Book Autopsy S1E02: Thinking, Fast and Slow -- The Replication Crisis Audit cover art

Book Autopsy S1E02: Thinking, Fast and Slow -- The Replication Crisis Audit

Book Autopsy S1E02: Thinking, Fast and Slow -- The Replication Crisis Audit

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 A Nobel laureate wrote a book that contains both the best and the worst of modern psychology. Then he publicly said parts of it were wrong. The book was never revised. Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. In 2011 he published Thinking, Fast and Slow — the most influential psychology book of the 21st century. In 2012 he wrote an open letter warning that the priming research in his own book was heading for a "train wreck." In 2017 he publicly admitted he "placed too much faith in underpowered studies." Kahneman died in March 2024. The book was never revised. We autopsied all 38 chapters from the primary text — 44 autopsies total. The replication scorecard: six major claims are dead. The Florida effect — walking slowly after reading old-age words — failed to replicate (Doyen 2012). Ego depletion — willpower as a finite resource — meta-analysis shows no effect (Hagger 2016). Money priming, pencil-in-mouth forcing smiles, the glucose model of self-control, and the Lady Macbeth hand-washing effect — all failed. Five more claims are wounded with mixed evidence. But seventeen-plus survived, including the Nobel Prize work on prospect theory, WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is), the planning fallacy, anchoring effects, and the Asian disease framing effect. The System 1 vs System 2 framework remains one of the most useful mental models in existence — even if some of the examples used to illustrate it turned out to be wrong. BS 5.0 out of 10. Edge 8.5. Replicability 6.0. 38 minutes. Every chapter autopsied from the actual text. BSKiller Book Autopsy — we fact-check the business book canon.
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