Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
1) The purpose and argument that the book is illustrating is that people often think irrationally due to faulty intuitions. Kahneman describes two systems: one automatic (impulsive) and another conscious, and how these two systems ultimately shape the reason for how humans behave and react to instances. Kahneman also talks about how your brain is lazy and how this restricts you from using your brain's full potential. Furthermore, with our brain being lazy, this causes humans to make errors when thinking things through. Another thing that Kahneman mentions is that people shouldn't use their emotions when trying to make decisions with money involved. Kahneman explains that humans are more afraid to lose what we currently have as we're trying to receive more.
2) The book connected with and enhanced what I'm learning in ENT3003 by thinking about how reaching to new markets could help our business ideas. If we were to make an impulsive decision (System 1) we would ultimately think that reaching to these more outlier market will increase and benefit our business. However, if we think more about it using more of System 2, we may figure out that trying to reach these out-lying markets will be bad for our business and cause us to lose money instead of earning money.
3) I would create an exercise where students make a list of things that would require the students to use each of the the two systems. Maybe do five examples of each system. This would require students to examine their day-to-day decisions, classify which system these decisions fall under, and explain why students think that the decision belongs under that system. I believe this will aid in the student's deeper understanding of how we make our decisions and how much effort we actually place on them.
4) What I found surprising when reading this book was how your brain competes with itself into thinking that you've found the right answer through the two systems. Sometimes when reading a question out and planning how to solve it, your brain initially goes through the first System, in which it thinks that it can handle answering the question without the help with System 2. When in reality the question is not as simple as it appears. This causes people to make mistakes because their brains perceive something too simple and not complex.
Austin,
ReplyDeleteI love how to big concepts in this book is 1. Humans having lazy brains and 2. Humans should't think with their emotions. I think both points are very accurate. As humans, our brain has so much potential but with us being lazy creatures by default, we can only activate portions of the brain (not the entire brain). Regarding acting upon emotion, I always try to do my best to think rationally and push my emotions to the side because as time goes on, emotional decisions do not age well.
Austin,
ReplyDeleteYou did a real good review of this book! Reading your summary made me wish that I chose to read this book instead. The book I chose to read was Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, which was also a pretty good book. The book I read was an autobiography and yours was not so there's not much similarity. I think it would be interesting to learn more about how people think irrationally due to faulty intuitions.
Austin,
ReplyDeleteI really liked reading your reflection of "Thinking Fast and Slow". I thought it was very interesting that Kahneman is able to find a reason for our human tendency to second guess ourselves. I personally experience this often when taking multiple choice exams. Going with my gut usually feels right, but then i begin to second guess myself because there is a disconnect between my system 1 answer and system 2. I also thought that your class exercise would be interesting and a realistic one to do. Good job.