The best we can hope for

Daniel Kahneman, who died this year, was a brilliant psychologist who argued that being irrational was …

Alasdair Palmer

DANIEL KAHNEMAN DIED ON 27 MARCH AT the age of 90. He was one of the most perceptive and accurate psychologists of the last 100 years, and his analysis of the sorts of mistake we are liable to make when trying to decide what to do is permanently valuable. Kahneman’s death was the cue for reverential obituaries outlining his conclusions: we’re very bad at estimating probabilities accurately; we are reluctant to believe things which do not fit in with our existing convictions and with our interests; our decisions are frequently determined by factors that should be irrelevant, such as feeling hungry, or experiencing a cool breeze on a hot day; and we ignore relevant statistics because we’re convinced that we’re exceptional: the statistics might apply to others — they don’t apply…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2024

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