Genius Grant: A Partnership Crumbles - The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

So, um, yeah, this chapter, it's called "The Clouds of Possibility." And it's, well, it's kind of heavy, actually.

So, picture this. Amos, he gets this call while he's, like, visiting Israel. It's about the MacArthur "Genius Grant," right? Big deal! Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars! Plus research money and, you know, great health insurance. The press release is all about how amazing Amos is, calling him, um, "one of the rare masters" who's done incredible work on decision-making. But, the thing is, all this work, it was done with Daniel. And Daniel's name? Nowhere. Not a peep.

And Amos, you know, he didn't even *like* awards. Thought they made people unequal, caused more harm than good. He even felt, uh, kinda annoyed about the MacArthur thing. I mean, his friend Maya Bar-Hillel said he was even "a little angry." He was like, "What were they thinking? Giving this to me alone? Don't they know this will ruin my collaboration with Daniel?" I mean, even though he didn't love getting awards, he kept getting them. Like, before the MacArthur, he was already in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Then came the Guggenheim. And in '85, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, which was, like, super rare for a foreigner. And, of course, not for Daniel. Then there were honorary degrees from Yale, Chicago, all over the place. But the MacArthur, that was, like, the last straw. Maya said he thought it was "the most irredeemably bad thing" that could have happened. Like, he was genuinely upset.

Around the same time, these books and articles started popping up, praising Amos but, like, totally ignoring Daniel's role. Even when Daniel *was* mentioned, it was always "Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman," you know, with Amos first. And he noticed this, for sure. He'd even write to people, like, "Hey, about that representativeness heuristic? It's joint work. Please include both our names." One time, someone credited him alone with the "Tversky effect," which was about how Israeli Air Force instructors misunderstand training. And Amos was like, "No way. That was with Daniel. And, actually, the pilot thing? That was Daniel's discovery. It should be called the 'Kahneman effect'!"

Amos couldn't understand why Americans treated him and Daniel this way. His friend Percy Diaconis at Stanford said people thought Amos was, like, super insightful and Daniel was just cautious. But Amos would say, "It's the opposite!"

His grad students at Stanford even had a nickname for him: "Amos the Celebrity." Everyone knew him, everyone wanted to meet him. But he didn't seem to care about all the attention, which was, you know, kinda crazy-making. He'd turn down TV interviews, saying things like, "You can never top yourself on TV." He'd throw away unopened invitations. It wasn't false modesty, either. He knew he was good. He just, uh, didn't really care what other people thought. He just wanted things done his way.

And, get this, the world let him! Congressmen would ask for his advice. The NBA wanted his take on statistical errors in basketball. Intelligence guys would fly him to D.C. to talk about predicting threats to politicians. NATO flew him to the French Alps to, like, teach them how to make decisions in uncertain situations. He just had this knack for getting to the heart of things, even in areas he knew nothing about. He even went to a conference about metaphor, and he just, like, blew everyone away. He was saying that a metaphor replaces clear thinking by semantic vagueness.

Daniel saw all this happening, all the praise going to Amos for their joint work. Economists, linguists, philosophers, they were all inviting *Amos*. And not him. I mean, even though Daniel wasn't keen on going anyway, he said it still felt pretty bad to not even get the invite. You know?

Back in Israel, people went to Daniel for advice. In America, it was all Amos, even if Amos was clueless about the problem. He was just that influential. Jack Maher, who was in charge of pilot training at Delta, said Amos had this ability to explain, using simple words, things that were difficult to understand, like how they were training their pilots.

And it wasn't just praise. There were critics, too.

You see, Daniel and Amos, back in the seventies, one day introduced their research to a professor named Max Black. The professor told them, "I am not interested in the psychology of idiots," and walked away.

People weren't always happy about their findings, because it really messed with their sense of themselves. You know, you show people an optical illusion and some will say, "Probably my eyes are bad." Show them a linguistic illusion, and they'll say, "Nothing special." Show them a question by Amos and Daniel, and they'll say, "Are you trying to embarrass me?"

