Brian

Genuine Author, Good Ideas

Revisado: 03-08-16

Recommended. This gives hope to anyone who isn't first in birth order given that most Ivy League matriculants are. The author narrates the book himself, and although he isn't a professional voiceover actor it's easy to tell there are a lot of good core business concepts in his book.

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Quality As Usual

Revisado: 03-05-16

Every book this author makes is rife with ideas worth taking on board. I find them relevant to my life and journey to success.

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Not Recommended

Revisado: 03-04-16

This is information free and available online to those interested in the subject. I kept getting the sense that the author was cared more about money than the content he was suggesting his audience make for their customers. He feeds many an affiliate link within the texts to profit more himself. I felt like I was listening to a guide for grey hat online marketers.

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Arrogance, BIas, Self Certainty

Revisado: 01-27-15

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I'd definitely have the author simply give the information from the studies he did rather than telling the audience what to think about the outcome. He spends some of the time attacking other professionals and making statements that seem to subtly be intended to convey how much cleverer he is than they are. For example, he talks about the foundation brought about by Bill Gates investing in small schools but that how according to the results of empirical studies that the results of student learning within small schools are simply more volatile in their results rather than actually being consistently better or worse than the performance within larger schools. Despite the questionable accuracy via usually never having a full sample of everyone in question when it comes to relevant respondents for a certain statistic and the false sense of security implicated in having a fixed number regarding statistics overall, The author seems very sure of himself when it comes to the outcomes of the studies he suggests and that bias to me feels more like a sort of intellectual chest pounding than any profound insight that I should be noting. There is a chapter in the book that addresses anchoring, which is a way of saying that we will have certain preconceptions in a certain situation when we have been given a sort of reference point that can often influence human decisions. In this chapter he introduces the concept of suggestion, meaning that a person can influence a certain reaction into being merely by suggesting its existence. It seems situationally ironic to me that it seems to be what he's doing throughout the entire book by naming his studies and then telling us what to think about the outcome after being given the subject matter and the data that he suggests. Should not he should be using his intellect to help us find other interpretations and possibilities so we can choose among them the most likely outcome that we can find for ourselves? Does the truth not exist in a realm of possibilities? Why are we only being given limited information in the form of his conclusions, delivered in a self certain way at that? In short, I can register the implications that he's making but I'm constantly having to make note of points at which I disagree with how self-certain he is. As far as I've experienced, although the truth can be expressed in a range of ways, the easiest way to initially understand the truth is to simply realize that it exists independently of our understanding of it and to be open to the other potential options until consistency in one facet or another seems to reasonably point at a specific outcome. I think anything analyzed severely enough can be made to seem preposterous but in a realistic way, when open to any option or interpretation that presents itself, consistency in certain outcomes given common circumstances and one controlled variable, usually the truth will come forth that way as long as we are aware about the dynamics of the situation in question. This can be without us listening to some extremely self-certain individual who appears to be harboring loads of biases. Also, I'd use simpler vocabulary and I'd use less morbid subject matter in some of the statistical examples he uses because is this book more about showing how smart he is or enlightening the public?

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Patrick Egan?

I was fine with the narrator though I don't mind hearing Matt Damon

Did Thinking, Fast and Slow inspire you to do anything?

To not be impressed by Nobel Prize winners because human flaws seem ubiquitous across the entire spectrum of our species

Any additional comments?

His intense willingness to judge people based on general group affiliation betrays something notably conservative: in group favoritism and outgroup derogation. Things like this are not unbiased and to me, and the truth and bias seem to be polar opposites. The truth to me represents a range of things that are true in and of themselves and true, also making other things true, to further degrees depending in a situational way based on other factors. There is no absolute truth independent of our own biased means of observance that we will ever be likely to access, usually, other than our ability to simply sit back and watch it exist. To me the difference between truth and perception is that truth exists in and of itself and perception is what we talk about. Perception seems able to mirror truth but at any given moment can diverge without our awareness of its divergence whatsoever. Knowing this, I am not inclined to let the fact that a group of experts as awarded a Nobel Prize to a man influence me not to use my truest sense of reality to question him and the material based on the flaws they betray.

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