Interesting topic - but audiobook wrong format

Any additional comments?

This is a fascinating book - outlining key research areas in the psychology of decision making. It also does a very good job explaining clearly the fundamentals of statistics in research - I wish it had been available when I was doing my psychology degree! BUT - it is a difficult book to digest in audiobook format. There are lots of references to the PDFs (difficult to refer to when driving!) and there are a lot of "lists" which you have to hold in your head whilst the theory is explained. It would be much easier to digest in traditional paper format.

140 people found this helpful

Brilliant. DK is a genuine mind reader!

Who am I to say this noble laureate is brilliant, but I'll chuck in my two pennyworth anyway. Kahneman shows you how you think and how easy it is to be deluded and misled by the way your brain just happens to work. Some of the book is quite hard work, and sometimes it is a bit slow reading (laboured points), but the content is fascinating and also important. It will probably change how you think, view and live your life, which is quite something for a mere book.

52 people found this helpful

Fascinating, but be prepared to concentrate

If you enjoyed works on behavourial economics such as 'Nudge' then you should listen to this. Daniel Kahneman is the godfather of the discipline and you get a nobel laureate giving you a comprehensive and fairly user friendly account of his pioneering work in this fascinating area. I only gave it four stars because i found it hard to follow when listening to it. He references PDFs which i think come with the download but i didn't have in front of me when walking the dog, and I ended up having to rewind to try and understand the bits i didn't understand, mostly giving up and going with the flow (ah, system one). I'll probably end up buying the book to go back over it, but i'm glad i downloaded it as otherwise i would never have read it. Recommended but be prepared to concentrate if you want to really understand it.

42 people found this helpful

Excellent book, but not a great audiobook.

The contents of this book are extremely good, but unfortunately it has too many figures, and too many thought experiments that involve juggling information for the audio format to be effective.

30 people found this helpful

Didn't work as an audiobook

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would recommend the paper version, but not the audiobook. I found there were too many references to visual things, which would have been easier to look at. Also, it's impossible to interrupt the book as there aren't any chapters on the audiobook (the Audible app crashes all the time, so no point in using that) It requires a lot of attention to follow...if you're a visual person, I would recommend the book.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

The narrator isn't very engaging. He has a nice voice, but isn't very dynamic.

26 people found this helpful

Not Convinced

Its an interesting read but in places leaves you scratching your head. There are a number of mind puzzles, that simply do not work. I understand the System 1 and System 2 dynamics of understanding things, but the puzzles presented were not great, to say the least.

One which the author continually uses as an example is a bat and ball pricing puzzle. I've asked this puzzle to about 10 people including my 16 year old daughter. Not one person got this wrong, 8 got it right within 2-3 seconds, 2 deferred to answer thinking I was tricking them. Yes - I know mine are not controlled experiments, but I think the text states most people get this wrong, and only 80% of Harvard graduates get it right. hmmmm.

Then, (I wont ruin this) he strings two words together designed to make you you sweat, feel ill and seriously want to cringe, with the same reaction that you get scratching a chalkboard. I won't tell you the words but for me it did nothing. I think if you have kids and tease them like I do, then I use words much worse to tell them what they have for lunch, In fact the two words for me was tame ! I can give him much worse I assure you.

I think a lot of this is written from an American perspective. We have a TV show in the UK called QI, which basically sums up his System1 and System 2 in one episode.

Q> How Many Wifes did Henry VIII have ?
System 1 is Alan Davies saying 6 wifes (followed by a big alarm bell)
System 2 is Stephen Fry explaining he had 2 wifes contrary to popular belief

The show is full of classics like this where the public believe something which is blatantly false which is disproved, like not eating closed mussels. (in fact they are the best ones, not the worst).

Going back to the book, another amazing admission is that the author claims to have go his statistical sampling wrong. Although this is great to hear, and the whole explanation really fascinated me, I then thought, what about his results before this revelation. He never mentions if the core of the work, basically in his early years was then rewritten or accepted with error.

So, in summary, its a fascinating read, but to me there is no science here. Its common sense and the results are dubious based on the statistical errors admitted to.

20 people found this helpful

Excellence surpassed

It is not often I would describe a book as 'priceless' but Thinking, Fast and Slow definotely warrants such praise, at least from this corner of the World.

The narration was excellent - I often forgot I wasn't actually listening to Daniel Kahneman (the author) personally as the delivery was faultless.

The subject matter however was exemplary! I have always had a healthy interest in both my own decision making process and needed to understand it, from a business perspective, in others.

Often however, such learning can be quite dry but not in this instance.

The exercises provided - many instantly available to grasp by just listening, some needing you to access accompanying documents - conveyed the point being made exquisitely.

I'm so thrilled with this book that it has beasily become my No.1 recommendation to like-minded friends and family.

Grab it, enjoy it ... and know yourself, oh so much better!

18 people found this helpful

How we think

An excellent book, very well read. The source document for many other snippety books on similar subjects, this book delves a bit deeper and gives a more complete account of how we think, how we unconsciously apply biases and the impact of luck on performance. An ear-opener in many ways from a Nobel prizewinner with decades of examples to give and some nice personal stories. Can't recommend highly enough.

18 people found this helpful

Read the book... you'll have to anyway

This book persistently asks you to view an accompanying PDF. It's not at all suitable as an audio book. I found that any enjoyment to be had from only listening to the book is spoiled by the narrator's voice.
Very poor for what has been rated as excellent material otherwise.

Don't buy this in audio format. It's very poor.

16 people found this helpful

Sensational: you'll understand how your mind works

What made the experience of listening to Thinking, Fast and Slow the most enjoyable?

The surprise, when you again and again, stumble over your own behaviour being described in the book. How you use assumptions, shortcuts and reduction of information to make everyday decisions, and Kahneman even exposes it to you with a quick math question regarding a baseball and a bat...

What was one of the most memorable moments of Thinking, Fast and Slow?

...when I was proud to have no glitches in some questions before and then stubbled over a question with animals and an ark...

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This book wasn't easy to stop listening...

11 people found this helpful