Their work threatened some psychologists. One of them, Ward Edwards, had been like Amos's teacher, and he went after them. He said their data collection was terrible, that they couldn't get anything useful from asking students silly questions. Amos was polite in his response, but he said Edwards's points were "unpersuasive."

But Edwards was, like, seething. Another psychologist, Ari Beiderman, said, "No one wanted to go up against Amos, especially in public." In one case, Beiderman heard of a philosopher who questioned the validity of heuristics. Once he finished, Amos spoke. "It was as if a terrorist organization was beheading a hostage." Edwards had heard these stories, so he kept quiet for a while.

In 1979, he did write to Amos, saying that people just were't getting what they were saying and that all of what they knew was being questioned. What consequences would their research have to psychology and the whole knowledge community? Then, he sent Amos some criticisms, hoping Amos would be nice about it. Amos said his writing was sarcastic and unjust to his research. So, Edwards apologized.

But not everyone was afraid of Amos. There was this philosopher from Oxford, Jonathan Cohen, who wrote a bunch of nasty articles. He claimed you couldn't learn about people's minds by asking them questions. He reasoned that people had made up the idea of rationality, so people had to be rational. Amos and Daniel had to address his claims in their writings.

After they moved to North America, Amos and Daniel published a string of papers together, but by the eighties, things had started to change. For example, Daniel only wrote a small portion of Amos's paper "Loss Aversion," but they both received credits. Daniel published the paper "Simulation Heuristic," which Amos had talked about before, and they were both credited. Also, Amos wrote a paper for economists on "The Evolution of Prospect Theory" after he and his grad student, Rich Gonzalez, took care of the technicalities. Both Amos and Daniel received credits. Amos said it was weird to credit a third person.

Even though they were growing apart, they pretended to still be working together. But their common enemies couldn't unite them. Amos dealt with enemies in a way that made Daniel nervous. Amos was a fighter, but Daniel just wanted to survive, and he'd run away from conflict. When the research got criticized, Daniel responded in a way that was, you know, new. Anything that upset him, he refused to evaluate it. It was a way of making an excuse. Amos accused Daniel of "being on the side of the enemy." It was easy for Daniel to stand with his enemy. He had always hated conflict.

For Amos, though, enemies were necessary. He had to have a target.

And the criticisms were coming from all sides. Economists and decision theorists were all saying that Amos and Daniel had exaggerated people's weaknesses. But what Amos couldn't get over was that people wouldn't admit he was right, even when they didn't win the debate. Daniel said Amos wanted to totally crush the opposition. So, near the end of 1980, Amos said they should write a paper to settle the debate. The opponents would never give in, but they could at least shift the subject. He called it their "detour plan."

Amos wanted to show that rules of thumb in thinking can mislead you. They had seen these things when they were in Israel, but they didn't dive in then. So, as usual, they designed situations to trick people in an experiment in order to see how their minds work. Amos's favorite situation was about Linda.

So, the experiment went something like this. Linda is 31, single, outspoken, and bright. She studied philosophy, and she was concerned with social justice and discrimination. She also went to anti-nuclear demonstrations. What statement about Linda is most likely? One option was elementary school teacher. Another was bookstore clerk who takes yoga classes. Another was active in the feminist movement. Another was psychiatric social worker. Another was member of the League of Women Voters. Another was bank teller. Another was insurance salesperson. Another was bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

Daniel had the students at the University of British Columbia arrange the possibilities. First, he split up the students in two groups. The first group was asked to decide whether or not the statement that Linda was a bank teller was true. The second group was asked whether or not the statement that Linda was a bank teller and active in the feminist movement was true. To Daniel and Amos's delight, the second group of students thought that the second statement was more likely to be true.

This proved to them that using rules of thumb can lead to bad judgments. A statement that says, "Linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement," can never be more likely than a statement that says, "Linda is a bank teller."

And you know, just like they predicted, logic goes out the window when there's a good story.

Daniel and Amos found that people had trouble with logic when "representativeness" was involved, or how well something fits in with our beliefs. The subjects focused on whether the story of Linda fit in with their stereotype of a feminist, so they found the more specific statement more likely.

