26 July, 2015

Daniel Kahneman: ‘What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence’ | Books | The Guardian

Daniel Kahneman: ‘What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidence’ | Books | The Guardian:



He advises, for example, that meetings start with participants writing down their ideas about the issue at hand before anyone speaks. That way, the halo effect – whereby the concerns raised first and most assertively dominate the discussion – can be mitigated, and a range of views considered. Then there is the concept of adversarial collaboration, an attempt to do away with pointless academic feuding. Though he doesn’t like to think in terms of leaving a legacy, it’s one thing he says he hopes to be remembered for. In the early 2000s Kahneman sought out a leading opponent of his view that so-called expert judgments were frequently flawed. Gary Klein’s research focused on the ability of professionals such as firefighters to make intuitive but highly skilled judgments in difficult circumstances. “We spent five or six years trying to figure out the boundary, where he’s right, where I am right. And that was a very satisfying experience. We wrote a paper entitled ‘A Failure to Disagree’”.