Name: Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics Week 4
Start: 2024-11-23T15:00:00.000Z
End: 2024-11-23T17:00:00.000Z
Location: Olympic Towers Atrium

This week we shall look into one of the pivotal works of modern rationality (or its lack thereof) - Thinking: Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, which includes the research which led to the origins of Behavioral Economics. With the book being extremely long and practically impossible to cover in 2 hours, we shall instead look into Kahneman's 2002 Economics Nobel Prize acceptance lecture. The crux of the theory, which culminated in Prospect Theory, was done with Amos Tversky.

In a joint biography of their work, *The Undoing Project: A friendship that changed our minds*, Michael Lewis comments on their radically different personalities, "Danny was always sure he was wrong. Amos was always sure he was right. Amos was the life of every party; Danny didn’t go to the parties. With Amos you always just picked up where you left off, no matter how long it had been since you last saw him. With Danny there was always a sense you were starting over, even if you had been with him just yesterday. Amos was a one-man wrecking ball for illogical arguments; when Danny heard an illogical argument, he asked, What might that be true of? Danny was a pessimist. Amos was not merely an optimist; Amos willed himself to be optimistic, because he had decided pessimism was stupid. Danny was irritable and short-tempered, but he wanted to please. Amos couldn't understand why anyone would be eager to please. In Danny’s office you couldn’t find anything because it was such a mess. In Amos’s office you couldn’t find anything because there was nothing there." But he also comments on their common ground, "Both were explicitly interested in how people functioned when they were in a ‘*normal*’ unemotional state. Both wanted to do science. Both wanted to search for simple, powerful truths. As complicated as Danny might have been, he still longed to do ‘*the psychology of single questions*,’ and as complicated as Amos’s work might have seemed, his instinct was to cut through endless bullshit to the simple nub of any matter. Both men were blessed with shockingly fertile minds. And both were Jews, in Israel, who did not believe in God. And yet all anyone saw were their differences."

But the critics were ultimately right about the Kahneman-Tversky instability, if not its timescale. Or perhaps just to ensure they were right, the critics claimed to have found the equivalent of the right hand which made the clapping sound (and not knowing the sound of one hand clapping, perhaps gave themselves a silent round of applause). Amos received more acclaim and honors, and was grabbed alone by Stanford University in one of the fastest instances of a tenured faculty job offers when the duo decided to shift to the US in 1978, effectively killing their collaboration, and Amos's untimely death in 1996 didn't leave much room for later reconciliation. The extreme irony of two of the founders of the psychology of decision making falling prey to their own cognitive distortions makes one question about the ability of even the most enlightened mind to see through its own blind-spots when working in isolation. But yet we are nowhere close to reasonably understanding how a three pound chunk of essentially meat can do any of everything it does at all.

Join us in our not-completely-rational attempt to understand our irrationality, and hope that in observing each other's biases, we eventually learn to work around our own.

**Assigned Reading/Viewing:**

* [Daniel Kahneman's Prize Lecture December 8, 2002, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2002/kahneman/lecture/) or [transcript](https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/kahnemann-lecture.pdf).

*Note:*
*1\. In case Thinking\, Fast and Slow is still fresh in your memory\, you may get away by skimming the transcript\.*
*2.* *This research is decades old and a few of the results have not been reproducible or just outdated.*

**Location:**
Meet us at the Interfaith Chapel on campus. Please RSVP on Meetup to receive more detailed directions.

**Parking:**
Parking is available on Wilson Blvd, near our venue. A general guide on visitor parking can be found [here](#). A map of some parking is [here](#). The red spaces (reserved) are reserved at all times. The other spaces, I (Ryan) believe, are available to visitors on the weekend, no pass needed. I (Ryan) typically park on Wilson Blvd, which also has no fee on weekends.

**Event Details:**
This event is welcoming to all. For more details about our group and meeting format, please check out the [FAQ](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dfefKv8HVAvyeXOvk1k8ihRqml5jnrI3mbvU-D6i0iA/edit?usp=sharing).

**Questions or Feedback?**
If you have any questions or wish to provide feedback, feel free to reach out to us on Meetup.

