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 ha… - Daniel Kahneman

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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 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. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge.

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About Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman (March 5, 1934 – March 27, 2024) was an Israeli-American psychologist. He shared the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Vernon L. Smith. Kahneman is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology. Latterly, he was professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.

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Also Known As

Native Name: דניאל כהנמן
Alternative Names: D Kahneman D. Kahneman Kahneman Kahneman D Kahneman D.
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Additional quotes by Daniel Kahneman

System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification.

The mystery is how a conception that is vulnerable to such obvious counterexamples survived for so long. I can explain it only by a weakness of the scholarly mind that I have often observed in myself. I call it theory-induced blindness: Once you have accepted a theory, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws. As the psychologist Daniel Gilbert has observed, disbelieving is hard work.

"At work here is that powerful WYSIATI ("what you see is all there is") rule. You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it. Paradoxically, it is easier to construct a coherent story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit into the puzzle. Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance."

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