(Shortform note: The idea that people value stories over data still holds true today. Realizing that providing leaders with information wasn’t sufficient, Kahneman and Tversky decided to examine the decision-making process itself. Lewis says this led Tversky and Kahneman to conclude that people need stories, not numbers. However, when they tried to teach the government about statistical analysis, they learned that generals and leaders always favor their instincts, even after their instincts have been proven wrong. In order to stave off a similar surprise attack in the future, Kahneman and Tversky tried to convince the country’s policy makers to calculate probabilities and play the odds. Military psychologists are often called upon to evaluate recruits and officer candidates, as well as to provide mental health interventions for soldiers operating under great stress.) Decision-Making and Prospect Theory (Shortform note: The employment of psychologists for military purposes began during the two World Wars, and not only to help soldiers deal with trauma.

Doing so was so heartbreaking that it reaffirmed the psychologists’ desire to find practical applications for their work, specifically to prevent another unexpected war. What they in fact were able to accomplish was to let the troops open up about their experiences. Lewis states that their primary job was to find ways to improve troop morale. When the fighting began, Tversky and Kahneman were assigned to the psychology unit embedded in the Israeli army. The Yom Kippur War began when Syria and Egypt launched a joint attack on October 6, 1973. However, in Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that not only do chaotic situations defy prediction, but that our very predictions themselves change the future.) In Superforecasting, Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardener emphasize that accurate prediction hinges on avoiding cognitive bias, as well as focusing on statistical probabilities and taking a wide perspective of events. (Shortform note: While much has been written in hindsight about failures in military intelligence, the problem of accurate forecasting remains an issue to this day.

They shifted their focus to examine the decision-making process and gave birth to a theory that overturned our understanding of human behavior in general. Lewis writes that in the years following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Kahneman and Tversky were particularly troubled by their government’s failure to predict the attack. The following military conflict gave fresh urgency to the problem of uncovering the foibles of the mind. The Duo in Action (1973-1977)īy 1973, Kahneman and Tversky were ready to summarize their findings, but once again, war intervened in their lives.

The undoing project by michael lewis