Richard H Thaler - Misbehaving- The Making of Behavioral Economics (epub)

PREFACE
Before we get started, here are two stories about my friends and mentors,
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. The stories provide some hints about
what to expect in this book.
Striving to please Amos
Even for those of us who can’t remember where we last put our keys, life offers
indelible moments. Some are public events. If you are as old as I am, one may be
the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated (freshman in college, playing pickup
basketball in the college gym). For anyone old enough to be reading this book,
September 11, 2001, is another (just getting up, listening to NPR, trying to make
sense of it).
Other events are personal: from weddings to a hole in one. For me one such
event was a phone call from Danny Kahneman. Although we speak often, and
there are hundreds of calls that have left no trace, for this one I know precisely
where I was standing. It was early 1996 and Danny had called to share the news
that his friend and collaborator Amos Tversky was ill with terminal cancer and
had about six months to live. I was so discombobulated that I had to hand the
phone to my wife while I recovered my composure. The news that any good
friend is dying is shocking, but Amos Tversky was just not the sort of person
who dies at age fifty-nine. Amos, whose papers and talks were precise and
perfect, and on whose desk sat only a pad and pencil, lined up in parallel, did not
just die.
Amos kept the news quiet until he was no longer able to go into the office.
Prior to that, only a small group knew, including two of my close friends. We
were not allowed to share our knowledge with anyone except our spouses, so we
took turns consoling one another for the five months that we kept this awful
news to ourselves.
Amos did not want his health status to be public because he did not want to