Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow

"...[System 1 is] that stranger in you, which may be in control of much of what you do, although you rarely have a glimpse of it."

—Daniel Kahneman 

Daniel Kahneman, along with his partner Amos Tversky, economist Richard Thaler and other collaborators, revolutionized the understanding of how we make choices. Kahneman sought to explain observed departures from the pure rationality assumed by economic theory, and quickly discovered that such departures are the norm rather than the exception.

As an example, you are offered a gamble on a single coin toss. If the coin comes up heads, you lose $100. If it comes up tails, you win $125. Would you accept the gamble? Most people say no. Their aversion to a loss of $100 is greater than their attraction to the prospect of winning $125. The average person requires a potential gain of around three times the potential loss in order to be induced to take this gamble.

So, you might say, in general people don't like to take risks. Consider, though, the next pair of options:

Option A: You lose $50 for sure.
Option B: On a single coin toss, if it comes up heads you lose $100; if it comes up tails, you lose nothing.

Which option would you choose? For many people, it's Option B, even though the potential downside is twice as great as that of Option A. When faced with two possibilities, both bad, people become much more willing to take risks. Kahneman and Tversky developed a theory, called "prospect theory," to explain these apparently contradictory results, an innovation for which Kahneman was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics (Tversky died in 1996, and the Nobel is not awarded posthumously).

Kahneman's recent book Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011) is a survey of his life's work, and it's fascinating stuff. He begins by describing the evidence that there are two modes of thought that we each employ. What Kahneman calls "System 1" is automatic and quick, and is engaged for things like emotional responses, intuitions, snap judgments, or well-practiced associations; "System 2" is more analytical, rational, and conscious, and is engaged for things like calculation or logical argument.

Because engagement of System 2 is effortful, it is often bypassed, and so doesn't provide a check on System 1. Here's an example:

If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long will it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? 

For many people the first answer that comes to mind is 100 minutes. But the correct answer is five minutes: it takes each machine five minutes to make one widget, so 100 machines will take five minutes to produce one widget each, for a total of 100 widgets. The correct answer, five minutes, is a System 2 response; the quick but incorrect response, 100 minutes, is a System 1 response.

Experimenters gave a test that included this problem and two others to Princeton students, and found that 90% of the students made an error on at least one problem. (The other two problems:

A bat and ball together cost $1.10, and the bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

In a pond there is a patch of lily pads that doubles in size every day. If it takes 48 days for the patch to entirely cover the pond, how long would it take to cover half the pond? 

Answers given below.)

But the error rate on this test plunged from 90% to 35% when the problems were presented in a hard-to-read font. Counterintuitively, the harder the problems were to read, the easier they were to answer correctly. The reason? The hard-to-read font forced the students to concentrate, engaging System 2, which is more analytical.

The problem is that it is relatively difficult to engage System 2. We often operate on System 1, and while sometimes the consequences are beneficial—we can sense danger very quickly, for example—sometimes they are dire. As Kahneman writes, "A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth." Even more frightening,

"...[Y]ou do not even have to repeat the entire statement of a fact or idea to make it appear true. People who were repeatedly exposed to the phrase 'the body temperature of a chicken' were more likely to accept as true the statement that 'the body temperature of a chicken is 144 degrees' (or any other arbitrary number). The familiarity of one phrase in the statement sufficed to make the whole statement feel familiar, and therefore true." (p. 62)

Any resemblance to recent political discourse is entirely intentional on the part of people who know that a repeated lie will continue to be believed even after a factual rebuttal.

It's the primacy of System 1 as our typical mode of thought that leads to phenomena such as:

• Anchoring and priming, where random suggestions can affect our estimates and judgments; 
• Formulation and framing effects, where we can come to diametrically opposed decisions depending on how a choice is presented to us; 
• The Law of Small Numbers, where we wildly overestimate how representative small samples can be; and 
• What You See Is All There Is, where we focus on the immediate details of a problem and ignore crucial information from its larger context.

If you are at all concerned with how your decisions can be influenced by elements outside your consciousness and your control, I strongly recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow. But it's also one of the most entertaining books I've read in the past year, filled with puzzles, problems, and brain teasers. You'll never look at apparently simple choices in the same way again—and that's a good thing.

