THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 2024
Thinking slow and slower: Professor Daniel Kahneman died yesterday. Headline included, the start of the New York Times obituary provides some basic background:
Daniel Kahneman, Who Plumbed the Psychology of Economics, Dies at 90
Daniel Kahneman, who never took an economics course but who pioneered a psychologically based branch of that field that led to a Nobel in economic science in 2002, died on Wednesday. He was 90.
[...]
Professor Kahneman, who was long associated with Princeton University and lived in Manhattan, employed his training as a psychologist to advance what came to be called behavioral economics. The work, done largely in the 1970s, led to a rethinking of issues as far-flung as medical malpractice, international political negotiations and the evaluation of baseball talent, all of which he analyzed...
As opposed to traditional economics, which assumes that human beings generally act in fully rational ways and that any exceptions tend to disappear as the stakes are raised, the behavioral school is based on exposing hard-wired mental biases that can warp judgment, often with counterintuitive results.
Do we humans "generally act in fully rational ways?" If memory serves, Sigmund Freud had suggested that we possibly don't.
According to that overview, the behavioral school of economics heads in a similar direction. Everyone seems to agree that Kahneman's work was very important—but as the Times obituary continues, a person might start to wonder why:
Professor Kahneman delighted in pointing out and explaining what he called universal brain “kinks.” The most important of these, the behaviorists hold, is loss-aversion: Why, for example, does the loss of $100 hurt about twice as much as the gaining of $100 brings pleasure?
Among its myriad implications, loss-aversion theory suggests that it is foolish to check one’s stock portfolio frequently, since the predominance of pain experienced in the stock market will most likely lead to excessive and possibly self-defeating caution.
Loss-aversion also explains why golfers have been found to putt better when going for par on a given hole than for a stroke-gaining birdie. They try harder on a par putt because they dearly want to avoid a bogey, or a loss of a stroke.
Mild-mannered and self-effacing, Professor Kahneman not only welcomed debate on his ideas; he also enlisted the help of adversaries as well as colleagues to perfect them...
Professor Kahneman won a Nobel prize for this work in economics. Did he really win that prize because he was able to explain why golfers putt with greater success in certain situations?
(Also, please don't check your stock portfolio on an hourly basis?)
We aren't trying to question the salience of Professor Kahneman's work. We may be questioning the capabilities of modern high-end journalism.
Having said that, we'll add this:
There has been one great learning in American politics over the past dozen years (or more). That one great learning is this:
There's no claim so apparently crazy, or so plainly unsupported by evidence, that you can't get very large numbers of people to believe it.
On balance, it seems that we humans aren't always supper-rational in the ways we assemble our ideas concerning what is true out there in the big wide world.
That seems to be true concerning red tribe voters who have come to believe that the last election was "stolen." Still, we wouldn't say that this general problem is confined to the red tribe only.
The greatest strength of humans is as a group it will fall for dumb ass stories. ie The bible. This piece of paper can be traded for food. DJT wa an effective leader who did not try to end America.
ReplyDelete"traditional economics, which assumes that human beings generally act in fully rational ways"
ReplyDeleteI don't believe any economist believes that human beings generally act in fully rational ways. Instead, I think they believe that in the aggregate, the unpredictable and wildly irrational decisions of individuals trends toward the rational.
So, for example, if you raise prices, generally you would expect the quantity sold to fall. But each individual will make the decision to buy or not, or to sell or not, for some godforsaken reason. And it is because of this general tendency for the aggregate to trend toward the rational that the starting point for traditional economic analysis is to act "as if" all the individuals composing that aggregate are rational.
If economists no longer believe in rational actors (a belief built-into the mathematical models used in economics, as Dogface describes), it is because of Kahneman and Tversky and others who disproved that rationality by showing that human behavior did not conform to such assumptions in economists models. That's why he got a Nobel Prize.
DeleteAssuming that people have always believed whatever they do currently, is a mistake.
