NSAA Group's Reviews > Thinking, Fast and Slow

With the publication of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking in 2005, pop culture anatomist Malcolm Gladwell gave us a new metaphor for understanding intuitive judgment. Rather than treating intuition as a gut reaction, Gladwell proposes that we view intuition more like rapidfire cognition. Thinking is there but only that unique, unconscious thinking that can occur in the "blink of an eye". The work was as instant a hit as the thought that is its story's hero. Although Gladwell's chronicle of cognition shows how quick thinking can lead us both astray and aright, for many readers Blink has become a hymn to the hunch. It has been too tempting a case for human overconfidence to avoid a partial reading.

It is exactly this type of fallacy of judgment that is the subject of Noble Prize Winning Economist Daniel Kahneman's new work Thinking, Fast and Slow. The book is an engaging summary of over fifty years of experimental research that has sought to understand how humans make choices when faced with uncertainty. Through anecdote, biography, and keen, plain-spoken insight, Kahneman presents an unsettling account of human judgment's common fallibilities that is both captivating and convincing. For enthusiasts who have taken up Blink as a defense of their sixth sense, Kahneman's book can be summed up with a single sobering rejoinder: don't think so fast.