The title was the book by Daniel Kahneman. One just wants to talk a bit about oneself, probably something that goes unnoticed. Say, one agrees that most of the things are true, even if one didn’t put a camera and check out one’s facial emotions. Yet, there are something that seems unnatural to oneself, particularly, some fast reactions.

Say, when being prompt to think of causation between words, like cottage, swiss, cake, it says “cheese” is what link them together. For me, nothing comes to my mind. It seems that my mind can’t make up immediate or even delayed causation between the words. One prompt two possibilities: one, one is different in brain working out words causation. Second, one just doesn’t have good English knowledge. One can’t pinpoint which is more greater a cause to the situation. Similarly, dive, light, rocket have nothing that comes to my mind, they seems to have no causation at all. And given the answer sky doesn’t make any sense to me, at least not immediately. Perhaps, knowledge is scarce of the surrounding?

Another difference one and what’s mentioned in book comes to impression on these two sentence:

  • Alan: intelligent – industrious – impulsive – critical – stubborn – envious
  • Ben: envious – stubborn – critical – impulsive – industrious – intelligent. The book said, we would have better like for Alan as intelligent is our first impression of the person. For me, the first impression is, hey, Ben have the same characteristics as Alan, in reverse order! It is unknown why one think this way.

Another is this: Given the first statement

  • Julie read fluently when she was four years old.

to influence subsequent questions:

  • How tall is a man who is as tall as Julie was precocious?

Nothing comes to one mind. One’s brain gives blank when trying to relate a “progress bar” from Julie to a “progress bar” in height. It says, they’re unrelated. One’s brain could not fit one to the other. Other questions like:

  • What level of income in your profession matches Julie’s reading achievement?
  • Which crime is as severe as Julie was precocious?
  • Which graduating GPA in an Ivy League college matches Julie’s reading?

My first impressions are:

  • What does my profession have to do with Julie? None of her business.
  • (I forgot my reaction, but remember I focus on the word “crime” and disregard “Julie”, so probably thinking of none of her business again.)
  • (I don’t follow Ivy League or know what a GPA is)

Edit during Chapter 20

One now know that you can speak of your informed belief when it’s a visual illusion; and one think that’s true for oneself. One still see it as longer, but one know these kinds of trick questions comes up (in a kind environment) to trick you, so immediate disbelief arise to suppress System 1.

Edit during Chapter 25: Bernoulli’s Errors

One don’t think this is considered an error. Thing is, perhaps one didn’t read the actual research paper, so one might be confused. This is how one sees it:

Consider a previous question on insurance, where 10M people lost 1M means losing of 4 utility points, and 3M people lost 1M means losing of 18 utility points. If we consider Bernoulli’s moral expectation over time, we can answer the happiness question:

Today Jack and Jill each have a wealth of 5M. 
Yesterday, Jack had 1M and Jill had 9M. 
Are they equally happy? (Do they have the same utility?)

In fact, it’s because we ask “are they equally happy” that asks us to compare their utility today; but we’re mentioning here their gain/lose in utility, so the question that’s being asked doesn’t take into account of time. If we instead ask this question:

How happy is Jill compared to how sad is Jack? (How much utility changes of Jack and Jill)?

then we know that, Jack gain 60 utility points while Jill lose 26 utility points, so Jack = 60, Jill = -26. This explained the experience of Jack and Jill happiness (sadness).

Similarly for the next question on Anthony and Betty. Both choices are a gain of utility points for Anthony, while both choices are a lose of utility points for Betty. Though, in this situation, Anthony can choose between sure thing (utility gain 20) or gamble (utility gain 25). For Betty, here choice of sure thing and gamble are both utility loss, points -30 and -25 respectively). It might or might not explain what choice Betty and Anthony choose here (with the small differences in utility point delta), but it surely explains for Anthony’s happiness and Betty’s sadness.

Perhaps this isn’t explained in Bernoulli’s paper? At least this is how one view his theory. If the insurance company includes time (shipping from Amsterdam to whatever the name called is requires some time, ship lost perhaps only known upon its arrival in the era without fast communication channels), then why we wouldn’t do include time in Bernoulli’s theorem to do calculations?

So even if Bernoulli’s theorem is seriously wrong because he forgot to include time in his theory, we can modify his theory and include time when making final calculations.

Conclusion

Generally, one agree with most of what the book content said, with some that may be matching for others but not what one react with.