SANSKAR JAIN answers “What are the three most vital takeaways...”

Patrick Brown asked this question about Thinking, Fast and Slow:

What are the three most vital takeaways from this book and why are they so important?

SANSKAR JAIN 1. we must accept the fact that there is inherent baises in our judgments and behaviors. the 1st step to overcome them is to be aware of them and most…more1. we must accept the fact that there is inherent baises in our judgments and behaviors. the 1st step to overcome them is to be aware of them and most of the time we can't be aware of them. After we realized that there are systematic errors in the choices or the decisions we are taking, the next step would be to minimize those errors gradually - it is hard to accept the errors and correct them as it is incompatible with how human mind functions. our mind isn't evolved to be rational and critical while making decisions. therefore any attempt to criticise our own long held believes about anything whatsoever results in us feeling restless, less confident, uncomfortable and less optimistic. whenever we reject our intuitive or impulsive response to anything and instead take a rational ,self criticising approach to deal with any situation, we will be less confident and more pessimistic about the outcome even though by making a rational choice, we have increased the probability of a favourable outcome. this is because, naturally, humans are terrible statisticians even though we think we aren't. So, don't let your feelings be in charge of your decisions - you can't convince your mind that your decision is indeed the best possible choice you can make based on the information available to you but that doesn't indicate inferiority in your decision but instead reflects your mind's inability to accept rational choices being more profitable and intuitive ones being more risky & more likely to be result in failure (even though you will be more confident of such choices).

2. It is foolishness to criticise every single intuitive idea that comes in our mind. it is because statistically, most of the time our intuition is correct. but we must know when it is necessary to criticise it. generally, whenever we feel overconfident about anything or overly happy and satisfied then probability of you making an irrational decision increases. thus, it is advisable to be aware of your surrounding as well as your behaviour so that baises can be detected and serviced.

3. Human mind is obsessed with stories. it wants a logical reason for everything. it likes consistency and coherency in the information. it isn't capable of differentiating illusion from reality & truth from lie. It is very receptive of meaning full simple logical stories. it greatly underestimates the role of luck & randomness in determining outcome of any decision. it becomes very uncomfortable while dealing with "what if" scenarios. it tries to find patterns in random events. it tries to formulate convincing stories to explain randomness giving birth to conspiracy theories. we must fully acknowledge the presence of meaninglessness in all the things happening around us and the role of luck in deciding how the past has unfolded and how future will unfold. therefore, blaming somebody or an event for something terrible, is a bad idea as if we have ignored the factor of luck here. Also, praising someone for her extraordinary performance and jumping to conclusion about their talent is also an irrational decision as luck is once again ignored here. (less)

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Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

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