The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics. One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky's extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis's own work possible. In The Undoing Project, Lewis shows how their Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.
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The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
352 pages
What’s it about?
This non-fiction book is equally about the origins of Behavioral Economics and the unique partnership and friendship between Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.
What did it make me think about?
This book emphasized how rare and difficult true partnerships are. It also shed light on how we make decisions. A early tidbit of what was discussed, "In some strange way people, at least when they are judging other people, saw what they expected to see and were slow to see what they hadn't seen before." How would your decision making change if you were more aware of this? Apparently not too much, "Simply knowing a bias wasn't sufficient to overcome it:". So even being aware that we see something a certain way, can not stop us from doing it.
Should I read it?
If you are interested in human behavior then this book is enormously interesting. Having said that, I did feel like behavioral economics is still just touching the iceberg of human decision making, so you may come away from this book feeling vaguely unfulfilled.
Quote-
"Shore asked him how he became a psychologist. 'It's hard to know how people select a course in life,' Amos said. 'The big choices we make our practically random. The small "choices probably talk more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet. Who we marry may depend on who happens to be around at the right time of life. On the other hand, the small decisions are very systemic. That I became a psychologist is probably not very revealing. What kind of psychologist I am may reveal deep traits.'"
If you like this try-
Ghettoside by Jill Leovy
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Think Like a Freak by Stephen Leavitt
The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis
352 pages
What’s it about?
This non-fiction book is equally about the origins of Behavioral Economics and the unique partnership and friendship between Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.
What did it make me think about?
This book emphasized how rare and difficult true partnerships are. It also shed light on how we make decisions. A early tidbit of what was discussed, "In some strange way people, at least when they are judging other people, saw what they expected to see and were slow to see what they hadn't seen before." How would your decision making change if you were more aware of this? Apparently not too much, "Simply knowing a bias wasn't sufficient to overcome it:". So even being aware that we see something a certain way, can not stop us from doing it.
Should I read it?
If you are interested in human behavior then this book is enormously interesting. Having said that, I did feel like behavioral economics is still just touching the iceberg of human decision making, so you may come away from this book feeling vaguely unfulfilled.
Quote-
"Shore asked him how he became a psychologist. 'It's hard to know how people select a course in life,' Amos said. 'The big choices we make our practically random. The small "choices probably talk more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet. Who we marry may depend on who happens to be around at the right time of life. On the other hand, the small decisions are very systemic. That I became a psychologist is probably not very revealing. What kind of psychologist I am may reveal deep traits.'"
If you like this try-
Ghettoside by Jill Leovy
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Think Like a Freak by Stephen Leavitt
We don't make choices between options but about the description of those options and that can make all the difference in economics. A fascinating story told in an interesting way.
*grunts*
Wow. A month and a half to listen to a 10 hour book...at 1.4 speed, which cuts it down to about 7.5 hours.
I think it's safe to say I am not the target audience for this book. I have no idea what the point was or what I'm supposed to take away from this.
I only even read it because a friend recommended it to me and I promised I'd finish it. Now I have and that's all I can say about this book.
Wow. A month and a half to listen to a 10 hour book...at 1.4 speed, which cuts it down to about 7.5 hours.
I think it's safe to say I am not the target audience for this book. I have no idea what the point was or what I'm supposed to take away from this.
I only even read it because a friend recommended it to me and I promised I'd finish it. Now I have and that's all I can say about this book.
I read a lot of behavioral economics, and I've read Kahneman and Thaler, but I was missing the context of the history of Kahneman and Tversky, followed later by Thaler, being the inventors of this discipline. I was also missing the context of the in-between location of the discipline between psychology and economics, but more importantly as the source of strife between psychologists and economists. This book also expressed my frustrations with my economics classes, and I'm even more annoyed now that I realize my economics professors were basically just ignoring research that was at that point already 20 years old. I was also interested in learning about how this research came out of Israel. I was maybe a little less interested in the ins-and-outs of Kahneman and Tversky's personal relationship and about which Lewis left me a bit confused.
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