Best Regards,
Atma & Ryan

Reading Philosophy and Psychology (ROC)

Atma Anand

Ryan Hallman

Keith Wilson

Bounded Rationality: Intuitive Judgment & Choice, Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky

Bausch & Lomb Hall

This is a reading group in which we read from **Plutarch's Parallel Lives** about the virtues and faults of great leaders from ancient Greece and Rome. At the end of each life, we rate them for their leadership quality, virtues, entertaining reading, and legacy.
For our leader scoreboard, check out this Google doc:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K66HPHPO_elctuHjCLAWnv5w_3HCY8YbxEK4SgCa_Gg/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K66HPHPO_elctuHjCLAWnv5w_3HCY8YbxEK4SgCa_Gg/edit#gid=0)

I'll be reading from Loeb Classical Library Edition which can be found here:
[https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/home.html](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/home.html)

or in print:
[https://www.amazon.com/Plutarchs-Lives-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0375756760](https://www.amazon.com/Plutarchs-Lives-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0375756760)
Generally, any edition will do.
For questions please send me a message or post to meetup.
Zita

Reading Philosophy and Psychology (NYC)

Zita Vasilisinova

Darlene Gedge

Plutarch Parallel Lives: 

Online event

Look out everyone, big shots are on the horizon starting this week with the life of Pompey the Great followed by Alexander the Great and Caesar.
Pompey played a significant role in the transformation of Rome from republic to [empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire "Roman Empire"). Early in his career, he was a partisan and protégé of the Roman general and [dictator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator "Roman dictator") [Sulla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulla "Sulla"); later, he became the political ally, and finally the enemy, of [Julius Caesar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar "Julius Caesar").

This is a reading group in which we read from **Plutarch's Parallel Lives** about the virtues and faults of great leaders from ancient Greece and Rome. At the end of each life, we rate them for their leadership quality, virtues, entertaining reading, and legacy.
For our leader scoreboard, check out this Google doc:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K66HPHPO_elctuHjCLAWnv5w_3HCY8YbxEK4SgCa_Gg/edit#gid=0](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K66HPHPO_elctuHjCLAWnv5w_3HCY8YbxEK4SgCa_Gg/edit#gid=0)

I'll be reading from Loeb Classical Library Edition which can be found here:
[https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pompey*.html](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pompey*.html)

or in print:
[https://www.amazon.com/Plutarchs-Lives-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0375756760](https://www.amazon.com/Plutarchs-Lives-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0375756760)
Generally, any edition will do.
For questions please send me a message or post to meetup.
Zita

Arthur O'Dwyer

Plutarch Parallel Lives: Pompey the Great

We will read Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics over five weeks. Written two years after The Critique of Pure Reason, the Prolegomena serves as a summary of the arguments in his longer work, with some new arguments given. The main question in this work is whether metaphysics is at all possible? Can it be anything like a science? Along the way he examines how pure mathematics and the science of nature is possible and uses these investigations to draw similarities and differences with metaphysics. For those interested in reading the Critique of Pure Reason, this work serves as a good primer before diving into all of the details of Kant's longer work. In the end he summarizes by giving his answer as to how metaphysics is possible. I will be reading this copy [here](https://www.amazon.com/Prolegomena-Future-Metaphysics-Immanuel-Kant/dp/B09CHGX4B9/ref=pd_lpo_sccl_2/144-8361955-9168236?pd_rd_w=5pbkH&content-id=amzn1.sym.4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_p=4c8c52db-06f8-4e42-8e56-912796f2ea6c&pf_rd_r=T3NPZAX385QTEB11V70B&pd_rd_wg=PMcri&pd_rd_r=82f2c18f-0ba3-4636-8b7c-36a625d1772f&pd_rd_i=B09CHGX4B9&psc=1) and you can find a free copy [here](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52821/52821-h/52821-h.htm). For the fourth week we will read the Third Part Of The Main Transcendental Problem.

Participants should read the entire reading before attending this in person meeting. We follow a mindful conversation approach, details on this along with a general FAQ on how we run the meetup can be found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dfefKv8HVAvyeXOvk1k8ihRqml5jnrI3mbvU-D6i0iA/edit?usp=sharing).

For questions please send me a message or post to meetup.

Best,

Brian

Brian Allen

Kevin Barclay

Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics Week 4

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