Part of that irrationality is not variability, which Dogface refers to, but specific biases, such as emotionality and loss-avoidance. These biases were not part of economics before Kahneman & Tversky. One of their most important books is:
DeleteJudgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman (1974).
Although traditional economics "assumes" rationality, traditional economics is fully aware that this assumption is contrary to reality. It is a useful fiction, however, when the aggregate decisions of irrational decision-makers trend toward the rational.
DeleteKahneman's work shows that the assumption of rationality does not hold empirically in certain situations. Would you bet everything you owned (your house, car, stocks, IRA, bank accounts, everything) on an the flip of a coin if you were given 2-1 odds? Probably not. (And if you would, would you do it for 1.1-1 odds?)
Yes, I got your point. Explaining the deficiencies in the assumption of rationality is more important to improving economic models than you are acknowledging. So-called traditional economics has changed.
Delete"Thinking slow and slower"
ReplyDeleteThis is mean-spirited. It is unclear who it is a jab at, Kahneman, who did not have dementia, or a backhanded swipe at Biden for being old. Kahneman worked at Princeton until his death at 90.
Yes, it is a play on his book title, but not clever or funny, especially to those of us who knew Kahneman, admired the man and his work, and now mourn his death.
"It is unclear who it is a jab at, Kahneman, who did not have dementia, or a backhanded swipe at Biden for being old."
DeleteIt's neither. It's a jab at "modern high-end journalism."
Except they did nothing to deserve it, and Somerby doesn’t explain, so you are assuming too much. It is Kahneman’s phrase, so why would it apply to obituary writing journalists? There was no delay in their report.
Delete"Do we humans "generally act in fully rational ways?" If memory serves, Sigmund Freud had suggested that we possibly don't."
ReplyDeleteSomerby is misinterpreting Freud here. Freud proposed that human behavior is determined by subconscious motives and past experiences. That means that the rationality of behavior may not be consistent across people or observable to others but has its own logic or rationality that can be known by revealing the subconscious via analytic techniques that allow a therapist and patient to better understand why they do what they do. That far from saying it is irrational or has no meaning. Freud said the opposite and his books were about methods for revealing the causes of behavior.
Somerby wants to contest Kahneman using another famous psychologist but he doesn't know any names, so he grabs Freud. Freud unfortunately was never a psychologist but a physician (medical doctor). The practice of psychoanalysis (based on Freud's work) is done by psychiatrists with analytic training, who are part of medicine.
DeleteThe problem with recruiting one guy to refute another, is that this isn't the battle of the psych guys, it is the battle of evidence from a lifetime of studies, which has stood the test of time over and over, against someone who had no evidence (Freud) and whose work has been discredit in various ways, although he did contribute a lot to therapeutic techniques and to literary criticism. When a psychologist wants to refute another psychologist, they do it by attacking the research findings, not by mocking golf but by producing a similar study that produces a divergent result that must then be explained in order for a theory to stand. That's science. And it doesn't involve fighting among personalities, pitting Freud against a non-clinical, cognitive research-oriented theorist working in a very different field.
But Somerby's hostility is noted. Perhaps Somerby he'll tell us where his animus comes from. What did Kahneman ever do to him?
You say Somerby is trying to "contest" or "refute" Kahneman, but Somerby denies this explicitly: "We aren't trying to question the salience of Professor Kahneman's work."
DeleteYou're missing Somerby's point, which he also states explicitly: "We may be questioning the capabilities of modern high-end journalism."
What do you think salience means? He isn’t questioning his fame. Somerby is clearly peevish without real cause. It isn’t because the journalists messed up.
Delete"Professor Kahneman won a Nobel prize for this work in economics. Did he really win that prize because he was able to explain why golfers putt with greater success in certain situations?"
