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100 Little Ideas
Anscombe’s Quartet : Four sets of numbers that look identical on paper (mean average, variance, correlation, etc.) but look completely different when graphed. Describes a situation where exact calculations don’t offer a good representation of how the world works.
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
Cobra Effect: Attempting to solve a problem makes that problem worse. Comes from an Indian story about a city infested with snakes offering a bounty for every dead cobra, which caused entrepreneurs to start breeding cobras for slaughter.
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
Hedonic Treadmill : Expectations rise with results, so nothing feels as good as you’d imagine for as long as you’d expect.
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
Chronological Snobbery : “The assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one
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Three Men Make a Tiger: People will believe anything if enough people tell them it’s true. It comes from a Chinese proverb that if one person tells you there’s a tiger roaming around your neighborhood, you can assume they’re lying. If two people tell you, you begin to wonder. If three say it’s true, you’re convinced there’s a tiger in your... See more
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
Pareto Principle : The majority of outcomes are driven by a minority of events.
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
Behavioral Inevitability : “History never repeats itself; man always does.” – Voltaire
Morgan Housel • 100 Little Ideas
System Justification Theory : Inefficient systems will be defended and maintained if they serve the needs of people who benefit from them – individual incentives can sustain systemic stupidity.