Background Image
...
The Idea That The Future Is Unpredictable Is Undermined Every Day By The Ease With Which The Past Is Explained.
-Daniel Kahneman
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

The Idea That The

Daniel Kahneman
...
The Idea That The Future Is Unpredictable Is Undermined Every Day By The Ease With Which The Past Is Explained.

Understanding the Quote: "the idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by..."

This quote by Daniel Kahneman reflects deeply on the theme of past. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Past, Ideas, Ease, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Daniel Kahneman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on past and ideas. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 5
Topic
Past
Ideas
Ease
More From Daniel Kahneman
You Should Expect Little Or Nothing From Wall Street Stock Pickers Who Hope To Be More Accurate Than The Market In Predicting The Future Of Prices. And You Should Not Expect Much From Pundits Making Long-term Forecasts.
Wall
Long
Investing
We Don’t Choose Between Experiences, We Choose Between Memories Of Experiences. Even When We Think About The Future, We Don’t Think Of Our Future Normally As Experiences. We Think Of Our Future As Anticipated Memories.
Memories
Motivation
Inspiration
I Have Always Believed That Scientific Research Is Another Domain Where A Form Of Optimism Is Essential To Success: I Have Yet To Meet A Successful Scientist Who Lacks The Ability To Exaggerate The Importance Of What He Or She Is Doing, And I Believe That Someone Who Lacks A Delusional Sense Of Significance Will Wilt In The Face Of Repeated Experiences Of Multiple Small Failures And Rare Successes, The Fate Of Most Researchers.
Believe
Fate
Successful
All Of Us Would Be Better Investors If We Just Made Fewer Decisions.
Decision
Would Be
Made
It's A Wonderful Thing To Be Optimistic. It Keeps You Healthy And It Keeps You Resilient.
Optimistic
Healthy
Wonderful
Clearly, The Decision-making That We Rely On In Society Is Fallible. It's Highly Fallible, And We Should Know That.
Decision
Should
Rely
Many People Will Admit That They Made A Mistake [putting Money In Dot-coms Or Telecoms At Their Peak] But That Doesn’t Mean That They’ve Changed Their Mind About Anything In Particular. It Doesn’t Mean That They Are Now Able To Avoid That Mistake.
Mistake
Mean
People
Optimism Is Normal, But Some Fortunate People Are More Optimistic Than The Rest Of Us. If You Are Genetically Endowed With An Optimistic Bias, You Hardly Need To Be Told That You Are A Lucky Person - You Already Feel Fortunate.
Optimistic
People
Optimism
Alternative Descriptions Of The Same Reality Evoke Different Emotions And Different Associations.
Reality
Different
Alternatives
The Most Effortful Forms Of Slow Thinking Are Those That Require You To Think Fast.
Thinking
Form
Our Comforting Conviction That The World Makes Sense Rests On A Secure Foundation: Our Almost Unlimited Ability To Ignore Our Ignorance.
Ignorance
Comforting
Foundation
We Have A Very Narrow View Of What Is Going On.
Views
I Would Not Advise People To Buy A Car Or House Without Making A List. You Will Probably Improve Your Intuitions By Making A List And Then Sleeping On It.
Sleep
People
Car
If You Can't Take The Time For A Vacation Right Now, Or Even A Night Out With Friends, Put Something On The Calendar - Even If It's A Month Or A Year Down The Road. Then Whenever You Need A Boost Of Happiness, Remind Yourself About It.
Night
Vacation
Years
People Assign Much Higher Probability To The Truth Of Their Opinions Than Is Warranted.
Truth
People
Opinion
Overconfidence Is A Powerful Source Of Illusions, Primarily Determined By The Quality And Coherence Of The Story That You Can Construct, Not By Its Validity.
Powerful
Quality
Stories
Establish A Closing Ritual. Know When To Stop Working. Try To End Each Work Day The Same Way, Too. Straighten Up Your Desk. Back Up Your Computer. Make A List Of What You Need To Do Tomorrow.
Trying
Way
Lists
There Is A Huge Wave Of Interest In Happiness Among Researchers. There Is A Lot Of Happiness Coaching. Everybody Would Like To Make People Happier.
People
Coaching
Wave
It Was Always Assumed I Would Be A Professor. I Grew Up Thinking It.
Thinking
Would Be
Professors
Most Successful Pundits Are Selected For Being Opinionated, Because It's Interesting, And The Penalties For Incorrect Predictions Are Negligible. You Can Make Predictions, And A Year Later People Won't Remember Them.
Successful
Years
People
Ten Minutes Of A Smartphone In Front Of Your Nose Is About The Equivalent Of An Hour Long Walk In Bright Daylight. Imagine Going For An Hour Long Walk In Bright Daylight And Then Thinking, "now I'll Get Some Sleep." It Ain't Going To Happen.
