From: John Brockman < INIMIF
To: Nathan Myhrvold
Cc: Larry Page - ,J , Sergey Brin
Pierre Omidyar , Dean Kamen
, Stewart George Dyson
, Elon Musk Hillis
, Bill Gates , Sean Parker
, Tony Fadell Richard Thaler
Jimm , Tim O'Reilly
Evan Williams Salar Kamangar
Craig Venter Eva Wisten
Christopher Anderson Jennifer Jacquet
, Nick Pritzker , Jaron Lanier
Jean Pigozzi , "J.E. Safra/Doumanian"
, Jeff Skoll , Mark Zuckerberg
Jeffre E stein <jeevacation mail.com>, Daniel Kahneman
, Anne Treisman June Cohen
Subject: Dyson on Kahneman - New York Review of Books
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:42:28 +0000
Attachments: How_to_Dispel_Your Illusions.docx
On Nov 30, 2011, at 3:36 PM, Nathan Myhrvold wrote:
> I must say that I love the irony of this. The NYT list is telling us
> what to think about Danny's book. Meanwhile the book tells us that we
> can be unduly influenced by people telling us what to think... It is
> wonderfully circular.
> It is very well deserved honor nonetheless - Danny should be proud of
> it.
> And for that matter, of his incredible book agent too :-)
> Nathan
OK, enough emails from me on Kahneman. This is the final one (promise!) until and unless he wins the Pulitzer
or the Nobel Prize for Literature. With Freeman Dyson's final paragraph in his review (attached) NEW YORK
REVIEW OF BOOKS, Danny can take a few days off (and so can I).
Cheers,
JB
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
December 22, 2011 - Page 40
How to Dispel Your Illusions
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Freeman Dyson
Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
499 pp., $30.00
(Final paragraph:) "Freud and James were artists and not scientists. It is normal for artists who achieve great
acclaim during their lifetimes to go into eclipse and become unfashionable after their deaths. Fifty or a hundred
years later, they may enjoy a revival of their reputations, and they may then be admitted to the ranks of
permanent greatness. Admirers of Freud and James may hope that the time may come when they will stand
together with Kahneman as three great explorers of the human psyche, Freud and James as explorers of our
deeper emotions, Kahneman as the explorer of our more humdrum cognitive processes. But that time has not yet
come. Meanwhile, we must he grateful to Kahneman for giving us in this book a joyful understanding of the
practical side of our personalities."
EFTA00719773