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cyclysm748's review
5.0
Took a while to finish but very thought provoking. Not super entertaining and could be a slog for many but I think it's worth a shot
rbogue's review against another edition
We’ve all seen things that aren’t there. The stick that looks like a snake. Shadows that move in the darkness that look eerily like the monsters of our childhood. Sometimes, we’ve also failed to see what is clearly there. We’ve missed stop signs and warnings that can keep us out of danger. Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment is a study of the things that we do see, those we don’t, and how we can get to a more reliable understanding of the world around us.
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susanbrearley's review
4.0
A little too technical for me, but that's Kahneman for ya. Still and all, worth the read (or listen) time.
segagenesys's review
It started getting really math-y rather than interesting. Got over it 🙄
boandr's review against another edition
3.5
A must-read for those interested in human judgement, research, or even just society at large- ‘Noise’ was a fascinating investigation into error, specifically the kind that we consider invisible. It’s the errors that we encounter in our everyday, yet give no thought to, and I’d love to see this topic explored more in the future.
For all my appreciation for the topic of the book, it was definitely a slow-read for me. Very technical, especially in the beginning chapters, with application and consideration coming later- so not the most ‘hooked’ of reads, but interesting nonetheless.
The way the book is divided into segments also makes for much easier reading if you were only interested in a specific subject area, and makes for great navigation between technical explanations, and later human application.
Overall a fascinating topic, delved into with much consideration.
For all my appreciation for the topic of the book, it was definitely a slow-read for me. Very technical, especially in the beginning chapters, with application and consideration coming later- so not the most ‘hooked’ of reads, but interesting nonetheless.
The way the book is divided into segments also makes for much easier reading if you were only interested in a specific subject area, and makes for great navigation between technical explanations, and later human application.
Overall a fascinating topic, delved into with much consideration.
michael5000's review
3.0
A good book, but not a good Kahneman book. The cognitive "noise" that the book talks about is real, certainly, and much of the data that they present supports that finding. But they are remarkably slow to notice that much of the noise in their data comes from a mismatch between what judgements are nominally about, and what judgements are REALLY about. For example, when they say that algorithms are stronger than individual evaluations at predicting future employee success, they seem only dimly aware that a person filling out an employee evaluation is not necessarily trying to predict future employee success, and is almost certainly not EXCLUSIVELY trying to predict future employee success. In cases like this, an algorithm approach isn't trumping human judgement by reducing cognitive noise; it's just forcing judgement into a single dimension by eliminating the meta-game. Kahneman & co. sometimes indicate that general idea has occurred to them, but for a lot of the research under discussion they think it is the sideshow when it is pretty obviously the main event. Which is a shame, both because it weakens the book, and because they would have been able to articulate what I'm talking about SO MUCH BETTER than I'm managing here!