Sleep
Thinking
Long Walks
We Don't See Very Far In The Future, We Are Very Focused On One Idea At A Time, One Problem At A Time, And All These Are Incompatible With Rationality As Economic Theory Assumes It.
Ideas
Assuming
Problem
Facts That Challenge Basic Assumptions-and Thereby Threaten People's Livelihood And Self-esteem-are Simply Not Absorbed. The Mind Does Not Digest Them.
Self Esteem
People
Challenges
We're Generally Overconfident In Our Opinions And Our Impressions And Judgments.
Opinion
Judgment
Impression
Happiness Is Determined By Factors Like Your Health, Your Family Relationships And Friendships, And Above All By Feeling That You Are In Control Of How You Spend Your Time.
Feelings
Determined
Family Relationship
Knowing The Importance Of Luck, You Should Be Particularly Suspicious When Highly Consistent Patterns Emerge From The Comparison Of Successful And Less Successful Firms. In The Presence Of Randomness, Regular Patterns Can Only Be Mirages.
Successful
Knowing
Luck
Survival Prospects Are Poor For An Animal That Is Not Suspicious Of Novelty.
Animal
Survival
Novelty
Every Night For The Next Week, Set Aside Ten Minutes Before You Go To Sleep. Write Down Three Things That Went Well Today And Why They Went Well...writing About Why The Positive Events In Your Life Happened May Seem Awkward At First, But Please Stick With It For One Week. It Will Get Easier. The Odds Are That You Will Be Less Depressed, Happier, And Addicted To This Exercise Six Months From Now.
Writing
Sleep
Exercise
We Are Far Too Willing To Reject The Belief That Much Of What We See In Life Is Random.
Belief
Life Is
Rejects
You Know, The Standard State For People Is 'mildly Pleasant.' Negative Emotions Are Quite Rare, And Extremely Positive Emotions Are Rare. But People Are Mildly Pleased Most Of The Time, They're Mildly Tired A Lot Of The Time, And They Wish They Were Somewhere Else A Substantial Part Of The Time - But Mostly They're Mildly Pleased.
Tired
Somewhere Else
People
An Individual Who Expresses High Confidence Probably Has A Good Story, Which May Or May Not Be True.
Stories
May
Individual
Organizations May Be Better Able To Tame Optimism Than Individuals Are.
Organization
Optimism
Able
Money Does Not Buy You Happiness, But Lack Of Money Certainly Buys You Misery.
Doe
Misery
Banks Are Run By Executives, And Executives Protect Themselves, And That Does Not Always Mean That Banks Are Going To Behave Rationally.
Running
Mean
Doe
A General Limitation Of The Human Mind Is Its Imperfect Ability To Reconstruct Past States Of Knowledge, Or Beliefs That Have Changed. Once You Adopt A New View Of The World (or Any Part Of It), You Immediately Lose Much Of Your Ability To Recall What You Used To Believe Before Your Mind Changed.
Believe
Past
Views
The Premise Of This Book Is That It Is Easier To Recognize Other People's Mistakes Than Your Own.
Mistake
Book
People
Mood Evidently Affects The Operation Of System 1: When We Are Uncomfortable And Unhappy, We Lose Touch With Our Intuition. These Findings Add To The Growing Evidence That Good Mood, Intuition, Creativity, Gullibility, And Increased Reliance On System 1 Form A Cluster. At The Other Pole, Sadness, Vigilance, Suspicion, An Analytic Approach, And Increased Effort Also Go Together. A Happy Mood Loosens The Control Of System 2 Over Performance: When In A Good Mood, People Become More Intuitive And More Creative But Also Less Vigilant And More Prone To Logical Errors.
Sadness
Creativity
Errors
Lucky Risk Takers Use Hindsight To Reinforce Their Feeling That Their Gut Is Very Wise. Hindsight Also Reinforces Others' Trust In That Individual's Gut.
Wise
Feelings
Risk
The Brain Scientists Are The Wave Of The Future In The Financial World. If You Seek To Maximize Understanding, Whether You're In Academia Or In The Investment Community, You'd Better Pay Serious Attention To Them.
Money
Community
Understanding
After A Crisis We Tell Ourselves We Understand Why It Happened And Maintain The Illusion That The World Is Understandable. In Fact, We Should Accept The World Is Incomprehensible Much Of The Time.
World
Facts
Illusion
There Is General Agreement Among Researchers That Nearly All Stock Pickers, Whether They Know It Or Not-and Few Of Them Do-are Playing A Game Of Chance.
Games
Agreement
Investing
I Used To Hold A Unitary View, In Which I Proposed That Only Experienced Happiness Matters, And That Life Satisfaction Is A Fallible Estimate Of True Happiness.
Views
Matter
Satisfaction
Experienced Happiness Refers To Your Feelings, To How Happy You Are As You Live Your Life. In Contrast, The Satisfaction Of The Remembering Self Refers To Your Feelings When You Think About Your Life.
