The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis tells the story of the deep friendship and intellectual collaboration between the two Israeli psychologists who invented “behavioural economics”, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
The result of Kahneman and Tversky’s “bromance” was not only behavioural economics but the establishment of the cognitive rules for human irrationality that has arguably done as much to define our world.
Kahneman and Tversky argued and proved that in the main humans decided things emotionally, not rationally. The trick or emotionally intelligent way to make decisions was to recognise those habits and not confuse emotion for rationality. Practising what they preached, their scientific papers were rigorous with fact and research but laced with memorable parable and anecdote.
One of the Israeli duo’s observations was that “no one ever made a decision because of a number – they needed a story”.
I have read every book and article written by Michael Lewis since Michael’s first book released in 1989, called “Liar’s Poker”, in which he wrote about the Wall Street boom of that decade and his part as a bond salesman for Solomon Brothers .
Michael displays a rare combination for a writer. He immerses himself in big ideas; about finance, technology, sports and, ultimately, the human condition; and then explains them to readers with sophistication and clarity.
However, he is also a vastly better raconteur than most other writers at playing the explanation game. You laugh when you read his books.
You see his protagonists in three dimensions; deeply likeable, but also flawed, just like most of your friends and family.
Some of Lewis’s other books worth reading are:
- Money Ball, which described the ways in which the Oakland Athletics baseball team had employed scientific data analysis rather than instinct and experience to mould a successful team. Made into a movie starring Brad Pitt
- The Blind Side: Evolution of a game, which talks about how American Football strategy has evolved over the years and featured the story of a football player Michael Oher which was made into a movie “The Blind side” starring Sandra Bullock.
- The Big Short , about those who saw the GFC coming and profited by shorting the US housing market , another movie starring Brad Pitt.
Michael Lewis, with his great gift for humanising complex and abstract ideas, is exactly the storyteller Tversky and Kahneman deserve.
The Undoing Project is at its heart simply, a book about Amos and Danny, two men who changed how people think about how people think.
Lewis accomplishes this, by telling us fascinating stories and leaving readers to make their own judgments about what lessons should be learned.
He provides along the way primers and examples on the research of Kahneman and Tversky, but this is almost done in passing; what is of interest here is the collaboration between two scientists. Two treads that are interwoven. While one gleans a good deal about teamwork from the book, Lewis doesn’t spell the lessons out.
Instead, the reader learns through observation, getting as close as anyone could to being in those closed rooms where the two men worked.
I recommend The Undoing Project to those who want to understand how people think and also learn about the two men who helped us to understand how we think.