The Undoing Project

A history of two psychologists surprised me with a lot of information about evaluating potential NBA basketball players.   One point made was that there were a lot of statistics about individual players which were helpful, but needed to have more context to be used for multi million dollar decisions.  One aspect would be the caliber of their opposition.  Another angle was how individual efforts fit into a team.  Amos Tversky was a basketball fan.

Daniel Kahneman was used to thinking he was the smartest guy in the room until he met Amos during Israeli combat against Arab foes.  Amos was a paratrooper, one of the most dangerous positions requiring intelligence.  The two men had an interest in psychology involving statistics.

The real key to their importance was collaboration.  Often neither could determine who should get credit for a particular idea.  One simple thought led to something else and each would be inspired to elaborate.  Lots of false leads, but in their case led to decisions closer to a solution.  By changing the context in which two things are compared, you submerge certain features and force others to the surface.

Bias is insidious.  We all tend to look for an easy solution and too often automatically adopt the first one uncovered.  They went to elaborate procedures to uncover bias.  The problem is that bias are difficult to uncover.   The law of large numbers does not always apply to small numbers.  Many scientific and psychological experiments are done with small numbers and often are misleading when extrapolated to larger numbers.

 It was pointed out that economists tended to belittle psychologists, but more of them have come to use psychological insights to help explain investor decisions.

The world has wondered how Israel has defeated so many of their enemies in military combat.  He felt others made decisions based on wrong assessments.  He was quoted in university saying, "When someone says something, don't ask yourself if it might be true.  Ask what it might be true of." 

Donald A, Redelmeier was a doctor at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto who had been exposed to the decision making process of Tversky and Kahneman.  He found that many life and death decisions were too often based on habits, accepting the first seemingly plausible solutions.  His decisions saved many lives and helped create better decisions in medical situations. 

 Both men made decisions to work together even when they had jobs at different universities.  Married, it seemed to many they had a closer relationship with each other than with their wives.

Michael Lewis started the book with a quote from Voltaire, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one."  The book does not eliminate uncertainty, but certainly does reduce it.

http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2023/12/all-your-decisions-are-really-bets.html  puts all decisions into gambles, most of which become habits, but a different choice could be an improvement or disaster.

http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2016/08/decisions-are-path-to-success.html  focuses on making better decisions by among other thing widening your options and looking at a bigger context.

http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2021/03/knock-on-wood.html  is another way of looking at statistics going beyond "luck".

Michael Lewis has become one of my favorite authors.  Below is link to recent blog with two other links. http://www.therealjohndavidson.com/2025/06/who-is-government.html