Thinking
Self
Live Your Life
A Reliable Way To Make People Believe In Falsehoods Is Frequent Repetition, Because Familiarity Is Not Easily Distinguished From Truth. Authoritarian Institutions And Marketers Have Always Known This Fact.
Believe
People
Way
People Who Face A Difficult Question Often Answer An Easier One Instead, Without Realizing It.
Difficult Questions
People
Answers
We're Not Aware Of Changing Our Minds Even When We Do Change Our Minds. And Most People, After They Change Their Minds, Reconstruct Their Past Opinion - They Believe They Always Thought That.
Change
Believe
Past
It's Not A Case Of: 'read This Book And Then You'll Think Differently. I've Written This Book, And I Don't Think Differently.
Book
Thinking
Cases
The Concept Of Happiness Has To Be Reorganised.
Concepts
The Idea That You Can Ask One Question And It Makes The Point - Well, That Wasn't How Psychology Was Done At The Time.
Ideas
Psychology
Done
Unfortunately, Skill In Evaluating The Business Prospects Of A Firm Is Not Sufficient For Successful Stock Trading, Where The Key Question Is Whether The Information About The Firm Is Already Incorporated In The Price Of The Stock. Traders Apparently Lackthe Skill To Answer This Crucial Question, But They Appear To Be Ignorant Of Their Ignorance.
Ignorance
Successful
Skills
Friends Are Sometimes A Big Help When They Share Your Feelings. In The Context Of Decisions, The Friends Who Will Serve You Best Are Those Who Understand Your Feelings But Are Not Overly Impressed By Them.
Decision
Feelings
Helping
We Can Be Blind To The Obvious, And We Are Also Blind To Our Blindness.
Blind
Obvious
Blindness
Managers Think Of Themselves As Captains Of A Ship On A Stormy Sea. Risk For Them Is Danger, But They Are Fighting It, Very Controlled.
Business
Fighting
Thinking
We Were Required To Predict A Soldier's Performance In Officer Training And In Combat, But We Did So By Evaluating His Behavior Over One Hour In An Artificial Situation. This Was A Perfect Instance Of A General Rule That I Call Wysiati, "what You See Is All There Is." We Had Made Up A Story From The Little We Knew But Had No Way To Allow For What We Did Not Know About The Individual's Future, Which Was Almost Everything That Would Actually Matter. When You Know As Little As We Did, You Should Not Make Extreme Predictions Like "he Will Be A Star."
Stars
Perfect
Soldier
To Better Avoid Errors, You Should Talk To People Who Disagree With You And You Should Talk To People Who Are Not In The Same Emotional Situation You Are.
Emotional
Errors
People
Mind Is A Machine For Jumping To Conclusions
Jumping
Mind
Machines
When You Look At The Books About Well-being, You See One Word - It's Happiness. People Do Not Distinguish.
Book
People
Looks
Slow Thinking Has The Feeling Of Something You Do. It's Deliberate.
Thinking
Feelings
Deliberate
When Action Is Needed, Optimism, Even Of The Mildly Delusional Variety, May Be A Good Thing.
Optimism
May
Action
Negotiations Over A Shrinking Pie Are Especially Difficult Because They Require An Allocation Of Losses. People Tend To Be Much More Easygoing When They Bargain Over An Expanding Pie.
Loss
Pie
People
One Of The Major Biases In Risky Decision Making Is Optimism. Optimism Is A Source Of High-risk Thinking.
Thinking
Optimism
Decision
You Should Not Take Your Intuitions At Face Value.
Intuition
Faces
Should
Optimistic People Play A Disproportionate Role In Shaping Our Lives. Their Decisions Make A Difference; They Are Inventors, Entrepreneurs, Political And Military Leaders - Not Average People. They Got To Where They Are By Seeking Challenges And Taking Risks.
Military
Optimistic
Average
People Just Hate The Idea Of Losing. Any Loss, Even A Small One, Is Just So Terrible To Contemplate That They Compensate By Buying Insurance, Including Totally Absurd Policies Like Air Travel.
Hate
Loss
Ideas
People Tend To Assess The Relative Importance Of Issues By The Ease With Which They Are Retrieved From Memory—and This Is Largely Determined By The Extent Of Coverage In The Media. Frequently Mentioned Topics Populate The Mind Even As Others Slip Away From Awareness. In Turn, What The Media Choose To Report Corresponds To Their View Of What Is Currently On The Public’s Mind. It Is No Accident That Authoritarian Regimes Exert Substantial Pressure On Independent Media. Because Public Interest Is Most Easily Aroused By Dramatic Events And By Celebrities, Media Feeding Frenzies Are Common
Memories
Independent
Views
Intuitive Diagnosis Is Reliable When People Have A Lot Of Relevant Feedback. But People Are Very Often Willing To Make Intuitive Diagnoses Even When They're Very Likely To Be Wrong.
People
Diagnosis
Feedback
Doubting What You See Is A Very Odd Experience. And Doubting What You Remember Is A Little Less Odd Than Doubting What You See. But It's Also A Pretty Odd Experience, Because Some Memories Come With A Very Compelling Sense Of Truth About Them, And That Happens To Be The Case Even For Memories That Are Not True.
Memories
Doubt
Littles
A Person Who Has Not Made Peace With His Losses Is Likely To Accept Gambles That Would Be Unacceptable To Him Otherwise.
Loss
Would Be
Accepting
Endlessly Amused By People's Minds.
People
Mind
Amused
Most Of The Moments Of Our Life - And I Calculated, You Know, The Psychological Present Is Said To Be About Three Seconds Long; That Means That, You Know, In A Life There Are About 600 Million Of Them; In A Month, There Are About 600,000 - Most Of Them Don't Leave A Trace.
Mean
Long
Three
The Amount Of Success It Takes For Leaders To Become Overconfident Isn't Terribly Large.
Leader
Amount
Overconfident
We Have Associations To Things. We Have, You Know, We Have Associations To Tables And To - And To Dogs And To Cats And To Harvard Professors, And That's The Way The Mind Works. It's An Association Machine.
Dog
Cat
Mind
The Experiencing Self Lives In The Moment; It Is The One That Answers The Question, 'does It Hurt?' Or 'what Were You Thinking About Just Now?' The Remembering Self Is The One That Answers Questions About The Overall Evaluation Of Episodes Or Periods Of One's Life, Such As A Stay In The Hospital Or The Years Since One Left College.
Hurt
College
Thinking
The Conclusion Is Straightforward : Self-control Requires Attention And Effort.
Self
Effort
Attention
Spend Some Effort In Figuring Out Why Each Decision Did Or Did Not Pan Out. Doing That Systematically Is Key: Really Try To Question The Way You Make Decisions, And Improve It.
Keys
Choices
Effort
The Easiest Way To Increase Happiness Is To Control Your Use Of Time.
Use Of Time
Way
Use
Except For Some Effects That I Attribute Mostly To Age, My Intuitive Thinking Is Just As Prone To Overconfidence, Extreme Predictions, And The Planning Fallacy As It Was Before I Made A Study Of These Issues.
Thinking
Issues
Age
Acquisition Of Skills Requires A Regular Environment, An Adequate Opportunity To Practice, And Rapid And Unequivocal Feedback About The Correctness Of Thoughts And Actions.
Opportunity
Practice
Skills
You Can Always Find An Evolutionary Quotation For Anything. But The Question Is Whether It's Functional, Which Is Not The Same As Being Evolutionary.
Evolution
Quotations
People Are Really Happier With Friends Than They Are With Their Families Or Their Spouse Or Their Child.
Children
People
Spouse
Most People Are Highly Optimistic Most Of The Time.
Optimistic
People
The Brains Of Humans Contain A Mechanism That Is Designed To Give Priority To Bad News.
Giving
Priorities
Brain
In Essence, The Optimistic Style Involves Taking Credit For Successes But Little Blame For Failures.
Optimistic
Essence
Style
We Know That The French Are Very Different From The Americans In Their Satisfaction With Life. They're Much Less Satisfied. Americans Are Pretty High Up There, While The French Are Quite Low - The World Champions In Life Satisfaction Are Actually The Danes.
Champion
Different
World
It Is Only A Slight Exaggeration To Say That Happiness Is The Experience Of Spending Time With People You Love And Who Love You.
Love You
People
Spending Time
If You're Going To Be Unreligious, It's Likely Going To Be Due To Reflecting On It And Finding Some Things That Are Hard To Believe.
Believe
Things That Are Hard
Reflecting
In Strategic Decisions, I'd Be Really Concerned About Overconfidence.
Decision
Overconfidence
Concerned
What Happens With Fear Is That Probability Doesn't Matter Very Much. That Is, Once I Have Raised The Possibility That Something Terrible Can Happen To Your Child, Even Though The Possibility Is Remote, You May Find It Very Difficult To Think Of Anything Else. Emotion Becomes Dominant.
Children
Fear
Thinking
Most Things That Couples Disagree Upon Aren't Worth More Than A Day's Combat.
Couple
Combat
Disagree
If Owning Stocks Is A Long-term Project For You, Following Their Changes Constantly Is A Very, Very Bad Idea. It's The Worst Possible Thing You Can Do, Because People Are So Sensitive To Short-term Losses. If You Count Your Money Every Day, You'll Be Miserable.
Loss
Ideas
Long
All Of Us Roughly Know What Memory Is. I Mean, Memory Is Sort Of The Storage Of The Past. It's The Storage Of Our Personal Experiences. It's A Very Big Deal.
Memories
Mean
Past
If People Can Construct A Simple And Coherent Story, They Will Feel Confident Regardless Of How Well Grounded It Is In Reality.
