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agraham96's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.5
Several times while reading this book I was blown away by real life examples and research on the topic. Unfortunately, aside from those, and one or two chapters (I found the chapters on decision Hygiene especially interesting), the book was far too dense and repetitive. It sometimes felt like the authors had a page number target and had to stretch out the core ideas far past what was necessary. That being said, it was definitely an interesting exploration of something that deserves more attention and I will likely be thinking about (and hopefully applying) the core ideas for years to come.
iriidescent's review
DNF @ 30% - I am not sure why I even picked this book up, considering I am not a big fan of Thinking Fast and Slow either...
waxwingslane's review
2.0
Yet another pop science book where economists try to convince you that they came up with a basic concept. This time: statistical variation.
dsgn301's review
4.0
Like many books in this genre, I found that the subject matter was quite interesting and the delivery provided interesting references and analogies; but the repetition and hammering home of the points adds unnecessary length and content to the book. Noise provided some interesting insight into elements of work and life that I can see and have interacted with in my experience. The appended noise audit could be helpful in my organization but I think the reality is that individuals and organizations are unwilling to facilitate this type of thing.
sweetcuppincakes's review
5.0
Sure, not as engaging as Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, but let's not lay that all on him - there are two other authors on the cover that some reviewers seemed to have conveniently forgotten (but lots of blame being sent Sunstein's way - is he really such a bore?). And part of the lack of engageability (made that word up) is of course the subject matter. It's not as sexy [ahem], I mean, applicable to most people's lives and the way they interact with the world as System-1 and -2 thinking is. And it doesn't make as much use of the wealth of interesting studies on decision-making heuristics that Kahneman and his buddy Tversky explored in their life times of research. I think all those examples of how, say, our availability heuristic or representative heuristic kicked into overdrive and led us to bad decisions were immediately relatable and, well, damn fun to read about! It's much more interesting to read about a 'heuristic' or 'cognitive process' going awry than to just accept, as this book implores us to, that there is lots of noise in our decisions for reasons we can't always fully understand. If we're open-minded, we can accept that we may be suffering from a bias we're not totally cognizant of. But that's bias - just one of the ingredients with noise that contributes to error in total. The focus on noise is of course what is more challenging for the layperson (or seasoned professional judger) to wrap their heads around and fully appreciate. And if you're not a statistically-minded person , a lot of the book can be a chore to read.
We're not all in positions to make judgments that affect other people's lives. But, of course, there are LOTS of people in those positions and their judgments affect our lives. And as the authors say, their judgments are chock-full of noise - and are likely noisier than they themselves think. So in terms of importance that K, S & S get their message out to do something about the unacceptable levels of noise in the world of judgments, yes - this book is way more important than T, F & S. But 'important' doesn't always equal 'interesting/enjoyable to read.' That won't notch a star off the review though - I hope the message of doing noise audits, and following good practices of decision hygiene, will ring loud and clear in the places it's needed. That will probably be the biggest challenge, of course: how can every entity or firm that is in the business of making judgments for their servicing of the law or for their profit accept that they have a noise problem?
We're not all in positions to make judgments that affect other people's lives. But, of course, there are LOTS of people in those positions and their judgments affect our lives. And as the authors say, their judgments are chock-full of noise - and are likely noisier than they themselves think. So in terms of importance that K, S & S get their message out to do something about the unacceptable levels of noise in the world of judgments, yes - this book is way more important than T, F & S. But 'important' doesn't always equal 'interesting/enjoyable to read.' That won't notch a star off the review though - I hope the message of doing noise audits, and following good practices of decision hygiene, will ring loud and clear in the places it's needed. That will probably be the biggest challenge, of course: how can every entity or firm that is in the business of making judgments for their servicing of the law or for their profit accept that they have a noise problem?