Amos didn't stop there. He wanted to rank all eight of the statements. Did the people who said Linda was a bank teller and active in the feminist movement think this was more likely than Linda was a bank teller? Amos really was passionate about it.

Daniel had mixed feelings about it. Amos was fixated on logic, but Daniel was stuck on psychology. He was't that interested in human irrationality like Amos was. Daniel later said that there had been a debate of whether to study psychology or decision theory. Daniel wanted to go back to psychology, and he didn't even think people would mess it up. But, once people saw the logic, they would recognize that the first statement was more likely.

Daniel gave the test to twelve undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia, and all twelve got it wrong. Then, they tested many more students with different situations and questions. They even gave it to people in simple terms. "Which statement is more likely?" they asked.

Linda is a bank teller.

Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

Eighty-five percent still claimed that the latter was more likely! It was like a Venn diagram, but they still couldn't see it. They had found that what ruled people's thinking was scary. Daniel even gathered a hall full of students at Columbia and explained all of their reasoning mistakes. One woman in the back even shouted, "So what! You are just asking for our opinions!"

They kept on coming up with different versions of the Linda question to make sure that the students were not misinterpreting some underlying assumptions. They asked the problem to graduate students in statistics and logic, and they asked it to doctors. The doctors had to make some decisions that would prove to be fatal mistakes! But, just like the undergraduates, the doctors failed, too! It was so embarrassing to them.

For Amos, writing this article on "conjunction fallacy" would hopefully end the debate of if people make decisions from rational reasoning or intuition. Their article would closely study how and why people break the most fundamental rule in all of probability.

On top of the "Linda problem," they also thought of another problem from their work in Israel in the early seventies.

Imagine that you select 4 pages of text from a novel (approximately 2,000 words). How many words that have the form “–––ing” (seven letters ending in ing) do you think you will find? (Circle the range that you feel is most appropriate.)

0 1–2 3–4 5–7 8–10 11–15 16+

Then, people would get a second problem.

In those same pages, how many words do you think you will find that have the form “–––n–” (seven letters with n as the sixth letter)?

The subjects didn't recognize that the number of words that end in ing should equal the number of words that have n as the sixth letter because the latter includes the former. The subjects thought there would be 13.4 words that end in ing, but only 4.7 with n as the sixth letter. Amos and Daniel analyzed that it may have been because the words that end in ing are easier to remember. In other words, people were influenced by the "availability heuristic."

The article was, without a doubt, a bombshell.

"The Linda problem" and "conjunction fallacy" became very popular words. But Daniel was a little nervous inside. The new work had been created as a collaboration, but it had been a "painful collaboration." He couldn't find the joy he found in talking with Amos. Amos had written a full two pages by himself, refining his definitions of representativeness. Daniel wanted to leave them vague. The paper didn't feel like the discovery of something new. Instead, it felt like a new weapon Amos had crafted to defeat the enemy, which left Daniel uneasy. He said it sounded like Amos was saying, "You can't win against me."

They were starting to become an issue to each other. Daniel had taken a long time to recognize his worth. He knew that the papers Amos wrote by himself just weren't as good as the papers they wrote together. They always got more attention.

Daniel could feel himself slipping out of the area that Amos loved and into a new, bigger one, one that Amos looked down on. He said that Amos had changed and that, before, Amos would look for something good in his ideas. That was the joy of their collaboration. Amos knew Daniel better than he knew himself. But, he didn't do that anymore.

Everyone who saw Amos and Daniel talk together were surprised. It wasn't that their friendship was dying, but that it had ever been made. Percy Diaconis said that Daniel was not someone who was easy to get close to. They both knew so much, so the fact that they talked to each other was a miracle. Once they left Israel, it was like the miracle could not continue.

In 1986, Daniel and his wife, Anne, moved to the University of California, Berkeley. This was eight years after the university had rejected Daniel for being too old. Amos wrote to a friend that he hoped this move would help their relationship and start them with a new page because now they could see each other every day. When Daniel returned to the job market, he was like a stock that was going up. Nineteen institutions made an offer, including Harvard. And if Daniel had suffered for leaving Israel, he suffered even more after all of his success. He was depressed. One of his friends from Israel said that he didn't want to work anymore and that things were getting worse.

