Daniel-Kahneman

Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Rational and Intuitive Problem-Solving

by

A rare aha moment in 2011 set me chas­ing new prob­lem-solv­ing research. The study Ratio­nal Ver­sus Intu­itive Prob­lem-Solv­ing: How Think­ing ‘Off the Beat­en Path’ Can Stim­u­late Cre­ativ­i­ty pub­lished in Psy­chol­o­gy of Aes­thet­ics, Cre­ativ­i­ty, and the Arts stung me out of a spot of intel­lec­tu­al arro­gance. From my per­spec­tive, John Dewey’s 19th cen­tu­ry step-wise [Read more…] about Why Agile Minds Deploy Both Ratio­nal and Intu­itive Problem-Solving

Daniel Kahneman on the Need to Think Slow (at times)

by

So Much for Snap Deci­sions (The Wall Street Journal):
— “How is it that so many peo­ple make deci­sions that, from their per­spec­tive, seem so right—and turn out so wrong? Blame it, in part, on think­ing “fast.”

- “On some occa­sions, when the stakes are high, exam­in­ing the evi­dence more systematically—especially the evi­dence that makes you uncomfortable—is like­ly to be worthwhile.”

- “This is how sci­en­tists often oper­ate in eval­u­at­ing their own ideas. They imag­ine a severe review­er who will be search­ing for weak­ness­es in their argument.”

To Learn More:

How cognitive illusions blind us to reason

by

Fun arti­cle by Daniel Kah­ne­man based on his new book,Think­ing, Fast and Slow.

How cog­ni­tive illu­sions blind us to rea­son (The Guardian):

Why do Wall Street traders have such faith in their pow­ers of pre­dic­tion, when their suc­cess is large­ly down to chance? Daniel Kah­ne­man explains. 

- “Look­ing back, the most strik­ing part of the sto­ry is that our knowl­edge of the gen­er­al rule that we could not pre­dict had no effect on our con­fi­dence in indi­vid­ual cas­es. We were reluc­tant to infer the par­tic­u­lar from the gen­er­al. Sub­jec­tive con­fi­dence in a judg­ment is not a rea­soned eval­u­a­tion of the prob­a­bil­i­ty that this judg­ment is cor­rect. Con­fi­dence is a feel­ing, which reflects the coher­ence of the infor­ma­tion and the cog­ni­tive ease of pro­cess­ing it. It is wise to take admis­sions of uncer­tain­ty seri­ous­ly, but dec­la­ra­tions of high con­fi­dence main­ly tell you that an indi­vid­ual has con­struct­ed a coher­ent sto­ry in his mind, not nec­es­sar­i­ly that the sto­ry is true.” …

- “The sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of traders is that they are mak­ing sen­si­ble edu­cat­ed guess­es in a sit­u­a­tion of great uncer­tain­ty. In high­ly effi­cient mar­kets, how­ev­er, edu­cat­ed guess­es are no more accu­rate than blind guesses.”

Relat­ed articles:

Mind Teaser: Consider Linda

by

(I hope you enjoy this very reveal­ing mind teaser!)

Please con­sid­er Lin­da, a 31-year-old woman, sin­gle and bright. When she was a stu­dent, both in high school and col­lege, she was deeply con­cerned with dis­crim­i­na­tion and social jus­tice, and also par­tic­i­pat­ed in anti-nuclear protests.

Which is more prob­a­ble about Lin­da’s occu­pa­tion today? (a) Lin­da is a bank teller; (b) Lin­da is a bank teller and active in the envi­ron­men­tal movement.

Quick, what’s your answer? (a) or (b)?

—

If you answered (b), you are wrong, and in good com­pa­ny. That’s what most of my col­leagues and I answered the first time we saw this teas­er in one of our Stan­ford Orga­ni­za­tion­al Behav­ior classes.

It is more prob­a­ble that Lin­da is a bank teller, which is a whole cat­e­go­ry, that she is both a bank teller AND also active in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment, which is a sub­set of that whole category.

A recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle explains the phenomenon:

Free to Choose, But Often Wrong:

“When psy­chol­o­gists Daniel Kah­ne­man and the late Amos Tver­sky con­duct­ed an exper­i­men­tal sur­vey in the ear­ly 1980s ask­ing peo­ple to answer this sim­ple ques­tion, they dis­cov­ered, to their sur­prise, that most respon­dents picked “b,” even though this was the nar­row­er choice and hence the less like­ly one. It seems that salien­cy in this case, Lin­da’s pas­sion­ate polit­i­cal pro­file trumps logic.”

Relat­ed read­ing and teasers:

- Why Smart Brains Make Stu­pid Decisions

- 50 brain teasers to test your cog­ni­tive abil­i­ty.

Brain Fitness @ Education, Training, Health events

by

Brain Fitness eventsIn what cat­e­go­ry does Brain Fit­ness fit? Edu­ca­tion, Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Train­ing, Health? Most of the inter­est so far has come from a Healthy Aging angle, but we are start­ing to see broad­er inter­est, as in the events below. After all, isn’t work­ing on our brains rel­e­vant to all those markets?.

2 busy weeks: I am attending/ speak­ing at a vari­ety of events. I will make sure to blog at least the take-aways from the main events dai­ly, and Car­o­line will also add her per­spec­tive as much as possible.

A) Octo­ber 3–6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Institute

B) Octo­ber 9th: First ses­sion of my class The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness at the UC-Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute (OLLI)

C) Octo­ber 10th: Teach­ing Brain Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty, work­shop at an Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (ASA) con­fer­ence for health professionals

D) Octo­ber 10th: Sci­ence at Work, Inter­view at the event The Future of Work: Ampli­fied Indi­vid­u­als, Ampli­fied Orga­ni­za­tions, orga­nized by the Insti­tute for the Future 

—————————–

A) Octo­ber 3–6th: The Aspen Health Forum at the Aspen Insti­tute. This promis­es to be a fas­ci­nat­ing event. See below the pan­els I am attending‑I will make sure to write some notes every day to keep you in the discussion.

Wednes­day Octo­ber 3rd:

Great Expec­ta­tions: Amer­i­can Atti­tudes toward Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Medicine

Health­care Re-Imag­ined: Learn­ing from Olympic Athletes

Thurs­day 4th:

The Dam­aged Brain: The Fight Against Neurodegeneration

The Human Ele­ment: A Can­did Con­ver­sa­tion about Pio­neers of Mod­ern Medicine

The Last Fron­tier: The Mind

Glob­al Sci­en­tif­ic Investment

Sci­ence Ver­sus the Bio­log­i­cal Clock [Read more…] about Brain Fit­ness @ Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing, Health events