Psychology, behavioural economics
Daniel Kahneman
1934 – 2024
The systematic ways judgement bends under uncertainty — availability, confirmation, hindsight — are most active in exactly the ambiguous conditions where sensing matters.
Read alongside: Sense
- Start with
- Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
- Where they resist the book
- Several priming results in the field failed replication. The core work on heuristics holds; the popular extensions should be held loosely.
Works worth the time
Thinking, Fast and Slow · 2011
The summary of a career. The chapters on availability and hindsight are the ones that bear on sensing under uncertainty.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ↗Read further
Where Kahneman appears
The mind seeks a floor before it seeks a direction.
Under uncertainty the body settles before the argument does. Regulation precedes reasoning — which is why a calm presence changes a room more quickly than a better analysis. It also explains the appetite for premature certainty: closure feels like safety even when it costs accuracy.
Behaviour is contagious in ways declaration is not.
Bandura's social learning explains why a stated value loses to an observed one every time. Argyris's espoused theory versus theory-in-use names the gap precisely. And the familiar biases — availability, confirmation, hindsight — are most active in exactly the ambiguous conditions where sensing matters.