About
Thinking, Fast and Slow outlines the two most prevalent techniques our brains use. Our brain, like a computer, is made up of systems.
System 1 is quick, intuitive, and emotionally charged. Daniel Kahneman wants us to wean ourselves off of this system. The most prevalent source of errors and stagnation is System 1.
System 2 is a more careful, slower, and logical reasoning process. Kahneman advises using this system more regularly. In addition to this counsel, Kahneman explains how and why we make decisions.
Notable quotes
- “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”
- “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it”
- “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”
- “If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.”
- “Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.”
- “The psychologist, Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches.”
- “The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.”
- “Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”
- “This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.”
- “The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little.”
- “We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.”
- “We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.”
- “A reliable way of making people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”
- “The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.”
- “You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.”
- “The easiest way to increase happiness is to control your use of time. Can you find more time to do the things you enjoy doing?”
- “Familiarity breeds liking.”
- “The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.”
- “The test of learning psychology is whether your understanding of situations you encounter has changed, not whether you have learned a new fact.”
- “acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.”