Thinking, Fast And Slow

A great post!

Thanks Obyvatel & to all who participated!

After reading all the threads in this post, I am reminded
of the way of the warrior: "Know thy enemy...", or the
"Petty Tyrant", to learn of his thoughts and ways that
we may become more aware thoughts and actions and
to better forearm and defend ourselves.
 
Okay, Kahneman reveals a lot in chapter 13 when he talks about the theories of Cass Sunstein. Remember ole Cass?

A little refresher:
https://www.sott.net/articles/show/202120-Cass-Sunstein-Agent-of-COINTELPRO

https://www.sott.net/articles/show/230906-COINTELPRO-Pied-piper-Charlie-Veitch-pulls-a-9-11-U-turn-says-people-who-disbelieve-official-story-are-part-of-paranoid-cult-

https://www.sott.net/articles/show/219703-Cass-Sunstein-Wikileaks-And-The-Public-Right-To-Know

https://www.sott.net/articles/show/239394-Wikileaks-a-COGNITIVE-INFILTRATION-Operation


Kahneman describes Sunstein as "one of the foremost legal scholars in the United States, and shares with other leaders of his profession the attribute of intellectual fearlessness."

I would say that Sunstein is a psychopath if he's anything. At the very least, a raging Authoritarian.

It begins at page 141. On page 142, Kahneman exposes himself as at best, abysmally ignorant or, at worst, deliberately writing disinformation. I think it's the former because I can't believe that anybody who has his education and experiences actually believes what he is writing about the media.

On page 144, he writes that "terrorists are the most significant practitioners of the art of inducing availability cascades." What he leaves out is that those "terrorists" are the governments themselves.

He gives small lip-service to NOT agreeing fully with Sunstein, but I think that is totally disingenuous.
 
The more I read here on Kahneman, the less interested I am in bothering with the guy's work. :-[

Is reading him worth spending the money on his book? I'm still working through "Strangers to Ourselves" and "In an Unspoken Voice." Those are both easy reads, which are tough right now from a physical standpoint. (I'm going to physical therapy, and while its working wonders, its also tiring....I start reading and go to sleep.)

If the information is worth incorporating, I'll get a used copy. Part of me just wants to throw a rubber chicken at him. :rolleyes:
 
Gimpy said:
The more I read here on Kahneman, the less interested I am in bothering with the guy's work. :-[

Is reading him worth spending the money on his book? I'm still working through "Strangers to Ourselves" and "In an Unspoken Voice." Those are both easy reads, which are tough right now from a physical standpoint. (I'm going to physical therapy, and while its working wonders, its also tiring....I start reading and go to sleep.)

If the information is worth incorporating, I'll get a used copy. Part of me just wants to throw a rubber chicken at him. :rolleyes:

Yes, it is very much worth it. Kahneman wrote this book to show off and the benefit we get from it is what THEY know about how human beings really function.
 
Laura said:
Yes, it is very much worth it. Kahneman wrote this book to show off and the benefit we get from it is what THEY know about how human beings really function.

I find it useful to work through his observations as they apply to my own mind. While I have been exposed to this kind of information previously, I still find things I forgot about or never noticed. I don't think, though, that the information presented is complete. It strikes me as a deliberate simplification. You don't get all the details for the price of a book.

Much of what I learned in the past was in the context of a form of "sales training" that drew upon an understanding of how minds work. I have never been involved in selling anything that way. In fact I made a conscious decision not to go down that route. But I have used what I learned as a DEFENSE ever since. I think the same thing applies here.

As an example, as I was looking at the "Paleo Summit" download offer on their website a few minutes ago I could see how they presented a variety of prices for the one product, and notice how they were attempting to influence my thinking. That is an aspect I did not learn about earlier, or that I totally forgot about. (And I did buy the download package, but I thought that through before I ever went to the website to complete the purchase.)
 
Gimpy said:
The more I read here on Kahneman, the less interested I am in bothering with the guy's work. :-[

Is reading him worth spending the money on his book? I'm still working through "Strangers to Ourselves" and "In an Unspoken Voice." Those are both easy reads, which are tough right now from a physical standpoint. (I'm going to physical therapy, and while its working wonders, its also tiring....I start reading and go to sleep.)

If the information is worth incorporating, I'll get a used copy. Part of me just wants to throw a rubber chicken at him. :rolleyes:

My take on this is that the book is useful because of the hard data it contains on human behavior. One would probably need to dig through hundreds of academic papers from multiple disciplines (psychology, economics etc) to get the information that is contained in the book.

