One of the first times I met Danny Kahneman was over dinner, just after SuperFreakonomics was published. Shortly after we were introduced, Danny said, “I enjoyed your new book. It will change the future of the world.” I beamed with pride at this compliment. Danny, however, was not done speaking. “It will change the future of the world. And not for the better.” While I’m sure many people would agree with his last sentence, he was the only person who ever said it to my face!
If you don’t know the name, Danny Kahneman is the non-economist who has had the greatest influence on economics of any non-economist who ever lived. A psychologist, he’s the only non-economist to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, for his pioneering work in behavioral economics. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that he is among the 50 most influential economic thinkers of all time, and among the ten most influential living economic thinkers.
In the years since that dinner with Danny, I’ve gotten to know him quite well. Every time I am with him, he teaches me something. His particular brilliance, I have decided, is being able to see what should be totally obvious, but somehow no one else manages to notice until he points it out.
He has a fantastic new book aimed at a popular audience entitled Thinking, Fast and Slow. It is a wonderfully engaging stroll through the world of behavioral economics – the kind of book people are going to be talking about for a long, long time.
Danny has generously offered to take questions from Freakonomics blog readers. So post your questions in the comments section, and if you are lucky will you get to a response from one of the wisest sages of our time. [Addendum: the answers to your questions can be found in this post.]
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Dear Professor Kahneman,
With the launch of Siri and a stated aim to be to use the data collected to improve the performance of its AI, should we expect these types of quasi-intelligences to develop the same behavioural foibles that we exhibit, or should we expect something completely different?
And if something different, would that something be more likely to reflect the old ‘rational’ assumptions of behaviour , or some totally other emergent set of biases and quirks based on its own underlying architecture?
My money’s on emergent weirdness, but then I don’t have a Nobel Prize….
Best wishes
Peter
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So of course there’s been a whole slew of research showing that we are quite irrational and prone to errors in our thinking. Have there been research to help us be more rational?
That saves me. Thanks for being so seinbsle!
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Out of curiosity why did you think that Freakonomics would change the world for the worst? In analyzing where our intuitions may lead us astray it seems to be part of an intellectual movement you and Tversky in many ways began.
Also, in my life, I have found that reason and logic to be the best tools in making my life better, but I supplement with intuition when it comes to trusting people and love. Are there examples of decisions where we should trust our intuition more than our reasoning mind?
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Professor Kahneman, i would like to know your opinion on the relation between pleasure, utility and happiness. Is it posible that the maximization of expected utilty (estimated upon the recall of past utility) did lead to a different outcome than the maximization of happiness? What about the maximization of pleasure??
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What do you think about “Fast and Slow Thinking” being released the day before your book, by Karl Daniels (a name which bears similarities to your own)?
What did you mean about the Freakonomics changing the world in a bad way.
have u applied the ‘focusing illusion’ concept to voting?- viz. might it be an explanation for What’s the Matter With Kansas?, i.e. that voters may ratify a political platform that goes against their interests because of abortion legislation, etc.
Suppose I’m the Chief Academic Officer at a University and find the number of first-year students who fail academically to be higher than I would expect (after all, their applications and credentials looked like they could do college level work when they were admitted). How can the ideas in the book be applied to improving student learning in college?