[passer_byer]

I can see where you might feel this way. I recommend giving it another try and come at from two considerations. The first is observing their experimental designs. They are very clever and well described. The second is the extent to which these experiments have been replicated with consistent results using populations with a range of socioeconomic and cultural differences.

Given the consistency of these experimental outcomes, may help to explain his authoritative tone. After all, he won a Nobel prize in economics which is completely outside his domain expertise.

If that is not enough to entice you to give it another go, consider the book, The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis. Lewis, in his highly researched and using detailed anecdotes describes how Kahnemans and Tversky collaboration initially began as a collaboration around understanding the decision making process in circumstances where there is a high degree of uncertainty and acquiring additional information is not feasible. The Khanamen/Tversky collaboration is described as a deep collaboration where neither man claims credit for their respective contributions. Only both minds together could have produced their research findings.

Lewis also describes how many reviewers of his book, Moneyball, expressed the many parallels between Kahnemans/Tversky's research and themes covered in Moneyball. Lewis was not familiar with this research when he wrote Moneyball. It was not until others pointed out these parallels that Lewis decided he should engage with Kahneman to write The Undoing Project.

[champagneben]

Given that this is what he had to say on priming, the authoritative tone starts sounding a little less authoritative: "When I describe priming studies to audiences, the reaction is often disbelief . . . The idea you should focus on, however, is that disbelief is not an option. The results are not made up, nor are they statistical flukes. You have no choice but to accept that the major conclusions of these studies are true."

https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...

[snarf21]

I agree completely. If you take everything in the book as 100% gospel, it will let you down. However, there are lots of perspective changing things to learn. I particularly learned a lot about anchoring and reacting vs thinking.