We were required to predict a soldier's performance in officer training and in combat, but we did so by evaluating his behavior over one hour in an artificial situation. This was a perfect instance of a general rule that I call WYSIATI, "What you see is all there is." We had made up a story from the little we knew but had no way to allow for what we did not know about the individual's future, which was almost everything that would actually matter. When you know as little as we did, you should not make extreme predictions like "He will be a star."

There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it's been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey.

If you're going to be unreligious, it's likely going to be due to reflecting on it and finding some things that are hard to believe.

Unfortunately, skill in evaluating the business prospects of a firm is not sufficient for successful stock trading, where the key question is whether the information about the firm is already incorporated in the price of the stock. Traders apparently lackthe skill to answer this crucial question, but they appear to be ignorant of their ignorance.

An investment said to have an 80% chance of success sounds far more attractive than one with a 20% chance of failure. The mind can't easily recognize that they are the same.

The evidence is unequivocal, there's a great deal more luck than skill in people getting very rich.

Hindsight bias makes surprises vanish.