ReplyDeleteWhat an assinine remark this is! No, the Nobel was not for studying golf but for studying decision making in the breadth of human situations in which it arises. The ability of economists to understand and predict choices that consumers make is enormously important to our economy. But Kahneman's work is also broadly applied throughout psychology, such as in the construction and analysis of surveys and polling, use of rating scales in research, and what governs all types of choice in behavior.
Somerby presumably knows that a study of choices golfers make is not necessarily about golf. So he is being an asshole. I am asking why this praise for a major figure evokes rancidness in his heart, because who else would say such stupid negative things when a great man dies.
Lighten up. It's a joke.
DeleteAnother Somerby mind-reader.
DeleteHe complains about an easy-to-relate-to golf study then complains because some of his other work may be harder to understand. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
That’s what bullies usually say after belittling someone — what’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?
DeleteLet's see: You call Somerby an "asinine" "asshole" whose heart is "rancid" - and yet he's the one who is "belittling someone" and is a "bully"? OK, whatever.
Delete
DeleteNo, you are the one claiming Somerby was joking and saying “can’t I take a joke after Somerby wrote a rancid essay about a dead man who he seems to dislike for his accomplishments. You are the bully. Or should I say bully adjacent.
You really do like to call people names, don't you?
DeleteAnd you only attack other commenters without addressing their substance. You are a huge waste of space here.
Delete"We aren't trying to question the salience of Professor Kahneman's work. We may be questioning the capabilities of modern high-end journalism."
ReplyDeleteOnce again, Somerby complains that not everything is easy to understand. Cognitive psychology is highly technical. It involves computational modeling, statistics, methodological knowledge in order to construct studies that are capable of producing informative results, knowledge of ancillary specifics (such as golf). When someone compares the wording of a sentence such as: "Which would you prefer to do: (a) win $100 with 50% certainty, or (b) lose $50 with 100% certainty? (termed a gamble in decision research), the preference of subjects to choose (a) instead of (b), when both have exactly the same expectation, represents a bias against loss. How easy would it be for the NY Times to explain this to readers in a limited space obituary which must describe a lot more of the life of the man? If Somerby is really interested, he can go read more about Kahneman. Complaining because there is no abridged version of complicated work that spanned a lengthy career and reformed several fields, is a ridiculous demand.
Kahneman's writing is engaging and thought-provoking. His work gives some profound insights into thinking and behavior. His work is a gift to society.
ReplyDelete"There has been one great learning in American politics over the past dozen years (or more). That one great learning is this:
ReplyDeleteThere's no claim so apparently crazy, or so plainly unsupported by evidence, that you can't get very large numbers of people to believe it."
Once again, Somerby provides no citation to who said this, no evidence or support for its truth. That would be ironic except it is obvious he has pulled this idea out of his own ass.
At the very least, there is probably an inverse relationship between the craziness and lack of support for the idea and the number of people believing it. There are also some mediating factors, such as how long the idea has been around, the status of those believing it, how well the idea supports other cherished beliefs, supports the status quo or some powerful social entity, or people's wishful thinking.
If Somerby were really interested in people's beliefs in strange things, there are those who study that phenomenon, a literature on delusional thought, for example, or mass movements. He never refers to any of that. It is just his way of once again calling the human race ugly names and pretending no one can think, knows anything, or has expertise of any kind. That there is no basis for deciding what is true and what is not, and that people don't care if they are crazy or not. Mostly he just likes to use the word crazy a lot.
This makes Somerby a pathetic old fool. Usually he doesn't reveal so many aspects of his foolishness, all in a single essay.
Kind of depends on what Somerby considers a large number. Somerby seems to be rejecting Kahneman's work, so I'm not sure he should be deciding what's crazy and what's not.
Delete"There's no claim so apparently crazy, or so plainly unsupported by evidence, that you can't get very large numbers of people to believe it."
DeleteI think Somerby has been making and documenting this contention for years, e.g., Obama was born in Kenya, Trump won the 2020 election, etc.
