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bootman's review
5.0
When you think of the best research behind our flaws in judgement and decision making, you think of Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman. I love Kahneman’s work as well as the work and books from Sunstein and Sibony. So, when I heard about this book, I knew I needed to get it. But what is “noise”? If you’ve ever wondered how people and even experts can make different decisions provided the same information, that’s typically due to “noise”. Or if you’ve wondered why your personal decisions on the same subject vary, it’s often due to noise as well. Noise branches off from the original research around thinking errors, so understanding how noise plays a role can help us make better decisions in our lives as well as in the work place.
This is a fantastic book, but much like Kahneman’s previous book, it’s a long one. I’m a fan of reaching as wide of an audience as possible, and I personally feel that this book was a bit too long. But who am I to judge? Kahneman’s previous book still sells like hotcakes to this day. Hopefully, like the other work from these gentlemen, this book is referenced by other books on the topic of thinking errors and decision making to reach more people.
This is a fantastic book, but much like Kahneman’s previous book, it’s a long one. I’m a fan of reaching as wide of an audience as possible, and I personally feel that this book was a bit too long. But who am I to judge? Kahneman’s previous book still sells like hotcakes to this day. Hopefully, like the other work from these gentlemen, this book is referenced by other books on the topic of thinking errors and decision making to reach more people.
cheenu's review
5.0
Not much to say but another exceptional book from Daniel Kahneman. Just highlights how poor we humans are at subjective judgements in all areas of life and how much we can gain by switching over to an objective criteria of judgements.
bfrearson's review
Unbearably repetitive. The core idea that humans are inherently inconsistent at making decisions doesn’t need 400 pages.
It reads like a badly written, dumbed down research study, and often makes broad statements that are not well backed up or fleshed out.
Ultimately I reached a point where it was clear there wasn’t really anything new I could learn here.
It reads like a badly written, dumbed down research study, and often makes broad statements that are not well backed up or fleshed out.
Ultimately I reached a point where it was clear there wasn’t really anything new I could learn here.
benrogerswpg's review
4.0
Fascinating read.
So happy to see the great Kahneman back writing again after how much I enjoyed [b:Thinking, Fast and Slow|11468377|Thinking, Fast and Slow|Daniel Kahneman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1317793965l/11468377._SX50_.jpg|16402639].
This book had some excellent realizations and lessons in it. Specifically beneficial for leaders and decision makers.
I found the information very well researched and laid out.
Definitely got a lot out of reading this book.
4.1/5
So happy to see the great Kahneman back writing again after how much I enjoyed [b:Thinking, Fast and Slow|11468377|Thinking, Fast and Slow|Daniel Kahneman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1317793965l/11468377._SX50_.jpg|16402639].
This book had some excellent realizations and lessons in it. Specifically beneficial for leaders and decision makers.
I found the information very well researched and laid out.
Definitely got a lot out of reading this book.
4.1/5
arwen_w's review
4.0
Really good insights for anyone in leadership/management or decision making position. excellently draws on evidence from research to outline challenges with noise in decision making and both strategies and tactics to challenge these using relatable case studies from medical, education, consulting and other professional contexts).
mikecross's review
3.0
Very interesting topic and insanely well researched and understood by the three authors. However, the book could use for a good editting; ideas that should be one page become three and there is much redundency. Additionally, some of the premises have errors (especially on setting bail) and some areas not explored (like "noise" not really being noise rather undiscovered factors). Overall, a good introduction to the topic.
inquiry_from_an_anti_library's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Is This An Overview?
There are aspects of life in which people want diversity of views, with disagreement expected. But, when the expectation is that the decision makers are supposed to provide a similar judgement within similar contexts, the diversity of views is harmful. These are noisy judgements. While biased judgements are systematically off, noisy judgements are those in which agreement is expected but not attained.
Whether in a public or private organization, their representatives are meant to provide a similar product no matter who is using their service. In practice, those using their services enter a lottery as to whom they receive as a representative. The outcomes depend on who is asked, for the person can receive someone favorable or unfavorable to them. Leading to very different outcomes for people within similar circumstances, rather than the expected reliable judgements.
Noise is the unwanted divergent judgements. Noise is more disagreement in a system than what is expected. Noise leads to unfairness in society, and a loss of profit for firms. Decision hygiene is meant to reducing noise which leads to better decision making. There are practical steps that everyone can take to reduce the amount of noise in the system, and take a noise audit to find out how much noise there is.
What Is An Example of Noise?
Judges are expected to deliver similar sentences to similar cases. But, there is a lot of noise in the sentences that judges make. Judges use their discretion to tailor the sentence with various factors. Although this discretion is meant to enable better outcomes, the discretion also creates discrimination due to arbitrary cruelties.
The noisy sentences received attention, leading to sentence guidelines. The guidelines reduced noise, but judges objected due to their lack of discretion. When the guidelines were removed, noise came back into sentences given. This created law without order.
How To Understand Noise?
A judgement is the conclusion. It is a process of mental activity and the product. A judgement is never certain. It includes reasonable disagreement. A judgement has an expectation of bounded disagreement. The amount of disagreement that is acceptable depends on the problem. Large disagreement violates expectations of fairness and consistency when representatives of public or private institutions are meant to be interchangeable and assigned quasi-randomly. Noise in the judgements are errors, and in a noisy system, the errors do not cancel each other out.
