Tribute To Daniel Kahneman
One of the greatest psychology researchers just died.
Daniel Kahneman received the Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics in 2002. Besides his scientific success, he was also keen on sharing his insights with a broader audience and published the influential book Thinking, Fast and Slow in 2011.
He died on the 27th of March 2024.
 |
|---|
| Daniel Kahnemann in 2009, Image source: Wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Norway License |
Why I am writing this article
I’ve never written a tribute article before and actually, I don’t know how to write it. But the moment I read about Daniel’s death, I wanted to write down my thoughts and say thank you for his contributions to humanity.
So this is just me writing down my thoughts.
How did I come to know his work?
In the past years, I’ve read many non-fiction books and there have been true jewels among them. But there had been a book that left a tremendous afterglow in my own thinking: “Thinking, Fast and Slow”.
The book is brimming with insights and I’ve learned so many things. It was (and I’m really not exaggerating) like installing a new operating system in my mind.
No week passes without me thinking about parts of the book. Human behavior is a fascinating thing and interestingly it pops up quite frequently in discussions. Often I find myself in conversations with colleagues, friends, or family on the topic of behavior and Daniel Kahneman’s teachings also frequently pop up.
Especially the model of the two selves has stuck with me: Our personality consists of two personas:
- the experiencing self (living in the moment and experiencing feelings like pain, hunger, warmth, …)
- the remembering self (remembers moments we’ve experienced in the past)
Daniel Kahneman’s studies show, that we define ourselves through the second one. When we make decisions we are optimizing how remember something rather than living in the moment.
But there are so many more things in his work.
It was so interesting for me to learn about cognitive biases and heuristics and how they are shaping our decision-making. Did you know, for example, that humans substitute the difficult question of probability with the much easier question about availability?
I could go on for thousands of words writing about the insights from his studies, but this is a tribute piece. I just want to emphasize above all that his work is very versatile and helps in the most diverse areas: from economics to psychology to casual conversations about human behavior.
Thank you Daniel Kahneman
Thank you for your contributions to science and for publishing one of the greatest non-fiction books of all time.
It truly changed the way I think about human behavior.
Rest in Peace!
Thank you for reading!
I’ve been a huge fan of Daniel Kahneman since I read his book a few years ago. After I’ve revisited the book last year, I decided to write down my learnings in a 3-part series in December: