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  3. Towards the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman laments that he and his late collaborator, Amos Tversky, are often c

Towards the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman laments that he and his late collaborator, Amos Tversky, are often c

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问题     Towards the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman laments that he and his late collaborator, Amos Tversky, are often credited with showing that humans make "irrational" choices. That term is too strong, he says, to describe the variety of mental mishaps to which people systematically fall prey. Readers of his book may disagree. Mr. Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel economics laureate, has delivered a full catalogue of the biases, shortcuts and cognitive illusions to which our species regularly succumbs. In doing so he makes it plain that Homo economicus — the rational model of human behaviour beloved of economists — is as fantastical as a unicorn.
    In one experiment described by Mr. Kahneman, participants asked to imagine that they have been given ￡50 behave differently depending on whether they are then told they can "keep" ￡20 or must "lose" ￡30 — though the outcomes are identical. He also shows that it is more threatening to say that a disease kills "1,286 in every 10,000 people", than to say it kills "24.14% of the population", even though the second mention is twice as deadly. Vivid language often overrides basic arithmetic.
    Some findings are downright peculiar. Experimental subjects who have been "primed" to think of money, perhaps by seeing a picture of dollar bills, will act more selfishly. So if someone nearby drops some pencils, these subjects will pick up fewer than their non-primed counterparts. Even obliquely suggesting the concept of old age will inspire people to walk more slowly — though feeling elderly never crossed their mind, they will later report.
    After all this the human brain looks less like a model of rationality and more like a giddy teenager: flighty, easily distracted and lacking in self-awareness. Yet this book is not a counsel of despair. Its awkward title refers to Mr. Kahneman’s two-tier model of cognition: "System 1" is quick, intuitive and responsible for the quirks and mistakes described above (and many others). "System 2", by contrast, i$ slow, deliberative and less prone to error. System 2 kicks in when we are faced with particularly complex problems, but much of the time it is all too happy to let the impulsive System 1 get its way.
    What, then, is System 1 good for? Rather a lot, it turns out. In a world that often demands swift judgment and rapid decision-making (fight or flight?), a creature who solely relied on deliberative thinking wouldn’t last long. Moreover, System 1 generally works well. As Mr. Kahneman says, "most of our judgments and actions are appropriate most of the time". He urges readers to counteract what he considers to be mistakes of System 1 thinking, such as the "loss aversion" that deters people from accepting favourable gambles (such as a 50-50 chance to win $200 or lose $100). He also recommends checking the performance of an investment portfolio no more than once a quarter, to limit needless anguish over short-term fluctuations and the "useless churning" of shares.
    Mr. Kahneman does not dwell on the possible evolutionary origins of our cognitive biases, nor does he devote much time to considering why some people seem naturally better at avoiding error than others. Still this book, his first for a non-specialist audience, is a profound one. As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be. Often hailed as the father of behavioural economics (with Tversky as co-parent), his work has influenced a range of disciplines and has even inspired some policy. But the true consequences of his findings are only starting to emerge. When he presents the poor victims of his experiments with conclusive proof of their errors, the typical reaction is not a chastened pledge to shape up, but confused silence, followed by business as usual. No one likes to be told he is wrong.
What does Kahneman, the author of the book, share in common with Copernicus and Darwin?
选项 A、They try to overrule a deep-rooted concept.
B、They undergo research to come to conclusion.
C、They prove natural and social sciences are related.
D、They explain complex theories in a simple way.
答案A
解析 推理判断题。文章最后一段提到哥白尼挑战了地球是宇宙中心的理论，达尔文挑战了人为中心的世界观，而本书作者试图推翻理性人类的观点，所以他们之间的共同之处在于他们都在试图推翻一些根深蒂固的观点，所以[A]是答案。哥白尼和达尔文研究的属于自然科学范畴，而卡尼曼研究的是人类本身，属于人文科学范畴，他们并没能证明社会和自然科学的关联性，所以[C]错误。虽然最后一段提到本书的目标读者是非专业人士，但不能推断他们都用简单的方法解释了复杂理论，[D]错误。
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