Simple
Reality
People
People's Mood Is Really Determined Primarily By Their Genetic Make-up And Personality, And In The Second Place By Their Immediate Context, And Only In The Third And Fourth Place By Worries And Concerns And Other Things Like That.
People
Worry
Personality
People Are Very Good [at] Thinking About Agents. The Mind Is Set Really Beautifully To Think About Agents. Agents Have Traits. Agents Have Behaviors. We Understand Agents. We Form Global Impression Of Their Personalities. We Are Really Not Very Good At Remembering Sentences Where The Subject Of The Sentence Is An Abstract Notion.
Thinking
People
Personality
The Idea That The Future Is Unpredictable Is Undermined Every Day By The Ease With Which The Past Is Explained.
Past
Ideas
Ease
Mental Effort, I Would Argue, Is Relatively Rare. Most Of The Time We Coast.
Effort
Arguing
Coast
Nothing In Life Is Quite As Important As You Think It Is While You're Thinking About It.
Thinking
Important
Life Is
By Their Very Nature, Heuristic Shortcuts Will Produce Biases, And That Is True For Both Humans And Artificial Intelligence, But The Heuristics Of Ai Are Not Necessarily The Human Ones.
Heuristics
Shortcuts
Produce
It's Very Easy For Trusted Companies To Mislead Naive Customers, And Life Insurance Companies Are Trusted.
Easy
Insurance Companies
Company
It's Nonsense To Say Money Doesn't Buy Happiness, But People Exaggerate The Extent To Which More Money Can Buy More Happiness.
People
Nonsense
More Money
We Have No Reason To Expect The Quality Of Intuition To Improve With The Importance Of The Problem. Perhaps The Contrary: High-stake Problems Are Likely To Involve Powerful Emotions And Strong Impulses To Action.
Strong
Powerful
Intuition
An Executive Might Have A Very Strong Intuition That A Given Product Has Promise, Without Considering The Probability That A Rival Is Already Ahead In Developing The Same Product.
Strong
Promise
Intuition
A Large Portion Of The Weekend Effects Is Explained By Differences In The Amount Of Time Spent With Friends Or Family Between Weekends And Weekdays.
Weekend
Differences
Weekdays
We Are Often Confident Even When We Are Wrong, And An Objective Observer Is More Likely To Detect Our Errors Than We Are.
Errors
Observers
Objectives
I Have Always Emphasized The Willingness To Discard.
Willingness
An Investment Said To Have An 80% Chance Of Success Sounds Far More Attractive Than One With A 20% Chance Of Failure. The Mind Can't Easily Recognize That They Are The Same.
Mind
Sound
Chance
If People Are Failing, They Look Inept. If People Are Succeeding, They Look Strong And Good And Competent. That's The 'halo Effect.' Your First Impression Of A Thing Sets Up Your Subsequent Beliefs. If The Company Looks Inept To You, You May Assume Everything Else They Do Is Inept.
Strong
People
First Impression
Each Additional Day Together Is A Gift. The End Of The Day Means The End Of Hostilities, The Recognition That The Underlying Shared Values And Commitment To The Relationship Trump The Need For One Last Dig Or Self-righteous Justification.
Mean
Commitment
Self
It Doesn't Take Many Observations To Think You've Spotted A Trend, And It's Probably Not A Trend At All.
Thinking
Trends
Observation
Hindsight Bias Makes Surprises Vanish.
Surprise
Hindsight
Bias
When You Are Under Time Pressure For A Decision, You Need To Follow Intuition.
Decision
Intuition
Needs
The Experiencing Self Lives Its Life Continuously. It Has Moments Of Experience, One After The Other.
Self
Moments
That's One Of The Real Dangers Of Leader Selection In Many Organizations: Leaders Are Selected For Overconfidence.
Real
Organization
Leader
Individual Investors Predictably Flock To Stocks In Companies That Are In The News.
News
Individual
Flocks
The Dominance Of Conclusions Over Arguments Is Most Pronounced Where Emotions Are Involved.
Dominance
Emotion
Argument
We Can't Live In A State Of Perpetual Doubt, So We Make Up The Best Story Possible And We Live As If The Story Were True.
Doubt
Stories
States
Psychologists Really Aim To Be Scientists, White-coat Stuff, With Elaborate Statistics, Running Experiments.
Running
White
Coats
The Confidence People Have In Their Beliefs Is Not A Measure Of The Quality Of Evidence But Of The Coherence Of The Story The Mind Has Managed To Construct.
People
Mind
Quality
This Is The Essence Of Intuitive Heuristics: When Faced With A Difficult Question, We Often Answer An Easier One Instead, Usually Without Noticing The Substitution.
Essence
Difficult Questions
Heuristics
People Who Are Cognitively Busy Are Also More Likely To Make Selfish Choices, Use Sexist Language, And Make Superficial Judgments In Social Situations.
Selfish
People
Choices
Courage Is Willingness To Take The Risk Once You Know The Odds. Optimistic Overconfidence Means You Are Taking The Risk Because You Don't Know The Odds. It's A Big Difference.
