Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Its kinda summary but mostly to show the beauty of this book

One of the books that have most changed the way I think is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Psychologist Daniel Kahneman. It goes to the fundamental level of Human Decision making and breaks down how we humans make our decisions. Even though it was a bit tough read as it had a lot of experiments and boring stuff but it just happens just for a little time. As this book was a bit long and hard read, it lead me to think about the experiments and assumptions made in the book while reading it. I have got the most key insights into human nature and decision-making through this book.

Some think that this book is just a tedious read and conclude that we are lazy creatures trying to cut the mental work but everyone draws different conclusions from the same stuff. Kahneman tries to explain the decision-making process by dividing the brain into 2 parts- System 1( lazy and biased) and system 2( questioning and taking mental work ). When we are exhausted which is most of the time, our system 1 makes a decision that is rarely based on evidence and is biased. Our brain uses it because it’s less intensive and non time-consuming. Decisions made by system 1 arent most of the time the best ones and show biases in our thinking. One of the most intriguing biases is Confirmation bias. Confirmation Bias is when you look and stress more on the evidence that supports your decision rather than looking at counterexamples and finding a better solution. This lead me to reflect on my own decisions where I saw how better decisions I could have made without bias.

One of the most key insights was the Planning fallacy. This happens when we make over-optimistic decisions without a full understanding of the costs and losses . This happens because of the outsider view and fault in our reasoning. The decision-maker doesn’t leave room for mistakes and errors while making the decision or forecasting something which usually leads to wrong predictions and bad decisions. One wise word was “ unknown unkowns”. This helped me to always account for and recduce my biases and overconfidence when I make some important decision.

After reading this book, I subconsciously ratioanlaized others decision and tried of thinking about their biases and thinking process when I didn’t like their decisions at all . It helped me by making me more rationale and wise than I was before reading this book . It helped me think about other people and how they are just innocent most of the times make make bad decisons because of the biases and overconfidence they have been seeing and inherit from other people . I hope you read this book and share your review and insights with me .

Now I will leave you with a line from the book “people will make better decisions when they trust their critics to be sophisticated and fair, and when they expect their deiciosn to be judged by how it was made , not only by how it turned out”.

PS : thought you will get away soon haha. Thanks for reading this blogpost dear reader . I have been unable to be consistent which I will try to be good at .

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