1. For this assignment, I read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. The general theme of this book is looking into the human brain in order to better understand why each person behaves the way they do. A main focusof the book is decision making. Kahneman presents two basic systems of decision making. The first is System 1. System 1 decision making involves automatic responses that require no deeper thinking. For example, a System 1 decision would be picking up the TV remote. You do this quickly and usually without struggle, since your brain has done it so many times before and the pathways already exist. System 2 involves the slower, more cognitive decisions. It would be something like solving a puzzle, planning a wedding, and other more complex decisions. Kahneman also covers topics like choices, intuition, biases, and a fascinating look into what he explains as “the two selves” (experiencing vs remembering). Overall, his 5 main parts of the book combine to give an in-depth look into why individuals operate the way they do from a cognitive standpoint.
2. For me, the best connection I could make between this book and ENT3003 was when Kahneman referenced “The Law of Small Numbers.” So often we hear about the rags to riches story of an entrepreneur with a billion-dollar idea. However, as the law shows, these are not representative of the population. Millions of entrepreneurial ideas fail every single year, while only a select number make a ton of money. It is important to keep this in mind as an entrepreneur. As ENT3003 has shown us, failure is common and needs to be embraced in order to achieve success someday. You will fail a hundred times before you can succeed once. Not everyone can be a millionaire, but with hard work, and idea and the right state of mind, success is achievable.
3. If I were to design an exercise based off of something from this book, I would focus on Kahneman’s “Frames and Realities” chapter. Nowadays, it is easy for media outlets to make you perceive events in a different way than is reality. FOXNews and CNN can report on the same event in two completely different ways. In order to help students filter through the noise and find the truth of the matter, I would design an exercise that focuses on a recent event. The class would be separated into two groups, each with different agendas. They would then have to come up with a storyline that fits their agenda. After presenting, the entire class will be assigned with writing a report on the true events, without bias. This will help them see how news can be easily manipulated and framed, while being far from the truth of what actually happened. Getting students to think objectively and focus on the facts in any given situation will only help them in the real world later on.
4. The most surprising part to me was Kahneman’s Illusion of Understanding. He states that since we believe we understand the past, we should be able to know the future as well. The two problems with this are that: we don’t understand our past nearly as well as we think we do, and that the future is uncertain and very hard to predict. I made a connection to this point with a bias I learned about in another class, the hindsight bias. So many times, I have thought to myself “oh, I should’veseen that coming!” or “How did I miss that!” To me Kahneman’s Illusion of Understanding has helped me to seek to understand my past more, so that I can better predict the future and not make the same mistake twice. While it may seem simple, it was definitely the biggest “aha” moment for me when reading. And the best part about it is that it is something I can work on today.
Hello Christopher Cafaro
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting coincidence that we chose the same book for this assignment. While the first part of assignment is something that I have said myself in my own blog though have not disagreement. I find fascinating how you found connection that was in the book with our class that I did think off. As I was more focus on thinking aspect of the book that I forgotten it did mention that topic of “law of small number”. I find your assignment quite interesting one though I would go a opposite direction in that instead of selecting a very recent event. I would choose something from the past, do the fact that a lot modern event is developing situation where not one has all the fact. While something in the past with proper record would allow you to show divide view of the time, along with how different both perspectives were from the truth.