Daniel Kahneman

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, whose work in the fields of judgment and decision making led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Presenter0:43

His work has revealed extraordinary truths about our emotional happiness, our life satisfaction, and something called behavioral economics, what motivates individuals and institutions to make the financial choices they do.

Presenter0:57

He is a much valued voice of wisdom amid the global economic crisis.

Presenter1:03

At sixteen he says he already had a pretty good idea of where he wanted to be going.

Presenter1:08

Maybe his Jewish family's flight from Nazi occupied France and his father's untimely death six weeks before D-Day helped focus his mind on what was important. He says My mother had a big influence. In fact, I credit her with the fact that I became a psychologist because she got me interested in people and listening to gossip. I've been fascinated by gossip ever since, so let's start then, uh, Danny, with gossip.

Presenter1:33

That seems to me a pretty brave utterance for an academic. We don't really associate intellectual rigor with the idea that gossip can be a good thing.

Daniel Kahneman1:42

Well, you know, what I have noticed is that, at least for myself, I'm a great deal better at finding mistakes in what other people do than in what I do. And I think it's generally the case that people see others much more clearly than they see themselves. And I think also for people who anticipate gossip...

Daniel Kahneman2:02

They tend to make better decisions than if they didn't anticipate gossip.

Presenter2:07

Hedonic psychology, that's what the academics call it. We call it what makes us happy.

Presenter2:13

It's been a significant area of study for you. I wonder what makes you happy?

Daniel Kahneman2:18

At this time, certainly the greatest source of happiness for me are my grandchildren, I would say and then it's feeling comfortable in the world in ways that I didn't when I was earlier, feeling more sure of myself that makes me happy.

Presenter2:33

And it's generally true, isn't it, that older people are happy.

Daniel Kahneman2:36

Yeah. Oh yes, definitely, there is a clear trend. The worst years, I think, are when people have adolescence at home, and then things look up from there.

Presenter2:46

You have brought us today your list of eight discs. Tell me about the first disc that we're going to hear this morning then. Why have you picked this one and what is it?

Daniel Kahneman2:53

Well, the first one is American Pie and for me it's related to a particular experience when my career really was about to take off. I met a hero of mine. His name was Dick Neisser and he was, you know, a generation ahead of me and I visited him at Cornell in his lab and we clicked and I had had an idea in a topic on which he was an expert and he said let's go home and think about it. And we went to his place and he was playing this record and he played it several times because I asked him to play it several times and that's my memory.

Presenter3:30

I started singing by

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I find this American pie Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

Speaker 43:38

Uh

Presenter3:38

Them good old boys with drinking whiskey and rye, And Singin' This'll be the day that I die.

Presenter3:45

This'll be the day that I die.

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Now for ten years

Presenter3:54

That was Don McLean in American Pie. You looked Denny Hahnemann as if you were enjoying every single minute of that.

Daniel Kahneman3:58

Yeah.

Presenter3:59

Um what you characterize as emotional happiness and life satisfaction are two areas of very rich research for you. Can you explain to people simply how they differ?

Daniel Kahneman4:10

Well

Daniel Kahneman4:11

Emotional happiness is how you feel about your life while you're living it. And life satisfaction is how you feel about your life when you're thinking about it. And we live it all the time. We think about it occasionally. But

Presenter4:20

Technology.

Daniel Kahneman4:25

Life satisfaction is very important to people. In fact, I think people do more to achieve satisfaction than to achieve happiness.

Presenter4:32

And life satisfaction is about goals that we may have set ourselves early on that we then achieve. Indeed.

Daniel Kahneman4:38

Right.

Presenter4:39

And what which goals seem to be the w I mean, I I I'm automatically thinking of things like money and family and love and

Daniel Kahneman4:45

Well, yes. I mean, some goals are better than others.

Daniel Kahneman4:48

I'm talking now of goals that people have a set age 18. And it turns out that people who have the goal of getting a lot of money, they do make more money than others. And those who make a lot of money are actually happier than average. And those people at age 18 who say that money doesn't matter to them, 25 years later, money really doesn't matter to them very much. They're equally satisfied with their life regardless of their income.