Optimistic
Mean
Odds
In A Rising Market, Enough Of Your Bad Ideas Will Pay Off So That You'll Never Learn That You Should Have Fewer Ideas.
Should Have
Ideas
Rising
Through Some Combination Of Culture And Biology, Our Minds Are Intuitively Receptive To Religion.
Mind
Culture
Biology
It's Clear That Policymakers And Economists Are Going To Be Interested In The Measurement Of Well-being Primarily As It Correlates With Health; They Also Want To Know Whether Researchers Can Validate Subjective Responses With Physiological Indices.
Want
Measurement
Well Being
People Like Leaders Who Look Like They Are Dominant, Optimistic, Friendly To Their Friends, And Quick On The Trigger When It Comes To Enemies. They Like Boldness And Despise The Appearance Of Timidity And Protracted Doubt.
Optimistic
People
Leader
If Individuals Are Rational, There Is No Need To Protect Them Against Their Own Choices.
Choices
Needs
Individual
When People Believe A Conclusion Is True, They Are Also Very Likely To Believe Arguments That Appear To Support It, Even When These Arguments Are Unsound.
Believe
People
Support
I'm Not A Great Believer In Self-help.
Self
Helping
Self Help
So Your Emotional State Really Has A Lot To Do With What You're Thinking About And What You're Paying Attention To.
Emotional
Thinking
Attention
Many Ideas Happen To Us. We Have Intuition, We Have Feeling, We Have Emotion, All Of That Happens, We Don't Decide To Do It. We Don't Control It.
Ideas
Feelings
Intuition
Experts Don't Know Exactly Where The Boundaries Of Their Expertise Are.
Experts
Boundaries
Expertise
Finally, The Illusions Of Validity And Skill Are Supported By A Powerful Professional Culture. We Know That People Can Maintain An Unshakeable Faith In Any Proposition, However Absurd, When They Are Sustained By A Community Of Like-minded Believers. Given The Professional Culture Of The Financial Community, It Is Not Surprising That Large Numbers Of Individuals In That World Believe Themselves To Be Among The Chosen Few Who Can Do What They Believe Others Cannot.
Powerful
Believe
Skills
Employers Who Violate Rules Of Fairness Are Punished By Reduced Productivity, And Merchants Who Follow Unfair Pricing Policies Can Expect To Lose Sales.
Fairness
Unfair
Employers
Divorced Women, Compared To Married Women, Are Less Satisfied With Their Lives, Which Is Not Surprising. But They're Actually More Cheerful, When You Look At The Average Mood They're In In The Course Of The Day.
Average
Cheerful
Looks
There's A Very Good Reason For Why Economics Developed The Way It Did, And That Is That In Many Situations, The Assumption That People Will Exploit The Opportunities Available To Them Is Very Plausible, And It Simplifies The Analysis Of How Markets Will Behave.
Opportunity
People
Analysis
People Exaggerate Their Confidence In Their Plans - Something We Call The Planning Fallacy... The Existence Of The Plan Tends To Induce Overconfidence.
Confidence
People
Planning
Doubts Are Suppressed By Groups... But Remember That The Internal Incentives That Shape How The Group Perceives Risks And Rewards May Be Very Different From The Reality Of The Risks And Rewards In The External Marketplace. Those Incentives Can Distort Risk Perception.
Reality
Risk
Perception
Human Beings Cannot Comprehend Very Large Or Very Small Numbers. It Would Be Useful For Us To Acknowledge That Fact.
Small Numbers
Would Be
Facts
The Psychologist, Paul Rozin, An Expert On Disgust, Observed That A Single Cockroach Will Completely Wreck The Appeal Of A Bowl Of Cherries, But A Cherry Will Do Nothing At All For A Bowl Of Cockroaches.
Cockroaches
Experts
Wrecks
One Emphasis Of My Research Has Been On The Question Of How People Spend Their Time. Time Is The Ultimate Finite Resource, Or Course, So The Question Of How People Spend It Would Seem To Be Important.
People
Important
Research
If People Do Not Know What Is Going To Make Them Better Off Or Give Them Pleasure, Then The Idea That You Can Trust People To Do What Will Give Them Pleasure Becomes Questionable.
Ideas
People
Giving
Although Professionals Are Able To Extract A Considerable Amount Of Wealth From Amateurs, Few Stock Pickers, If Any, Have The Skill Needed To Beat The Market Consistently, Year After Year.
Years
Skills
Able
If You Care About Being Thought Credible And Intelligent, Do Not Use Complex Language Where Simpler Language Will Do.
Intelligent
Care
Use
When You Analyze Happiness, It Turns Out That The Way You Spend Your Time Is Extremely Important.
Important
Way
Turns
Our Memory Tells Us Stories, That Is, What We Get To Keep From Our Experiences Is A Story.
