W. W. Norton & Company The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Extremely well-written, gripping and a fast paced read. Gives amazing insights into the lives of Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky and the whole thought process + events that went into making their life's work. This also works as a simpler summary of Thinking Fast and Slow, as we get to hear it from Michael Lewis who is a great storyteller. If you are short on inspiration or backstory to finish Thinking Fast and Slow, this book is an excellent starting point.

I pre ordered this book because a couple of Michael Lewis’s previous books had proven compelling reads and because the book was about the friendship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, had fascinated and stimulated me. One of Michael Lewis’s books I had previously read was Moneyball about Oakland Athletics quest to find new and better players. They did not have the money of other clubs to spend on the most expensive players but they developed systematic ways of finding value where baseball experts (management, talent scouts, journalists) did not find it. But after Moneyball was published, Michael Lewis realised that he was telling a more general story - about the way the human mind worked when it was forming judgements and making decisions under uncertainty. He discovered that a pair of Israeli psychologists - Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky - had developed theories on the limitations of rational man, assumed by economists, when making decisions under uncertainty. This is a very personal story of the dire circumstances of the two refugees raised in Nazi Europe and Russia who met in the young state of Israel. They develop a tight working relationship and produced insights into human behaviour based on empirical evidence. They assiduously tested all their ideas on their students so their theories were soundly based on evidence in contrast to much conventional psychological and philosophical work. In the 1960’s Israel which was in constant war conditions with the British and then the Arabs. Danny and Amos were active service soldiers as well as psychology students/ teachers personally involved in close combat fighting and with close friends dying. In these dire circumstances, Danny was already developing his theories about human behaviour and decision making. The Israeli Defence Force recognised the value of his work and put Danny in charge of army personnel selection at the age of 19. Michael Lewis describes the way their work was developed through complimentary talents and rigorous testing of each other's ideas. “There are geniuses who work on their own says Danny. I am not a genius. Neither is Tversky. Together we are exceptional.” Their underlying idea was that the mind has the mechanisms for making judgements and decisions that are useful but capable of generating serious error. They identified heuristics, for example availability, conditionality, anchoring , hindsight, simulation heuristics, that lead to systematic bias. The rules of thumb people use to evaluate probability lead to misjudgement. As formal decision analysis was based on quantification, they tried formulating their estimates of misjudgement statistically. They presented to Israel's Foreign Ministry experts estimates that the effect of the failure of Kissinger's negotiations were a 10% increase in the chance of war but they were ignored. They concluded "No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story" So compelling stories Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky produced. And this book is Michael Lewis’s compelling story of the origin and development of their stories.

I'm a big fan of both Daniel Kahnemann and Michael Lewis. So this is a must read for me. This is a very very interesting and well-written book. I'm so glad to know more about these two geniuses! Now looking forward to the movie.

Rambling with a ton of irrelevant background ('colour', as Evelyn Waugh would say) with too little attention to academic detail.

Generally very entertaining, insightful in relation to Tversky's and Kahneman's work and a friendship story that touched me emotionally.