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Friday, March 29, 2024

Basketball: A Great Thinker Passes, Study Danny Kahneman

Communication and action improve when we think clearly with fewer biases and distraction. Here's a valuable post about the late Danny Kahneman (Professor emeritus, Princeton) by Vadym Graifer.  


Vadym Graifer

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Daniel Kahneman died at 90. Man who changed psychology forever. His book Thinking, Fast and Slow, changed forever the way I think of people, their actions, and life in general. A few memorable quotes from his works:
- We're blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We're not designed to know how little we know.
- Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.
- Your emotional state really has a lot to do with what you're thinking about and what you're paying attention to.
- There's a lot of randomness in the decisions that people make.
- We're generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments.
- What you see is all there is.
- A reliable way of making people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. (This is especially frightening one, isn't it? -V.G.)
- The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story, the mind has managed to construct.

Brilliant mind, accomplished man. Thanks for making me learn to think slow.
A Nobel Laureate, Kahneman partnered with Amos Tversky to develop critical theories (e.g. Prospect Theory) and psychological advances. 

Although literally a legend in his field, Professor Kahneman took questions via email. I asked him a question about dementia via his Princeton email and he answered, "I can't believe anyone read the whole book (Thinking: Fast and Slow). Tedious." The book emphasizes that we have "reflexive" thinking for instantaneous decisions (that can save us) and "reflective" thinking that requires more mental work. 

Michael Lewis's book The Undoing Project discussed their career with emphasis on Kahneman as Tversky had passed. One chapter is about the NBA's Daryl Morey and how analytics changed basketball.

Celebrate Danny Kahneman life and contributions. 

Lagniappe. BOB thread from Coach Tim. 
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