Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Daniel Kahneman has died

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 324 posts

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#151

Post by __mharrison__ »

zug_zug wrote: post #6

I'm not one to give an exaggerated eulogy nor rhapsodize about all those "Books with a white cover and a weird picture" -- 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. (Though at some point, maybe the 2nd half of the book, drags on and you can skip most…

I guess I'm one of the rare folks who started reading TFAS and left without any big revelations or takeaways. I got bored half way through and stopped. Shrug...

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#152

Post by cjblomqvist »

derbOac wrote: post #112
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.

... except the distinction was being made in various forms long before Kahneman, and does get questioned. When you start to poke at it, what's intuitive starts to seem less so. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17456916124606... (that's a link to a defense of dual process theories, but it makes clear there's increasing criticism of them)

Does anyone have a link to a publicly accessible version of this paper?

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#153

Post by arrowsmith »

yboris wrote: post #114
arrowsmith wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go further: many non-fiction books could be losslessly compressed into a tweet. (Looking at you, The Checklist Manifesto )

Reading a book, say 10 hours, is like a meditation on an idea: you get numerous examples of it and a variety ways of thinking about it. Our brains learn best when they encounter something often across time (spaced repetition). Reading a single tweet may summarize the book, but the chances of you recalling the idea in an appropriate situation is much lower than if you had spent hours on it.

I agree, and there are many books which are well worth the time it takes to read them. All I'm saying is that there are many other books which aren't.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#154

Post by cjblomqvist »

supafastcoder wrote: post #103
zug_zug wrote: post #6

I'm not one to give an exaggerated eulogy nor rhapsodize about all those "Books with a white cover and a weird picture" -- 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. (Though at some point, maybe the 2nd half of the book, drags on and you can skip most…

> it covered some generally profound ideas that still are relevant as ever and not widely understood I've tried to read this book over and over again to understand what everyone is talking about but never found the insights that useful in practice. Like, what have you been able to apply these insights too? What good is it to know that we have a slow mode of thinking and a fast way? Genuine question.

When to trust your instincts /intuition (eg. when few facts are known, there are no critical central deciding factors, but it's important to take a decision and move forward) and when to stop trusting your instincts and reflect a little (eg someone is trying to rush you into making a buying decision).

When it's likely that your biased, and try to work around that (highly related to above). (Eg. When don't make critical decisions when you're sleep deprived)

How you can utilize other people lacking this ability. (eg utilize it in sales processes)

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#155

Post by Tarq0n »

resource_waste wrote: post #147
coyotespike wrote: post #83

Although many of the results in Fast and Slow didn't hold up, Kahneman was always refreshingly open and honest about that, and keen to identify the limits of knowledge. Which surely is one of the best things you can say about a scientist.

>was always refreshingly open and honest about that, His work got torn to shreds with science, what did you expect him to do? It really should be embarrassing rather than acceptable. It doesnt matter how honest you are AFTER you are caught. Between the replication crisis and his name on some bad papers, the guy seriously didn't care about correctness as much as interesting-faux-science.

There's lots of scientists that deflect and deny falsifications.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#156

Post by bartread »

zug_zug wrote: post #6

I'm not one to give an exaggerated eulogy nor rhapsodize about all those "Books with a white cover and a weird picture" -- 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. (Though at some point, maybe the 2nd half of the book, drags on and you can skip most…

I know Daniel Kahneman only through reading him. Like you, I found Thinking Fast & Slow incredibly useful, first reading it perhaps 10 years ago. Definitely 2014, and I can't believe that's 10 years ago.

I must admit this headline shocked me for the simple reason that... I straight up had no idea that he was so old.

Thank you, Daniel, for the way you've influenced my (and our) thinking in ways that are still impacting us today, both in work and in the rest of life. Rest in peace.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#157

Post by pineaux »

__mharrison__ wrote: post #151
zug_zug wrote: post #6

I'm not one to give an exaggerated eulogy nor rhapsodize about all those "Books with a white cover and a weird picture" -- 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. (Though at some point, maybe the 2nd half of the book, drags on and you can skip most…

I guess I'm one of the rare folks who started reading TFAS and left without any big revelations or takeaways. I got bored half way through and stopped. Shrug...

Had the exact same experience. Maybe someone can enlighten us with why this is -supposedly- such a revelatory book?

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#158

Post by elbear »

resource_waste wrote: post #147
coyotespike wrote: post #83

Although many of the results in Fast and Slow didn't hold up, Kahneman was always refreshingly open and honest about that, and keen to identify the limits of knowledge. Which surely is one of the best things you can say about a scientist.

>was always refreshingly open and honest about that, His work got torn to shreds with science, what did you expect him to do? It really should be embarrassing rather than acceptable. It doesnt matter how honest you are AFTER you are caught. Between the replication crisis and his name on some bad papers, the guy seriously didn't care about correctness as much as interesting-faux-science.

Embarrassed because science worked as expected?

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#159

Post by 1letterunixname »

zug_zug wrote: post #6

I'm not one to give an exaggerated eulogy nor rhapsodize about all those "Books with a white cover and a weird picture" -- 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. (Though at some point, maybe the 2nd half of the book, drags on and you can skip most…

More meta is that, when people in aggregate are stressed and not all that wise or informed, they tend to look for convenience and expediency rather than effort and mastery. Unfortunately, this can also happen when people are apathetic or not stressed and slack off on reasonable skepticism or fail to dig into the details.

Leadership, pride, excellence, empathy, and fairness must not fail into the decay of jingoist buzzwords and remain values with intent and actions that remain unwavering.

The greatest danger is dishonesty when words stop having ordinary meanings, when people stop talking to each other, or when they're a lack of agreement on the obvious intersection of a shared reality.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#160

Post by tomrod »

dredmorbius wrote: post #141
foobiekr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology could legitimately be considered a subset of economics.

Is all human behaviour mercantile? The counterargument to the proposition in my earlier post would be to show that there is economic activity which relies on nonhuman behaviours. Automated financial trading or AI-based management systems (financial, corporate, industrial, governmental, etc.) might be possible exceptions, which raises further interesting questions.

Economics since the mid 1900s hasn't been solely focused on mercantilism, but rather has had a significant focus on choice under various conditions, assumptions, and constraints. Game theory, mechanism design, contract and auction deisgn, and focus on individual versus collective behavior (e.g Arrow's Impossibility Theorem) have strong overlap with psychology.

Though there is certainly daylight: my subfields of Industrial Organization and Computational eocnomics are way more related to quantitative finance, ML, and similar than voting behavior.

Post reply on HN