The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind

by John Coates

Given this point, Kahneman and Klein went on to conclude that intuitions can be relied on only if two conditions are met: first, people can develop an expertise only if they work in an environment that is regular enough to produce repeating patterns; and second, they must encounter the patterns frequently and receive feedback on their performance quickly, for only in this way can they learn. Playing chess exemplifies these conditions: chess grandmasters play game after game, the rules are fixed and they find out quickly if their moves were right or not. Much the same can be said of paramedics, firefighters and fighter pilots. Political forecasters, on the other hand, inhabit a world that is far too fluid and complex to produce patterns, and even if something like a pattern does emerge, it does so with such a long time lag that learning it may take a lifetime. “Remember this rule,” advises Kahneman: “Intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment.”