Thinking, Fast and Slow
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemanby Daniel Kahneman
Shares rank 2 of 50 popular science books by recommenders
Widely recommended for changing how you think about decisions and biases; critics say many of its studies, especially on priming, have failed to replicate.
Widely recommended for changing how you think about decisions and biases; critics say many of its studies, especially on priming, have failed to replicate.
30 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 13
- approval share
- 57%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Changes how readers think about decisions
“This is why my favorite book is Thinking, Fast & Slow. It blew my mind and totally made me think about almost everything differently.”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” “That was one of the biggest influences for starting to write my decisions down and then building this.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: I built a 2-min quiz that shows you how bad you are at estimating” “Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman is a fantastic way of getting into how much more complex the mechanism is.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “AI capability isn't humanness” Explains fast and slow thinking
“Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman is a fantastic way of getting into how much more complex the mechanism is.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “AI capability isn't humanness” “that explains cognitive systems, 1 is subconscious and fast and the other is conscious and slow”
Comment from 5 Jul 2026 in “How working memory could give rise to consciousness” “I'm a real fan of Kahneman's "thinking fast" and "thinking slow" paradigm”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: Build the habit of writing meaningful commit messages” Explains why brain makes thinking errors
“Learn why your brain constantly tricks you and how to avoid costly thinking errors.”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 on Hacker News “he wrote a digest of what he touched on during his career, which was also thought-provoking for me”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Thought-Provoking Books” “someone like Daniel Kahneman can be a good read if you are interested”
Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Your brain was never designed for this much bad news” Praised as a must-read classic
“please check out the amazing book Thinking, Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: I built a 2-min quiz that shows you how bad you are at estimating” “I have heard some good things about the book”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “Show HN: HackerBooks – HackerTube, but for books mentioned on HN”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Priming studies failed to replicate
“The content on "priming" (significant pillar of the book) has collapsed as part of the reproducibility crisis in psychology.”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” “a lot of the studies he cited in Thinking Fast and Slow, especially the ones about priming, have failed to replicate”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Oliver Sacks put himself into his case studies – what was the cost?” “the underpowered studies cited in Thinking Fast and Slow didn't replicate”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Oliver Sacks put himself into his case studies – what was the cost?” - Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Thinking fast and slow in AI: The role of metacognition (2021)”
- Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Accountability mechanisms can be joyful (2024)”
Flawed statistics and cherry-picked data
“A lot of the arguments in this book are built in a delicate set of assumptions that are supported by equally ridiculous and contrived experiments”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” “it uses some cherry picked data to set up a straw man to rationalize his idea of how the mind works”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” “Kahneman book and work has been discredited, due to the bad statistical methods”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “How to make System 1 LLMs show System 2 competencies?” - Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “How to make System 1 LLMs show System 2 competencies?”
- Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “The Legacy of Daniel Kahneman: A Personal View (2025)”
Dull and heavy on autobiography
“It's like a collection of the obvious, the wrong, and autobiography of someone you haven't otherwise heard of.”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “How to make System 1 LLMs show System 2 competencies?” “Just an incredibly dull book to read.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “What I don’t like about chains of thoughts (2023)” Challenges System 1 and 2 model
“it kind of dismantles the whole idea of System 1 and 2, which then I guess would question the theoretical foundations”
Comment from 22 Mar 2026 in “Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI Is Reshaping Human Reasoning” “Kahnemans book is considered outdated by modern neuroscience.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “KV Cache Compression 900000x Beyond TurboQuant and Per-Vector Shannon Limit”
Other popular science books people recommend
The four most recommended other popular science books, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gödel, Escher, Bachby Douglas R. Hofstadter | 47 | 10 | 82% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Thinking, Fast and Slowby Daniel KahnemanThis page | 17 | 13 | 57% | 9 | — | — |
| Thinking in Systemsby Donella H. Meadows and Diana Wright | 17 | 0 | 100% | 8 | — | Approved |
| The Selfish Geneby Richard Dawkins | 14 | 5 | 74% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Cosmosby Carl Sagan | 13 | 1 | 93% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
29 of the 32 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I have heard some good things about the book”
“Read Thinking, Fast and Slow. Both system 1 and system 2 thinking has been achieved with modern AI.”
“whose book and work has been discredited, due to the bad statistical methods”
“Kahneman book and work has been discredited, due to the bad statistical methods”
“Of that class of book, the game is to pretend to have read it.”
“It's like a collection of the obvious, the wrong, and autobiography of someone you haven't otherwise heard of.”
“unfortunately a victim of the reproducibility crisis”
“has been debunked as yet more non-replicable pop psychology”
“A lot of the arguments in this book are built in a delicate set of assumptions that are supported by equally ridiculous and contrived experiments”
“it uses some cherry picked data to set up a straw man to rationalize his idea of how the mind works”
“knowing it was largely debunked/retracted but feeling it was a 'classic' I 'ought' to read”
“Want something research-backed instead?”
“that explains cognitive systems, 1 is subconscious and fast and the other is conscious and slow”
“The content on "priming" (significant pillar of the book) has collapsed as part of the reproducibility crisis in psychology.”
“This is why my favorite book is Thinking, Fast & Slow. It blew my mind and totally made me think about almost everything differently.”
“someone like Daniel Kahneman can be a good read if you are interested”
“Learn why your brain constantly tricks you and how to avoid costly thinking errors.”
“Kahnemans book is considered outdated by modern neuroscience.”
“That was one of the biggest influences for starting to write my decisions down and then building this.”
“please check out the amazing book Thinking, Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman”
“it kind of dismantles the whole idea of System 1 and 2, which then I guess would question the theoretical foundations”
“accept that large parts of his book are flawed”
“I found Kahneman's arguments persuasive, however the article makes me re-evaluate those conclusions.”
“a lot of the studies he cited in Thinking Fast and Slow, especially the ones about priming, have failed to replicate”
“Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman is a fantastic way of getting into how much more complex the mechanism is.”
“he wrote a digest of what he touched on during his career, which was also thought-provoking for me”
“the underpowered studies cited in Thinking Fast and Slow didn't replicate”
“Just an incredibly dull book to read.”
“I'm a real fan of Kahneman's "thinking fast" and "thinking slow" paradigm”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.