EFTA02711327.pdf

From: John Brockman Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 2:42 PM To: Epstein Jeffrey Subject: "On Kahneman" deadline Wednesday night - last call HOW HAS KAHNEMAN'S WORK INFLUENCED YOUR OWN? WHAT STEP DID IT MAKE POSSIBLE? http://www.edge.org/conversationion-kahneman user id: edge_access password: edgeaccess Responses date: Richard Nisbett, Richard Thaler & Sendhil Mullainathan, =ric Kandel, Michael Norton, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Joshua Greene, =alter Mischel, Steven Pinker, Nicholas Christakis, Rory Sutherland I spent the weekend with Danny who is aware of the project. I am not =howing responses to him until publication. Below are the "editorial marching orders" and snippets from the =eginning of the responses to date, which hopefully will inspire you to =it down and write a few words. JB John Brockman EDITORIAL MARCHING ORDERS: Please be brief send 500 words max to me at [email protected] as a Word file or email text. We plan to publish next =hursday, March 27th so I need pieces by Wednesday night. This is Edge, so be Edgy. Just as we don't allow ad hominem comments =nd characterizations, neither is this the venue for birthday greetings, =marmy tributes, personal reminiscences, etc. As always, it's about the =deas, not the person. Write something serious and worthy of Kahneman. = Say something new, true, original, and interesting (no previously =ublished material). Surprise me. No referencing politicians, =residents, prime ministers, political parties. No editorials or OpEds: =acts and evidence, not opinions. No flippancy.Please avoid =elf-promotion: referencing your own writing or books ("As I wrote in my =ook ...."); selling from the stage, pushing your well-known agenda. =dge is not an academic publication: no footnotes, academic citations, =r hyperlinks: stay on the page. •••••••• RICHARD NISBETT Only people of a certain age will recall that when Danny and Amos began =heir work on heuristics, every social and behavioral scientist knew =hat their job was strictly empirical: you report only what people do =nd think. It was absolutely forbidden to be prescriptive — to say =hat people ought to do or think. . . . RICHARD THALER & SEN0HIL MULLAINATHAN Kahneman and Tversky made Behavioral Economics Adjacently Possible EFTA_R1_02124882 EFTA02711327 Even in science, timing is everything. Charles Babbage' programmable =omputer was, in 1837, a step—or two —too early. Influential ideas =re those that are novel but just familiar enough that existing =esearchers can build on them. Stuart Kauffman coined the term "adjacent =ossible" to describe the untapped potential that sits only one step =way where scientists currently sit. Scientists who open the adjacent =ossible deserve the research equivalent of an "assist" in sports. . . . ERIC KANDEL Daniel Kahneman has not yet influenced my work on snails and mice, but I =m only in an early point in my career and I still look forward to =xploring his ideas in a molecular biological context in the future. . = . MICHAEL NORTON Danny Kahneman sets a nearly impossible standard for social scientists: =esign experiments that so perfectly (and subtly) capture two different =ersions of the world that you don't even need to see the results to =ave already learned something novel. . . . NASSIM TALEB The Problem of Multiple Counterfactuals Here is an insight Danny K. triggered and changed the course of my work. = figured out a nontrivial problem in randomness and its underestimation = decade ago while reading the following sentence in a paper by Kahneman =nd Miller of 1986: . . . JOSHUA GREENE It's hard to overstate Kahneman's influence on my work. What I have =one, essentially, is to look at moral thinking through the lenses =round by Daniel Kahneman. In my first year of college I was introduced =o the field of "heuristics and biases" and was struck by the power of =hese ideas—that some of the most important decisions we make are =eeply myopic. Soon after, I was introduced to contemporary debates in =thics, much of which center around moral dilemmas such as the Trolley =roblem. . . . WALTER MISCHEL "Answering an Easier Question" I have known Danny Kahneman for more than 40 years, and am taking the =iberty of bypassing the editorial instructions to avoid the personal =nd will mention how we first met. From my brief time as chair of the =tanford Psychology Department in the 1970s I recall two achievements: a =ew paint job and hiring Amos Tversky. Amos in turn brought Danny often =nto the Tversky's campus home. Some of my most treasured memories of =hat time were watching them thinking, talking, and laughing when they =ere at the height of their collaboration. Since then, I have avidly =bsorbed Danny's work, and enjoyed every conversation we have had. It =as all influenced my own thinking, not only about our science, but =bout how to try to do it right. . . . STEVEN PINKER As many Edge readers know, my recent work has involved presenting =opious data indicating that rates of violence have fallen over the =ears, decades, and centuries, including the number of annual deaths in =ar, terrorism, and homicide. Most people find this claim incredible on =he face of it. Why the discrepancy between data and belief? The answer =omen right out of Danny's work with Amos Tversky on the Availability =euristic. People estimate the probability of an 2 EFTA_R1_02124883 EFTA02711328 event by the ease of =ecovering vivid examples from memory. As I explained, "Scenes of =arnage are more likely to be beamed into our homes and burned into our =emories than footage of people dying of old age. No matter how small =he percentage of violent deaths may be, in absolute numbers there will =lways be enough of them to fill the evening news, so people's =mpressions of violence will be disconnected from the actual =roportions." NICHOLAS CHRISTAKIS I heard of Danny in 1974 when I was 12, when my father, a nuclear =hysicist, handed me a copy of a paper that Danny and Amos Tversky had =ust published in Science. I first met him when I was in my 40's, when I =ad gone to Princeton to give a talk. And I now count him as a friend. =ut in the intervening decades, he had a profound effect on people like =e who work at the intersection of the natural and social sciences—not =o much (or only) because of the content of his thinking, but rather =ecause of the manner of his research—because Danny's brilliant way of =orking highlighted how one could practice a beautiful kind of syncretic =cience. RORY SUTHERLAND Loss aversion was, of course, widely understood by the advertising =ndustry long before it was adopted by economists. The slogan "Nobody =ver got fired for buying IBM" suggests that people might be willing to =ay a significant premium to avoid the small chance of a disastrous =utcome. . . . President Edge Foundation, Inc. 260 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10001 Visit edge.org ("Take a look. No matter who you are, you are bound to =ind something that will drive you crazy." -NEW YORK TIMES)=?xml version=.0" encoding=TF-8"?> <IDOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version=.0"> <dict> <key>date-last-viewed</key> <integer>0</integer> <key>date-received</key> <integer>1395672136</integer> <key>flags</key> <integer>8590195713</integer> <key>gmail-label-ids</key> <array> <integer>7</integer> <integer>27</integer> </array> <key>remote-id</key> <string>398186</string> </dict> </plist> 3 EFTA_R1_02124884 EFTA02711329