Memories
Stories
Our Memories
One Thing We Have Lost, That We Had In The Past, Is A Sense Of Progress, That Things Are Getting Better. There Is A Sense Of Volatility, But Not Of Progress.
Past
Get Better
Progress
The Effort Invested In 'getting It Right' Should Be Commensurate With The Importance Of The Decision.
Effort
Decision
Should
People Have Little Idea, By And Large, Of The Investment World. They Are Convinced They Have An Advantage.
Money
Ideas
People
I Would Be Wary Of Experts' Intuition, Except When They Deal With Something That They Have Dealt With A Lot In The Past.
Past
Intuition
Experts
Question: So Investors Shouldn't Delude Themselves About Beating The Market? Answer: "they're Just Not Going To Do It. It's Just Not Going To Happen."
Investing
Answers
Happens
The Extra Daily Social Time Of 1.7 Hours In Weekends Raises Average Happiness By About 2%.
Weekend
Average
Hours
The Illusion That We Understand The Past Fosters Overconfidence In Our Ability To Predict The Future.
Past
Illusion
Ability
My Interest In Well-being Evolved From My Interest In Decision Making - From Raising The Question Of Whether People Know What They Will Want In The Future And Whether The Things That People Want For Themselves Will Make Them Happy.
People
Decision
Want
The Planning Fallacy Is That You Make A Plan, Which Is Usually A Best-case Scenario. Then You Assume That The Outcome Will Follow Your Plan, Even When You Should Know Better.
Outcomes
Planning
Assuming
One Of The Problems With Expertise Is That People Have It In Some Domains And Not In Others.
People
Problem
Domain
Often, The Most Enjoyable Part Of An Activity Is The Anticipation.
Anticipation
Enjoyable
Activity
My Impression Is That The Elimination Of Memories Greatly Reduces The Value Of The Experience.
Memories
Elimination
Impression
Most Of The Time, We Think Fast. And Most Of The Time We're Really Expert At What We're Doing, And Most Of The Time, What We Do Is Right.
Thinking
Experts
I Don't Try To Be Clever At All. The Idea That I Could See What No One Else Can Is An Illusion.
Clever
Ideas
Trying
If There Was One Ubiquitous Recommendation About Marriage It Was This: "don't Go To Bed Angry."
Bed
Recommendations
Angry
There Are Some Conditions Where You Have To Trust Your Intuition.
Intuition
Trust Your Intuition
Conditions
You're Surprised By Something, But You Don't Really Know What Surprised You; You Recognize Someone, But You Don't Really Know What Cues Cause You To Recognize That Person.
Causes
Persons
Knows
We Associate Leadership With Decisiveness. That Perception Of Leadership Pushes People To Make Decisions Fairly Quickly, Lest They Be Seen As Dithering And Indecisive.
Leadership
People
Decision
You Are More Likely To Learn Something By Finding Surprises In Your Own Behavior Than By Hearing Surprising Facts About People In General.
People
Hearing
Facts
A General “law Of Least Effort” Applies To Cognitive As Well As Physical Exertion. The Law Asserts That If There Are Several Ways Of Achieving The Same Goal, People Will Eventually Gravitate To The Least Demanding Course Of Action. In The Economy Of Action, Effort Is A Cost, And The Acquisition Of Skill Is Driven By The Balance Of Benefits And Costs. Laziness Is Built Deep Into Our Nature.
Law
Skills
People
The 'instagram Generation' Now Experiences The Present As An Anticipated Memory
Memories
Generations
Instagram
To Know Whether You Can Trust A Particular Intuitive Judgment, There Are Two Questions You Should Ask: Is The Environment In Which The Judgment Is Made Sufficiently Regular To Enable Predictions From The Available Evidence? The Answer Is Yes For Diagnosticians, No For Stock Pickers. Do The Professionals Have An Adequate Opportunity To Learn The Cues And The Regularities? The Answer Here Depends On The Professionals' Experience And On The Quality And Speed With Which They Discover Their Mistakes.
Mistake
Opportunity
Two
The Evidence Is Unequivocal, There's A Great Deal More Luck Than Skill In People Getting Very Rich.
Skills
People
Luck
There's A Tendency To Look At Investments In Isolation. Investors Focus On The Risk Of Individual Securities.
Focus
Risk
Looks
People Should Be Conscious Of The Large Contribution Made By Anything That Gets People Together Easily In The Reduction Of Loneliness And Emotional Well-being.
Loneliness
Emotional
People
Poverty Is Clearly One Source Of Emotional Suffering, But There Are Others, Like Loneliness. A Policy To Reduce The Loneliness Of The Elderly Would Certainly Reduce Suffering.
Loneliness
Emotional
Elderly
Political Columnists And Sports Pundits Are Rewarded For Being Overconfident.
