Thinking, Fast and Slow

“How much expertise does she have in this particular task? How much practice has she had?” “Does he really believe that the environment of start-ups is sufficiently regular to justify an intuition that goes against the base rates?” “She is very confident in her decision, but subjective confidence is a poor index

learned to read the roiling water in front of him and to anticipate obstacles. He has learned to make the tiny adjustments of posture that keep him upright. There are fewer opportunities for young men to learn how to create a giant company, and fewer chances to avoid hidden rocks—such as a brilliant innovation by a competing firm. Of course there w

high subjective confidence is not to be trusted as an indicator of accuracy (low confidence could be more informative). Short-term trends can be forecast, and behavior and achievements can be predicted with fair accuracy from previous behaviors and achievements. But we should not expect performance in officer training and in combat to be predictabl

Organizations are better than individuals when it comes to avoiding errors, because they naturally think more slowly and have the power to impose orderly procedures.

Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.

Richard Thaler tells of a discussion about decision making he had with the top managers of the 25 divisions of a large company. He asked them to consider a risky option in which, with equal probabilities, they could lose a large amount of the capital they controlled or earn double that amount. None of the executives was willing to take such a dange

It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.

When you feel strained, you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you also are less intuitive and less creative than usual.

System 1 is radically insensitive to both the quality and the quantity of the information that gives rise to impressions and intuitions.