27;s input.

Thinking Fast and Slow made a tremendous impact on me when I read it (multiple times) in the 2010s. What curiosity and what clarity of thought this man had. His influence will continue to be felt!

The idea of system 1 and system 2 had a profound impact on me. While specific conclusions in the book were reported to be based on low quality data, it doesn&#x27;t take away from the fact that it gave me a new mental lens to look at things and understand people&#x27;s behaviour.

If you’ve only read Thinking Fast And Slow, try grabbing a copy of his 2021 book Noise. It’s a little drier but I found it to be a much deeper and more insightful read. Less pop sci, more hard research results.<p>And if I recall correctly he addresses the replication issues from Thinking Fast And Slow and discusses more recent research that disproves or adds nuance on the older studies. I think it’s also more practically useful and applicable to everyday life. Where TFS gives you a “these are interesting facts about life” vibe, Noise is more “here’s the problem and this is what you can do about it” style.

Feel like I&#x27;m the only one who couldn&#x27;t get through Thinking, Fast and Slow. Felt like a rambling slog, with most of the interesting bits being something that was very common sense to me.

Fascinating quote I found on his wikipedia page:<p>&quot;It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.&quot;

I&#x27;d second every recommendation in this thread for &quot;Thinking Fast And Slow&quot; - it&#x27;s one of those books that gives you a concept that has such immediate salience that it feels like it unlocks some part of reality you didn&#x27;t see before but is totally obvious in retrospect.<p>One of the few other books that&#x27;s changed my thinking about my thinking in similar ways is Annie Murphy Paul&#x27;s &quot;The Extended Mind&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bookshop.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;books&#x2F;the-extended-mind-the-power-of-thinking-outside-the-brain-annie-murphy-paul&#x2F;17058771" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bookshop.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;books&#x2F;the-extended-mind-the-power-of-...</a> . It&#x27;s hard to put anything at the level of Thinking Fast and Slow, but it felt like reading a sequel to that book.

For me, among other things, Thinking, Fast, and Slow cracked the implicit notion that my intuition is always right by demonstrating how easily it could go wrong.<p>RIP Daniel Kahneman.

Fantastic book - I certainly had to read it slowly, not fast.<p>Two things bothered me about it though - firstly, it landed shortly before the reproducibility issues of such research became more widely known.<p>Secondly - towards the end of the book, it espouses the idea that using some methods of psychlogical and behavoural manipulation is at worst a net neutral, especially if there was nothing to see of the manipluation in question. After all, who can argue against organ donation being opt-out by default, or similar?<p>To me, this is like a magician claiming that there was no sleight of hand, as we were free to look wherever we liked during their performance. Denying the presence and capabailities of tools of manipulation is, in my opinion, incredibly dangerous, and the worst of its outcomes has been very publicly played out in recent years.

I always felt I got more mileage out of the reflexivity of Popper, by way of Soros.

wow ..didn&#x27;t realize he was so old .He was always on the tips of people&#x27;s tongues, never seemed old or dated or faded away even at 90. He was at his peak intellectual influence or trajectory, which is uncommon for someone so old; most careers peak at 40-60. Not only that, his reputation fully unblemished and unmarred, which is also increasingly uncommon.

Great interview Tyler Cowen did with him.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;conversationswithtyler.com&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;daniel-kahneman&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;conversationswithtyler.com&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;daniel-kahneman&#x2F;</a>

Lots of praise for this man. He was obviously very influential. His theory enabled the broad paternalistic state we are all suffering from today. Too many policy makers read his book and thought they could tax every person into &quot;good&quot; behavior. That&#x27;s way beyond the scope of how governments should be involved.<p>Now that &quot;soft paternalism&quot; has been so successful, the same policymakers are pivoting into hard paternalism .<p>I learned a lot from Thinking Fast and Slow, but it&#x27;s also a cynical book. In the same vein as Skinner&#x27;s behavioralist view of people.<p>Principles must always come first.

from the article: &quot;Then the students were asked which was more likely: that Linda is a bank teller or that Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement. The vast majority went with bank teller and active feminist, which has to be the less likely choice because the probability of two conditions will always be less than the probability of either one.&quot;<p>Isn&#x27;t that a bad question to ask, it suggests there are only two possible outcomes, wouldn&#x27;t a better question include a third option of &quot;not a bank teller and may or may not be a active feminist&quot;?

Kahneman&#x27;s &quot;add one&quot; &#x2F; &quot;add three&quot; exercise is his recommended way to activate System 2.<p>If anyone has figured out how to do it using one&#x27;s phone, please share. There used to be an App on Google Play store but it doesn&#x27;t work on more recent versions of Android. I created a Spreadsheet based random 4-digit number prompter, which isn&#x27;t bad, but I&#x27;d like better ideas if anyone has any.

Among all the praise for <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i> it seems that many people have missed out on <i>Noise</i>. Also a fantastic book that shaped how I approach situations perhaps more than the former.<p>Kahneman was one of those people where I was just waiting to have a problem tough enough that I&#x27;d have a good reason to email him with a question, whether or not I&#x27;d get a response. I guess no longer.

