My daughter doesn’t know where money and bills come…
My daughter doesn’t know where money and bills come from. She has a crystal clear vision of the situation when dad isn’t playing with me and I want him to play with me. I’m sad. Even though she knows little, she doesn’t realize it she tells herself a coherent story about what’s going on. Based on the little she does know. Just like my daughter, I don’t know what I don’t know. So I am just as susceptible to explaining the world to the limited set of mental models. I have at my disposal. History cannot be interpreted without the aid of imagination and intuition. hindsight, the ability to explain the past, gives the illusion that the world is understandable. It gives the illusion that the world makes sense, even when it doesn’t make sense. That’s the big deal in producing mistakes in many fields. I might completely misunderstand why the stock market is behaving like it is, in a way that gives me too much confidence in my ability to know what to do next. Part of the reason forecasting the stock market and the economy is so hard because you are the only person in the world who thinks the world operates the way you do. coming to terms with how much you don’t know means coming to terms with them, but how much of what happens in the world is out of your control.
— from The Instruments (Awareness/Perception/Expectations)