When I grew out of my annoying teenage atheist phase I needed a new way to feel superior to other people. In a stroke of luck, this was around the peak ascendancy of behavioural economics, a field devoted to pointing out how everyone was going around being WRONG!!! all the time.
From 2012-2018ish, I was obsessed with this stuff. And I wasn’t alone: Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow was a phenomenon, selling millions of copies. I discovered an online community of ‘rationalists’ devoted to practicing the art of thinking clearly, and whose founding blog was literally called Overcoming Bias. I lapped up everything they wrote.
Fast forward to a few months ago, when Kahneman died. It got me thinking about just how little impact any of that stuff has had on my life and my thinking, despite all the hype at the time.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the field of behavioural economics has failed to live up to its promise. The stronger claim I want to make is that its very foundations are crumbling, right up to and including the great central pillar of prospect theory for which Kahneman received his Nobel prize…
The post The ‘Bias’ Bias: No, Your Brain is Not Made of Swiss Cheese appeared first on Deep Dish.