I would be wary of experts' intuition, except when they deal with something that they have dealt with a lot in the past.

We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

In essence, the optimistic style involves taking credit for successes but little blame for failures.

An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.

Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don't know the odds. It's a big difference.

So your emotional state really has a lot to do with what you're thinking about and what you're paying attention to.

Policy makers, like most people, normally feel that they already know all the psychology and all the sociology they are likely to need for their decisions. I don't think they are right, but that's the way it is.