I wrote Daniel an email once from a personal (non-academic) account once as I felt like there was something meaningful to discuss, though I didn&#x27;t expect a response. He did indeed reply, and seemed remarkably down to earth and genuine considering he was something of a rockstar in pop-sci&#x2F;psych. RIP.

I first became aware of a type of &quot;slow thinking&quot; through the book &quot;Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less&quot;, by Guy Claxton, published 1999. Does anyone have a comparison of the types of slow thinking?

About his book: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;replicationindex.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;30&#x2F;a-meta-scientific-perspective-on-thinking-fast-and-slow&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;replicationindex.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;12&#x2F;30&#x2F;a-meta-scientific-pe...</a>

He truly had that rare combination of gifts for formulating <i>and</i> expressing ideas clearly.

I remember one quick reply of Kahneman when Sam and Daniel were discussing about intuitions and how people are wrong many times.<p>Sam Harris jokes, &quot;I have met these people&quot;. Daniel replies, &quot;We have met them and we see them in mirror&quot; [0]<p>[0] 17:25 @ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.samharris.org&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;making-sense-episodes&#x2F;150-map-misunderstanding" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.samharris.org&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;making-sense-episodes&#x2F;150...</a>

This is one reason why I feel like economics is still in its infancy and I find a lot of policy recommendations are built off ideology rather than actual reality. That doesn&#x27;t stop people from being very confident though about their statements.<p>I understand that sometimes you need assumptions to make the math work, but the fact that it took so long for behavioral economics and bounded rationality to be recognized is crazy. Just because the math is convenient doesn&#x27;t mean people work that way at all.<p>I say this as someone who has taken a lot of econ classes, so I understand its value, but it is still very much a set of principles and ways of thinking about problems involving people, rather than something as exact as it&#x27;s made out to be.<p>I got slightly off topic here, but seeing as how Daniel got the nobel prize in 2011 (pretty recent) and the work occurred in the 70s, it made me think again about how young the field is.

Met the man in person, had a really long chat with him. Made me realize how he truly was one of the smartest people alive at the time.<p>Really sad news...

I met him while I was studying at Berkeley. Not only he helped upend the long-held notion of &quot;rational economics&quot;, he was also a great person to meet!

Dupe: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39840447">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39840447</a>

Rest in Peace, Ms. Kahneman. May strength be with your family and loved ones. Your Thinking Fast and Slow was an influential book.

Fantastic impact, probing society to think, about their thinking. RIP.

Wow. I was just looking him up yesterday to see if he had written anything else. Sad. Be blessed.

It&#x27;s hard to think of any public intellectual whose career was on the peak of its trajectory as his was, and at such and advanced age. Usually someone has a few ideas and they fade with time, but not him. The neoclassical assumptions had crashed after 2008 and this guy comes along with his books and upends the whole economics establishment.

He&#x27;s a legend! His book made me question my every thought for a while D:

For me the best part about reading <i>Thinking: Fast and Slow</i> is that I&#x27;m more distrustful of my own thought processes. That little bit of questioning of my own conclusions has helped me see gaps in my reasoning.<p>My dream is to one day have the caliber of insights this man had, along with his ability to express them so clearly and persuasively.<p>dang, does this deserve a black bar?

I have a standing offer to buy any individual any of Kahneman&#x27;s books, if they commit to me they will read it. Amazingly only a few people have taken me up on this.<p>Kahneman is unequivocally the person I would call my hero, today I am sad to see him leave us. I hope to honor his memory by... I guess, recognizing just how wrong I am, on a regular basis.

Is Daniel Kahneman the only Psychologist who has received the Noble?

Damn, I’m reading Thinking Fast and Slow right now. RIP.

90 years old, the most common age of death these days.

One of a kind! A life that will never be replicated.

The best psychologist of all time has died. RIP

R.I.P a true genius.. hope people discover him now..

He was nudged off his mortal coil too soon.

Kahneman was a giant among men. Anyone rattling on about &quot;the replication crisis&quot; probably isn&#x27;t fit to carry his folders.

May he rest in peace

is it me or the washington post making money off obituaries kinda weird?

&quot;people [are] endlessly complicated and interesting.&quot;

rip

Can we ban paywalled WP articles?

NO NO NO NO NO !

For those who don&#x27;t know who he is:<p>Professor Kahneman, who was long associated with Princeton University and lived in Manhattan, employed his training as a psychologist to advance what came to be called behavioral economics. The work, done largely in the 1970s, led to a rethinking of issues as far-flung as medical malpractice, international political negotiations and the evaluation of baseball talent, all of which he analyzed, mostly in collaboration with Amos Tversky, a Stanford cognitive psychologist who did groundbreaking work on human judgment and decision-making.

I&#x27;m not an economist nor that interested in them, but I did read Nassim Taleb&#x27;s books* and Kahneman stuck out as one of very few economists Taleb doesn&#x27;t totally trash.<p>* I had read Eugene Koonin&#x27;s &quot;The Logic of Chance&quot; and was then recommended Taleb&#x27;s books for a more thorough perspective on probability, to apply to Koonin&#x27;s work.

The death of reason.