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.
Interpretation
We often believe we can make sense of events after they occur, but in reality, the world is often beyond our understanding.
Daniel Kahneman's quote highlights the human tendency to rationalize and create narratives around crises and uncertainties, suggesting that while we may strive for clarity and understanding, it is important to recognize and accept the inherent complexity and chaos of life. Embracing the idea that not everything is comprehensible allows for a more realistic perspective on events and the world around us, fostering resilience in the face of challenges.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the unpredictability of global events during a seminar.
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.
Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
Loss; is the returning of what never actually belonged to us in the first place.
If you have indeed been so highly distinguished, should you not ‘live no longer to yourselves, but altogether unto Him who died for you and rose again?’ Should any thing short of absolute perfection satisfy you? Should you not labour to ‘stand perfect and complete in all the will of God?’
Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself.
It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.
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