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Why read ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow� at all? Apart from the intellectual challenge of ‘processing� 418 pages of solid text, there was the desire to better understand how we think, and how our thinking shapes our behaviour. Summarizing the book is a daunting task better left to others (‘simplified versions� and ‘summaries� have been published) and beyond the scope of this short evaluation. So just a few remarks about the reading experience.
1. In the first half of the book D. Kahneman analyses fast, intuitive thinking vs. slow, analytical thinking (his System 1 and System 2), their characteristics, uses and implications. Since thinking is something we all do, a lot of what he describes and ‘proves� seems self-evident and his examples confirm our own experiences: e.g. 'life satisfaction' as opposed to 'experienced well-being', 'remembering self' vs. 'experiencing self', the 'planning fallacy' (a combination of Parkinson's Law and lack of discipline!), his wife's erroneous 'affective forecasting' of happiness in California (already expressed by Albert Hammond - 'it never rains in California, but girl don't they warn ya? It pours.', and by Alvy Singer's behaviour on his visit to Hollywood in Woody Allen's 'Annie Hall'), etc. The merit of the writer is however that he invents terms for, and puts labels on common biases, illusions and other cognitive fallacies that too often are the source of wrong decisions, so that we can refer to them and talk about them more succinctly. (Remarkably enough, as I reread the introduction just now, I discover - because I had already forgotten - that this was exactly Kahneman's objective: "So this is my aim (...): improve the ability to identify and understand the errors of judgment and choice, in others and eventually in ourselves, by providing a richer and more precise language to discuss them.")
2. The latter half of the book focuses on the impact of thinking on economic decision making. In particular reasonable 'Humans' think differently from rational 'Econs', which accounts for poor decisions. This part of the study justifies why Daniel Kahneman, as a psychologist, won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. His insights in ‘Behavorial Economics� are relevant and make you think (e.g. why would the very same stock simultaneously be judged to be of poor value for the seller and quite valuable for the eager buyer?). Yet here also the writer sometimes stated the obvious (e.g. in relation to 'framing': the necessity of regulation for the make-up of contracts so as to protect Humans from the tricks of the Econs, like the use of fine print).
3. The inductive method he continually applied in order to come to scientific conclusions did not always convince. Over and over again Kahneman recounts his ‘experiments� in which he presented binary choices in fictitious situations (often involving gambling, or taking a risk) to ‘subjects� (mostly volunteer students in an academic environment) who reacted in a ‘lab� (that’s just the room where they had to fill in the questionnaires). The artificial context of these experiments yielded, next to relevant observations, also risky generalizations and extrapolations. Moreover it revealed the wish of researchers in the human sciences to be taken as seriously as ‘positive� scientists, whose research is based on solid material facts and mathematical deductions, and whose conclusions therefore leave no room for doubt.
4. So reading this thick book did not yield an impressive ‘Aha-Erlebnis�, which someone who purchased the book based on its promising cover (‘lifetime’s worth of wisdom�, ‘International bestseller�, ‘Nobel Prize� � was I a victim of the 'halo effect'? Of 'framing'?) might have hoped for. But �
5. Daniel Kahneman and his co-scientist Amos Tversky got worldwide recognition for their work and insights ('prospect theory', 'loss aversion', 'cognitive ease', 'heuristic of judgment', 'optimistic bias', etc�), so one should refrain from rash and easy criticism, I suppose.
6. This book is so top-full of content, that a lot of relevant information may well be read over too quickly during a first reading. So a second reading imposes itself (Right. But later, later!), before one jumps to conclusions all too eagerly.