Reddit Reddit reviews Thinking, Fast and Slow

We found 32 Reddit comments about Thinking, Fast and Slow. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Business & Money
Books
Business Management & Leadership
Decision-Making & Problem Solving
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Farrar Straus Giroux
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32 Reddit comments about Thinking, Fast and Slow:

u/wideiris · 95 pointsr/canada

be careful when at intersection? should be retitled, ANOTHER REASON TO GET OFF YOUR PHONE WHEN DRIVING. if someone gets busted, good, they should be fined 10 times the current amounts. IT's SO fucking dangerous.

I am currently reading this book (http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637), nobel prize winning author Daniel Kahneman is not the best writer, but his ideas are troubling and important. highly recommended.

u/lakai42 · 20 pointsr/AskReddit

You have to practice. Communication is a subconscious skill. You can't consciously plan your way through an entire conversation because there isn't enough time. It's possible to think of a few things that are good conversation starters, but that's about it.

In order to train any subconscious skill, you have to practice. When you practice your brain starts by trying to make the neural connections necessary to create the movement you want. At first the brain uses a lot of neurons. After more practice the brain finds more efficient ways of creating the movement and uses less neurons. That's how musicians look like they can effortlessly play an instrument the more they practice.

The biggest mistake people make about communication is that they don't approach learning it like they would approach learning a new sport or musical instrument. That's why nerds who like to be analytical about everything suck at communicating, because you have to learn communication by practice; the same way you learn a sport, which is another thing nerds suck at. You can't ride a bike by thinking every time before you move the pedals or handles. You can't make your way through a conversation that way either for the same reason - there's no time.

Practice keeping eye contact and saying what's on your mind without any hesitation. You'll find that after a few conversations you'll be able to do this more easily because your brain has gotten used to the skills. A good rule of thumb is to be yourself, but if you happen to be an asshole, you'll have to change.

If you can't find the courage to talk to random people right away, then start small. Talk to people you've been avoiding, like neighbors, coworkers, or classmates. Come up with a few prepared conversations and see what happens. If things don't go too well, know that you won't be that nervous and awkward during the next talk.

The neuroscience in this comment comes from The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

u/Grandberry · 14 pointsr/askscience

Daniel Kahnenman talks about this in his new book, that there's a remembering self and an experiencing self in terms of pain experiences.

TED Talk

Book

u/ehaaland · 10 pointsr/psychology

It depends on what types of things you're interested in!

Over time, you'll come to know certain people who research in different areas and you can go to their personal webpages and access their Curriculum Vitae. Through that, you can find all the work they've done and many times they link to PDF copies of their papers.

But psychology is a very broad field. Here are some suggestions I can come up with:

For dealings with moral political psychology (the psychology of how people on the right and people on the left feel about moral decisions - includes religions and other aspects to our deeply-rooted conceptions of 'self'), see Jonathan Haidt - He just wrote a new book called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

For dealings with the extent and limits of human rationality, I'd suggest Daniel Kahneman. He also just wrote a new book called Thinking Fast and Slow.

Stuffisnice suggested William James. James' Principles of Psychology is remarkable and very fun to read. It's quite dated both in science and in language, but his writing is impeccable.


In fact, James didn't just do psychology. He did philosophy as well. His later philosophy was at odds with the picture provided by most mainstream psychology that takes the brain as the source of our mental experience. These philosophical aspects have recently been brought into the empirical realm in the branch of Ecological psychology. This is my personal preference for psychology reading as I feel it is much more willing to ask harder questions than traditional psychology; it is willing to do away with assumptions and premises that are generally taken for granted.

This ecological framework deals more with perception and the role of the animal's action in perception. Instead of the traditional way of looking at perception (cells react to stimuli in the environment, feed this encoded stimuli into the brain, the brain processes things and makes sense of them, recreating a picture of the world through its activity, and finally sending out directions to the body to move), the ecological perspective focuses more on how the animal perceives the world directly and does not require internal processing to make sense of the world. It's much cleaner and much simpler. The brain is still crucial for the lived experience, but it is not the whole story.

