PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME. RECOMMEND a book. I ask how many I can pick. They say just one. I always go for Thinking, Fast and Slow. By Daniel Kahneman. Great psychologist. Changed my life. I didn't read it first. I listened to the audio. I got hooked after another book. It's called The Undoing Project. Michael Lewis wrote it. It's a biography of two psychologists. Kahneman and Amos Tversky teamed up for years. They changed how we understand decisions: "We think we get stuff. We don't.
Even when we think we do." That's groundbreaking. It started behavioral economics. Also social psychology stuff. Even positive psychology. Source: https://wizdomapp.com/books-like-thinking-fast- and-slow/ It got me thinking hard. I was in academia back then. I was job hunting. I wanted psychology in my work since I found it to be so cool (even wanted a psychologist girlfriend at one point). I studied anthropology. I regretted not taking psych classes. They were so close. Just a few floors up. William James Hall at Harvard. That book pulled me in.
I wanted to know this Princeton Professor Daniel Kahneman. He was alive then. Stanford Professor Amos Tversky passed years ago. He had an illness. Kahneman lasted till March last year. He chose assisted suicide. He left at 90. He did it before physical decline. Before cognitive decline. That hit him. It's strange for a top psychologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics. That was in 2002. He's an expert in decision- making. Yet he cut his life short. He didn't face it all.
I can't believe his family was okay with it.
Something feels off. I'm Buddhist. I believe life's a journey. If you take shortcuts like suicide, you start over. You never reach the end. I'm not sure if that's pure Buddhism. It might be my simulation theory. I'm obsessed with that idea. I'll talk about that next section. First, I wanna focus on Kahneman. I picked up Thinking, Fast and Slow after The Undoing Project. It's a great book. It feels conversational. It's like Uncle Danny's talking to you. He explains with experiments. Some use people. Some use objects.
He shows how we think: He breaks thinking into two systems. System 1 is hot. We use our gut. It happens when we're anxious. Or when we're excited. We're not true to our thinking self. System 1 isn't all bad. Something happens fast? You react. Your body takes over. Your brain avoids trouble. System 1 kicks in. You escape. System 2 is logical. It's cooler. You take your time. You think about factors. You think about consequences. You think about processes. You avoid problems. You get results quick.
System 2 folks are like that Star Trek guy (Spalk? I wouldn't know since I am a Star Wars guy). He's always logical. The rest of the crew? Like the captain. He acts on his gut. He acts on his heart. He's a System 1 guy. Source: Reed and Proctor, Collegiality, dealing with bullying and acknowledging unconscious bias. https://www.slideserve.com/Pat_Xavi/dignity-at-work The book is thick. It's not thin. It takes a week to finish. But it's fun to read. I listened first. Then I got the paperback.
The second time, I learned more. We're so flawed. We're bad at decisions. It became my favorite book. I like other books too. Ryan Holiday's trilogies on living good. Michael Lewis's books on money. Also cryptocurrency. Malcolm Gladwell's stuff. I loved his first 10 years. He wrote non-fiction. Later, he got wack. His messages turned cloudy. Too much virtue signaling. A patronizing tone. People read him less now. Danny taught us humans something. Even logical stuff isn't easy. Like self-preservation. Outside stimuli mess us up. The past clouds our judgment.
The present makes us nervous. We can't decide easy. We become less logical. We're less reasonable. When we engage in a process. We didn't think about that before. Then Kahneman came. He shaped psychology. He made it about thinking. That's amazing. I gotta set the scene. Before Kahneman, psychology was scientific. You'd see machines in offices. They collected data. They formed side effect theories. Like B.F. Skinner did. Behavioralism. It shaped conditioning. People were triggered to act. They didn't know. Intuition got planted in their mind. Before they even knew.
Research was experimental. It was mathematical. It used stats a lot. Pigeons being observed and tested in a B.F. Skinner's laboratory at Harvard. Source: https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/706878/view Psychology was a hard science. Then Kahneman and Tversky came along. They showed the world. You don't need all that equipment. Psychology is about studying people. People walking around us. It's a systematic understanding. Of their psych. Machines can't always catch it. You use experiments. But they can be simple. Or casual. You ask people. Same situation. Same condition. They give different answers.
You find reasons. Behind their differences. In how they think. Daniel came. Amos came. They changed the discipline. Psychology got grounded. It got relatable. It's not too far from psychiatry. People think psychologists diagnose. In hospital rooms. Or they're psychotic. They're into psychology. I don't know. My understanding of psychology was different. Before these two guys. Their contribution was amazing. They got us thinking. About the spectrum of human indecision. In situations needing good decisions. We overestimate risk. We underestimate rewards. From a bet or something. They uncovered biases.