--

The ball costs five cents, not ten cents; the lake would be half-covered in 47 days, not 24 days

Haruki Murakami's 1Q84

Haruki Murakami's novels often read like a collaboration between Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick. A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard-Boiled Wonderland & The End of the World, Dance Dance Dance, Kafka on the Shore, After Dark, and his latest novel 1Q84 all feature laconic, self-sufficient but emotionally incomplete protagonists, indifferent to or alienated from worldly measures of success, who find themselves unexpectedly thrust into the role of detective when they come into contact with a dreamlike alternate reality.

1Q84 follows two characters (Aomame and Tengo) who shared a brief but intense moment of connection in childhood, and as adults separately find themselves in the world of "1Q84"—a slightly askew version of 1984 Tokyo. The two begin to search for one another in this odd new world, while both are being pursued in turn by Ushikawa, a detective hired by a vengeful religious cult.

The cult is concerned with Tengo because he has ghost-written a best-selling novel that reveals the cult's secrets and describes aspects of 1Q84. The ostensible author of the novel (entitled Air Chrysalis) is a beautiful teenaged girl who has escaped from the cult. The cult is also after Aomame, because she has murdered its leader, a serial rapist of underage girls. The cult leader is the latest and last of a series of killings of abusive men that Aomame has carried out at the behest of a wealthy woman called The Dowager who runs a safe house for victims of domestic violence.

The unusual details of the world of 1Q84, the multiple pursuits, and the novel's split structure (chapters alternate between Aomame and Tengo, with Ushikawa eventually added to the mix) make for compelling reading. And readers of Murakami's other books will recognize some familiar themes, such as lesbianism, an intensely erotic focus on women's ears, Western music (in this case, Janáček's Sinfonietta), and brand-name clothes, drinks and other accessories.

But 1Q84 shows signs of hasty translation. Awkwardnesses occur with dismaying frequency, especially in the portions of the novel translated by Jay Rubin. For example, when NHK and the Akutagawa Prize are mentioned in the novel, they are accompanied by explanations clearly intended for Western readers, and almost certainly not written by Murakami. Doesn't Rubin trust us to go to Wikipedia if a reference isn't clear?

Then there's the sentence "After leaving Komatsu, Tengo walked to Kinokuniya, bought several books, and started reading them over a beer in a nearby bar" (p. 174). Reading "them"? Personally, I've never been able to read several books simultaneously, but perhaps Tengo is more talented than I am. There are verb tense issues as well; on page 331 a lengthy description of two men in a room is followed by "When Tengo entered the room..." Everything that's been described up to this point in Tengo's chapters has been limited to what he has experienced, so it's jarring for the narrative voice to suddenly become omniscient and describe men Tengo hasn't yet seen. Perhaps the phrase should have been rendered "When Tengo had entered the room..."

This is not to absolve Murakami of sloppy writing. On page 87, Aomame has just begun to wonder about disturbing details that don't seem to match those of her familiar world. "Whatever might have happened, she would have to do something to make the world whole again..." This seems like a very premature thought for a character who is just beginning to suspect that something's wrong; she doesn't finally conclude that she's crossed over into another reality for another twenty pages (page 110, to be exact).

Then there are clunkers like "And his experiences...had changed Tengo profoundly" (p. 426)—isn't the very first thing beginning writers learn is that they must show, not tell? Late in the novel Aomame is holding a guarded conversation over the phone with The Dowager's assistant Tamaru in which both are careful to speak in code about her activities—until Aomame says, "He knew from the outset that I had gone there to kill him" (p. 880), and they both continue openly using the word "kill" for the rest of the conversation. So much for being careful. And there is Aomame herself: a beautiful bisexual miniskirted assassin with a designer wardrobe, sexy ears and an inexplicable lust for middle-aged men with receding hairlines. There just seems too much of an admixture of middle-aged authorial fantasy in this character.

Finally, there's the novel's schematic quality: if Chekhov's famous dictum (ironically quoted in 1Q84) is that a gun that appears in the first act will be fired by the third, then—spoiler alert!—two characters living their stories in parallel must ultimately meet. So while I was immersed in the book I found it difficult to put down, when I closed it after finishing the final chapter I felt vaguely disappointed. The novel seemed to be ending just when the most interesting part of the story—Tengo and Aomame's emergence from their emotional shells—was about to begin.

