A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
April 3, 2017
Actor Boutsikaris narrates Lewis’s latest with finesse. He creates and sustains the sense that he’s right there telling you this story about two brilliant friends, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who profoundly influenced the way we all think about thinking. In such areas as economics, medicine, sports, and government policy, they showed how intuitive judgments are generally mistaken. Boutsikaris adroitly highlights their process of discovery, their responses to their own findings, the intensity of their feelings about their evolving personal and professional collaboration and about public responses to their revolutionary theories. This is a great listen for anyone familiar with the field; Boutsikaris reads clearly but quickly, so uninitiated listeners may need to hit pause to think through Kahneman’s and Tversky’s concepts. A Norton hardcover.
December 12, 2016
Lewis (Flash Boys) deftly explores a timeless and fascinating subjectâhuman decision-makingâthrough the intellectually intimate collaboration of two influential psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The pair met in 1969 and worked together until a few years before Tversky's death in 1996. As Lewis explains, they discovered that people do not make decisions as economists long believedâas "intuitive statisticians"âbut rather in a chaotic fashion shot through with confirmation bias, fears of regret, sensitivity to change, the desire to avoid loss, and a propensity to mentally undo distressing outcomes. Through interviews with Tversky and Kahneman's friends, family, colleagues, rivals, and critics, as well as the psychologists' own recollections, letters, and published papers, Lewis seamlessly pieces together an informative and engagingly paced story. He begins with a step-by-step explanation of why both human minds and statistical models so often fail to produce the best choice. He then interweaves the psychologists' early lives, military service in defense of the young state of Israel, and professorial careers in both Israel and the United States with their questions, theories, and startling conclusions about how people actually make decisions. Lewis' latest effort is a joy to read, packed with "aha!" moments, telling and at times hilarious details, and elegant explanations of complex experiments and theories.