Sports
Political
Columnists
However, Optimism Is Highly Valued, Socially And In The Market; People And Firms Reward The Providers Of Dangerously Misleading Information More Than They Reward Truth Tellers. One Of The Lessons Of The Financial Crisis That Led To The Great Recession Is That There Are Periods In Which Competition, Among Experts And Among Organizations, Creates Powerful Forces That Favor A Collective Blindness To Risk And Uncertainty.
Powerful
Organization
Optimism
Below An Income Of ... $60,000 A Year, People Are Unhappy, And They Get Progressively Unhappier The Poorer They Get. Above That, We Get An Absolutely Flat Line. ... Money Does Not Buy You Experiential Happiness, But Lack Of Money Certainly Buys You Misery.
Motivation
Inspiration
Years
A Plan Is Only A Scenario, And Almost By Definition, It Is Optimistic... As A Result, Scenario Planning Can Lead To A Serious Underestimate Of The Risk Of Failure.
Optimistic
Risk
Definitions
Economists Think About What People Ought To Do. Psychologists Watch What They Actually Do.
Thinking
People
Watches
Policy Makers, Like Most People, Normally Feel That They Already Know All The Psychology And All The Sociology They Are Likely To Need For Their Decisions. I Don't Think They Are Right, But That's The Way It Is.
Thinking
People
Decision
It Is The Consistency Of The Information That Matters For A Good Story, Not Its Completeness. Indeed, You Will Often Find That Knowing Little Makes It Easier To Fit Everything You Know Into A Coherent Pattern.
Knowing
Consistency
Stories
Nobody Would Say, 'i'm Voting For This Guy Because He's Got The Stronger Chin,' But That, In Fact, Is Partly What Happens.
Guy
Voting
Stronger
There Are Domains In Which Expertise Is Not Possible. Stock Picking Is A Good Example. And In Long-term Political Strategic Forecasting, It's Been Shown That Experts Are Just Not Better Than A Dice-throwing Monkey.
Long
Political
Example
Intelligence Is Not Only The Ability To Reason; It Is Also The Ability To Find Relevant Material In Memory And To Deploy Attention When Needed.
Memories
Attention
Reason
Some Achieve A Reputation For Great Successes When In Fact All They Have Done Is Take Chances That Reasonable People Wouldn't Take.
People
Done
Facts
I Enjoy Being Active, But I Look Forward To The Day When I Can Retire To The Internet.
Looks
Internet
Enjoy
Adaptation Seems To Be, To A Substantial Extent, A Process Of Reallocating Your Attention.
Attention
Adaptation
Process
Some Memories Come With A Very Compelling Sense Of Truth About Them. And That Happens To Be The Case Even With Memories That Are Not True.
Memories
Cases
Compelling
Laziness Is Built Deep Into Our Nature.
Laziness
Built
We Are Very Influenced By Completely Automatic Things That We Have No Control Over, And We Don't Know We're Doing It.
Knows
You Know You Have Made A Theoretical Advance When You Can No Longer Reconstruct Why You Failed For So Long To See The Obvious.
Long
Made
Obvious
Odd As It May Seem, I Am My Remembering Self, And The Experiencing Self, Who Does My Living, Is Like A Stranger To Me.
Self
Doe
May
Being Wealthy Is Often A Powerful Predictor That People Spend Less Time Doing Pleasurable Things And More Time Doing Compulsory Things And Feeling Stressed.
Powerful
People
Feelings
Researchers Who Studied A Thousand Dutch Vacationers Concluded That By Far The Greatest Amount Of Happiness Extracted From The Vacation Is Derived From The Anticipation Period.
Vacation
Dutch
Anticipation
When People Think Of The Outcomes Of Their Decisions, They Think Much More Short Term Than That. They Think In Terms Of Gains And Losses.
Loss
Thinking
People
The Confidence That Individuals Have In Their Beliefs Depends Mostly On The Quality Of The Story They Can Tell About What They See, Even If They See Little.
Quality
Stories
Littles
The Concept Of Loss Aversion Is Certainly The Most Significant Contribution Of Psychology To Behavioral Economics.
Loss
Psychology
Aversion
We Are Prone To Overestimate How Much We Understand About The World And To Underestimate The Role Of Chance In Events.
Events
Roles
World
The Illusion Of Skill Is Not Only An Individual Aberration; It Is Deeply Ingrained In The Culture Of The [investment Management] Industry.
Skills
Culture
Aberration
Groups Tend To Be More Extreme Than Individuals.
Groups
Individual
Extremes
One Study Found That People Who Just Thought About Watching Their Favorite Movie Actually Raised Their Endorphin Levels By 27 Percent.
People
Levels
Study
People Talk Of The New Economy And Of Reinventing Themselves In The Workplace, And In That Sense Most Of Us Are Less Secure.
People
Workplace
Economy
True Intuitive Expertise Is Learned From Prolonged Experience With Good Feedback On Mistakes.
Mistake
Feedback
Expertise
Trending Author
Paul Gillmor
Thomas Keller
Cheryl James
Ashley Greene
Vanessa Mae
Charles Edison
Category
Information