Quotes About Decision-making

Correcting your predictions may complicate your life

I propose a simple account of how we generate intuitive opinions on complex matters. If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it.

However, we are not all rational, and some of us may need the security of distorted estimates to avoid paralysis.

puzzles were legible, but the font induced cognitive strain. The results tell a clear story: 90% of the students who saw the CRT in normal font made at least one mistake in the test, but the proportion dropped to 35% when the font was barely legible. You read this correctly: performance was better with the bad font. Cognitive strain, whatever its source, mobilizes System 2, which is more likely to reject the intuitive answer suggested by System 1.

It is very likely that intrinsic variability in the functioning of the brain also affects the quality of our judgments in ways that we cannot possibly hope to control.

The dominance of conclusions over arguments is most pronounced where emotions are involved. The psychologist Paul Slovic has proposed an affect heuristic in which people let their likes and dislikes determine their beliefs about the world.

For one thing, it helps us see the logical consistency of Human preferences for what it is—a hopeless mirage

When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing that may solve the problem of the moment. System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer, as probably happened to you when you encountered the multiplication problem 17 × 24. You can also feel a surge of conscious attention whenever you are surprised.

How Groups Amplify Noise

The law of least effort is operating here. He will think as little as possible.

Groups can go in all sorts of directions, depending in part on factors that should be irrelevant. Who speaks first, who speaks last, who speaks with confidence, who is wearing black, who is seated next to whom, who smiles or frowns or gestures at the right moment—all these factors, and many more, affect outcomes.

Because System 1 operates automatically and cannot be turned off at will, errors of intuitive thought are often difficult to prevent. Biases cannot always be avoided, because System 2 may have no clue to the error.

As expected, the effect of facial competence on voting is about three times larger for information-poor and TV-prone voters than for others who are better informed and watch less television.

Unless you are a professional, however, you may not react very differently to a sample of 150 and to a sample of 3,000. That is the meaning of the statement that "people are not adequately sensitive to sample size.

Adam switches from a gas-guzzler of 12 mpg to a slightly less voracious guzzler that runs at 14 mpg. The environmentally virtuous Beth switches from a 30 mpg car to one that runs at 40 mpg.

Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book. I describe System 1 as effortlessly originating impressions and feelings that are the main sources of the explicit beliefs and deliberate choices of System 2. The

Systematic errors are known as biases

If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I

an accurate diagnosis may suggest an intervention to limit the damage that bad judgments and choices often cause.

people rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations. In general, these heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors.

In simple words, prospect theory cannot deal with disappointment.

Irrational is a strong word, which connotes impulsivity, emotionality, and a stubborn resistance to reasonable argument.

The reliance on the heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic errors) in their predictions.

whenever accuracy is the goal, bias and noise play the same role in the calculation of overall error.