In Memoriam
Daniel Kahneman (RIP)
(March 5, 1934 — March 27, 2024)
If you don’t know the name, at minimum read his Wikipedia page.
Credit to the great Michael Lewis for his brilliant, page-turner biography of Kahneman and his partner in scholarship Amos Tversky, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds.
Trained as psychologists, the Nobel was in Economics. They burst the bubble of economic models based on a premise of rational homo economicus, researching and documenting human cognitive biases that distort decisions/choices.
Their most important contribution was Prospect Theory, that future changes (either up or down) in one’s fortunes … in a synonym: opportunity … matter more than absolute wealth/income. Why the Elephant Curve results of the New World Order (aka Globalization) strategy proved so destructive to “First World” social cohesion … Brexit, MAGA/Trump, etc… (Read Hillbilly Elegy for color.)
In hindsight, a big “Duh”. Sadly, one that has yet to lock in as a shaper of policy here in the USA.
Rest in peace.
