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Daniel Kahneman has died

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Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#311

Post by kashyapc »

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.

Careful there. By saying "many of the results", you're hand-waving most of the book. The book covers over several decades of his collaborative research with Amos Tversky.

Most of the "underpowered studies" are in the priming-related chapter, called "The Assoviative Machine". The rest of the book is still worth a careful read.

(I had to make this same correction here several years ago. I didn't look up the comment to link it here.)

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#312

Post by yreg »

abdulhaq wrote: post #284
yreg wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfortunately the case for many books on human behavior. Sure, Dan Ariely comes to mind, but the field itself is very tricky. I don't think we - people used to STEM - appreciate how difficult behavioral psychology is. In STEM, we are used to isolating experiments down, so there are as few variables as possible. And we are used to well-designed experiments being reproducible if everyone does what they are supp…

I don't agree, I think if you understand science in general then you realize at an early age e.g. 20 that social/behavioral science is at best a pseudoscience

Attacking me is a poor way to phrase your fringe opinion.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#313

Post by abdulhaq »

yreg wrote: post #312
abdulhaq wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, I think if you understand science in general then you realize at an early age e.g. 20 that social/behavioral science is at best a pseudoscience

Attacking me is a poor way to phrase your fringe opinion.

I disagreed with your opinion, I didn't attack you. I don't know the first thing about you.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#314

Post by pcthrowaway »

mistermann wrote: post #298
cornel_io wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most human authors are frankly far too stupid to be worth reading, even if they do put care into their work. This, IMO, is the actual biggest problem with LLMs training on whatever the biggest text corpus us that's available: they don't account for the fact that not all text is equally worthy of next-token-predicting. This problem is completely solvable, almost trivially so, but I haven't seen anyone publicly describ…

> This problem is completely solvable, almost trivially so, but I haven't seen anyone publicly describe a (scaled, in production) solution yet. Can you explain your solution?

I imagine it looks something like "Censor all writing that contradicts my worldview"

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#315

Post by dredmorbius »

bumby wrote: post #305
adastra22 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology is the study of the behavior of singular minds. Economics is the study the behavior of many minds acting independently.

To the multi-disciplinary point above, I think Kahneman's economic work is largely categorized as behavioral economics . That's not divorced from group dynamics, as it tries to understand how social preferences, social utility, and other psychological factors shape strategic decision-making behavior.

Good points.

There's also the fact that the economics profession, and the Economics Nobel committee, have both been making pains to include a broader set of dynamics under their scope. Among the more notably economic polymaths prior to Kahneman was Herbert A. Simon, possibly better known to the HN crowd for his pioneering work in AI and computer science, though he also worked in economics and, again, psychology. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel in economics on decision-making in the context of bounded rationality.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#316

Post by whelp_24 »

satellite2 wrote: post #128
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.

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.

I haven't read this to be fair but this seems to question the dsm itself. https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/psychia...

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#317

Post by whelp_24 »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #289
xotesos wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly has interesting ideas in small doses but knowing about your heuristics and biases doesn't mean you still don't fall victim to them. The real issue I have with the book is the audio book is read in such boring way by Patrick Egan. I would love to hear a different voice actor take a shot at it as it is not the most exciting book on its own anyway. Then read in such a boring way it reminds me of the worst o…

> Because of its popularity I would say Thinking, Fast and Slow might be the most overrated book I can think of. The Art of War is the most overrated book, imo. "If the enemy is more powerful than you, don't attack them!" So profound. -_-

This is like "Seinfeld isn't funny" in that once enough shows copy it, it looks cliche.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#318

Post by elbear »

resource_waste wrote: post #162
elbear wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embarrassed because science worked as expected?

Doesn't science require replication? He wrote books based on un-replicated studies. Further, the confidence he extolled about his now debunked ideas make him a charlatan. This person was a bad scientist. If we esteem people who don't check their data and influence millions of people with falsities, we are going to create a society with low trust. Just look at this thread, the man lost respect among the people in the…

That's a fair point. Frankly, I don't know what to say. Should we only promote studies that have been replicated? My first thought tells me that the answer should be "yes". At the same time, that would mean we would never talk about certain studies, because I don't think we can reach a 100% degree of replication.

What do you think?

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#319

Post by dr_kiszonka »

worik wrote: post #191
dr_kiszonka wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add some context, there is no Noble Prize in psychology.

And utterly pedantically there is no Nobel prize in Economics. It is "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel" Established in 1968

I appreciate the comment.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#320

Post by TedHerman »

I first became aware of a type of "slow thinking" through the book "Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less", by Guy Claxton, published 1999. Does anyone have a comparison of the types of slow thinking?
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