For readings in ecological psychology, I would recommend Ed Reed's Encountering the World and Eleanor Gibson's An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development.

After you get your bearings, then you can get into some really deep stuff that tries to synthesize biology, psychology, and the essence of human/animal experience (phenomenology). For that, Evan Thompson is my go to guy. His work is heavily philosophical and is sometimes overly dense, but you may find it interesting.

PM me if you have any questions!

u/themadscribe · 5 pointsr/booksuggestions

Currently about 100 pages into Thinking Fast and Slow and it covers the psychology of how we think and learn.

u/lastshot · 3 pointsr/wikipedia

Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow is like an orgy-fest of careful demonstrations of many of these effects. Good read.

u/Sentient545 · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a great read.

Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence by David Keirsey is also a classic.

u/smekas · 3 pointsr/TrueReddit

This is my issue with Gladwell and Lehrer:

>In works of less than 500 pages, Gladwell and Lehrer attempt to enlighten the reader on How the World Works, What People are Really Like, and How Greatness Happens without getting into any of the technical details that would absolutely overwhelm the majority of the readers traipsing through airport book shop before grabbing their flight home.

They set out to achieve something that's nearly impossible and people are willing to suspend disbelief just because they don't want to expend the energy required to become truly informed on a given subject.

Also this:
>More than actionable insights, this kind of popular analysis gives the reader something far more immediately valuable – the feeling that they have a sophisticated view of the world.

I'm still reading the article, but I fell in love with the following sentence:
>America splits its valuable time between blowing an enormously obvious housing bubble, demanding Master’s degrees for entry-level positions, and badly managing the bloodbaths of Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is an excellent article. If I may suggest a couple of anti-dotes to the Gladwell/Lehrer pop-science oversimplification, two books with excellent science and research on how we think, decide and react to stress are Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow and Choke, by Sian Beilock.

u/MrLawliet · 3 pointsr/DebateReligion

>Otherwise how do you explain the selectivity of oxytocin production to different visual stimulus?

Because the signals passing through the visual cortex are what activate the oxytocin releases, no person controls the feelings they feel, they simply surface automatically through your automated identification system.

This is all from: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637

You don't decide when your oxytocin is released, the systems which schedule its release are automated processes that are part of System 1.

u/Dudge · 3 pointsr/audiobooks

While not strictly about Statistics Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman looks into the science of decision making and how people aren't good at statistical thinking. It's a fascinating book and does have some basic discussions on statistics.

u/Palmsiepoo · 3 pointsr/AskSocialScience

I think you're going to have to find a balance between accuracy and ease. most academic books are dense because 50 years of theoretical work went into understanding a very minute phenomenon. For example, there are books (Locke & Latham, 1990) written on just goal setting and how important it is to set a difficult goal. On the other hand, you have books written by folks like Malcolm Gladwell, while easy to read, are often incorrect because they omit many important nuances in academic literature.

Your best bet is to find books written by academics but made for laymen, two I recommend are:

You are not so smart

Thinking fast and slow

u/mschley2 · 2 pointsr/nfl

You're putting value on memories and emotions. That's fine from a personal aspect, but as far as winning a football game, they're the same.

I took a behavioral economics class which is basically focused around all the reasons and ways we don't think logically/rationally/statistically. This book is really good if you're interested in that.