Problems with anchoring. We're mentally anchored. We walk into losing situations. We lack priming psychology. They showed us. With vivid examples. Vivid experiments. It made me believe. Psychology teaches us. Who we are. How we are. How we get where we wanna be. If life has meaning at all. I'll move quick. You know enough. I love his work. It helped me think. About myself. System 1 crashes with System 2. I want System 2 in public. Inside, I'm System 1. It's my bad temper. I'm trying to control it.
I'm not great at it. Decisions come from info I get. Beforehand. Those are biases. It's interesting. The number of biases. The anchoring stuff. We see things. We hear things. We feel things. Before walking into a room. Without that noise, I'd decide different. That's big for me. Now, the real topic. Kahneman's assisted suicide. I don't think he should've done that. For many reasons. He could still talk. He could be stimulating. Like he always was. He was useful to humanity. It's not fair for humanity. To control him.
Live or die. To be or not to be. That's Hamlet stuff. But still. Something might happen tomorrow. A medical breakthrough. It could cure his problem. Maybe 3D printing kidneys. If that's his issue. In a few years, we might make his brain. It'd be more helpful. To society. We could ask him stuff. Like a mini ChatGPT. All wisdom. A System 2 guy. He didn't leave options. For those things. He traveled to Switzerland. First, he went to France. With family. Visited his birthplaces. Old spots. To remember.
Before he died. Then Switzerland. For the suicide. Humanity shouldn't ask him. To stay forever. But we gave him a lot. He owed a lot. How he became him.
Contributions he could've had. If he believed in humanity. We'd fix what he had. It'd be easy. He could've conquered decay. Physical decay. It makes us who we are. He could've lived long. Studied more. Learned more. Solved more problems. Done cutting-edge research. Led us better. The world's divided now. Too many poles. People think too much. There's rising conflicts. Wars. Declining birth rates. They're related. He should've stayed. I think it's selfish of him. People around him thought he was senile. That he could decide for himself. That's ridiculous.
Really ridiculous. To cue a guy. Just cause he seemed capable. He lacked belief. In human goodness. We should've tried. Got him to a point. Where we could help. He contributed so much. He could live longer. Help more. Be one of us. It's too early. I learned lessons. First lesson. Your life is an accumulation of experience. Go out there. Find more. Born in France. Grew up in Jerusalem. Professor in the US. He embraced multiculturalism. Few people have that. It shaped his personality. His character. Made him empathetic.
Calm in turmoil. He saw perspectives ahead. From exposure. Different thinking. Different beliefs. Different processes. These are qualities of a great mind. (I'm like him. I lived in Bangkok. Shanghai. Boston. I got those values. That empathy. It makes me good at what I do. I wanna keep that. I learned from this. It's a sample size of one. But it's a good example. Daniel himself). Second lesson. We're who we tell ourselves to be. Social psychology says that. It was born under these two. It's about individuals. In society.
Society dictates behavior. Wanna act pure? Raw? Unedited? In a good way. Hide primitive desires. That's another topic. Sigmund Freud. Not Kahneman. To be you? Act willingly. Think who you are. Believe it first. Believing in your ability. To be you. In that moment. It confirms you're good. Lets you decide good. I like that. It works. It makes me confident. Sometimes I force it. It's the only way. When things get rough. Third lesson. You never know what's gonna happen. The best decision- maker. On Earth. Commits suicide.
That's nonsense. It doesn't make sense. It taught me. You never fully understand. Even if you think you do. Steve Jobs said it. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. That's true. Stop being hungry? Once food's served? You can't exercise. You can't go out. Be excited. Find new things. You go dormant. You're useless. People wanna exercise. Be different. Be unexpected. Not like this. Not Kahneman's choice. I can't believe he did that. I'll try my life. To reconcile with it. That's the point. I hope you learned. I learned about me.
We're our problems. We think too much. About the moment. We believe it's everything. Time makes it less hard. Unless it gets harder. Maybe leaving's right. But that point won't come soon. If it does? You survive? You get a bonus. You supply more later. Citations: Kahneman's work: Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291. The Undoing Project: Lewis, M. (2016). The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. W.W. Norton & Company. Kahneman's Nobel Prize: The Nobel Prize.
(2002). Daniel Kahneman – Facts.
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