There’s a lot of noise around us – distractions of all sorts that can be found wherever people make judgments and decisions. Too often, individuals and organizations ignore this. They show “noise neglect”, as Nobel Prize Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his co-authors Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein argue. In their new book Noise – A Flaw in Human Judgment they show how noise can lead to errors in many fields, including medicine, law, public health, economic forecasting, food safety, management and human resources. In this DLD talk, moderated by John Brockman, the authors discuss simple remedies that we can all use to reduce both noise and bias in order to make far better decisions.
DLD Video
Book Talk: “Noise – A Flaw in Human Judgment”
Speakers
Cass Sunstein
Cass R. Sunstein is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. Prof. Sunstein has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy.
Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman was the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, Princeton University, Professor of Public Affairs, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Price in Economic Sciences and the National Medal of Freedom in 2013. He passed away in March 2024.
Olivier Sibony
Olivier Sibony is Professor of Strategy at HEC Paris and an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University. His research on improving the quality of strategic decision making has been featured in many publications, including Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review.
John Brockman
John Brockman is a cultural impresario, whose career has encompassed the avant-garde art world, science, books, software, and the Internet. He is publisher and editor of Edge.org, a highly acclaimed website devoted to discussions of cutting edge science by many of the world’s brilliant thinkers, and founder of Brockman, Inc., a leading international literary agency for serious nonfiction authors.