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.
As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.
Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.
A lot of parents today are terrified that something they say to their children might make them 'feel bad.' But, hey, if they've done something wrong, they should feel bad. Kids with a sense of responsibility, not entitlement, who know when to experience gratitude and humility, will be better at navigating the social shoals of college.
A liberal education will impart an awareness of the amazing and precious complexity of human relationships. Since those relationships are violated more often out of insensitiveness than out of deliberate intent, whatever increases sensitiveness of perception and understanding humanizes life.
Take the example of my daughter. A lot of people were speaking out about education when the Taliban were bombing schools in Swat Valley, but Malala's voice was like a crescendo. It spread all around the world. She was the smallest but her voice was the biggest, because she was speaking for herself.
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