You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.
Interpretation
Self-reflection leads to deeper learning than passive information consumption.
This quote emphasizes the value of introspection and understanding oneself over merely absorbing information about others. Daniel Kahneman suggests that personal experiences and the surprises we find in our own actions can offer more profound insights and lessons than external facts that may not resonate or connect with our own lives clearly.
In practice
During a workshop on personal growth, one might say, 'As Daniel Kahneman suggests, we learn more from surprises in our own 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.
It's very easy for trusted companies to mislead naive customers, and life insurance companies are trusted.
It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.
The 'safe spaces' for minority students on university campuses are actually redemptive spaces for white students and administrators looking for innocence and empowerment.
Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading.
I have sometimes dreamt ... that when the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading.
I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth. We need to be taught to study rather than believe, to inquire rather than to affirm.
We cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can't do the white woman's homework for her. That's an energy drain. More times than she cares to remember, Nellie Wong, Asian American feminist writer, has been called by white women wanting a list of Asian American women who can give readings or workshops. We are in danger of being reduced to purveyors of resource lists.
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