[mattpavelle]

For those who don't know who he is:

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, mostly in collaboration with Amos Tversky, a Stanford cognitive psychologist who did groundbreaking work on human judgment and decision-making.

[whyenot]

I used to play D&D after school with Tal Tversky and Jon Barwise at the Tversky's Eichler home on the Stanford campus. This was in the early 1980s. I had no idea how famous either of my friend's fathers were (or would become). It's sad how young both of their parents were when they died.

[radu_floricica]

"advance" and "groundbreaking work" is far from enough. Those two basically invented a couple of new sciences.

"Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" is the paper that made them famous, and it's still a damn good read:

https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Psyc590Readings/TverskyK...

[narnarpapadaddy]

Yes, two new sciences. To those criticizing his work: I’m not saying the magnitude of the impact is the same, but have all of Darwin’s ideas about evolution stood the test of time? Clearly not.

Each of us sees the world through our own sets of biases. None of us is immune. Any of us that can see clearly enough to move humanity’s body of knowledge forward even a smidgen is a rarity and a treasure. Even among that group this man (and his collaborators) did more than most. I don’t believe _I_ will be counted among those. I can’t fault Kahneman for making some mistakes. Finding and fixing those is part of the process, and requires others with a different set of perspectives and biases. At a future date, weighed against his contributions, I believe they will appear relatively small.

[ipsum2]

All of this is in the article.