Join getAbstract to access the summary!

Daniel Kahneman

Thinking, Fast and Slow

FSG, 2011

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

“Two systems” vie for control of your mind, and “two selves” decide your happiness. Can all four of you ever get along?

Upgrade for audio

Listen to MP3
Audio Summary

Editorial Rating

Qualities

Innovative

Recommendation

The topics that Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman addresses are both complex and integral to the human mind: He asks you to think about thinking by considering how your mind habitually contradicts itself, distorts data and misleads you. His prose is lucid, his reasoning rigorous and his honesty refreshing – more than once Kahneman illustrates conflicted thinking with examples from his own life. The result is a fairly slow read, but an ultimately rewarding experience.

Summary

Your “Two Systems” and What They Mean

When you have to make sense of something, you think about it. To understand this process, consider a model that says people apply two cognitive systems.

The first is “System 1,” or the mental processing that reads emotions and handles your automatic skills, like driving your car or adding two plus two. System 1 takes over your thinking when you comprehend simple statements (such as “complete the phrase ‘bread and . . .’”), instinctively turn to see where a noise is coming from or grimace when you see a gruesome image. System 1 supplies associated meanings (including stereotypes) rapidly and involuntarily.

By contrast, you use “System 2” when you’re focusing on specific details, like counting or figuring out how to complete your income tax forms. System 2 applies effort consciously, such as when you do complicated math, try new physical activities or search for a specific person in a crowd. System 2 thinking is slower, but you need it for methodical thinking processes such as formal logic.

Human beings tend to value the measured System 2 while dismissing the mechanical System 1, but reality is much more complicated. ...

About the Author

Daniel Kahneman, a professor emeritus at Princeton and a Nobel laureate in economics, has written extensively on the psychology of judgment and decision making.

Comment on this summary

Sign in to share your opinion
1 month ago

android 12 smoke test
N. P. 4 months ago

NICE TO KNOW
M. C. 9 months ago

Lovely listening experience! I like and appreciate all the concepts that have been mentioned. Another to-read to add on my list :)

More on this topic

By the same author

Book

Noise

Video

Daniel Kahneman and Yuval Noah Harari in Conversation

Article

A Structured Approach to Strategic Decisions

In our Journal

7 months ago

Journal Article

The Power of a “Nudge”

The context of your choices may mean the difference between success or failure. Before nudge theory became a focus in the behavioral sciences, most people knew it as the art of persuasion. Nudge theory by other names has always been part and parcel of modern advertising, marketing and public relations, because ad men knew before […]

1 year ago

Journal Article

You’ve Got a “Noise” Problem and You Don’t Even Know It

getAbstract International Book Award 2021: Turn down the volume with some good old-fashioned methodical thinking.

1 year ago

Journal Article

Robots Need Bias Awareness Training, Too

Despite their veneer of objectivity, algorithms are as biased as the humans creating them. It’s piñata time! Imagine you’ve invited a bunch of kids to your daughter’s birthday party. You find yourself at a loss watching them squabble over who gets to take the first swing at the papier-mâché lama filled with candy. To prove […]

1 year ago

Journal Article

How to Reduce Complexity

We often make complex things even more difficult by the way we deal with them. Here's how to change that.

2 years ago

Journal Article

Thinking, Fast and Slow (and Artificial)

Daniel Kahneman’s book is becoming a blueprint for the latest AI research.

2 years ago

Journal Article

Our World Is Counterintuitive and Exhausting

What saber-toothed tigers and used-cars salespeople have in common. And what that has to do with your brain and better decisions. Imagine a cubical-shaped pool with edges the length of a kilometer. The pool is filled with water up to the rim. There is a hole in the bottom that leaks 100 liters per hour. […]

2 years ago

Journal Article

Curb Your Biases

How to avoid errors in judgment and thinking. Nobel Prize-winning author and psychologist Daniel Kahneman lays out the case for two systems of thinking in humans in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. “System 1” is fast. It’s the system that reacts automatically to noise. It lets you drive without much conscious thought and answer […]

2 years ago

Journal Article

The Future of Decision Making?

AI and the Limits of Common Sense First of all: What is common sense? It was at the beginning of the 18th century that this philosophical term first acquired its modern meaning. Common sense became the basis for modern thinking in contrast to metaphysics that was practiced during the middle ages. Today, common sense and […]

2 years ago

Journal Article

Lessons from the Top of the World

Business writers find insight for leaders from the challenges and deadly hazards of climbing Mount Everest. What’s in it for you? Bold company objectives can be as bracing and formidable as climbing Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak, a feat that’s beckoned generations of adventurers but wasn’t accomplished until 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and his […]

3 years ago

Journal Article

Our Most Popular Books

Time to highlight some of the most successful titles from our library! By popular demand: Here are the most successful books from over 20 years of getAbstract. If you are not yet a customer, take advantage of our Free Access offer until May 18, and read or download all summaries free of charge. 10 9 […]