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Daniel Kahneman has died

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#121

Post by abirch »

localhost wrote: post #61
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The density of non-replicable results varies by chapter. You can ignore anything said in chapter 4 about priming for example. See https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-pe... for more.

This is exactly the kind of task that I want to deploy a long context window model on: "rewrite Thinking Fast and Slow taking into account the current state of research. Oh, and do it in the voice, style and structure of Tim Urban complete with crappy stick figure drawings."

I would actually like to have books that had "Thinking Fast and Slow" as a prerequisite. Many data visualization books could be summed up as a bar chart is easily consumed by System 1. The visual noise creates mental strain on System 2.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#122

Post by zug_zug »

gattilorenz wrote: post #55
zug_zug wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I wouldn't read too much into any single study. But what I would defend vigorously is System1 / System2 distinction as something so clear/fundamental that you can see it constantly once you understand it.

It’s also very common in psychology theories, I haven’t read “Thinking, fast and slow” but I imagine there’s more than Kahneman’s own papers cited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

wow, it looks like "dual process" theory is basically the same thing.

I don't know if there's a better text on dual-process theory out there (perhaps by the original authors), but regardless of who originated it, I think it's something worth learning about for everyone (and if you don't have a better source then Thinking Fast and Slow is a very good one).

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#123

Post by malshe »

COGlory wrote: post #30

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

I know I am nitpicking but Kahneman was not an economist. He was a cognitive psychologist. In fact he is the only psychologist ever to win a Nobel prize in economics.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#125

Post by foobiekr »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #40
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The density of non-replicable results varies by chapter. You can ignore anything said in chapter 4 about priming for example. See https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-pe... for more.

What's wild to me is that anyone could read chapter 4 and not look up the original papers in disbelief. Long before the controversy was public I was reading that book and, despite claims that the reader must believe the findings, it sounded like nonsense to me. So I looked up the original paper to see what the experiment set up was, and it was unquestionably a ridiculous conclusion to draw from a deeply flawed experi…

I had exactly this reaction to Malcolm gladwell. It is completely obvious that gladwell across multiple books has never once read one of his references and consistently misrepresents what they say.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#126

Post by raincole »

lupire wrote: post #89
zug_zug wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I wouldn't read too much into any single study. But what I would defend vigorously is System1 / System2 distinction as something so clear/fundamental that you can see it constantly once you understand it.

It's been called "emotion / intuition" and "logic" for centuries or millennia before the goofy System name was invented.

Ironically people like System 1/2 more than intuition/logic because the terms sound more like they are coined by System 2.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#127

Post by foobiekr »

dredmorbius wrote: post #69
bumby wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I believe Kahneman resisted being categorized as an economist and preferred to think of himself as a psychologist.

There's a school of thought which holds that economics is a subset of psychology. I'd thought that this was reflected in some university departmental organisation, with M.I.T. being the one that came to mind. Despite there being a behavioural economics section there, though, so far as I'm aware Economics remains its own department. Kahneman's training and primary focus were both in psychology, but he was awarded the…

Psychology could legitimately be considered a subset of economics.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#128

Post by satellite2 »

yawboakye wrote: post #97
mistercow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that many of the results in Thinking, Fast and Slow didn’t hold up to replication. It’s still very much worth reading in its own right, but now implicitly comes bundled with a game I like to call “calibrate yourself on the replication crisis”. Playing is simple: every time the book mentions a surprising result, try to guess whether it replicated. Then search online to see if you got it right.

psychology isn’t science. it’s a grave mistake to read/interpret it a such. does that mean it’s useless? of course not: some of the findings (and i use findings very loosely) help us adjust our prior probabilities. if we’re right in the end, we were lucky. otherwise we just weren’t.

I think psychology is very successful at categorizing abd treating mental illnesses. The DSM is really a monument and hold for most of its part very well to scrutiny.

Where psychology is massively failing to replicate is in trying to characterise healthy individuals. Typically the work of Kahneman.

But that's what interest people and sells, pop psychology.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#129

Post by discreteevent »

localhost wrote: post #61
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The density of non-replicable results varies by chapter. You can ignore anything said in chapter 4 about priming for example. See https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-pe... for more.

This is exactly the kind of task that I want to deploy a long context window model on: "rewrite Thinking Fast and Slow taking into account the current state of research. Oh, and do it in the voice, style and structure of Tim Urban complete with crappy stick figure drawings."

Then we just need the LLM that will rewrite your book taking into account the current state of LLM hallucination behaviour.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#130

Post by billfor »

emeril wrote: post #85

from the article: "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." Isn't that a bad question to ask, it suggests there…

I read that as assuming that the "bank teller only" answer implied that the person was not a feminist, since most people would assume that being a bank teller does not make you a feminist. In any case, a bad phrasing to give for a survey.... These questions would be better off being as unambiguous as possible.
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