Or, how about this crazy claim: "Somerby is a propagandist paid by Putin to manufacture ignorance." That crazy claim, which is plainly unsupported by any evidence, seems to be believed by many.
DeleteThere's nothing crazy about being born in Kenya, and it was supported by evidence, Obama's own book advertisement: "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii"
Delete@Anon 6:17
DeleteIt was in an advertisement? Well, it's indisputable then, what?
Just because something is unproven doesn’t make it crazy. It makes it speculation.
DeleteSomerby hasn’t been. documenting crazy right wing views. He’s been calling left wingers equally crazy, without supplying any evidence.
DeleteThat was a swing and a miss, Bob.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"There's no claim so apparently crazy, or so plainly unsupported by evidence, that you can't get very large numbers of people to believe it."
Yes. And I noticed another strange thing: there some who are desperately, day and night, searching for a certain white-paper-like document, and can't find it, despite the fact that plenty of these white-paper-like documents are freely available everywhere. Inexplicable.
Bob hasn’t complained lately about Albert Einstein’s explanation of the relativity of simultaneity.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Bob that, "There's no claim so apparently crazy, or so plainly unsupported by evidence, that you can't get very large numbers of people to believe it."
ReplyDeleteWhat's even worse is that there are those with the expertise to manipulate large numbers of people to believe in something crazy and unsupported by evidence. E.g. many or most of us have been sold on the idea that someone with a woman's genetics and a woman's body parts can claim that she's a man, based solely on her own feelings, with no ay to objectively verify whether she's really a man. And, all of society is obliged to respect her unverifiable claim.
"What's even worse is that there are those with the expertise to manipulate large numbers of people to believe in something crazy and unsupported by evidence. E.g. many or most of us have been sold on the idea that someone with a woman's genetics and a woman's body parts can claim that she's a man,"
DeleteI don't follow you, DiC. Who is the expert manipulator you're talking about here?
One effective technique, possibly attributable to Teddy Roosevelt is, “If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
DeleteThe application of this aphorism to people choosing their own gender is that many people have been punished for failing to obey someone's chosen gender.
The brevity of your attention span is troubling, DiC. Your post at 6:39 plainly says "there are those with the expertise to manipulate large numbers of people."
DeleteMy question is direct. Who are these manipulators? Are you saying that trans people are expert manipulators?
Many people believe that Palestinians don’t own Palestine — that diaspora Jews own it! Zionists convinced them of this absurdity.
DeleteAren’t trans people punished when people disrespect their bodily autonomy? My body, my choice should be taken literally.
DeleteI was forced to wear a dress every day to school K-12. After that I wore one on my wedding day but never again. My body, my choice, no labels. It is nobody’s damned business.
Given the persistence of pro-Palestinian propaganda, the lack of buy-in refutes David’s theory.
DeletePalestinians don’t own Palestine. That’s a fact.
DeleteQuaker asks, "Who is the expert manipulator you're talking about here?"
DeleteI read an article some time ago that said a group who had worked successfully to legalize gay marriage decided to take on the gender nonsense. Either the article didn't say who this group is or I've forgotten. I know that's pretty weak.
My main reason for believing what I do is that IMO things like this don't happen spontaneously. I can't identify a group specifically working to attain this end, but I do not believe that an enormous, radical change like this could happen spontaneously and so rapidly. Therefore I have no doubt that the change we've seen was the result of an organized campaign. YMMV
I agree with @6:59. You should wear what you please and call yourself what you please. It's your business. Let me add that your being trans doesn't interest me. I'm married, so I wouldn't have sex you in any case. Other than that, your identity doesn't affect me. (BTW I would question whether someone's gender should be their identity. Who you or I like to f*ck is our business, but I don't think that should define us.)
DeleteOTOH, it should be other people's business how they regard you. The way I refer to you should be my business. What athletic events you're allowed to participate in should be other people's business. Whether you go to a men's or women's prison should be other people's business.
