Fooled by randomness

Survivorship bias – we focus on successful people and ignore those that failed, even if their actions were identical.

Think in terms of expected value (e.g. the impact of the downside, not just the probability) – protect yourself against extreme negative risks – e.g. never play Russian roulette

Journalism (information that has never had to prove its truth more than once) is just about entertainment, has negative expected value.

Other interesting notes:

Humans misinterpret luck as skill, especially their own.

The greater number of businessmen, the greater the likelihood of one of them performing in a stellar manner just by luck.

Strive to become a man of leisure who can afford to sit with ideas, think properly about them, and gradually provide something of value.

Minor stalemates in life can often be solved by choosing randomly or following a rule. Not because the rule is right, but it makes things fast and easy.

Most of us know pretty much how we should behave. It is the execution that is the problem, not the absence of knowledge.

We need tricks to get us there but before that we need to accept the fact that we are mere animals in need of lower forms of tricks, not lectures.

Few people are grateful for insurance that protects them from something that did not take place.

Reading history will not help you “learn from other’s mistakes.”

We do not learn from our own history – we keep buying things hoping it will bring long-lasting happiness.

Reality is worse than Russian roulette – fatal events are uncommon and we forget they exist.

The pain of losing $100 is (~2.5x) greater than the satisfaction of earning $100.

Thoughts on the book:

*Great idea, could be a blog post.