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BEYOND_KAHN
June 16, 2014
July 6, 2014
July 17, 2014
Kahneman's attitude toward the subjects he's
researched leaves me feeling puzzled. FAST_SLOW_AND_SLOWER
His tone seems to vary from place to place--
Is Kahneman describing varieties of insane
behavior that are problems to be addressed,
or is this "insanity" so common that it
should simply be expected, and the real
insanity would be to reject it, and not
regard it as normal?
Does Kahneman *approve* of the way our
minds work, or does he think of humanity Programs to perfect
as a rough diamond? mankind have gone out
of favor, but it's
Granted, his primary mission is to not like it's that
*study* how human minds work, but ridiculous an idea.
once you know something about an
evident flaw in human reasoning, Even if you want to
other questions come up immediately: believe that human
nature is fixed,
Can this be fixed or evaded? there are many ways
How do we compensate for it? to use human
nature: many
His remarks in this direction are sketchy. variations in human
social institutions
are possible.
In several places he makes fun of Economists
(though really he means just the fresh-water
guys, the Austrians and such) for being true MADNESS
believers in the rational actor model: they
often seem to think that actual human beings
really are "rational actors"-- a notion which
comes as a surprise to the rest of humanity.
Kahneman thinks of these "rational actors"
as an alien race he calls Econs, as
opposed to human beings.
But the question remains open: Should
human beings strive to be "Econs"? Some results Kahneman describes
How would someone get closer to being makes it sound like it might be
an Econ? promising to train people to
think, but in other places he
sounds pessimistic about it.
Moving beyond Kahneman and co's
results, where do we go?
Working through his "Conclusions" section:
"What can be done about biases? How can we improve judgments and
decisions, about our own and those of the institutions that we
serve and that serve us? The short answer is that little can be
achieved without a conserable investment of effort. As I know
from experience, System 1 is not readily educable." -- p.417
In his own case, Kahneman comments he thinks he can now identify
situations where errors are more likely, but has made better
progress in recognizing others errors rather than his own.
That's an interesting observation in itself,
and suggests an angle of attack: work on BLIND_FIELD
o learning to listen to criticism,
o develop institutions where other's insights can
act as a check on your own errors.
"The way to block errors that originate in System 1 is
simple in principle: recognize the signs that you are in a
cognitive minefield, slow down, and ask for reinforcement
from System 2."
Or I might add, ask for assistance from others.
"... cognitive illusions are generally more difficult
to recognize than perceptual illusions. The voice of
reason may be much fainter than the loud and clear
voice of an erroneous intuition, and questioning your
intuitions is unpleasant when you face the stress of a
big decision. More doubt is the last thing you want
when you are in trouble. The upshot is that it is much
easier to identify a minefield when you observe others
wandering into it than when you are about to do so.
Observers are less cognitively busy and more open to
information than actors."
The next steps after Kahneman:
o training to improve individual cognition
(to the extent possible)
o design of social insitutions to compensate
for human flaws
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