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.
Interpretation
Our minds create connections to various concepts and objects, shaping our understanding and experiences.
In this quote, Daniel Kahneman emphasizes the fundamental process of human cognition, where our minds link different concepts and entities together. This associative thinking governs how we perceive the world around us, influencing our reactions and interactions based on the connections we make between experiences, objects, and people.
In practice
In a psychology class discussing how our thoughts influence behavior.
We think, each of us, that we're much more rational than we are. And we think that we make our decisions because we have good reasons to make them. Even when it's the other way around. We believe in the reasons, because we've already made the decision.
The average investor's return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.
Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.
Laziness is built deep into our nature.
Through some combination of culture and biology, our minds are intuitively receptive to religion.
You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.
I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.
How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts.
Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
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