In this mental state, Daniel began to think that his relationship with Amos may be coming to an end. He had been working with Daniel for fifteen years, and he called it a major marriage. It would be a disaster if they couldn't keep going.

Despite everything, Daniel experienced a few periods where he wanted to maintain the relationship. Moving to Berkeley had no effect, and seeing Amos more often brought him more pain. After a conference, Daniel wrote to Amos, "It has reached the point where I am worried at the thought of getting my opinion to you. Even a small incident can disrupt my sleep for days, and I am tired of it."

Amos sent a long letter, writing that he had changed. He then wrote a letter to his friend, Varda Lieberman, saying that he and Daniel had vastly different opinions and that they had a tough time.

Daniel needed Amos to do something, to change people's attitudes and let them know that they were both equal collaborators. He suspected that Amos agreed with the world's opinion. MacArthur giving the award only to Amos may have annoyed Amos a little, but when Daniel congratulated him, Amos boasted, "If I didn't get this, I would have gotten something else." Barbara Tversky's office was right next to Amos's. "I could hear them on the phone," she said. "It was worse than a divorce."

But Daniel didn't want to just cut ties. He wanted to free himself. Amos had had such an impact on him that it couldn't just be stopped. So, not only did he want to remove Amos from his heart, but he also wanted to take him out of his sight. In 1992, he moved to Princeton. He said that Amos had cast a shadow over his life, and he needed to escape. Amos didn't understand why he needed the 3,000 miles between them. He thought Daniel's actions were irrational.

For a long time, even if he faltered, Daniel had ended the relationship in his heart. Amos hadn't done this. Daniel was stubborn about accepting something, and they stayed as friends. Both of them hid this subtle change so well that most people thought they were still working together. Amos enjoyed this nonexistent intimacy more than Daniel. He wanted to write a book that they had promised to write, but Daniel gracefully declined.

If Amos couldn't return what Daniel needed, it may have been because he never knew that he needed it. Back in Israel, they had been equals, each holding a cucumber. Amos had a banana now. It was not the banana, though, that had caused Daniel to throw a cucumber at the experimenter. Neither the Harvard offer nor the MacArthur award mattered to Daniel. The only effect they had was to change Amos's attitude toward him.

In October of 1993, Daniel and Amos met at a conference in Turin, Italy. One night, while they were taking a walk, Amos brought something up. A German psychologist named Gerd Gigerenzer was attacking their research, bringing them into the spotlight again.

From the beginning, there had been an effort to say that Daniel and Amos exaggerated the issue of human mistakes. The world and Daniel and Amos had stated so many times that the rules of thumb people follow when they are uncertain were usually effective, but sometimes they were wrong. People study them because they're interesting and show how the human mind works. There are no complaints when experts study how eyes work with optical illusions.

Gigerenzer asked them the same question, but Daniel and Amos believed that he distorted their research and also that he dismissed most of their claims. It was like he was describing someone to judge and then tearing them apart. Amos told Daniel that Gigerenzer was famous in Europe for "opposing the Americans." It was weird because he was opposing two Israelis.

Gigerenzer followed the views of evolutionary psychology, and Amos thought it was absurd. They thought that the mind was not a precise tool but a mechanism to help humans understand the world.

Daniel wanted to know more about Gigerenzer. He thought he might be irrational due to some mental state and that they could let him return to reason. But Amos had absolutely rejected that.

Daniel had agreed to help Amos as a friend, but he had soon fallen back into the pain that Amos gave him. Amos and Daniel had revised the rebuttals over and over again, with them reiterating all the arguments they had.

Three days later, Amos called. He was going to tell Daniel some news that he had heard. His tumor was cancerous, and it had spread to many parts of his body. He was expected to live six months. Daniel was the second person he had told. It was like the ice in Daniel's heart melted. Amos said that no matter what, they were still friends.