Organization and people tend to maintain an illusion of agreement, even though they disagree in their judgements. People tend to think that others share their beliefs, that they understand reality the way the individual does. With naïve realism, people assume that there is a single interpretation, which is rarely challenged. Organizations prefer consensus and harmony over dissent and conflict. Procedures are designed to minimize exposure to disagreement, and explain disagreement away.
Noise is unwanted, and noise is not always unwanted. Variability in judgement is acceptable when it comes to experiences with expected diverse views. Such as innovative solutions to problems, in competition, and art.
Noise is undesirable variability in judgement to the same problem, which does not apply to singular problems that are not repeated. But, there could be counterfactuals, as different decision makers with the same competencies could have made different decisions.
Why Is There Noise?
Noise can occur even with the same facts, as the same facts on different occasions produce different results. It is not just different people that can have different judgements, but also the individual. Mood affects what the individual thinks, and how the individual thinks. Making people less consistent than they think.
Overconfidence in predictions reduces the quality of the predictions. Perfect predictions are impossible, but that does not prevent overconfidence in predictions. Experts tend not to do much better than everyone else when making predictions. What experts know is how to explain themselves and see the different issues involved, but not make better predictions. Better forecasters tend to be those who continuously update their beliefs.
People jump to conclusions based on little information while believing that their views are based on appropriate evidence. Building evidence when a conclusion has been made, rather than seek alternative explanations. People reply on empty explanations to enable coherence of events.
People can have different views based on earlier impressions. Judgements are affected by prior attitudes. Interpretation of facts depends on prior impressions. The affect heuristic, also known as the halo effect, occurs when people use their emotions to make decisions. Applying the same favorable or unfavorable emotions to a person, even though the person is complex.
How To Reduce Noise?
Decision hygiene is the term meant to indicate when there is an attempt to reduce noise. This can include sequencing information, independent assessments, referencing the outside view, and aggregating various independent judgments. A noise audit can be used to understand the amount of noise in the system. Within a noise audit, the same case is evaluated by different individuals.
When making a collective decision, better to apply a wisdom of the crowd’s approach. To gain a wisdom of the crowd, judgements need to be independent of others. Individual judgement needs to not be influenced by other people’s judgements. What influences judgement is popularity for popularity is self-reinforcing as people do what they see others doing.
Simple rules are better than human judgment. Rules do worse when the person has decisive information that the model did not consider, which is called the broken-leg principle. The reason why rules do better is due to the amount of noise in human judgement. Rules do better but they are not perfect. Models do better, but not by much. Resistance to rules tend to be that humans are allowed to err, while machines are not given that permission.
Rules are complicated. Rules try to eliminate discretion, while standards provide discretion. Some rules restrict behavior without specifying the behavior. This creates a problem of arbitrary decisions. But if the behavior would be specified, then people would be able to behave in inappropriate manner with behavior not covered by the rule.
Not all noise needs to be removed. Removing noise can be costly, create their own errors, reduce dignity, and noise can be needed for evolution of values.
Caveats?
Some parts of the book are related to the authors prior works. The prior work is referenced, without going into detail. There is a bit of statistics, which could be better understood by those who already have some knowledge of statistics.
alykat_reads's review against another edition
slow-paced
1.5
This could have been about 300 pages shorter. As a statistician, I do appreciate the palatable explanation of standard deviations, bell curves, medians, and what that information means when regarding a set of data and how to interpret it; as time and time again I see people just butcher the analysis of a set of data and have no idea what they're actually saying.
This book is just so redundant though, to the point where it is painful. And while it may be an interesting factoid that judges tend to dole out lighter sentences on days with good weather, there's not much else that can be done with that information. The American 'justice' system is already known to have racism intertwined, with blacks getting much harsher sentences than whites when they have the same criminal history and the crime is similar. So yes, we know it's "noisy." There are situations (e.g. the APGAR test) where noise has been reduced, but it's not possible to entirely eliminate noise. As a former underwriter, I wasn't surprised at all that there was "noise" when it came to that, but this was written as though there was nothing that could be done. There's easily parameters that can be put into place when underwriting to vastly reduce the discrepancies between the underwriters in the company.
The author also separates noise from bias, but I'm not entirely sure that we can eradicate one from the other; or that more often than not, they're the same thing.
Idk, it was just very redundant and not much more information than "people use biases to make judgments."
This book is just so redundant though, to the point where it is painful. And while it may be an interesting factoid that judges tend to dole out lighter sentences on days with good weather, there's not much else that can be done with that information. The American 'justice' system is already known to have racism intertwined, with blacks getting much harsher sentences than whites when they have the same criminal history and the crime is similar. So yes, we know it's "noisy." There are situations (e.g. the APGAR test) where noise has been reduced, but it's not possible to entirely eliminate noise. As a former underwriter, I wasn't surprised at all that there was "noise" when it came to that, but this was written as though there was nothing that could be done. There's easily parameters that can be put into place when underwriting to vastly reduce the discrepancies between the underwriters in the company.
The author also separates noise from bias, but I'm not entirely sure that we can eradicate one from the other; or that more often than not, they're the same thing.
Idk, it was just very redundant and not much more information than "people use biases to make judgments."