What's the Point of Writing a Book?

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In many situations where human judgment has been compared to algoritms or to rules, typically the algoritm of the rule come out ahead. So much of that is driven also by the complexity of the problem you're trying to solve a so medical problems and psychiatric problems are pretty complex. It's not clear that if you have six of eight symptoms, you definitely have this disease or mental disorder. And that's where the noise comes from in the assessment of those criteria.

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients. Now imagine that the same doctor making a different decision depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. This is an example of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.

Shermer speaks with Nobel Prize winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman about the detrimental effects of noise and what we can do to reduce both noise and bias, and make better decisions in: medicine, law, economic forecasting, forensic science, bail, child protection, strategy, performance reviews, and personnel selection.