Presenter5:15

Those people at eighteen who've said yes, I would like to make money and who later in life have not.

Daniel Kahneman5:19

Those who have not are really disappointed. And then there is one goal that is a bad one, where most people have that goal at age eighteen, are unhappy at age forty five. And this is the goal to be a performing artist, because so few people succeed.

Presenter5:35

Emotional happiness is in part due to genetics, that's true, is it?

Daniel Kahneman5:40

Yeah. Mostly.

Presenter5:41

Mostly.

Daniel Kahneman5:42

Oh yes. There is actually a gene has been identified that affects optimism and happiness, pessimism and misery. So you know, it's not all genetics. We have some degrees of freedom. Things can be worse or better. But genetics has a lot to do with it.

Daniel Kahneman5:59

I would say that the genetic determination of happiness is almost as strong as the determination of height.

Presenter6:06

So if if somebody is, as they might say themselves, a born pessimist, it would seem more likely then that they create circumstances where there's a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. You know, life life is bad and dull and difficult, and therefore life is bad and dull and difficult.

Daniel Kahneman6:19

No, you know, I'm a born pessimist, and I don't feel life that way. I think there are many advantages to being a born pessimist. I'm never disappointed.

Daniel Kahneman6:27

And that's quite an enjoyable state.

Presenter6:30

And what about the subject of memory? It doesn't according to you, it doesn't really correspond to what actually has happened in our past. It's the end of it that is the important bit. It's not actually going through the experience.

Daniel Kahneman6:39

I think that's quite true. We summarize it in a few still pictures and in a few memories. And when we think of the future, we tend to think of the future as an anticipated memory of it.

Presenter6:52

Uh

Daniel Kahneman6:52

Uh

Presenter6:52

Yeah.

Daniel Kahneman6:52

Yeah.

Presenter6:52

Example

Daniel Kahneman6:52

Well, I'm asking people to think about a vacation and asking them to imagine that at the end of the vacation the camera will be destroyed and they will get a drug that will make them amnesic. So there will be no memory.

Daniel Kahneman7:07

And are they still interested in having a vacation? And it is then that you realize how much you go to vacations in order to remember them.

Daniel Kahneman7:17

But actually, you know, there is a very good point in going to a vacation you will not remember. You will have a good time.

Daniel Kahneman7:24

We should think of living, and not only of remembering.

Presenter7:27

And what about when you talk to me today about the memories of your life? What what will I be listening to then? I'll be listening to the narrative that you've constructed of parts of your life that you've reworked. And it's

Presenter7:38

Uh

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Let's have some more music. We're on your second disc of the morning. What are we gonna hear?

Daniel Kahneman7:43

Well, when I was four years old I lived in Paris. That was just before the war and we were well to do and the maid, I suppose when my mother wasn't home, made me croon to the other maids. It was all around a courtyard and all the kitchens faced the courtyard and I sang a song and that's the first song I remembered.

Speaker 38:05

Au Émière rose, des che beur poulheur d'soir et es cla de ta pour brider.

Speaker 38:17

Pau conclaire de liner, pour es mien au brance ye noir, je vibr d'a tendrespoi, je voudre que tous soi mier.

Speaker 38:34

Boy

Presenter8:39

That was Tino Rossi and Bohemienne Au Grand Your Noir. So, Daniel Cannerman, your parents were Lithuanian Jews living in Paris. What was it like for you then, apart from singing to the amassed maids in the courtyard?

Daniel Kahneman8:50

Well, it was very nice until the war began, and then the war began, and we were Jews, and uh it wasn't fun.

Daniel Kahneman8:57

Actually, I remember the very first graph I drew, I must have been seven, and I drove the graph of the family fortunes as a function of time, and around nineteen forty forty one it went under zero.

Daniel Kahneman9:10

And that's where it stayed for a number of years.

