It is very difficult to comprehend, review and analyze a book that challenges the idea of human rationalism. Are humans rational? Daniel Kahneman got a Nobel Prize for saying we are not.
The main takeaway of this book is that people think in two ways: fast, which is done by System 1, which is instinctive, emotional, impulsive, judgmental, easily manipulated; and slow, done by System 2, which is more deliberative, intelligent, indolent, logical and... lazy.
Kahneman elaborates on his years of research, experiments and surveys exploring every nook of our mind. He focuses on a diverse set of heuristics and biases that affect our judgments in everyday life.
Reading this book made me question my own rationality and how often System 2 allows System 1 to take over. It becomes more interesting if we include sentiments of free will, intention, choice. Are our choices really our own?
Considering things like the associative machine, cognitive ease, exposure effect, normality illusion, question substitution, what we see is all there is, loss aversion, overconfidence and hindsight bias, lost cost fallacy, makes me wonder if a single human has ever had an original, rational thought, free of influence.
Along with The Power of Habit, Thinking, fast and slow changed my life. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Behavioral Psychology.
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