How Two Trailblazing Psychologists Turned the World of Decision Science Upside Down

Sunday, November 27th, 2016

Michael Lewis explains how two trailblazing psychologists turned the world of decision science upside down:

Danny was always sure he was wrong. Amos was always sure he was right. Amos was the life of every party; Danny didn’t go to the parties. Amos was loose and informal; even when Danny made a stab at informality, it felt as if he had descended from some formal place. With Amos you always just picked up where you left off, no matter how long it had been since you last saw him. With Danny there was always a sense you were starting over, even if you had been with him just yesterday. Amos was tone-deaf but would nevertheless sing Hebrew folk songs with great gusto. Danny was the sort of person who might be in possession of a lovely singing voice that he would never discover. Amos was a one-man wrecking ball for illogical arguments; when Danny heard an illogical argument, he asked, What might that be true of? Danny was a pessimist. Amos was not merely an optimist; Amos willed himself to be optimistic, because he had decided pessimism was stupid. When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice, Amos liked to say. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens. “They were very different people,” said a fellow Hebrew University professor. “Danny was always eager to please. He was irritable and short-tempered, but he wanted to please. Amos couldn’t understand why anyone would be eager to please. He understood courtesy, but eager to please—why?” Danny took everything so seriously; Amos turned much of life into a joke. When Hebrew University put Amos on its committee to evaluate all Ph.D. candidates, he was appalled at what passed for a dissertation in the humanities. Instead of raising a formal objection, he merely said, “If this dissertation is good enough for its field, it’s good enough for me. Provided the student can divide fractions!”

The piece is adapted from The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds.

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