Noise Disrupts Decisions

To give you a quick overview, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, along with co-authors Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, explores how human decisions are often influenced by unpredictable variability—or “noise”—even when they should be consistent. Whether it’s judges handing out different sentences for similar crimes, or doctors giving different diagnoses for the same patient profile, the book dives into how this randomness in decision-making can lead to unfairness, inefficiency, and errors. It also offers strategies to reduce noise through structured decision protocols and better judgment practices. It’s a powerful wake-up call that complements Kahneman’s earlier work on cognitive bias, Thinking, Fast and Slow.