Lewis then proceeds to talk about the main topic of the book, which revolves around the partnership between Amos Tversky, a brilliant psychologist, and Daniel Kahneman, the man who wrote fantastic book, Thinking Fast And Slow. The system would later change into one where the player was judged on how many points per minute they could attain, and that made the whole headhunting process much fairer and, yes, more rational overall. Overall, the quality of players improved, but then there were a couple of stinkers – those who just didn’t measure up to ‘their potential.’Īs you might have guessed, this was later revealed to be an unjust system towards those who sat at the bench most of the match, but who might be better players overall. The players statistic on how many points they accumulated per game was used as the benchmark. This would later change into approach that took statistics more into account. This was the early days, and we’re long past it now (or are we?), but that’s how it was. The best looking player would get the spot over someone mediocre looking one. Surprisingly enough, the statistics often weren’t as important as the looks of a player. Like for example, the recruitment process in baseball used to rely on industry experts’ opinion, headhunters as we sometimes call them, and that often lead them to look at players from the wrong perspective.

First he talks about how our failure to think rationally may cloud our better judgment in the heat of the moment, and how that may have long term consequences. In his book, Lewis talks about our rationality.

Have you ever wondered just how irrational you really are? At least I have, and I’ve just started to realize that I’m nowhere near as rational as I thought I am after reading The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis.

The undoing project book summary