If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.
Interpretation
Clear communication is more effective than using complicated language.
This quote emphasizes the importance of simplicity in communication. Daniel Kahneman suggests that in order to be perceived as credible and intelligent, one should prioritize clarity and straightforwardness over complexity, as simpler language can convey ideas more effectively and resonate better with others.
In practice
During a presentation at work, a speaker might use this quote to emphasize the importance of clear language when conveying ideas.
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.
There exists one book, which, to my taste, furnishes the happiest treatise of natural education. What then is this marvelous book? Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny, is it Buffon? No-it is Robinson Crusoe.
Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels.
There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.
Wear your learning like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out, and strike it, merely to show that you have one.
But because we've all been readers, we know what the experience is like, and we hope that what certain writers have given to us, we will give to someone.
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