美国国家公共电台 NPR Are You Of Two Minds? Michael Lewis' New Book Explores How We Make Decisions

Are You Of Two Minds? Michael Lewis' New Book Explores How We Make Decisions

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0005:03repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: 

We like to think our brains are able to make rational decisions, but maybe they can't. Take this example.

MICHAEL LEWIS: If you have a patient in a doctor's office who's just been told they have terminal cancer but there's this operation they could perform right now that might save their lives...

CORNISH: Author Michael Lewis says the way the risks are presented can change the way we respond.

LEWIS: They have a 90 percent chance of surviving the operation. If you tell them that, they respond one way. If you tell them all of that - that they have the 10 percent chance of being killed by the operation, they are about three times less likely to have the operation. If you frame something as a loss - 10 percent chance at dying - as opposed to as a gain - 90 percent chance at living - people respond entirely² different. They make a different decision.

CORNISH: And Michael Lewis has been studying research on the human mind for his latest book "The Undoing⁴ Project." It chronicles the lives of two men who made that discovery and many others about the surprising way humans make decisions. In fact, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman founded an entire branch of psychology⁵ called behavioral economics.

Michael Lewis' interest in these two psychologists came out of one of his other books, "Moneyball," which was about trusting statistics instead of intuition to build a successful baseball team.

LEWIS: When the book was published, it was pointed⁶ out to me in a review that the mistakes that people make when they're judging other people had been described well by these two Israeli psychologists in work they'd done in the 1970s. And I was oblivious⁷ to it.

This book, if anything, is like the prequel to "Moneyball." It explains why experts' intuitive judgments⁹ can go wrong and why you need to have data to rely on as a check against the judgments of these experts.

CORNISH: So they're Israeli psychologists - Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. What was the kind of central question that fueled their research?

LEWIS: I think their central question is, how does a mind work not when it's in an emotional state but when it thinks it's in a rational state? When it's faced with a judgment⁸ or a decision to make, what's it doing? That's what they were interested in.

CORNISH: You've also talked about the influence that their research has today or had on the Obama administration (laughter) and the White House. Can you give us an example?

LEWIS: The Obama administration actually had and has a unit in it that's responsible for framing decisions in a way that leads people to maybe make better decisions. This unit, for example, has gone through all the federal pension plans, many of which were opt-in, required a worker to check a box if he wanted to save a certain amount of money.

They changed these plans to opt-out. You had to check a box if you didn't want to save a certain amount of money. Just that change in the - what's called the choice architecture leads people to save massively more money. And that was just one of the things that Danny and Amos' work revealed - the importance of framing.

CORNISH: Now, I can imagine that this election in particular (laughter) with the perception that data-driven journalism¹⁰, like, focused too much on the polls and, quote, unquote, "got it wrong" must have been really interesting to you. I mean how did this book make you think about that conversation?

LEWIS: I filter the election through Danny and Amos. They did these wonderful unfinished studies about how the human imagination worked. They called it the Undoing Project. And they studied briefly¹¹ how people undid¹² tragedy. So after the election, people who found the result tragic¹³ were obeying some of the rules of the imagination that Danny and Amos described - focusing on the FBI director, for example, at the end.

They had pointed out - Danny and Amos had pointed out that when people endure a tragedy and they try to undo³ it in their minds so that they get to some alternative reality where it didn't happen, they start at the end, and they undo the last thing that happened. So they undo the field goal kicker missing the field goal, or they undo the grounder going through the legs of the first baseman in the ninth inning. Or they undo the last...

CORNISH: And you see that in the way, like, Democrats¹⁴ are focusing on the FBI director...

LEWIS: On Comey.

CORNISH: ...James Comey.

LEWIS: Whereas, you know, you can think of a thousand different things that could have happened and that were more probable that could have ended with Trump¹⁵ not being president.

CORNISH: How did this make you see your own work because you also do this in a way - try and see patterns in the past, try and seek order maybe where it's not always clear there's order. I mean that's just being an author.

LEWIS: You're exactly right, and it makes me skeptical¹⁶ of my own work. And when I was working on this book and writing it, I was hoping the reader all along was going to take Amos and Danny's spirit with them and think about everything I was doing with it and thinking about the patterns I was finding and whether these were true patterns or false patterns because it's not that all patterns are false. It's that we can be misled by false patterns. So it's given me a heightened awareness¹⁷ of the temptation that the mind presents you with to find a story that really isn't true.

CORNISH: Well, Michael Lewis, thank you so much for sharing this research with us.

LEWIS: Thanks for having me.

CORNISH: Michael Lewis' new book is called "The Undoing Project." It's out now.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

3 undo   

vt.解开，松开；取消，撤销

参考例句：

• His pride will undo him some day.他的傲慢总有一天会毁了他。
• I managed secretly to undo a corner of the parcel.我悄悄地设法解开了包裹的一角。

4 undoing   

n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭

参考例句：

• That one mistake was his undoing. 他一失足即成千古恨。
• This hard attitude may have led to his undoing. 可能就是这种强硬的态度导致了他的垮台。

5 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

6 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

7 oblivious   

adj.易忘的，遗忘的，忘却的，健忘的

参考例句：

• Mother has become quite oblivious after the illness.这次病后，妈妈变得特别健忘。
• He was quite oblivious of the danger.他完全没有察觉到危险。

8 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

9 judgments   

判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判

参考例句：

• A peculiar austerity marked his judgments of modern life. 他对现代生活的批评带着一种特殊的苛刻。
• He is swift with his judgments. 他判断迅速。

10 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

11 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

12 Undid   

v. 解开, 复原

参考例句：

• The officer undid the flap of his holster and drew his gun. 军官打开枪套盖拔出了手枪。
• He did wrong, and in the end his wrongs undid him. 行恶者终以其恶毁其身。

13 tragic   

adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的

参考例句：

• The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
• Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。

14 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

15 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

16 skeptical   

adj.怀疑的，多疑的

参考例句：

• Others here are more skeptical about the chances for justice being done.这里的其他人更为怀疑正义能否得到伸张。
• Her look was skeptical and resigned.她的表情是将信将疑而又无可奈何。

17 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。