Presenter9:13

Yeah.

Daniel Kahneman9:13

Your father was a succ.

Presenter9:13

Successful man tell

Daniel Kahneman9:14

He was a successful man. He was Chief of Chemistry for a branch of L'Oréal.

Daniel Kahneman9:20

And L'Oréal was led at the time by Maurice Schweiler, a very anti-Semitic person, and he loved my father, who was a Jew. And he actually saved my father. My father was picked up by the Germans, and Schweuler had him released. And they sent us food packages throughout the war. My father died before D-Day, but

Daniel Kahneman9:44

Very complicated story.

Presenter9:45

How much did you understand as a little boy about what was going on?

Daniel Kahneman9:48

What was going on?

Presenter9:49

Yeah.

Daniel Kahneman9:49

I understood the whole thing. My worst memory, but it it will give you the feeling of of what it's it was like. There was a year when it was too dangerous to go to school, so I stayed home.

Daniel Kahneman10:00

And every night I would pray to God and I

Daniel Kahneman10:04

I knew that you know it was war time, that God was very busy, but I was I was asking for another day.

Daniel Kahneman10:11

I mean, every day the possibility.

Daniel Kahneman10:14

was there of being caught and of its being the last day.

Presenter10:18

Tell me about your mother, what was what sort of person was she?

Daniel Kahneman10:21

My mother was a big influence on me. She was a pessimist. She was.

Daniel Kahneman10:27

Very clever, she was a gossip, she loved talking about

Daniel Kahneman10:31

and was always a good and a bad side. I think my interest in people started with my mother.

Presenter10:36

You've written about an instance when, as a little boy, you were wearing a sweater which had to have the Star of David sewn on it, and you turned the sweater inside out. Can you give our listeners a little more of that story?

Daniel Kahneman10:47

Yes, well in 1941 the Germans declared a curfew on Jews. That was before extermination really began. And I overstayed the curfew. I was with a friend and I had to come back home. And the street was deserted, but there was a German soldier walking toward me and he was wearing black. And black were the SS. They were the worst of the worst.

Daniel Kahneman11:07

And he beckoned me.

Daniel Kahneman11:09

And I went, and he picked me up, and I remember that my great fear was that he would see inside my sweater.

Daniel Kahneman11:16

But he didn't.

Daniel Kahneman11:17

And he hugged me, and he opened his wallet, and there was a picture of a little boy.

Daniel Kahneman11:23

And that was his son.

Daniel Kahneman11:24

And that to me was really an example of the complexity of human nature. I think that incident had a big impact.

Daniel Kahneman11:33

You know, I mean, it was a matter of puzzlement, and I think we knew it at the time, that Hitler loved children and flowers.

Daniel Kahneman11:41

And, you know, it was very hard to put together. But it's that complexity of human nature that I find fascinating.

Presenter11:47

Time for some more music, Denny Connor. What are we going to hear now? You're uh your third of the morning.

Daniel Kahneman11:52

Well, I moved to Israel from France at age twelve.

Daniel Kahneman11:56

And it was a complete transformation for me. I had been, you know, very weak physically and and in Israel I was very lucky. I was held back a grade, and so I was just as good physically as my peers and

Daniel Kahneman12:09

And life was very good, and there is a song which was the very first Hebrew song I learned.

Daniel Kahneman12:14

And it stayed in my memory. The words sounded very funny to me as a child. They still do. And there is something sentimental and warm about the song that I have always loved, and so I wanted to play it.

Presenter12:28

Hey, see you nune hater.

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Avanim levan bano.

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Tovla Shutar mila shechem.

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Eilé Blier van Hargelingur.

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Peinayele dumetula shama yafti wa e shef peren lichtofcha fazi p ni natzli kotz pale.

Presenter13:05

Shirat Hanodei, the Wanderer Song sung there by Betty Klein. So as you were telling us, Danny, your your father died when you were round about ten, and you moved to what was characterized then as mandatory Palestine. So so life had a huge shift. What are your strongest memories?

