“Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman: Book review

on Jun 10, 2021

In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 provides intuitive judgements based on stimulus we might not even be conscious of receiving; it’s the snap signals that we might not even know we are acting upon. System 2 is the more contemplative, cognitively taxing counterpart that we engage for serious mental exertion.

The difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in knowing about how the human mind works when thinking, Kahneman reveals where we should and shouldn't trust our intuitions and what are the benefits of slow thinking.

He provided insights into how we make our choices in both our professional and our personal lives—and how we can guard ourselves from getting into troubles . Thinking, Fast and Slow can surely transform the way you think about thinking.

He is out to educate us about how these systems cause us to make decisions that aren’t always rational or sensible given the statistics and evidence at hand.

Kahneman talks about the halo effect, affection bias, confirmation bias, and even regression to the mean in the book. In the end, this book is about people and the way they think. This book is a long, comprehensive explanation of why we make decisions the way we do.