The first day of class, my professor asked us, "You need a new alarm clock. The campus bookstore has one for $40. Walmart (a few miles away) has the same alarm clock for $20. How many of you would go to WalMart?" About 90% of the class raised their hands. He followed it up with this: "You need a new computer. The campus bookstore has one for $350. WalMart has the same one for $330. How many of you would go to WalMart?" Only about 20% of the class raised their hands.... Why? You're saving $20 each way. It's illogical to go to WalMart for one of those things but not the other. But people think it's better to do it for the alarm clock because they're saving a larger percentage, even though that's irrelevant. You're doing the same thing. Early game, late game, it doesn't matter, it's still the same amount of points, but it feels better if it happens at the end of the game just like it feels better to get a bigger percentage off.

u/contrarianism · 2 pointsr/MensRights

This book explains why men, and women, have judgement lapses vis-a-vis the opposite sex.

u/mathent · 2 pointsr/atheism

Consciousness is...tricky. From what I've studied, all we are really confident in saying about it now is that it's entirely dependent on the brain. If you change the brain, it directly effects consciousness. How consciousness, a non-physical entity, can arise from exclusively physical attributes is still under discussion. What Dennett is offering in the video is a re-characterization of the entire discussion. People seem to be looking for a "real" magic trick to explain consciousness. Dennett is making the case that just as there really is no "real" magic, there's only illusions to make you believe there's magic, that there's no "real" magic to consciousness. It's an illusion, in a non-deceptive sense. Consciousness is what happens when the extremely complex systems in your brain interact in the way they do.

If you want some books to read about the mind and brain, check out Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (NY Times Bestseller List 2011) and Connectome by Sebastian Seung. Kaheman will change the way you think about the way you think. He outlines the to "systems" that operated the way you think, and then outlines the biases he's discovered that causes the way you think to be wrong. Connectome outlines the processes of the brain and how the brain is wired to give a somewhat speculative look into Connectome science (mapping all the neurons in the brain and their connections to eachother) and makes claims that once we do this we will better understand the brain and consciousness because the physical structure of the brain is hypothesized to matter a great deal.

As a moderately related point to consciousness, you may want to ask that if consciousness is dependent on the brain, what does that mean for free-will. You should check out Free Will by Sam Harris. It's extremly short--more of an essay. Then look at what Dennett says about free-will. They very strongly disagree, and Sam has said that he hopes to sit down with Dennett and discuss it. When that happens it will be really interesting, and worth having at least a small background on the issue.

u/derpstar_ · 2 pointsr/books
u/Manny_Bothans · 2 pointsr/TrueReddit

You should read the article author's book called thinking fast and slow.

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637/

u/ALeapAtTheWheel · 2 pointsr/casualiama

>If we are smarter and more informed, why doesn't it appear that way?

Probably because you are comparing reality to your idealized world. Probably because you are suffering from what is called "Availability heuristic." If someone hangs out in r/bad_cop_no_donut, they are going to see a lot of stories about alleged bad behavior of cops gathered from all over the country. (pulling a number out of the air) Let's say 5% of cops are like that, and 95% are reasonable. Is that person going to go read 19 stories about cops doing normal things for every story you read there? probably not. Do you think that this will probably skew their perception of the police? Science says yes.

>How is the media allowed to so rampantly present belligerent lies? We (internet, Reddit etc.) are informed because we choose to be, the mass American public buys into the bullshit and further perpetuates the madness. We are raping the planet.

What are rampantly presented belligerent lies? These? Ignore the politics of the publication. They have citations if you want to verify the historical sources.

I'll give you a rampant bullshit lie believed by lots of people who use Reddit and the internet and who think they are informed. The earth is not anthropomorphic. It does not care for us. It cannot be "raped" without mutating the term in a way that both harms our ability to communicate and that is also callously insulting people who are the victims of rape. Getting this wrong isn't just lazy language. It fundamentally misstates the issues.

I don't see you as arguing, and I'm working under the assumption that you understand I'm not arguing either. That doesn't mean that I agree with you. I do, however, recognize the epiphany you are having. I had one too. Do you want to feel better about the world? Learn and practice some engineering and discover just how fast we are solving our human problems. Learn some history and find out just how different it is today than even 100 years ago. Learn some economics, psychology, and game theory and learn how and why people respond to incentives and just how little an 'informed' person knows. These things have really changed my outlook on life.

