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
Review
As always I won't really go into the details or the topic of the book when the book is popular and already has a ton of reviews. Instead I'll stick to commenting on how you'd likely feel about the book and how well and fairly it conveys the message.
This is a book I sorta randomly read on audiobook. I got tired of reading about modern psychology, groups and psychometrics and just needed something random to listen to to refresh my mind. This was exactly what I needed. This is a book about the study of biases by 2 Jews. Mixed in are their personal anecdotes and life stories. All interesting stuff.
The first chapter is by far the best one. It's about biased thinking in general and moneyball. That's amazing. After that it turns into the biography and is less amazing as it focuses more on stories and anecdotes than lessons. Yet it still keeps bringing forth experiments so it keeps it value high as an educational book. It's an excellent intro to the heuristics work of Danny and Amos. There are cool anecdotes everywhere of people messing up and about how scientists refuse to believe that they are irrational like most common folk. The book is very long but you won't regret reading it. Even though both characters are not really rulers or bosses and therefore not that historically significant overall. They are still researchers who did describe some things well and conveyed important messages to the world. And we can learn a lot from their mistakes because they seemed to have made quite a few of them in their personal lives. Amos seems fairly rational and clever. I assume his technical writing held him down. Danny on the other hand is often a mess. The kind of person who is broken mentally from day one and kinda ruins stuff for himself. He seems fearful of everything, hides from intellectual attacks and is extremely focused on prestige. Just not a researcher I can respect as often the truth hides in the new and therefore controversial. Yet I don't need to respect him. I just need to understand him. It's not rare to see an irrational scientist I'm just always surprised when I see one. I pride myself on trying to reach 100% objectivity on any topic no matter who I offend, even myself. That 100% is impossible but at least I try to reach for it. So for me this kind of researcher seems like a bad thing. Yet I did love his book Thinking Fast and Slow. So he clearly can think clearly and fairly. Unfortunately his thinking was founded before evolutionary psychology was a thing so it's not really as modern and cohesive as you may wish it to be. Still, I suggest you read his book because the single studies by themselves are great.
Amos seems very interesting and cool. His research is not really fully in my field so I haven't read anything he has written. But I do respect him after reading this book. I mostly read long and detailed ideas so I keep to books over short and less detailed papers. Since he is not a popular book writer I just haven't really engaged in his personal ideas. Though I have of course read about every single of their findings already. Amos is the mathematician while Danny is the describer who uses anecdotes. One is a great intellect while the other is something that can make you world famous by speaking to the masses. So one is famous while the other is mostly known from this book and from people who know about Danny.
It's an interesting partnership that Danny's neuroticism broke apart. But it did lead us closer to biases research and evolutionary psychology ideas about biases as instincts made to solve problems. Today biases are studied more than ever before and especially the ideology monoculture among social science professors is a huge talking point as there are just not enough people to think outside the box anymore. I know of maybe less than 20 good thinkers worldwide in social science academia. All the rest are thinking inside the box. The most groundbreaking research today happens outside academia but yet we do need to understand how academia leaders like Danny are shaping their fields. I kept shouting "STOP BEING IRRATIONAL AND GREEDY" at Danny. But not all researchers are fully objective and fact based. Amos is very much so it seems. Danny less so. But they still are objective enough to get somewhere with their research. Even though it's not based on any greater foundation like evolutionary psychology that explains why we have biases and how they actually work. And what problems they solve and don't solve.
Conclusion
This is a great book. It's very well-researched and while it tries to create heroes it doesn't refrain from describing bad sides too. If you are interested in social science or personal stories this is a book you should read. There is also a ton of good studies presented here and the writer has a keen and clean mind. While the author maybe could have presented some modern psychology it's not terrible that he didn't as there is enough info here to educate any modern researcher anyhow.
Go read this book. Just be aware that it's very long and will take much of your time. It's still worth it.
As always I won't really go into the details or the topic of the book when the book is popular and already has a ton of reviews. Instead I'll stick to commenting on how you'd likely feel about the book and how well and fairly it conveys the message.
This is a book I sorta randomly read on audiobook. I got tired of reading about modern psychology, groups and psychometrics and just needed something random to listen to to refresh my mind. This was exactly what I needed. This is a book about the study of biases by 2 Jews. Mixed in are their personal anecdotes and life stories. All interesting stuff.
The first chapter is by far the best one. It's about biased thinking in general and moneyball. That's amazing. After that it turns into the biography and is less amazing as it focuses more on stories and anecdotes than lessons. Yet it still keeps bringing forth experiments so it keeps it value high as an educational book. It's an excellent intro to the heuristics work of Danny and Amos. There are cool anecdotes everywhere of people messing up and about how scientists refuse to believe that they are irrational like most common folk. The book is very long but you won't regret reading it. Even though both characters are not really rulers or bosses and therefore not that historically significant overall. They are still researchers who did describe some things well and conveyed important messages to the world. And we can learn a lot from their mistakes because they seemed to have made quite a few of them in their personal lives. Amos seems fairly rational and clever. I assume his technical writing held him down. Danny on the other hand is often a mess. The kind of person who is broken mentally from day one and kinda ruins stuff for himself. He seems fearful of everything, hides from intellectual attacks and is extremely focused on prestige. Just not a researcher I can respect as often the truth hides in the new and therefore controversial. Yet I don't need to respect him. I just need to understand him. It's not rare to see an irrational scientist I'm just always surprised when I see one. I pride myself on trying to reach 100% objectivity on any topic no matter who I offend, even myself. That 100% is impossible but at least I try to reach for it. So for me this kind of researcher seems like a bad thing. Yet I did love his book Thinking Fast and Slow. So he clearly can think clearly and fairly. Unfortunately his thinking was founded before evolutionary psychology was a thing so it's not really as modern and cohesive as you may wish it to be. Still, I suggest you read his book because the single studies by themselves are great.
Amos seems very interesting and cool. His research is not really fully in my field so I haven't read anything he has written. But I do respect him after reading this book. I mostly read long and detailed ideas so I keep to books over short and less detailed papers. Since he is not a popular book writer I just haven't really engaged in his personal ideas. Though I have of course read about every single of their findings already. Amos is the mathematician while Danny is the describer who uses anecdotes. One is a great intellect while the other is something that can make you world famous by speaking to the masses. So one is famous while the other is mostly known from this book and from people who know about Danny.
It's an interesting partnership that Danny's neuroticism broke apart. But it did lead us closer to biases research and evolutionary psychology ideas about biases as instincts made to solve problems. Today biases are studied more than ever before and especially the ideology monoculture among social science professors is a huge talking point as there are just not enough people to think outside the box anymore. I know of maybe less than 20 good thinkers worldwide in social science academia. All the rest are thinking inside the box. The most groundbreaking research today happens outside academia but yet we do need to understand how academia leaders like Danny are shaping their fields. I kept shouting "STOP BEING IRRATIONAL AND GREEDY" at Danny. But not all researchers are fully objective and fact based. Amos is very much so it seems. Danny less so. But they still are objective enough to get somewhere with their research. Even though it's not based on any greater foundation like evolutionary psychology that explains why we have biases and how they actually work. And what problems they solve and don't solve.
Conclusion
This is a great book. It's very well-researched and while it tries to create heroes it doesn't refrain from describing bad sides too. If you are interested in social science or personal stories this is a book you should read. There is also a ton of good studies presented here and the writer has a keen and clean mind. While the author maybe could have presented some modern psychology it's not terrible that he didn't as there is enough info here to educate any modern researcher anyhow.
Go read this book. Just be aware that it's very long and will take much of your time. It's still worth it.
*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.
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