Daniel Kahneman13:21

My first memory actually was well, the whole family came in a bus and my uncle bought me a glass of milk, and that was the first glass of milk I had seen for four or five years.

Daniel Kahneman13:34

And then the other memory was feeling normal for the first time.

Presenter13:38

Yeah.

Presenter13:39

And you say you were put back a year just by the vagaries of the war and all all the rest of it. You you're a very clever little boy.

Daniel Kahneman13:45

I was a very clever little boy, but I I must have been hopelessly pompous too. So I would write essays when I was in France. But in in Israel, you know, there were girl friends and there were Boy Scouts. There were many other things that were very good for me.

Presenter14:01

And was there with your father no longer being there and of course no longer having his income were you in a a situation that was difficult for that?

Daniel Kahneman14:06

No, not really because my mother had a family there, so we went back to the family and the family actually took care of my mother to her last day. I mean, I'm very close to my cousins, they are now like my siblings.

Presenter14:20

And did you have siblings?

Daniel Kahneman14:21

I had a sister um who was my best friend and she died.

Daniel Kahneman14:27

She died the year I got the Nobel Prize. She died actually six months.

Daniel Kahneman14:32

Earlier.

Daniel Kahneman14:33

And that was one of my biggest regrets. Possibly the first thing I thought of was that she didn't get to get the news.

Presenter14:42

Time for some more music, Danny Kahneman. We're on your fourth of the morning. Tell me about this.

Daniel Kahneman14:46

Well, when I was about thirteen and we had moved to Israel and I was living with an aunt and she had a gramophone.

Daniel Kahneman14:57

And I fell in love with a piece of music, and it's the first piece of music I fell in love with, and it's Schnabel's recording of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto, and I have loved it all my life.

Presenter16:08

That was Artur Schnabel playing part of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto the Second movement. He was accompanied there by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Frederick Stock.

Presenter16:18

So, Danny Kahneman, you were seventeen, really, when you decided absolutely that psychology was what you were going to go on and make your future studies about. You deferred your military service until after you had got your degree, and then you joined now I'm not sure officially what it was called, but you were doing psychological analysis on people in the military.

Daniel Kahneman16:37

Yeah. It was something we had inherited from the British Army actually. It was a way to assess candidates for officer training and there was a field test which involved taking a group of people and tell them to do something with a telephone pole, like pass an obstacle with all sorts of constraints, while we, the psychologists on the side, take notes. And what was very striking to me was that you could actually see the personalities. You knew what their true nature was like. And then every month we would get feedback from the officer training school and they would tell us how well we were doing, whether we could predict who would be a good cadet and who would not. And the answer was always the same. We couldn't. We had no idea what they were going to do.

Daniel Kahneman17:25

But what was truly remarkable was, you know, this was the Army, so we would hear on Friday that our work is useless, but Sunday morning there would be a new batch of recruits, we'd take them to the obstacle course, and the statistics had absolutely no effect in reducing our confidence in our ability to see the true nature of people. And I called it the illusion of validity. That is, we felt we were valid, although we knew we were not.

Presenter17:55

Can you give me examples of more situations where you could employ that phrase and say that's what's happening there?

Daniel Kahneman17:59

The illusion of validity is really everywhere. You can see something very similar to it in the financial world.

Daniel Kahneman18:07

Where you have people who really know in principle that you cannot do better than the market, but who somehow feel that they can do better than the market.

Daniel Kahneman18:16

You know, they're not hypocrites, they're not lying to anyone, they truly feel that they can do something that they know cannot be done.

Daniel Kahneman18:25

I think many predictions are useless, and economists really know it. They know certain things, so it's not as if they're totally lacking in expertise. They don't know the limits of their expertise, and they don't feel or realize that their expertise doesn't extend to predicting the future.

Presenter18:45

Good time to take a break for some music. We're on your fifth of the morning. Why have you chosen this?