As far as the author is concerned, my take is that like many in academia and elsewhere, he is an useful t(f)ool for the PTB. A well-developed narrow focus intellect along with the desire for adulation (the "see how smart I am" attitude which Laura mentioned) is an usual combination for this class of people in general. The research or work they generate is used by the PTB who keep the good stuff coming by throwing bones at them (titles and research grants/ prizes for academics, money and stock for corporate types). But just as it could be counter-productive for our goals to eschew certain aspects of technology because of the various evils associated with it, here too we need to be discerning of what we can use. After all these are just tools - and it is in our interest to make best use of the tools that are available to us to work towards our goals.

My 2 cents
 
Mr. Gurdjieff said:
"When you go on spree go the entire hog, including the postage."

I write these words to pay for what I stole. I understand more of Mr. Gurdjieff’s cryptic response to Mourvieff’s query as to the origin of Mr. Gurdjieff’s teachings. He famously responded, “I stole the teaching.” Perhaps, we each must take for ourselves, the cubic centimeter of chance the universe dangles in front of us on rare occasion.

I recently posted a variety of mechanical reactions to Daniel Kahneman’s accumulated knowledge on this thread. It is inconsiderate for a drunken driver to take the horse drawn carriage out on the road late at night. The runaway horses take roads into bad neighborhoods. Thanks to developing trust of the forum and its moderation, I took the opportunity to let the horses run to develop material for real work effort.

Mullah Nassr Eddin in Beelzebub’s Tales said:
“One can never know who might help you to get out of galoshes.”

Anart’s description of go2’s state as petulant did the trick. The drunken driver go2 woke up at the strange descriptor…petulant. Petulant is a negative emotion mingling anger and self-pity into a new and unrecognized negative state. After waking up a little and finding the mute button, I began to use the work to examine the entire context of the go2’s petulant spree.

I studied go2’s mechanical reaction to Daniel Kahneman’s famous Nobel Prize Lecture. If I have a negative emotional reaction, it is some facet of go2’s machine I have not observed, accepted, or acknowledged. Why was I angered by his speech? What had I not seen, acknowledged, and accepted in the go2 machine, which now projected out onto the world so strongly? I took Daniel Kahneman’s inventory and put my name at the bottom of the page. He is an arrogant mechanical know-it-all. That is go2, an arrogant know-it-all automatic reaction machine criticizing Daniel Kahneman’s machine.

It is interesting to experience the negative emotional reaction to other’s machines vanish when I see identical machine parts in my inner world; hidden behind the reflecting buffers, projecting the dark unconscious machine protocols onto the mechanical world and its mechanical people. I cannot hate what I understand. The experience of annoyance, anger, petulance, fear etc. of other people’s machines is fertile soil to examine the workings of the go2 machine. The phenomenon of criticizing others for what I am myself is called hypocrisy in the work. I now have experience to make inner correlations with the word hypocrisy that make real understanding of hypocrisy. The work is practical or it is not work. Work connects the outer world with the inner world. Is this connecting the objective world to the subjective world?

I am doing another work exercise taken from Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries. I am trying to like what I dislike. It is like praying for one’s enemies. Well, I don’t dislike Daniel Kahneman any longer, but liking hasn’t progressed beyond laughing at his antics and wiseacreing. He is a showman and a good boy. So am I.

This episode and my relationship with the forum have been discussed in depth with practitioners of the Twelve Step spiritual principles which are derived from early Christianity. There is a wealth of work memory of using work principles in daily life, within some of these individuals. I discussed the feelings of fear and shame after go2's spree, with a retired psychologist from Texas who has decades of experience with Twelve Step spiritual principles. After he listened to my detailed description of the event he asked a question, “Do you remember the first time you began to pretend to be different than you are?” I thought for a few minutes and the feeling of fear and shame led me back to a similar feeling event when I was five years old.

I grew up in a family which read parables, fables and fairy tales and I did not know that most of the world cannot hear in symbol and metaphor. The world is weighed and measured and labeled according to the protocol's of secular man. At kindergarten show and tell, I wove beautiful stories from arrowheads and bird’s eggs which I had found. The Middle American teacher and principal called my parents to discuss the possibility that my stories indicated a lack of appropriate perception of reality. They called my stories lying.

My parents were mortified and urged me to find the famous mute button. That is the moment I became a good little go2 machine. The problem with being a good boy is I have to deny and buffer real feelings and impressions to pretend to be decent and civilized. It is the history of civilization, within our inner world. It is the comet Kondoor striking the earth and Atlantis sinking beneath the sea of the subconscious. The go2 machine does not feel, has no conscience, and is not real. We are captured and domesticated and have forgotten the trauma of our education as civilized machines.

