Part of that, I think, is being able to tune out folly, as distinguished from recognizing wisdom. You've got whole categories of things you just bat away so your brain isn't cluttered with them. That way, you're better able to pick up a few sensible things to do.

The possibility that stock value in aggregate can become irrationally high is contrary to the hard-form "efficient market" theory that many of you once learned as gospel from your mistaken professors of yore. Your mistaken professors were too much influenced by "rational man" models of human behavior from economics and too little by "foolish man" models from psychology and real-world experience.

I think it is undeniably true that the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person's brain because it understands the most fundamental models- ones that will do most work per unit.

My idea of a good place to shop is Costco - it has these heavily marbled fillet steaks. The idea of eating some wheat thing and washing it down with carrot juice has never appealed to me.

So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.

We're emphasizing the knowable by predicting how certain people and companies will swim against the current. We're not predicting the fluctuation in the current.

If it happens every year like clockwork, what's so extraordinary about it?