Noise: A Variability in Judgments

Daniel Kahneman is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Public Policy at Princeton University. He won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for joint work with Amos Tversky in which they revealed the biases and heuristics with which humans operate, thereby deviating from the rationality presumed by economic theory at the time. Among this and many other awards, Danny was also given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barrack Obama. While Danny is likely best known outside of psychology for his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he and Robinson discuss his latest a book, co-authored with Olivier Simony and Cass Sunstein, called Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, which concerns the astonishingly prevalent and damaging variability inherent in human judgment.

Noise: https://a.co/d/hbKBQKD

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:55 Introduction

06:16 Danny’s Childhood

11:23 The Difference Between Noise and Bias

16:21 Some Themes from Noise

18:57 Noise in the Judicial System

32:36 Noise in the Medical System

37:59 The Difficulty of Spotting Noise

39:58 Psychology and the Descriptive, Prescriptive, and Normative

43:14 Decision Hygiene for Reducing Bias and Noise in Judgment

54:32 Limiting Intuitions to Improve Decision-Making

01:00:38 Understanding Regression to the Mean

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.