ad verecundiam

conformity bias

Have you noticed that we are social creatures who devote a lot of our time to thinking about social ranking? And that a by-product of this obsession is a tendency to blindly trust the claims and ideas of people who rank…

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Wanna be a trillionaire?

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And you would be the first on this planet, provided that you measure your wealth in the current USD, since I am quite certain that there would already be existent trillionaires when measured in Vietnamese Dong or Indonesian Rupiah. Trillions are flung around in the news nowadays to…

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Others are just like me

We have the tendency to overestimate the degree to which others agree with us; therein making this—tendency—just another of those predictable patterns of thought and behavior that lead us to draw incorrect conclusions. Psychologists call this the False Consensus Bias. Let me ask you: “Is agreeing…

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Don’t trust yourself

Have you ever been convinced that you could predict how well you would perform in any stock market situation? If the answer is yes, then you are suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. What that effect literally means is that you are so bad at a…

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Correction

In my earlier blog post, I asked which animal kills more people? Despite that the Hippopotamus emerged victorious; in truth, the animal that creates by far the greatest havoc to humankind is the Black Swan. How so? Because the most influential and devastating events in history…

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Got any habits?

Let’s talk about Habituation. Habituation is really just another trick that our inner con man plays on us: He makes us believe that wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, and that their wonderfulness wanes with repetition. “Psychologists call this effect habituation,…

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Whatever you earn – live within your means

Now, that is a no-brainer! Others might even call this a “know-brainer”. Still, I know from personal experience that this principle is not easy to apply; nevertheless, it is worth your utmost attention as it is the key to growing your savings. People are always talking about character,…

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