Janáček's Sinfonietta (3rd movement)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Rafael Kubelik, conductor

Haydn chamber music

For many years I resisted the appeal of Joseph Haydn's music. It seemed too clever to be profound, too pleasant to be emotionally affecting. Haydn also focussed on vocal music to a lesser extent than either Handel or Mozart, and his surviving operas, unlike theirs, are rarely performed or recorded. Perhaps Haydn's greatest accomplishments were in the string quartet and the symphony, two genres that I rarely listen to. Until recently, anyway: over the course of the last year or so I've come to have a greater appreciation for Haydn's music; and to my surprise, that appreciation developed through remarkable performances of his chamber music.

Most of Haydn's career was spent in the service of the Esterhazy court. Haydn's patron Prince Nikolaus I was an amateur musician whose favorite instrument was an unusual type of viol called the baryton. Like the larger viola da gamba, the baryton had seven bowed strings and a fretted neck; like a viola d'amore, the baryton had a second set of strings that resonated when the first set were bowed; and like the theorbo, the baryton's sympathetic strings could be plucked (the baryton had a hollow neck, and the strings were plucked from behind, with the thumb of the left hand). Haydn composed about 175 pieces for the baryton, most of which were trios for viola, baryton and cello (Haydn himself probably played the viola part). I was introduced to these works through a wonderful recording on the Hungaroton label by Balázs Kakuk (baryton), Péter Lukács (viola) and Tibor Párkányi (cello). The combination of the three low stringed instruments creates a lovely sound, and lends more a hint of melancholy to the slower movements.

Here is a sample: the adagio from Trio no. 114, performed on 18th-century instruments by José Vazquez (baryton), Lucia Krommer (cello), and Christa Opriessnig (viola):

Hearing this marvelous music played on 18th-century instruments inspired me to seek out other period-instrument Haydn performances. I don't remember how I first discovered the string quartet recordings of the Quatuor Mosaïques, but they have such warmth and such a beautiful blending of sound that my resistance to Haydn was completely overcome.

Here is Quatuor Mosaïques performing the adagio from Haydn's Opus 77 No. 1. The musicians are Erich Höbarth (violin), Andrea Bischof (violin), Anita Mitterer (viola), and Christoph Coin (cello):

Quatuor Mosaïques has recorded Haydn's quartets Op. 20/32, 33, 64, 76, and 77 along with the quartet arrangement of The Seven Last Words of Christ (Op. 51). They are available in two boxed sets at a cost of under $7 per disc—an amazing bargain for music and performances of this quality.

We were privileged to see Quatuor Mosaïques in concert on Friday night in Berkeley in a program spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries: Haydn's Quartet Opus 76 No. 4 ("Sunrise"), Felix Mendelssohn's Quartet Op. 13, "Ist es Wahr?" (Is it true?), and Franz Schubert's Quartet Op. 29 No. 1, "Rosamunde." After playing together for more than 25 years these musicians are perfectly attuned to one another, and each quartet became a subtle conversation. As good as their recordings are, their live performance offered a richness and spontaneity that no recording can match.

The Top 10 Shah Rukh Khan movies

This morning Geet TV presented the Top 10 Shah Rukh Khan movies as voted by visitors to the Namaste America website.

Shah Rukh is the reason we began watching Bollywood films. Kal Ho Naa Ho (Tomorrow May Never Come, 2003) and Devdas (2002) were the first and second Bollywood movies we saw, and we were immediately hooked. We have since seen more than 40 of SRK's films; the Internet Movie Database lists 77 movies in which he has appeared as an actor, but that list includes special appearances, voiceovers, and movies that haven't yet been released. So we've probably seen at least two-thirds of the movies in which he has a major role (though we haven't yet seen either of his movies from last year, Ra.One and Don 2).

The results of the vote by the viewers of Namaste America were eyebrow-raising; here they are, in ascending order, with my comments:

10. Main Hoon Na (I'm Here Now, 2004): While for my taste this movie is a bit heavy on the masala—it's a college comedy crossed with a terrorist thriller, with a couple love stories and a father-daughter reconciliation thrown in for good measure—it belongs on this list for the wonderful musical numbers choreographed by writer/director Farah Khan. As bonuses it has the adorable Amrita Rao and, as SRK's love interest, Sushmita Sen (a pity that she and SRK don't work together more often). As a taste, here is "Tumse Milke" (if after clicking play the English subtitles don't appear automatically after 45 seconds, click on the CC button on the bottom bar):

9. Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (A Match Made In Heaven, 2008): On my list of favorite SRK films, this one is now in the top five. It took a while to grow on me, but I think it has one of SRK's strongest performances. He plays Suri, a shy, plain office worker who, with the aid of his hairstylist buddy Bobby (Vinay Pathak), secretly transforms himself into the brash filmi-style hero "Raj" in order to win the love of his estranged young wife Taani (the delightful Anushka Sharma in her first film). Of course, the plan backfires in a big way; the scene where Tani confesses her awakening feelings to Raj is devastating.

