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A review by sweetcuppincakes
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Cass R. Sunstein, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony
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?