Danny Kahneman and his late partner Amos Tversky are the most important psychologists of the past several decades. Their research has exposed fallacies in human decision-making and many of the most basic assumptions of the field of economics. In short—humans are not rational beings, but instead intuitive ones with some weak control of reason at their disposal. Not only is this demonstrated in their experiments, but it can be subjectively experienced while reading the book. Throughout, Prof Kahneman will give you a couple of preference choices, you might pick them with all the logic you might muster, and he will still show you to be self-contradictory a few paragraphs later. He and Tversky brought to the fore the use of heuristics and mental models, and this has been their work of which I’ve been most appreciative.
I have yet to organize my hundreds of notes on the subject. In the meantime, you can view a number of the heuristics and notes from The Undoing Project, which is the written documentary of Kahneman and Tversky’s work together.
jasperburns.org 