In "Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte" SRK pays homage to Golden and Silver Age Bollywood heroes and heroines; SRK's partners are Kajol, Bipasha Basu, Lara Dutta, Preity Zinta, and Rani Mukherjee:

I have also written a full-length post on RNBDJ.

8. Mohabbatein (Love Stories, 2000): A teacher (SRK) carrying a secret returns to the boarding school where he was once a student and confronts its strict headmaster (Amitabh Bachchan). We rewatched Mohabbatein recently, and found it more enjoyable the second time; still, I think I might put the tender supernatural fable Paheli (Confusion, 2005) in this slot. Here is Paheli's "Khali Hai Tere Bina," with SRK and Rani Mukherjee:

7. Don (2006): Farhan Akhtar's slick remake-with-a-twist of the classic Amitabh Bachchan movie from 1978 is entertaining enough, but it wouldn't come close to making my SRK Top 10. Instead I think this slot should belong to Om Shanti Om (2007), which is inexplicably missing from the viewers' list.

OSO features SRK in a dual role as a struggling junior artiste in 1970s Bollywood and as his reincarnation as a modern Bollywood superstar. Along the way we get hilarious parodies of both Silver Age and contemporary Bollywood. As an example, here's "Dhoom Taana," which features the lovely Deepika Padukone in her first major role (no subtitles, alas: clicking the CC button will only get you an English phonetic "translation" of the lyrics):

6. Kal Ho Naa Ho (Tomorrow May Never Come, 2003): This would be Number 1 on my list. As I wrote in my earlier post "Bollywood for the Curious": "The clever script, appealing stars and razor-sharp editing make KHNH an excellent candidate for a Bollywood conversion experience. It's a film that gets better with multiple viewings, as more of its Bollywood in-jokes become comprehensible. But while it's fun to get the references, we can attest that the movie is also highly enjoyable without any previous experience of Bollywood." Here is the title song, with SRK, Saif Ali Khan, and Preity Zinta:

5. My Name Is Khan (2010): I don't quite know what to make of this choice. I thought this Karan Johar-directed film was well-meaning, and that SRK did an amazing job in the role of Rizwan Khan, a man with Asperger's Syndrome whose stepson is the victim of a hate attack after 9/11. The movie also stars Kajol, whose onscreen chemistry with SRK is justly famous.

Still, I thought My Name Is Khan took on too many issues too superficially (if Asperger's, 9/11 and anti-Muslim prejudice aren't enough, there's an extended Hurricane Katrina sequence and a nod to the 2008 presidential election). Despite its positive qualities, this movie wouldn't make my SRK Top 10.

Instead, I'd put Veer-Zaara (2004) here. It's the impossibly romantic story of Veer, an Indian man (SRK) and Zaara, a Pakistani woman (Preity Zinta), who are separated by the political divisions between their countries. Yash Chopra's lush, sweeping direction is especially apparent in "Aise Des Hai Mere" (if after clicking play the English subtitles don't automatically appear, click the CC button on the bottom bar):

4. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (Sometimes Joy, Sometimes Sorrow, 2001): This has to be on this list somewhere, if only for the songs, but Number 4? For me this would just squeak on at Number 9 or 10. Director Karan Johar pulled out all the stops on this multi-starrer, but the final result leaves me less moved than I suspect I'm intended to be. We do get to see SRK and Kajol, along with Amitabh Bachchan (reprising his Stern Dad role from Mohabbatein) and Jaya Bachchan, and the young Hrithik Roshan and Kareena Kapoor. For me, though, it adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Still, the big-budget treatment of the songs is highly effective, as in "Yeh Ladka Hai Allah":

3. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave Heart Will Win The Bride, 1995): As with its placement in Namaste America's list of the Top Ten Bollywood Love Stories since 1990, I'm only amazed that this didn't come in higher. The movie that made SRK a superstar, it remains a classic. It's marred for me, though, by the violent final scenes. Still, the Jatin-Lalit songs are excellent and SRK and Kajol are unforgettable together, as in "Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna" (apologies for the lack of subtitles on this latest version from Yash Raj Films):

As I wrote in my post "Having it both ways: Bollywood contradictions", "I also love how, when Raj sings 'Keep your eyes downcast,' Simran looks straight into his eyes."

2. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Is Happening, 1998): Another great SRK-Kajol pairing; there's a good reason why four of the top five films on this list feature this famous jodi. Probably the third or fourth Bollywood film we saw, it remains among my favorite SRK films; my partner and I still quote the gazebo scene to one another. Here's the title song, with SRK, Rani, and Kajol:

1. Devdas (2002): And I thought I was the only one who appreciated this amazing film; see "In defense of Devdas, the movie everyone loves to hate". It wouldn't be my Number 1—that honor belongs to Kal Ho Naa Ho—but it's definitely in my top three or four. Here is "Kahe Chhed Mohe," my Platonic ideal of a Bollywood dance number, which features the exquisite Madhuri Dixit as the courtesan Chandramukhi:

Missing from the list: Apart from the films mentioned above, I was a bit surprised that Dil Se (From the Heart, 1998) didn't make it onto the list, as it has the famous SRK-dancing-on-top-of-the-train number "Chaiyya Chaiyya"; it's the fourth entry on "Why I Love Bollywood: The Playlist". SRK gave an excellent performance as coach Kabir Khan in Chak De! India (Come on, India! 2009), the thinly fictionalized story of the Indian women's field hockey team at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Given the patriotic, uplifting story, I wonder why more viewers didn't vote for it—perhaps the lack of songs hurt its chances. Also, a good argument for inclusion could be made for Swades (2004), and I think the forthright Kabhie Alvida Naa Kehna (Never Say Goodbye, 2005) is underrated.

Bach's Mass in B-minor

J. S. Bach: Mass in B-Minor. Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Ton Koopman, conductor, Saturday, March 10, Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley. Produced by Cal Performances.

Bach's B-minor Mass is a mass of contradictions. More of it is in D major (the key of natural trumpets) than in B minor, and, at nearly two hours long, it was never intended to be performed in an actual mass. The different pieces that make up the work were composed decades apart; Bach, a devout Lutheran, combined them into a whole by replacing the texts of those sections that had originally been in German with Latin, the language of the Catholic service.

So why did Bach assemble this monumental work if it was neither composed nor intended to be performed as a whole? (In fact, the first performance of the work in its entirety did not occur until more than a century after his death.) As Bach scholar Christoph Wolff has suggested, it seems to have been intended (along with other late works such as A Musical Offering and The Art of the Fugue) as a compendium of Bach's compositional techniques, a summation and culmination of his life's work and a set of models for others to follow.

That description makes it sound somewhat academic, and indeed Wolff's biography of Bach (Norton, 2000) is subtitled "The Learned Musician." However, the music of the B-minor Mass is simply transporting. Here is "Gloria in excelsis Deo/Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis" from Phillippe Herreweghe's superb second recording with the Collegium Vocale (Harmonia Mundi HMC 901614.15):

This is music that can lift you out of your seat; unfortunately there were few such moments during the performance of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir under the direction of Ton Koopman last Saturday. Koopman's tempos sometimes dragged, there were occasional moments of mis-coordination between the soloists and the orchestra, at times the choir sounded ragged, and the instruments weren't always in tune. Tuning was especially a problem for the winds; in "Et in spiritum sanctum dominum," a bass solo accompanied by oboes, the instruments were painfully off-key.

An occasional miscue or sour note is only to be expected in such a massive and difficult work. But Koopman's group sounded underrehearsed, which seems incredible given their long association with Bach's music (they have recorded Bach's complete cantatas, among other works). In combination with Koopman's sometimes plodding tempos, the group's musical struggles kept this transcendent music firmly earthbound. In a pre-concert interview with Jeffrey Thomas of American Bach Soloists, Koopman asserted that the B-minor Mass is one of the most difficult of all choral works; unfortunately, this performance made it sound like it. Matters weren't helped by Koopman's odd decision to break for intermission after performing 19 of the work's 25 sections, leaving only half an hour's music for the second half of the concert.

It was so disappointing that when I got home I put on Herreweghe's recording, just to reassure myself of how magnificent this work can be. Here is Andreas Scholl performing "Agnus dei":

Thanks to pannonia77 and civileso for posting these wonderful clips.