Like I said, we've never had so much information at our fingertips. Here's a list of book recommendations. They are all written for a popular audience. None require much in the way of math or previous understanding of the subject matter.

u/this_won · 2 pointsr/RandomKindness

This Book

It's written by a Nobel Economist and has been on the buzz on many radio stations. As a potential Econ major, I would love to read this as soon as possible to talk about it with others. One of my econ professors asked if I had read this when we were talking, but I didn't and that was the end of the convo. Likewise, I was having an interview, and the guy asked me if I had read it, when I said I was interested in Econ, and again the convo ended there.

I'm trying to borrow, but the library's copy is on a waitlist system... and I have been number 50 something... for the past 2 months...

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/WTF

You know so very little about the human mind, I must enlighten you.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374275637

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory

u/KAL_WHSPhysics · 1 pointr/PhascinatingPhysics

This video has some great brain teasers that were quite revealing and informative! The manner in which these two distinct brain systems interact and shape our worldly perceptions is quite astounding. It goes to show that reaction time and immediate judgement are mere results of our brain doing its job. I wonder how harnessing these two systems for good (i.e. putting more focus on System 2 when making logical decisions) could benefit us all. That book the video mentions is of particular interest...

u/LeonardNemoysHead · 1 pointr/science

By citing the person who came up with this metaphor. You're doing postgrad Psychology and don't know about Danny Kahneman or Amos Tversky?

u/Eratyx · 1 pointr/atheism

Today I was reading Thinking, Fast and Slow, a book about recent findings in cognitive science, at work during lunch break. I have a reputation as the quiet guy. A guy wearing a rosary asks me about it, and I explain that we have two thinking modes, intuitive and rational. He immediately cuts me off with "I think rational stuff gets in the way of spirituality." I ask if he's religious. He looks proud and says yes. I nod and ignore him for the rest of the break, reading my book. He was pretty put out for the rest of the day.

u/garblz · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

That's how our brains work. These thinking machines evolved in a way that reults in prioritizing available 'instance' information over statistical data. Our brains are not wired for statistics.

If I never knew a man from say Alaska, and during the course of my life met three Alaskans, all of which did me a small grievance, I couldn't help but think all Alaskans are bad people. Even if I wanted to, my brain would trick me into it. I could refrain myself consciously from hostility, but still would be constantly fed this false information by my subconsciousness.

Even if I knew Alaskans to be good people, but media focused on presenting of cases of violence commited by them, it would be the same.

I don't think the case has anything to do with Muslims being somehow special. It would be the same if it were for Mormons or anyone else.

I recommend Daniel Kahneman's excellent Thinking Fast and Slow for an in-depth explanation of this and other related phenomena.

u/steelypip · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

Everyone is subject to cognitive biases - not just Confirmation Bias but all the others too.

The only defence is to be aware of them and try and spot them early. Unfortunately they are much easier to spot in other people that oneself, even for psychology researchers working in this field. I highly recommend reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman if you are interested in the subject. He has several stories in there about how he has been suckered by his own biases.

u/Skyblacker · 1 pointr/AskReddit

5; I don't think I comprehend it as well as my husband did.

u/Atheist10 · 1 pointr/DebateAChristian

You may want to check out this book http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637 excellent read about decision making and intuition and basically how we should not trust intuition in many cases... maybe intuition is not the right word for what you are looking for.

u/MrSabuhudo · 0 pointsr/changemyview

It seems you asked the right questions, since my answer turned out longer than expected. I actually had to split it up, because of the character limitation. So I hope my effort is of benefit to you. In any case, you should probably get a hot chocolate or something. :-D

Question 1


I think there are several reasons, why people might make these arguments (Note that these are not refutations of the arguments themselves, but speculations about their psychological roots / motivations):

  • Far-leftists see capitalism as an evil system that produces exploitation. Therefore, anarcho-capitalism would logically result in a maximum of exploitation, since it's like regular capitalism on steroids. It goes without saying that ancaps like me don't agree with anti-capitalist exploitation theory.

