Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - A 30-minute Summary

by Instaread Summaries

With Instaread Summaries, you can get the summary of a book in 30 minutes or less. We read every chapter, summarize and analyze it for your convenience. This is an Instaread Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Below is a preview of the earlier sections of the Introduction In this book Daniel Kahneman hopes to identify and understand errors of judgment and choice. He wants to provide a richer and more accurate vocabulary to discuss these errors. He worked with his colleague, Amos Tversky, doing research on intuitive statistics. The two of them had already concluded in an earlier seminar that their own intuitions were lacking. Their subjective judgments were biased, they were too willing to believe research findings based on inadequate evidence, and they collected too few observations in their own research. The goal of their study was to find out whether other researchers had this problem as well. Kahneman and Tversky found that participants in their studies ignored the relevant statistical facts and relied exclusively on resemblance. They used resemblance as a heuristic (rule of thumb) to simplify things when making a difficult judgment. Relying on this heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic errors) in their predictions. The research partners learned that people tend to determine the importance of issues by how easy they are retrieved from their memory. This is brought about in large part by the extent of coverage of the issues in the media. Kahneman presents a view of how the mind works, drawing on recent developments in cognitive and social psychology. He explains the differences between fast (intuitive) thinking and slow (deliberate) thinking. People have a limitation in their an excessive confidence in what they think they know.

Genres: Science, Psychology

75 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 4, 2014

About the author

With Instaread, you can get the summary and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, summarize and analyze it for your convenience.

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My brother had spoken highly of "Thinking fast and slow" in its full unabridged version but I recognised that I would not find time to read and digest the full opus. This summary was helpful in introducing the ideas in outline.
Clearly I cannot know how faithfully it passes on the arguments of the original but other reviewers seem positive.
Because it is so 'lean' it, predictably, left questions and applications unresolved.
When working I used the contrast between Star Trek's Kirk and Spock to illustrate the emotional/intuitive and the rational/logical. Interaction between them parallels in an, admittedly oversimple way, the exchange between System One and System Two.
The other range of ideas explored by Kahneman made a lot of sense in bringing some understanding to the common human responses that we see and many of the irrational reactions. Fear seems be a factor.
Having recently read "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry" I was struck by one of the closing sentences, "The easiest way for people to increase happiness is to control their use of time."
As was probably true of the original and re-read is in order to consolidate.

[Everson Luis de Campos Moura · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is better than this summary states

I read the whole book by Daniel Kahneman before reading this summary. The summary is good and can be used to help the reader to consolidate some of the main concepts of the book. However, at the end of the summary, there is a bad critic about the book. I strongly disagree with that critic. In my opinion, the book is great, and Daniel Kahneman did a very good job in writing it.

[Charles Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humans, even the smartest, are prone to errors in judgment and mental lapses. In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explores this phenomenon and discusses ways it can be identified and mitigated. Summary of Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman by Instaread analyzes this book, and concludes that the author, though an expert in his field, has failed to effectively communicate his thesis in a book that is tedious and lacks continuity. This objective summary is a prime example of the value of Instaread books. They are a resource that enables readers to get a sense of the content and value of a book before making a purchase decision.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review

[Jessica Gartner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely worth the summary version of this book.