![]() Our minds do not naturally process statistics on incidents of violence, and so Kahneman helps explain why my claim is news or why it's hard for people to believe. My most recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, is about the historic decline of violence, a fact that I argue is underappreciated precisely because the human mind works the way Kahneman says it works, namely, that our sense of risk and danger is influenced by salient events that are available from memory. I've taught his research for more than 30 years and it's one of my favourite lectures when I teach psychology. His work has had a great impact on my own. ![]() That's a powerful and important discovery. ![]() His central message could not be more important, namely, that human reason left to its own devices is apt to engage in a number of fallacies and systematic errors, so if we want to make better decisions in our personal lives and as a society, we ought to be aware of these biases and seek workarounds. He pretty much created the field of behavioural economics and has revolutionised large parts of cognitive psychology and social psychology. I've called Daniel Kahneman the world's most influential living psychologist and I believe that is true. ![]() He is frequently named one of the world's top intellectuals and has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard University. ![]()
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