Books like Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

01

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

Both dig into decision-making.

02

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Barry Schwartz · Psychology

Barry Schwartz argues that the expansion of consumer choice in wealthy societies has not produced the freedom and happiness it promised.

Both dig into decision-making.

03

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Annie Duke · Psychology

Thinking in Bets is Annie Duke's argument that most decisions in life share a fundamental feature with poker hands: you're choosing under uncertainty, with incomplete information, and luck will affect the outcome regardless of how well you reasoned.

Both dig into decision-making.

04

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein · Psychology

Bias gets most of the attention in discussions of judgment error.

Both dig into decision-making.

05

The Art of Thinking Clearly

Rolf Dobelli · Psychology

Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss entrepreneur and novelist who wrote a series of short newspaper columns on cognitive biases, later collected and expanded into this book.

Both dig into decision-making.

06

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

Susan Weinschenk · Psychology

Susan Weinschenk is a behavioral scientist and UX consultant, and this book is her translation of cognitive science research into practical guidance for designers.

Both dig into cognitive science.

07

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

Paul Bloom · Psychology

Paul Bloom's argument is not that we should care less about others.

Both dig into decision-making.

08

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell · Psychology

Blink is Malcolm Gladwell's argument that fast, unconscious decisions — the ones made in the first two seconds of encountering something — are often just as reliable as slow, deliberate analysis, and sometimes more so.

Both dig into decision-making.

09

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Antonio Damasio · Psychology

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist at USC whose work challenges the centuries-old idea that reason and emotion are separate faculties, with reason the reliable guide and emotion the unreliable interference.

Both dig into decision-making.

10

Dollars and Sense

Dan Ariely · Psychology

Dollars and Sense is Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler's examination of why people consistently make bad financial decisions even when they have the information and intention to do otherwise.

Both dig into decision-making.

11

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Psychology

Fooled by Randomness is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that humans are wired to misread luck as skill, noise as signal, and random outcomes as the product of ability or effort.

Both dig into decision-making.

12

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · Psychology

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford who argues that the conscious self is a late, small, and largely uninformed participant in the brain's activity.

Both dig into decision-making.