We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that we often overlook clear truths and are unaware of our own ignorance.
Daniel Kahneman highlights the human tendency to ignore evident facts and remain oblivious to our lack of understanding. He suggests that not only do we miss the obvious, but we also fail to recognize that we are missing it, which can lead to misguided beliefs and poor decision-making.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about decision-making in business meetings.
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.
To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can’t. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn’t want to be in the sun?
If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
It is only serving God that is doing immortal work; it is only living for Christ that is living at all.
Our emphasis here is based not only on the growing seriousness of drug-related crimes, but also on the belief that relieving our police and our courts from having to fight losing battles against drug use will enable their energies and facilities to be devoted more fully to combating other forms of crime.
Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.
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