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You Know You Have Made A Theoretical Advance When You Can No Longer Reconstruct Why You Failed For So Long To See The Obvious.
-Daniel Kahneman
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You Know You Have

Daniel Kahneman
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You Know You Have Made A Theoretical Advance When You Can No Longer Reconstruct Why You Failed For So Long To See The Obvious.

Understanding the Quote: "you know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no..."

This quote by Daniel Kahneman reflects deeply on the theme of long. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Long, Made, Obvious, 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 long and made. 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.

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Long
Made
Obvious
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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.
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Looks
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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.
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Alternative Descriptions Of The Same Reality Evoke Different Emotions And Different Associations.
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Alternatives
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.
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Creativity
Errors
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.
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Long
Three
We Are Far Too Willing To Reject The Belief That Much Of What We See In Life Is Random.
Belief
Life Is
Rejects
The Illusion That We Understand The Past Fosters Overconfidence In Our Ability To Predict The Future.
Past
Illusion
Ability
The Brains Of Humans Contain A Mechanism That Is Designed To Give Priority To Bad News.
Giving
Priorities
Brain
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
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
One Of The Major Biases In Risky Decision Making Is Optimism. Optimism Is A Source Of High-risk Thinking.
Thinking
Optimism
Decision
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 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
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
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
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 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
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
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
We Are Very Influenced By Completely Automatic Things That We Have No Control Over, And We Don't Know We're Doing It.
Knows
Clearly, The Decision-making That We Rely On In Society Is Fallible. It's Highly Fallible, And We Should Know That.
Decision
Should
Rely
People Assign Much Higher Probability To The Truth Of Their Opinions Than Is Warranted.
Truth
People
Opinion
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
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
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
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
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
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
It's Very Easy For Trusted Companies To Mislead Naive Customers, And Life Insurance Companies Are Trusted.
Easy
Insurance Companies
Company
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
Our Memory Tells Us Stories, That Is, What We Get To Keep From Our Experiences Is A Story.
Memories
Stories
Our Memories
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
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
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
There's A Tendency To Look At Investments In Isolation. Investors Focus On The Risk Of Individual Securities.
Focus
Risk
Looks
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
Endlessly Amused By People's Minds.
People
Mind
Amused
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
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
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
Individual Investors Predictably Flock To Stocks In Companies That Are In The News.
News
Individual
Flocks
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
People Who Face A Difficult Question Often Answer An Easier One Instead, Without Realizing It.
Difficult Questions
People
Answers
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
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
The Premise Of This Book Is That It Is Easier To Recognize Other People's Mistakes Than Your Own.
Mistake
Book
People
We Can Be Blind To The Obvious, And We Are Also Blind To Our Blindness.
Blind
Obvious
Blindness
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
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
Often, The Most Enjoyable Part Of An Activity Is The Anticipation.
Anticipation
Enjoyable
Activity
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
I'm Not A Great Believer In Self-help.
Self
Helping
Self Help
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
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
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
When Action Is Needed, Optimism, Even Of The Mildly Delusional Variety, May Be A Good Thing.
Optimism
May
Action
Organizations May Be Better Able To Tame Optimism Than Individuals Are.
Organization
Optimism
Able
Through Some Combination Of Culture And Biology, Our Minds Are Intuitively Receptive To Religion.
Mind
Culture
Biology
There Are Some Conditions Where You Have To Trust Your Intuition.
Intuition
Trust Your Intuition
Conditions
The Evidence Is Unequivocal, There's A Great Deal More Luck Than Skill In People Getting Very Rich.
Skills
People
Luck
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
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
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
It's A Wonderful Thing To Be Optimistic. It Keeps You Healthy And It Keeps You Resilient.
Optimistic
Healthy
Wonderful
Psychologists Really Aim To Be Scientists, White-coat Stuff, With Elaborate Statistics, Running Experiments.
Running
White
Coats
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
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
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
If There Was One Ubiquitous Recommendation About Marriage It Was This: "don't Go To Bed Angry."
Bed
Recommendations
Angry
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
Money Does Not Buy You Happiness, But Lack Of Money Certainly Buys You Misery.
Doe
Misery
You Should Not Take Your Intuitions At Face Value.
Intuition
Faces
Should
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
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
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
People Have Little Idea, By And Large, Of The Investment World. They Are Convinced They Have An Advantage.
Money
Ideas
People
When You Analyze Happiness, It Turns Out That The Way You Spend Your Time Is Extremely Important.
Important
Way
Turns
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