I say "should be", but the incredible success of the gender nonsense often persuades or forces us to accept a bizarre POV.
I’m not trans. All people should have such autonomy. Trans people are liberating all of us. What you say to me is my business and what you say elsewhere is not.
DeletePrisoners are a special case because they lose many freedoms. You seem unaware that talented female athletes want to sharpen their skills by competing with men. That has been true for decades across various sports. This restriction is about protecting male egos.
Gender is not “nonsense”. It is how individuals see themselves. It is not binary but occurs on a continuum. People who are androgynous (comfortable with traits of both sexes) have the best social adjustment and mental health. Those who are rigid about sex roles have problems.
@9:15 I heard swimming champ Riley Gaines speak. She strongly objects to biological men competing in women's events.
DeleteAnd I can list the athletes who want to compete against men and don’t fear transwomen. That gets us nowhere. Athletes enter events and compete but they don’t choose their opponents in order to more easily win.
DeleteThere are several problems with "gender"
Delete1. It can't be independently verified. So, if someone is is mistaken about their gender, there's no way to find out.
2. It's not fixed. Someone can feel like a man one day and like a woman another day.
3. It invites lying. A male prisoner can be held in a women's prison by just lying and saying his gender is female. There's no way to disprove that.
4. It invites people to say they identify as non humans. E.g., seehttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=identify+as+a+cat&ia=web
5. It can lead to harm in children. Children are still figuring out sex. If medical changes are done before the child is really sure of their gender, that can cause irreparable harm.
@DiC:
Delete"I read an article some time ago that said a group who had worked successfully to legalize gay marriage decided to take on the gender nonsense."
I see. There are "expert manipulators" in some unnamed "group" that you believe are behind the acceptance of trans people.
I can't argue with you about the monsters you think are under the bed.
9:37 The first well publicized and accepted (by many) transgender athlete on the world stage was an opthalmologist who was an excellent club tennis player as a male but suddenly was a world class female after transitioning and playing professional tennis beginning in her early 40's. She ranked as high as 20 in the world and made it to the US Open doubles final. At the age of 47 Renee Richards retired from professional tennis after 4 years on the tour. Later in life she expressed ambivalence and some regret about her professional tennis career, stating that if she had transitioned in her 20's, no genetic woman could have beaten her.
DeleteI remember Renee Richards. As Unamused says, she had surgery to become a woman. She didn’t qualify for women’s tournaments by simply announcing that she felt like a woman.
DeleteThis was in the time period when Billy Jean King had to come back to tennis to beat Bobby Riggs in the so-called battle of the sexes in tennis.
DeleteThe question isn't whether women in general are beaten by men in general, or whether men or women are better players. It is whether any particular individual, male or female, is a better player than another.
Female players being groomed as pros routinely play against men to sharpen their skills. When I was in high school, I was the second singles player on my school's team. One match, we were told we would not be playing. I later found out that it was because the girl's singles player was too good to play against us, aiming at a professional career, and our coach thought it would be too demoralizing to us to be badly beaten, even though none of us had serious expectations about playing beyond high school. I found this out because the other school's player turned out to be a friend of mine from church, who had never mentioned to me that she was a serious tennis player.
So it isn't whether a player is male or female that matters, but who is better, and there are top female players and duffers like me, and they routinely beat each other and expect to be beaten. That's why this fit that some people are throwing over having a new person to play against who is better than they are, is inherently ridiculous, poor sportsmanship, against the spirit of competition, and irrelevant to the way anyone wants to live the rest of their life.
When a trans person cannot play as a man and is not welcome as a woman, how do they pursue their lifelong interest in tennis? Is there any good reason to ask them to give up their sport? It strikes me as punitive and mean-spirited, especially given that anyone will already have a collection of trophies so this cannot be about the winning. You win some and lose some, and move on to the next challenger. This is about intentionally hurting other people, and it should be seen for what it is. Just as no one considered Bobby Riggs a serious challenger to any female professional player, but he was able to psych out Margaret Court Smith. Billy Jean said "This is ridiculous" and wiped the floor with Riggs. And none of that proved a damned thing. Neither does this trans in sports controversy, especially now that there are women playing and coaching in the NFL.
