Although professionals are able to extract a considerable amount of wealth from amateurs, few stock pickers, if any, have the skill needed to beat the market consistently, year after year.

... sometimes when you are asked a question that is difficult, the mind doesn't stay silent if it doesn't have the answer. The mind produces something, and what it produces very characteristically is the answer to an easier but related question.

you know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious.

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

When people think of the outcomes of their decisions, they think much more short term than that. They think in terms of gains and losses.

It doesn't take many observations to think you've spotted a trend, and it's probably not a trend at all.

Mental effort, I would argue, is relatively rare. Most of the time we coast.