This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.
Interpretation
We tend to simplify complex issues by unconsciously addressing easier ones instead.
In this quote, Daniel Kahneman highlights a common cognitive tendency known as intuitive heuristics, where individuals substitute challenging questions with simpler ones to avoid discomfort and confusion. This often occurs unconsciously, leading us to form conclusions based on oversimplified reasoning rather than fully engaging with the complexity of the original problem.
In practice
In a psychology class, while discussing decision-making, a teacher might quote this to illustrate cognitive biases.
We think, each of us, that we're much more rational than we are. And we think that we make our decisions because we have good reasons to make them. Even when it's the other way around. We believe in the reasons, because we've already made the decision.
The average investor's return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.
Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.
Laziness is built deep into our nature.
Through some combination of culture and biology, our minds are intuitively receptive to religion.
You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.
Soul of all souls, life of all life - you are That. _x000D_ Seen and unseen, moving and unmoving - you are That. _x000D_ The road that leads to the City is endless; _x000D_ Go without head and feet _x000D_ and you'll already be there. _x000D_ What else could you be? - you are That.
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't.
The public interest is not always the same as the national interest. Going to war with people who are not our enemy in places that are not a threat doesn't make us safe, and that applies whether it's in Iraq or on the Internet. The Internet is not the enemy. Our economy is not the enemy.
Because there is no man who can be true and just judge of himself, so much will self-love deceive him.
The Lord doesn't care at all if we spend our days working in marble halls or stable stalls. He knows where we are, no matter how humble our circumstances. He will use - in his own way and for his holy purposes - those who incline their hearts to Him.
Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.
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