Daniel Kahneman18:50

Well, during my adolescence, Danny Kaye was a hero of mine. And I stored many sentences from his songs, in particular one that was quite important to my thinking. And in fact, there's a chapter in my book that comes directly from Danny Kaye. And he describes a favorite form of exercise as jumping to conclusions. It's not in this song that we're going to hear, but it's another of my favorite Danny Kaye's.

Speaker 419:17

There once was an ugly duckling

Speaker 419:20

With feathers all stubby and round

Speaker 419:24

And the other words in so many words it

Speaker 419:29

Get out of town.

Speaker 419:32

Get out.

Speaker 419:34

Get out.

Speaker 419:36

Get out of town.

Speaker 419:38

And he went with a quack and a waddle and a quack in a flurry of ider down.

Presenter19:48

That was Danny Kaye and Ugly Duckling. So, Daniel Kahneman, you won the Nobel Prize for economics it was, not psychology, but you you won it for work that you had done really in collaboration. Tell me about that work.

Daniel Kahneman20:01

Uh

Presenter20:02

Uh Yeah.

Daniel Kahneman20:02

I'm an extraordinarily lucky individual because I formed a friendship early on with my colleague Amos Turski, whom many people considered the most intelligent person they had ever met. And we got together, we liked each other. And he made me funny. He was funny always. And so for about fifteen years we were essentially inseparable intellectually and physically. We spent a lot of our time together.

Daniel Kahneman20:31

And we just had a shared mind which was better than either of our separate minds. Very few people have that luck.

Presenter20:39

And so the Nobel Prize was awarded for your work on something called prospect theory. Amostverski had died by the time that this was awarded, so it was awarded singularly to you. They cannot be awarded posthumously. That's right. And can you explain to all of us prospect theory in the most boiled down straightforward way?

Daniel Kahneman20:55

Straightforward way. What was slightly different about prospect theory from what had existed before, most theories of of decision making up to that point had been theories of how people should behave, of what is a rational way to behave.

Daniel Kahneman21:10

And we just wanted to describe the decision that people do make intuitively, their intuitive preferences. And there were

Daniel Kahneman21:19

Two essential deviations or departures that we made from the way that things were conceived earlier, and they have been very influential. Retrospectively, they look quite trivial. In fact, Amos and I frequently joke that our grandmothers knew everything that we were studying, because one of our discoveries, in quote, was loss aversion, that people are much more sensitive to losses than to equivalent gains. Can you give me a concrete example then? Well, we're going to toss a coin.

Presenter21:48

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Kahneman21:49

And depending on where it lands, you will either lose ten pounds or you will win X.

Daniel Kahneman21:57

And now I ask you in all candor, what would X have to be for that gamble to be attractive to you?

Daniel Kahneman22:04

And it turns out it's not ten and a penny, it's a lot more. In fact, for most people it's more than twenty pounds. So in order to compensate for the loss of ten pounds, you need a gain of more than twenty. That's what we call loss aversion.

Presenter22:21

So let's translate prospect theory then into something, scale it up into something that would be a sort of world equivalent.

Daniel Kahneman22:28

From prospect theory you would say that most attempts to reform society are going to have a lot of difficulty, because any attempt to reform is going to involve winners and losers, and the winners are going to fight less hard to achieve their gains than the losers are to protect what they have.

Daniel Kahneman22:47

And as a result, reforms will always be distorted in favour of the potential losers. And they will be more expensive than they were intended to be, and sometimes they will fail altogether. And this happens time and time again. Potential losers fight a great deal harder than potential winners.

Presenter23:06

And is that why then, for example, in the media, you know, there's a huge amount of conversation right now here in Britain about cuts, you know, people who are going to be on the receiving end of the cuts. And there is an argument for people saying we're hearing too much about that. We're not going to hear about the benefits to society at large. Would that be an example?

Daniel Kahneman23:22

Well that's exactly it. I mean the people who are suffering the cuts, they're in the losses. And all our ethical system actually is based on the idea that people are entitled to what they have and you cannot impose losses on them.

