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Daniel Kahneman has died

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#181

Post by AlgoRitmo »

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 have a physical copy and only read about 2 chapters, after having it for years. I need to take it on a flight to finally get around to reading it. It seems like one of those books you have to own and read at least once.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#183

Post by rvbissell »

mxs6 wrote: post #132
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.

I was fortunate enough to take a cognitive psych grad seminar from him in the 90s, co-taught by his wife, Anne Treisman. He always seemed given to thinking a little more deeply in the moment than most people do. One half-joking comment he made about science in the real world vs some idealized notion of it has always stuck with me. In a discussion about whether the results of some paper conflicted with some model or t…

Let's call those tweaks epi(stemological)-cycles.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#184

Post by worik »

usrnm wrote: post #171
ghaff wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with Guns, Germs, and Steel is that it make it essentially all about geographic determinism. There's another book ( Why the West Rules--For Now written before China had really fully emerged on the stage) which argues that, yes, geography played an important role in which cores emerged earliest. BUT if you look at the sweep of history, the eastern core was arguably more advanced than the western core at vari…

The book specifically considers Eurasia to be one geographical region and it does acknowledge the technological developments in China. The fact that Europe became the winner in this race, according to GGS, is a sign that while geography is important it does not determine the course of history. It is not all about geographic determinism

It is a snapshot in time, and so wrong if viewed in a longer context.

People from Europe, came to have the Industrial Revolution at just the correct moment.

Some small changes in history and it would have happened in India.

It is making a theory to fit the facts.

I do not think the author is a "white supremacist" but the book reads like that. Taking all the accidents of history and making them seem like destiny that Europeans rule the world (they do not, they never did, and they are fading from world domination fast)

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#185

Post by richrichie »

mistercow wrote: post #13
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’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.

Experiments involving grad students dont correlate well with how (normal) people behave in real life.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#186

Post by worik »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #105
yawboakye wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's an unexpected position for me. How do you define science? Could it be a science, according to you, or is there something fundamentally non-scientific about it?

> How do you define science?

Science is that which could be disproved.

It is a very small, and very important, part of human knowledge.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#187

Post by btilly »

mistermann wrote: post #54
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.

A fun question especially considering the topic of the thread : are propositions that lack proof necessarily false?

Not necessarily false.

But such a small fraction of possible propositions are true that it is unlikely to be worthwhile to waste much time on propositions with no evidence.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#188

Post by ceuk »

pineaux wrote: post #157
__mharrison__ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Assuming this is a genuine question and not just intellectual posturing the obvious answer if you've ever spoken to.. most people.. is that a lot of the (admittedly somewhat simple) concepts in the book are for whatever reason, not part of the general public psyche

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#189

Post by worik »

Shrezzing wrote: post #51

Kahneman's impact on economics can'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. To a large extent, it's still dogmatic and prescriptivist, but unorthodox opinions (not just limited to behavioral economics) are more accepted & considered following Kahneman's input.

> The subject was becoming a fairly absurd and dogmatically prescriptivist practice

That was when I was studying it!

So much rubbish "economics is a science because it uses maths" is one favourite of mine.

I did over a decade of study on economics and finance and nobody, even once, mentioned Karl Marx, arguably the most influential economist in the last two hundred years.

It was very prone to fetishes. "Price mechanism" was one I recall. Every problem in society had to be shoe horned into a market so the "price mechanism" would get to work.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#190

Post by musiciangames »

cvwright wrote: post #36
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 find that most nonfiction books follow a common structure: * 1st third of the book: Lays out the basic ideas, gives several examples * 2nd third of the book: More examples that repeat the themes from the 1st part * 3rd third of the book: ??? I usually give up at this point I sometimes wish that more books were like "The Mom Test" - just long enough to say what they need, even if that makes for a short book.

As a sample of 1, it seems to me that this is particularly an issue with American non-fiction.
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