I have been examining and digesting the patterns of behavior and the psyche implications of this recovered memory, using the work as third force to understand go2's sprees and the origins and structures of go2's machine. When we go down this path far enough the work begins to fight our machine. This is the work which can lead us to consciousness from the material of our lives if we can pay the price of conscious labor and intentional suffering. My foe is not Daniel Kahneman and his world, my foe is what I have not observed, acknowledged, and accepted in my inner world.

Mathew 10:34-36 said:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

I wish to thank all who provided material and guidance so I can work to be a conscious man.
 
go2 said:
I cannot hate what I understand.
...
My foe is not Daniel Kahneman and his world, my foe is what I have not observed, acknowledged, and accepted in my inner world.

I think you stated your point well.
 
I am in the middle of reading this book, and I have a question in regards to a paragraph that is bothering me. Since I have just really delved into this realm, I may be out in left field so if anyone can help to point out where I may be error I would appreciate it.

I have heard of too many people that "knew well before it happened that the 2008 financial crisis was inevitable'. This sentence contains a highly objectionable word, which should be removed from our vocabulary in discussions of major events. The word is, of course, knew. Some people thought well in advance that there would be a crisis, but they did not know it. They now say they knew it because the crisis did in fact happen. This is a misuse of an important concept. In everyday language, we apply the word know only when what was knw is true and can be shown to be true. We can know something only if it is both true and knowable. But the people who thought there would be a crisis ( and there are fewer of them than now remember thinking it ) could not conclusively show it at the time. Many intelligent and well informed people were keenly interested in the future of the economy and did not believe a catastrophe was imminent; I infer from this fact that the crisis was not knowable. What is perverse about the use of the word know in this context is not that some individuals get credit for prescience that they do not deserve. It is that the language implies that the world is more knowable than it is. It helps perpetuate a pernicious illusion.




Now, to me, based on all the material before this, even though "know" may not have been the best word used here, if one used a baseline and factored in all available data, the "probability" was high enough to say it was most likely, statisticly.


And this sentence in particular:


Many intelligent and well informed people were keenly interested in the future of the economy and did not believe a catastrophe was imminent; I infer from this fact that the crisis was not knowable.

Well, that sentence makes me ask myself " What does that have to do with the price of tea in China, if we are to take all of the prior Baysian thinking and statistics into consideration in reading this, along with logical fallacies?"

Am I out in left field, or is this a subtle misdirect to the reader? This is from pgs 200-201.




edit- spelling





 
EmeraldHope said:
...Now, to me, based on all the material before this, even though "know" may not have been the best word used here, if one used a baseline and factored in all available data, the "probability" was high enough to say it was most likely, statisticly.

I think you are arguing from hindsight. What you are thinking seems to be what the author is trying to point out people's thinking.

And this sentence in particular:


Many intelligent and well informed people were keenly interested in the future of the economy and did not believe a catastrophe was imminent; I infer from this fact that the crisis was not knowable.

Well, that sentence makes me as myself " What does that have to do with the price of tea in China, if we are to take all of the prior Baysian thinking and statistics into consideration in reading this, along with logical fallacies?"

Am I out in left field, or is this a subtle misdirect to the reader? This is from pgs 200-201.

Could you phrase that another way? I find your question difficult to understand. Leonard Mlodinow makes much the same point as Kahneman, in The Drunkard's Walk. I think it is well worth considering.
 
Megan said:
EmeraldHope said:
...Now, to me, based on all the material before this, even though "know" may not have been the best word used here, if one used a baseline and factored in all available data, the "probability" was high enough to say it was most likely, statisticly.

I think you are arguing from hindsight. What you are thinking seems to be what the author is trying to point out people's thinking.

And this sentence in particular:


Many intelligent and well informed people were keenly interested in the future of the economy and did not believe a catastrophe was imminent; I infer from this fact that the crisis was not knowable.

Well, that sentence makes me as myself " What does that have to do with the price of tea in China, if we are to take all of the prior Baysian thinking and statistics into consideration in reading this, along with logical fallacies?"

Am I out in left field, or is this a subtle misdirect to the reader? This is from pgs 200-201.

Could you phrase that another way? I find your question difficult to understand. Leonard Mlodinow makes much the same point as Kahneman, in The Drunkard's Walk. I think it is well worth considering.


I will try. I am pretty sure I have a system 1 error somewhere. I understand what he is saying here if I take it literally, and in a vaccum, as to anything is not 100% certain until after the fact. Granted. No problem.


What I am having an issue with, and where I need to know where my thinking is off, is maybe due to comparing the previous material that came before this in the book, to this particular statement.


The sentence in bold does not seem right to me, because just because some people are intelligent and interested in the economy does not mean that the crisis was not knowable. As I said, not to 100% accuracy, but the probability if based on objective reality was calculated, a baseline formed, and a percentage given, it would have indicated it as highly likely. Also, given the fact that he had been discussing regression to the mean, it is also pretty certain just on that concept along the economy would get worse in about the the same swing that it had climbed.


