The Signal and Thinking

So I finished a couple of books that ended up being about similar aspects of thought, Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise" and Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". Although I started K's book first and then started Nate's book later, I ended up finishing The Signal first. Silver is just a better writer with a much more concise interaction with statistics and heuristics while "Thinking" is very in depth with lots of lab work and real test outputs. Definitely recommend reading Silver's book first as it gives a much better explanation of Bayes's theory as well as how the math works in the examples. Then jump to K's book because he really invests the time to show all of the different interactions of the math with the irrationality of the human reaction to situations.

I really wish I had taken notes of the highlights, but I didn't. Granted the notes would make as much sense for people who are not me as the last post, but this blog is for me.

Some of the key points in Thinking, Fast and Slow is about System 1 and System 2.

1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.

2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

The are not objectively different systems of the brain, but are mnemomics to how the brain operates.

Both books then take this process and demonstrate how you can't fully trust the output of your mind. It needs to be run through a decision filter, especially in regards to overconfidence, before taking an action. Which is where Bayes and the idea of probability and confidence percentages come into use. Start with prior belief of expected percentage of something to occur, then develop the percentage after examining the evidence, then finish with the necessary percentage to create a change in the output.

Sortof. I should probably read them again to get a better picture or maybe go back to school.