If Renee Richards had seriously pursued pro tennis in his early 20s, he might have been a world class male player, challenging he idea that he only won as a woman because women are easier to beat. Women's tennis at that time was qualitatively different, more skill and less power. He obviously didn't do that, perhaps put off stride by feeling female in a male jock environment.
DeleteThese discussions never focus on whether a man keeps a strength advantage after taking hormones and testosterone blockers. They don't focus on whether changing a person's body composition impacts their trained physical performance in a sport, what they might have to relearn. There is just a plainly sexist assumption that being male is better, so any winning must be attributed to lingering maleness (but what does that consist of).
If this were actually about the sport, there would be some consideration of this instead of just crying about men being able to win more. That's why it is obvious that these concerns are a sham.
Gender consists of their roles people accept and perform in society and their self-presentation. This has always been true. One of my favorite quotes is this one:
Delete"I figure if a girl wants to be a legend she should just go ahead and be one." Calamity Jane
She wore buckskins and imitated male behavior, rode with Wild Bill Hickok, but she also displayed compassion, had romantic attachments, and helped other people. She lived on her own terms. This was when gender conformity was more entrenched than now, but she ignored those conventions and didn't care whether she was socially accepted. She was respected. See her portrayal in Deadwood, which has some accuracy.
There were other women who passed for men their whole lives, some fought in wars, others were part of male culture, only discovered to be female at their deaths when examined by a doctor or mortician. This has been true throughout history. Imposition of gender rules on women, and to a lesser extent, men, has waxed and waned, but there are no behaviors specific to women in one culture that have not been assigned to men in a different culture, and vice versa.
That's why this furor over gender is largely a matter of ignorance. Worrying about people misrepresenting some truth is a waste of energy. It already happens without dire consequences. Children will be what they are, no matter how parents interfere. The interference causes more problems than letting kids be their authentic selves, whatever that means. Imagine if someone tried to force Barbie to be different in her youth!
All people should be taught kindness, compassion and how to mind their own business, at as early an age as possible. Then we wouldn't have people trying to make other people miserable over trivialities, such as whether they like to wear makeup or not. Donald Trump wears makeup for God's sake, and none of his he-man bully boys even notices.
@Anon 11:46
DeleteWell done.
“We aren't trying to question the salience of Professor Kahneman's work. We may be questioning the capabilities of modern high-end journalism.”
ReplyDeleteNo one can tell from this whether Somerby thinks the professor’s work is salient, or if he is at all familiar with it.
He says he may be questioning the journalism, in this case, the obituary.
This doesn’t sound like something someone would say who was familiar with the professor’s work and could judge the accuracy of the obituary for himself.
The purpose of an obituary is to inform the public of someone’s death and show respect to survivors by honoring their life. It isn’t to provide remedial education. Somerby skepticism about this man’s work is misplaced and offensive.
DeleteI think that’s why he says he “may” be questioning the journalism/obituary. He is leaving open the possibility that it accurately reflects Kahneman’s views, in which case, he WOULD be questioning Kahneman. It’s kind of weaselly.
DeleteLet's dissect the points raised in the post to address your concerns about its ambiguity regarding Somerby's stance on Kahneman's work and his critique of journalism.
DeleteOn Questioning Kahneman's Work: The original statement from the post, "We aren't trying to question the salience of Professor Kahneman's work," directly indicates an acknowledgment of Kahneman's significant contributions. Somerby seems to take for granted the importance of Kahneman's work, possibly assuming that the audience is aware of Kahneman's esteemed position in the field of behavioral economics. This choice to not explicitly affirm the value of Kahneman's work could be seen not as a reflection of unfamiliarity but rather as a rhetorical strategy aimed at focusing the critique on journalism rather than on Kahneman's legacy.