My brain ( system 1) then translated it into poker language, as I am a poker player. For example. the hard core math of wining a hand in texas holdem if you are dealt Ace Ace preflop is 80%. 20% of the time you will lose, and you may hit negative variance and lose twelve times in a row, but in the long run, with a large enough sample size, you will win 80% of the time with that hand. The bolded sentence above reminds me of poker players who do not know their math well, and when the negative variance hits start complaining that the game is rigged, or making a statement such as " I know how to play poker and since I did I am well informed and interested in the outcome of the game it is not possible that someone could know that is was going to happen. Well, maybe not on those exact twelve times, but statistically , anyone with the "right" information and who bothered to study the math would know it would happen. It is a mathematical certainty.


What I am saying is that based on all of the information leading up to this, this just doesnt sit exactly right to me. I am sure that it is my instrument that is off, as my system 2 is still being trained and I have not read all of the cognitive books yet. But, I figured I would nip it in the bud and ask so I can try to correct it now. I hope that makes a little more sense. If it doen't , I will try to put it another way. Thanks, Megan.
 
EmeraldHope said:
I understand what he is saying here if I take it literally, and in a vaccum, as to anything is not 100% certain until after the fact. Granted. No problem.


What I am having an issue with, and where I need to know where my thinking is off, is maybe due to comparing the previous material that came before this in the book, to this particular statement.

[quote author=Thinking, Fast and Slow]
Many intelligent and well informed people were keenly interested in the future of the economy and did not believe a catastrophe was imminent; I infer from this fact that the crisis was not knowable.

The sentence in bold does not seem right to me, because just because some people are intelligent and interested in the economy does not mean that the crisis was not knowable. As I said, not to 100% accuracy, but the probability if based on objective reality was calculated, a baseline formed, and a percentage given, it would have indicated it as highly likely. Also, given the fact that he had been discussing regression to the mean, it is also pretty certain just on that concept along the economy would get worse in about the the same swing that it had climbed.

[/quote]

I am not a finance person in any way - but my opinion is that what happened in the financial sector cannot be explained by a simple regression to the mean concept. It was not part of normal up and down swings which usually affect the sector.

Based on what we read on sott and elsewhere, we would say that the probability was high that the collapse would occur. Now the author is a mainstream guy who was won the Nobel prize. He has his own ego stake in the system. It is possible that he is unwilling to admit or even see the possibility that the crisis could be foreseen by "intelligent" people since he thinks that the (mainstream) circle he moves in and considers to be "super-intelligent" did not or could not see it. So he is eager to dismiss what others could see using his authority. Hindsight bias exists - but that does not mean it can be invoked universally as an explanation of all such phenomena. At least that is the way I am seeing it in this specific context.
 
Obyvatal:
I am not a finance person in any way - but my opinion is that what happened in the financial sector cannot be explained by a simple regression to the mean concept. It was not part of normal up and down swings which usually affect the sector. Based on what we read on sott and elsewhere, we would say that the probability was high that the collapse would occur. Now the author is a mainstream guy who was won the Nobel prize. He has his own ego stake in the system. It is possible that he is unwilling to admit or even see the possibility that the crisis could be foreseen by "intelligent" people since he thinks that the (mainstream) circle he moves in and considers to be "super-intelligent" did not or could not see it. So he is eager to dismiss what others could see using his authority. Hindsight bias exists - but that does not mean it can be invoked universally as an explanation of all such phenomena. At least that is the way I am seeing it in this specific context.


I agree that it was not a normal swing down, but the swing up was not normal either. So I still see it as regression for now. Either way, your opinion makes me feel better as I could not agree with the bolded statement. I can not eloquently say exactly why, though I tried, but hopefully my thinking is not as far off as I was scared it was. I thought perhaps it was an intentional misdirect to the reader by the author as it did not make sense as a whole compared to the pages prior and what I know in regards to variance and game theory. But I also know my system 2 is not my strongest tool.

Thank you, Obyvatal. You are always so very helpful.



edit- spelling
 
EmeraldHope said:
I agree that it was not a normal swing down, but the swing up was not normal either. So I still see it as regression for now.

\It is possible. However, something to keep in mind is that in general, the regression to the mean concept assumes randomness. Over a large enough field of observation, random factors tend to balance out. If there are identifiable causal factors that come into the picture, then application of the regression to the mean concept may not be valid. In this instance, if there are causal factors (like an orchestrated controlled burn by the PTB) which have started the economy on an overall downward spiral, then the old accepted "mean" would not be a valid point of reference anymore to apply the regression concept.
 
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