Behavioral economics is such a popular topic nowadays that noted economist and student of human behavior Richard Thaler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in the field in 2017. I first became interested in the topic that same year when I was asked to give a presentation at work, and I started by reading Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational (read my review here!). Back in the 1970s, though, the suggestion that people, as a general rule, behave irrationally in all sorts of circumstances where they have a vested interest was controversial. Sure, some people might make irrational decisions, but they were just confused or stupid, right? Smart, educated people (such as economists) would never make logical errors, or so economists liked to assume. Needless to say, when a couple of guys from Israel started publishing articles challenging the long-held economic principle that people make decisions based on their best interests, it made waves.
Author Michael Lewis, best known for writing engaging works of non-fiction that are adapted into critically-acclaimed films (see Moneyball and The Big Short), first heard about those two guys–Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky–when he read a thoughtful critique of Moneyball in the New Republic written by a law professor named Cass Sunstein and the aforementioned Thaler. Sunstein and Thaler found the book interesting but pointed out that Lewis had overlooked the reason for the inefficiencies in the market for professional athletes. Those inefficiencies “sprang directly from the inner workings of the human mind” and had been explored decades previously by Kahneman and Tversky. As Lewis concedes in his introduction, “My book wasn’t original. It was simply an illustration of ideas that had been floating around for decades and had yet to be fully appreciated by, among others, me.” Thus began Lewis’s exploration of another story, that of two Israelis with ground-breaking ideas and an unconventional friendship.
If you love the study of irrational behavior as much as I do, there’s plenty in The Undoing Project to inform and entertain. Yet there’s so much more to be digested here about the odd relationship between two geniuses. They were both soldiers in the Israeli military, both psychologists, and both brilliant. In terms of personality, though, they couldn’t be more different. Amos Tversky was extroverted, outspoken, optimistic, and supremely confident, while Dan Kahneman was introverted, pessimistic, and full of self-doubt. Somehow they formed a professional partnership that led to incredible, new ways of thinking. And their friendship–it can only be described one way:
Although Amos and Danny both started out at Hebrew University, they first crossed paths at the University of Michigan in the late 1960s. They had both been there at the same time for about six months before they had what could be called a “meeting of the minds.” Danny invited Amos to be a guest lecturer at one of his graduate seminars, which was unusual in itself. Danny never invited guests to his seminars, and students perceived there was a bit of a rivalry between the two men: “They were clearly the stars of the department who somehow or other hadn’t gotten in sync.” When Amos gave a very basic talk on Bayesian probability, Danny was surprised and underwhelmed. Not only did he think Amos’s talk was crap, he couldn’t believe this was the guy he had heard so much about. So, he challenged Amos, big time. In Lewis’s words, “. . .so Danny did what every decent citizen of Hebrew University did when he hear something idiotic: He let Amos have it.”
To the students in the seminar, it must have seemed something like this:
Danny: “You pointy-eared bastard!” Students: “Just kiss already.”
Lewis goes on to say, “. . .that day something shifted inside Amos. He left Danny’s seminar in a state of mind unusual for him: doubt. After the seminar, he treated theories that he had more or less accepted as sound and plausible as objects of suspicion.”
By the fall of 1969, Amos and Danny had both returned to Hebrew University, and they started hanging out together, bouncing ideas off each other and exploring new concepts. They would hide themselves away in an office and passersby would just hear laughter coming from behind the closed door. When they wrote, it was truly collaborative, in that they went over every line together and wrote maybe a paragraph per day. When it came time to submit their first paper, they truly couldn’t determine who had contributed more to it, so they flipped a coin to determine whose name should be listed first. Amos won the coin flip; thereafter, they alternated first billing on every paper they wrote together.
The pair became so close that Danny’s wife even felt a little jealous (they eventually divorced; Danny remarried in 1978), although Amos’s wife Barbara tolerated the relationship to the point where Amos praised her for dealing so well with the intrusion on their marriage. In Lewis’s words, “What they were like, in every way but sexually, was lovers. They connected with each other more deeply than either had connected with anyone else.”
It would be 40 years before we’d ship another pair this hard.
As sometimes happens in equal partnerships, the strain of one person getting more credit eventually took its toll. Amos, the extrovert and the attention-seeker, was perceived by many outsiders as the star of the team with Danny playing a supporting role. In Danny’s mind, Amos didn’t do enough to counter this perception, leading to resentment. In the late 1970s, Danny decided to move to North America permanently and, while Amos followed, they ended up at different universities, putting additional strain on their partnership. For one thing, Amos (the star) ended up at Stanford while Danny landed at the University of British Columbia, which Amos perceived to be beneath him. More importantly, though, their partnership didn’t function the same way when they couldn’t be in the same room together. Danny would write to Amos about new ideas and then become dismayed when Amos didn’t respond. Danny started to talk to another colleague about these ideas, essentially “cheating” on the partnership.
Shortly after “breaking up,” Amos was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. Danny was the second person he called with the news. When Amos died in 1996, Danny gave the main eulogy at the funeral.
This book is a fascinating human drama. The irrational ways people behave are highlighted not only through Danny and Amos’s studies but through their relationship as well. I tell you, no romance contains as much intimacy and resentment and longing as this story. Though their friendship ended on a strained note, Danny was there for Amos in the end, in spite of the anger and hurt feelings.
In 2002, when Danny was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics (which is never given posthumously), he credited Amos as his partner, calling it a “joint prize.” I like to think he put it this way:
