INTRODUCTION

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis documents the decades-long friendship and collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, leading to Nobel-winning theories about human decisions--showing they're not strategies to maximize tangible benefits, but emotion-based. A century of economic modeling was just wrong about what people want and choose. Jefferson was right to edit our goals from "life, liberty and property" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Though Kahneman and Tversky found "and avoiding regret, guilt and misery" might be more accurate. Wary of pain.

Over time, the forces their theory described manifested in their own collaboration. Objectively it produced solid benefits (for the world, not just for them), but emotionally, it grated, especially for Kahneman, an introverted self-doubter forced to argue constantly with Tversky, a human bulldozer and brash self-promoter. In 1996 it came to a head...

THE DREAM

One night in New York, while staying in an apartment with Amos, Danny had a dream. "And in this dream the doctor tells me I have six months to live," he recalled. "And I said, 'This is wonderful because no one would expect me to spend the last six months of my life working on this garbage.' The next morning I told Amos."

Amos looked at Danny and said, "Other people might be impressed but I am not. Even if you had only six months to live I'd expect you to finish this with me."

Not long after that exchange, Danny read a list of the new members of the National Academy of Sciences, to which Amos had belonged for nearly a decade. Once again, Danny's name wasn't on the list. Once again, the differences between them were there for all to see. "I asked him, why haven't you put me forward?" said Danny. "But I knew why." Had their situations been reversed, Amos would never have wanted to be given anything on the strength of his friendship with Danny. At bottom, Amos saw Danny's need as weakness. "I said, 'That's not how friends behave,"' said Danny.

And with that Danny left. Walked out. Never mind Gerd Gigerenzer, or the collaboration. He told Amos that they were no longer even friends. "I sort of divorced him," said Danny.

Three days later Amos called Danny. He'd just received some news. A growth that doctors had discovered in his eye had just been diagnosed as malignant melanoma. The doctors had scanned his body and found it riddled with cancer. They were now giving him, at best, six months to live. Danny was the second person he'd called with the news. Hearing that, something inside Danny gave. "He was saying, 'We're friends, whatever you think we are."'

SOURCE: The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, 2017, p. 337-8. DATE: p.347 fixes diagnosis as Feb. 1996.

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