Public Good

Ekonomipristagaren Daniel Kahnemans nya bok Thinking , Fast and Slow ligger i min läslista. Kahneman är känd för att till exempel ha visat att professionella aktiehandlare i regel inte är bättre än slumpen. Boken sägs inte bidra med speciellt mycket nytt för den som känner till hans forskning, men ett kul utdrag finns i The Guardian på nätet: How Cognitive Illusions Blind us to Reason.

Kahneman beskriver en situation där han förklarar för ett fondföretag (efter att ha granskat deras egna siffror) att de belönar tur, snarare än skicklighet:

“Our message to the executives was that, at least when it came to building portfolios, the firm was rewarding luck as if it were skill. This should have been shocking news to them, but it was not. There was no sign they disbelieved us. How could they? After all, we had analysed their own results, and they were sophisticated enough to see the implications, which we politely refrained from spelling out. We all went on calmly with our dinner, and I have no doubt that both our findings and their implications were quickly swept under the rug and that life in the firm went on as before. The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in their culture. Facts that challenge such basic assumptions – and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem – are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them. This is particularly true of statistical studies of performance, which provide base-rate information that people generally ignore when it clashes with their personal impressions from experience.”