Heuristics and biases
by Thomas Gilovich, Daniel Kahneman · first published 2002
45% recommend55% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Academic collection of foundational research on judgment under uncertainty by Kahneman and Tversky, with rigorous treatment of heuristics and biases. Suits readers wanting the primary science behind popular bias books.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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I used to think that, until I read Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. The work done by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explained how "action without action" can actually work - no mysticism required.
on “Ask HN: Do you think intuition is as valuable as rational thinking?” ↗Heuristics & Biases is a great book with more detail: http://www.amazon.com/Heuristics-Biases-Psychology-Intuitive...
on “List of cognitive biases” ↗I've not read it yet, but have read Heuristics and Biases, which is Kahneman and Tverskys original research on the topic. It is very long and sorta dry, but incredibly useful. I'd also suggest reading the LessWrong sequences on rationality, as they are aimed…
on “A Magician’s Best Trick: Revealing a Basic Human Bias” ↗…what is right, what our purpose is. The earth and nature aren't going to help us there - it's our call, full stop. That is huge, and many otherwise seemingly well educated people don't seem to get it. Heuristics and Biases. (Though Thinking Fast and Slow might be more approachable.) This book opened me up to the fact that I'm running on busted hardware. That I've got serious, unfixable, biases built into my brain. That…
on “Ask HN: What are the books that changed the perspective of your life?” ↗If you want the actual science instead of the quiz consider the book Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. It's better than Hume. For something you can read right now that might get you to care: http://singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf
on “The quiz Daniel Kahneman wants you to fail” ↗Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow" is a great overview of the field of cognitive bias. For a more academic treatment of his research, check out "Heuristics and Biases". The part of his work most relevant to project estimation can be found in the "planning fallacy" section. Aside from Kahneman, there are numerous papers on software estimation, many of which note these…
on “Agile is Dead” ↗"advance" and "groundbreaking work" is far from enough. Those two basically invented a couple of new sciences. "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" is the paper that made them famous, and it's still a damn good read: https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/TverskyK...
on “Daniel Kahneman has died” ↗It's supposed to be an accessible version of "Heuristics and Biases". Saying Kahneman is pop psych... Well if you think so, then we should consider anything in psychology to be "pop".
on “Ask HN: Books with a high signal to noise ratio?” ↗It's widely acknowledged in behavioral economics that biases have their uses. In fact, usually the phrase used to describe them is "Heuristics and Biases"[1]. It's first and foremost a heuristic -- a reasonably good way to generate good behavior. Secondarily, in certain specific situations, it causes non-optimal behavior. [1] ( https://www.amazon.com/Heuristics-Biases-Psychology-Intuitiv...…
on “Why Is Behavioral Economics So Popular?” ↗I've not read "Thinking Fast and Slow" but long ago I read "Heuristics and Biases"[0] and attended one of Kahneman's talks during his tour promoting his newest book. I couldn't help but think that TFaS was the product not so much of a desire to share some new insights he'd recently…
on “Daniel Kahneman on when to trust intuitive judgment” ↗…separated. My understanding is that this has even been studied more formally, there is a paper I remember reading by Kahneman and somebody else [1] about the development of intuition and the tension between heuristics-and-biases and naturalistic decision making. In short, don't trust people so much, if they say they understand something but are unable to actually do it, be a bit more skeptical. [1] Found it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19739881…
on “Backpropagation is a leaky abstraction” ↗…Psychology. 67 (3) Kahneman, Daniel; Tversky, Amos (1982). "Intuitive prediction: Biases and corrective procedures". In Kahneman, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; Tversky, Amos (eds.). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science. Vol. 185. Kahneman, Daniel; Tversky, Amos (1979). "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk" (PDF). Econometrica. 47 (2) Flyvbjerg, Bent (2006). "From Nobel Prize to Project Management:…
on ““Laws” of software estimation for complex work (2021)” ↗…prediction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Johnson-Laird andsoitis: "informal, simplified, personal" models are exactly why systematic errors show up. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky document heuristics and biases when internal maps are over-trusted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_dec... Repair loop: Seymour Papert's microworlds provide controlled sandboxes for testing and revising models:…
on “Mental Models (2018)” ↗…system operates outside of its training distribution, all bets are off. The phrase unique objectivity above strikes me as wrong, though [1] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases: Biases in judgments reveal some heuristics of thinking under uncertainty. science, 185(4157), 1124-1131. [2] The Turing Test : Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/…
on “Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans.” ↗…studies. And perhaps why Daniel Kahneman got a Nobel in economics, despite being one of the best and most breakthrough psychologists in recent times. (His pop sci treatment of his and Tversky's seminal "Heuristics and Biases" came out a couple years ago, "Thinking Fast and Slow". If Heuristics and Biases is too long/dry/boring, read the pop sci version, as it's the best model (that I've heard of) for how human brains actually…
on “The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness (2014)” ↗