Daniel Kahneman23:39

Not imposing losses and granting gains is not the same thing.

Daniel Kahneman23:46

Ethically it does not. You know, in our very first study, this was not with Emostowski, but with my another very close friend, Richard Thaler, we asked, is it all right for a hardware store that has been selling a shovel for

Daniel Kahneman24:00

ten dollars, to raise the price to twenty dollars during a blizzard.

Daniel Kahneman24:05

And it turns out it's not all right. People think it's scandalous. In the United States people are a little more tolerant, but in Canada, where we did that research, it was really considered absolutely improper.

Presenter24:16

Let's have some more music then, Danny Conneman. What are we going to hear now? We're on your uh your sixth.

Daniel Kahneman24:21

We're going to hear the music that was actually in the background when Amos Tuski and I were working. It was the late sixties and the early seventies were the era of the Beatles for us. And so we're going to hear my favorite Beatles song.

Speaker 424:36

Helena Rigby picks up the rice in the church where her wedding has been.

Speaker 424:43

Lives in a dream, waits at the window, Wearing the face that she keeps in her jar by the door

Speaker 424:52

Who is it for all the low people?

Speaker 424:57

Do they all come from?

Speaker 425:01

All the lonely people, why do they all be?

Presenter25:08

That was the Beatles and Eleanor Rigby. So, Danny Kahneman, um, one of the other people, the important people that you've had a collaboration with, is your wife. Tell me about when you first met.

Daniel Kahneman25:18

Well, I first met an

Daniel Kahneman25:22

She was giving a triumphant talk. She was a cognitive psychologist. And her dissertation was, I think, one of the most famous dissertations in the 20th century in psychology. It was very influential. And so she was giving a series of talks all over the United States. And she gave one that was joint at MIT and Harvard. And so I volunteered to guide her. I was acquainted with her mother and her then husband and her two children. And many, many years later, we got together. But that meeting changed my life and the orientation of my work.

Presenter25:55

So it was twelve years before you would uh be married. Uh on that first time that you saw her, w was it the case that it was just her her professional capabilities that were impressing you?

Daniel Kahneman26:04

She was uh like a goddess to me. Uh she was very beautiful as well as very modest and you know, extraordinary in her achievements. I mean, we were all plebeians compared to her. It was really quite something.

Presenter26:17

And so, as you say, Anne Treesman is is very, very well known and distinguished in her field. There are times when it would be fair to say and this is extraordinary to say this to a Nobel laureate you you are Mr Treasman. You do play sort of second fiddle to her sometimes.

Daniel Kahneman26:29

Fiddle to her sometimes. And I was at the White House. And my favorite experience, though, is a long time ago when she became a fellow of the Royal Society.

Daniel Kahneman26:43

I was the only s male spouse. There were forty people, thirty-nine women in floral dresses, and me with my very formal suit. They tried to force me into Newton's room, you know, into the place where you learn the signature. And then they had a television programme to entertain the spouses, which was the chemistry of cooking.

Daniel Kahneman27:04

It would they wouldn't do it today. It was so condescending.

Presenter27:07

When you have

Daniel Kahneman27:08

I've collaborated with your wife on work. What has been the focus? Well, we work together on attention. Attention has been her field, and I switched to her field after hearing her talk, just because I was so captivated. It was tougher than other collaborations I've had.

Presenter27:26

And working with your wife then, people will often say, whether it's opening a cafe or writing a book, that working with your spouse can be a particularly tricky experience. Uh was it feisty? Was it feisty?

Daniel Kahneman27:36

Oh, it was quite feisty. Oh yes, oh yes, it was it was quite feisty. We survived, but it's it was tense. We had different points of view when we started. It took us years before we could agree sufficiently to write a good paper about it.

Presenter27:52

Let's have some more music, then, Danny. What are we going to hear? We're on your seventh.

Presenter27:55

Yeah.

Daniel Kahneman27:55

Well, there was a long period of my life uh when I was writing and working.