  • Most people just have a very strong status-quo-bias (basically what you suggested by referring to it as alien). As psychologists have believably suggested, it's very exhausting and unpleasant to change one's world view in any way. Since ancapism proposes such a radically different world view as the mainstream one, most people understandably don't want to consider it, because that poses the risk of exhaustion and discomfort. That applies especially to people who are not very interested in politics anyway, so the vast majority.

  • Moderate but politically active people might like the thought that they can improve society by wisely participating in its leadership. Ancapism basically tells those people: It doesn't matter how wise you are, you are not wise enough to rule over other people. That might be damaging to some people's ego.

  • And then there are the minarchist-libertarians, who are very close to ancaps. These people make the best arguments against ancapism, because they would actually like it if ancapism did work and they understand our arguments the best, since we think so similarly.

    As for the validity of the arguments themselves, I don't think the criticisms of the first three groups are quite easily refuted. But the minarchists make some points about the nature of defense services that definitely need to be considered. (E.g. positive externalities lead to an underproduction of defense services, making an anarchist society vulnerable to conquest.) The only possibility of ancapism turning south is basically the emergence of new states and a resulting regression to statism. That process would obviously involve a lot of bloodshed and ancapism should therefore be avoided if a violent return to statism is inevitable. I'll provide some of my own thoughts why I consider that unlikely.

    I think several factors play a role in the sustainability of "Ancapistan":

  • The anarchist territory should be as large as possible, so private property insurance companies can pool enough funds for efficient defense against neighbouring statist societies.

  • The surrounding statist populations should be as civilised and enlightened as possible, so it's harder for their respective states to justify war against the anarchist territory to their populations. (Lichtenstein probably has a good shot, Israel not so much.)

  • The population of the anarchist territory should be as armed and educated about property rights / libertarian ethics as possible, so any neighbouring state considering invasion would have to expect very high costs of keeping the invaded population under control.

    The education and enlightenment factor is likely to improve with time, so I do think the anarcho-capistalist society is inevitable. (Basically like marxists think communism is inevitable. I do see the irony there, lol.)

    Once the whole world is anarchist, I see little reason to worry about the emergence of a new state. That being said, going back to statism would be the worst case scenario. So we're in the worst case scenario right now... and hence, it can only get better if we try.

    If you want me to elaborate more, I'll gladly do that, but you can probably learn more from people smarter than me. I'll provide a book list further below and here is a great lecture on the specific topic. It's still a good idea to ask me any specific questions though.

    Question 2


    I haven't read anything by Ayn Rand. Her books are extremely long, so that's a turn-off. From what I've heard about her: I think her objectivist approach to ethics is both weird and wrong. However, her novels probably convey a good "sense" of capitalism. I have that already though, so I don't think I'm missing much. She might have been influencial in the sense that she has made many people familiar with ideas ancaps share. But her own ideology is statist in the sense that it actively supports a minarchist state and rejects ancapism on ethical grounds (as stated by Yaron Brook, the most prominent objectivist / follwer of Ayn Rand I know). I myself am much more of a fan of Murray Rothbard, which is basically the "founder" of anarcho-capitalism anyway. He's surely the most influencal person in the movement, Hans-Hermann Hoppe taking the controversial second place.

u/ShannonOh · 0 pointsr/skeptic

And another note...I often just read /r/skeptic rather than participate, because participation (IMHO) should include links, sources, and well-reasoned arguments. That's cognitive processing, or "system 2" thinking, in Kahneman's language. Confirmation bias is less likely when we are using system 2 over system 1.

There are a variety of sources, but the first that comes to mind is Kahneman's recently published popular press book: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637

u/ethics · -1 pointsr/Conservative

My full quote was:
>why the media is using a picture of a 12 year old vs. a more recent picture.

No need to look, it's my own hypothesis as he looks 12 vs. what he looked like more recently. Pictures available side by side here.


Finally, effective propaganda, especially in press and television will never be anything grandiose where people will have a GOTCHA moment. It's always subtle, hinting, nudging and anchoring. If you are really interested in that topic an excellent (and recent) book I highly recommend.