Daniel Kahneman – Biographical, Part 2: Eulogy for Amos Tversky (June 5, 1996)

Daniel Kahneman · 5 Jun 1996

The piece opens with

Predictions should be less extreme than the information they rest on, an idea that is deeply counterintuitive

Their wordsAs I understood clearly only when I taught statistics some years later, the idea that predictions should be less extreme than the information on which they are based is deeply counterintuitive.

Read the piece on nobelprize.org ↗

6 korrents from this piece ↓

Daniel Kahneman did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Predictions should be less extreme than the information they rest on, an idea that is deeply counterintuitive

Their wordsAs I understood clearly only when I taught statistics some years later, the idea that predictions should be less extreme than the information on which they are based is deeply counterintuitive.
Our reading
Loss aversion was the most useful contribution of the prospect theory work to the study of decision making

Their wordsThe concept of loss aversion was, I believe, our most useful contribution to the study of decision making.
Our reading
Social science disciplines use ritual tests of competence that screen work by form rather than substance

Their wordsEvery discipline of social science, I believe, has some ritual tests of competence, which must be passed before a piece of work is considered worthy of attention. Such tests are necessary to prevent information overload, and they are also important aspects of the tribal life of the disciplines.
Our reading
Which scientific writing gains lasting fame is decided by a strange and rather arbitrary process

Their wordsIt is a strange and rather arbitrary process that selects some pieces of scientific writing for relatively enduring fame while committing most of what is published to almost immediate oblivion.
Our reading
Critique-and-reply debates in the social sciences are absurdly adversarial; hardly anyone admits an error

Their wordsBoth as a participant and as a reader I have been appalled by the absurdly adversarial nature of these exchanges, in which hardly anyone ever admits an error or acknowledges learning anything from the other.
Our reading
People who make a difference do not die alone; something dies in everyone they affected

Their wordsPeople who make a difference do not die alone. Something dies in everyone who was affected by them.

Keep reading

The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.