Daniel Kahneman28:02

With background music. That period came to a fairly abrupt end actually when I realized that I was much better at writing in silence than with the music. But for years I didn't know that. And I had of course a few favourites, some Schubert, some Mozart, and the selection I've picked is one of my all-time favourites.

Presenter29:29

That was Mozart's clarinet quintet in A major, played there by the Amadeus Quartet with Gervais de Peyre on clarinet.

Presenter29:37

Let us talk, then, for a moment, Danny, about um wisdom. What can we do when we're at the centre of a storm to make ourselves cope with it in a way that will be more psychologically healthy?

Daniel Kahneman29:49

Look at an underutilized resource as friends.

Daniel Kahneman29:53

People must have friends that they can consult in a crisis because people cannot decide to be wise. But.

Daniel Kahneman30:01

They can trust someone who says I can tell you I know how you will feel a year from now. You can't, because you are with your feelings right now.

Daniel Kahneman30:11

That is wisdom that friends can impart. And if I have one piece of advice for people well, two one is pick the right goals, pick pick goals that you can meet.

Daniel Kahneman30:22

and spend a lot of time with friends.

Presenter30:26

So much of what you say and so much of what I've heard you say by watching your lectures and reading what you've written.

Presenter30:33

Although it's based in empirical evidence, so much of it sounds like old wisdom. You know, I think of something that my own grandmother said, which was an old Scottish lady, they're no happy for all their money. This idea, you know, that there are things that we believe that will make us happy, but actually it's an illusion. Do do they sometimes feel like old wisdoms to you?

Daniel Kahneman30:51

Well, they are, except, you know, there is something that psychologists say about old wisdom, which is that you can find anything and its contrary in old wisdom.

Daniel Kahneman31:01

So you can find proverbs to defend absolutely any point of view, and they sound right. Empirical work doesn't work that way, so whatever you say is always going to sound like old wisdom. But there are many things you don't say that would also sound wise.

Presenter31:16

What a good point. You know that I'm going to abandon you to day to a desert island. And how will you be? Presumably very unhappy, because you will not have your friends around you.

Daniel Kahneman31:25

I mean, a desert island is not a great place for me.

Presenter31:28

No. So let us then hear for now your eighth piece. Tell me what we're going to hear finally today.

Daniel Kahneman31:33

Well, the last piece is when I selected a month ago. I was in Israel and my grandson, who is sixteen, played a piece of music for me. And I said, Oh, that's the solution to my problem. And here is my grandson playing the piano. He recorded it for me.

Presenter32:51

That was Bach's piano suite, played by Danny's grandson, Ori Shohan. So I come to the point then, Danny Kahneman, where I give you the books. You get the Bible or the Torah, if you prefer.

Daniel Kahneman33:02

Well take the Bible, the more the better.

Presenter33:04

Okay, we'll give you that, and also the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What would you like to choose?

Daniel Kahneman33:10

Yeah.

Presenter33:10

Uh

Daniel Kahneman33:10

I will take the Thesaurus and I have plans for it.

Daniel Kahneman33:14

You know, the thesaurus are synonyms, but they're not quite synonyms, and I think there is a lifetime of activity finding differences between neo-synonyms, so that's the game I will play on the desert island.

Presenter33:25

Right, we shall give you that. And um a luxury too. We allow you something on to this island to make life just a little more bearable.

Daniel Kahneman33:31

Uh for me there was no hesitation at all. I would like to take my home recliner, if I may. Oh, you may. It's the perfect chair, and I've owned chairs like that for the last twenty five years.

Presenter33:43

Okay, you can take that. And also one track that you would save if the waves threatened to wash them away. Which track would you save?

Daniel Kahneman33:49

Oh, undoubtedly, my grandson.

Presenter33:51

Undoubtedly. Danny Kannaman, Daniel Kanneman, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Daniel Kahneman33:57

It was truly my pleasure.

Presenter34:29

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website: bbc.co. uk slash radio four.