Critique of Journalism: Somerby's assertion that he may be questioning the capabilities of modern high-end journalism, specifically through the lens of the obituary, highlights a concern with how complex ideas and contributions of significant figures are communicated to the public. This critique does not inherently require an in-depth discussion of Kahneman's work itself but rather an evaluation of whether the journalistic portrayal effectively captures and conveys the essence of Kahneman's contributions to a broader audience.
Ambiguity and Interpretation: Your concern that Somerby's comments leave ambiguity regarding his familiarity with Kahneman's work and the accuracy of the obituary is valid from a critical reading standpoint. Explicitness in argumentation enhance understanding and allow for more precise evaluation. However, the absence of explicit personal evaluation of Kahneman's work in Somerby's critique could also be interpreted as an attempt to maintain focus on the critique of journalism rather than on the merits of Kahneman's work itself.
Evaluating the Critique's Basis: The effectiveness of Somerby's critique could be strengthened by providing specific examples of how the obituary (and similar journalistic endeavors) might fail to capture the nuances of Kahneman's contributions. Without these examples, readers are left to infer whether the critique stems from a perceived superficiality in the obituary's coverage, a misunderstanding of Kahneman's work, or another factor.
In direct response to your comment, it's clear that you are seeking clarity in Somerby's critique—both in terms of his understanding of Kahneman's work and his evaluation of the obituary's journalistic quality. Engaging with complex intellectual contributions and their media representations requires both clear articulation of one's evaluative stance and, when critiquing, specific examples to support the critique. While Somerby's approach aims to raise important questions about journalistic practice, your call for greater clarity and specificity is a valuable reminder of the principles that underpin constructive and insightful critique.
It’s an obituary, for Chrissakes, not a dissertation on Kahneman.
Delete12:25
DeleteIndeed, the distinction you've drawn attention to is both important and necessary in discussions about the nature of obituaries versus more detailed academic analyses. An obituary, by its traditional purpose and format, is crafted to honor and summarize the life and contributions of an individual, aiming to reach a broad audience, including those who may not be familiar with the depth of the subject's professional work. It serves to commemorate, inform, and sometimes inspire, rather than to provide a comprehensive critique or exhaustive exploration of one's scholarly contributions.
In the context of Professor Daniel Kahneman's obituary, the aim is to encapsulate his monumental impact on psychology and economics, his groundbreaking research, and the essence of his legacy in a manner that is accessible and meaningful to a wide readership. This includes not only academics and students of his work but also the general public who may have little to no background in behavioral economics. The challenge, therefore, lies in striking a balance between the brevity and broad appeal of an obituary and the desire to do justice to the complexity and significance of Kahneman's contributions.
Bob Somerby's reflections, as articulated in his post, while acknowledging the constraints of an obituary, also seem to yearn for a deeper recognition of Kahneman's nuanced work. This is not to undermine the value or purpose of the obituary but to highlight a broader question of how we, as a society, recognize and communicate the contributions of individuals whose work has profoundly shaped our understanding of human behavior and decision-making.
Thus, when considering your comment, it is vital to appreciate the obituary's role within its traditional bounds while also recognizing the legitimate desire for a more thorough exploration of Kahneman's work. The critique isn't necessarily a demand for obituaries to transform into dissertations but perhaps a call for complementary narratives that together paint a fuller picture of a person's life and legacy. In this light, the discussion around Kahneman's obituary opens up broader conversations about how we memorialize and celebrate the lives of those who've left significant marks on their fields and society at large.
Netanyahu makes Jews look bad.
ReplyDeleteYou make trolls look bad.
DeleteI’m just boosting Dic’s view: Fani Willis makes black people look bad. So, I’m just extending his brilliant insight.
Delete