Thinking, Fast and Slow (Part 3)

Intro: The Pessimism…

Whenever I finish reading a book, I always list what I liked about that book and what I feel it could work on. If I am truly in love with a book, like the 5 am Club, I will struggle to write anything bad about it (halo effect). I will avoid disregarding the efforts of the author and the years of knowledge in their chosen field. I will never disregard the field and suggest you stop reading books of a certain nature. But this book is an exception. I am struggling to get through this book because of the amount of pessimism in it. I know life is hard but did you need to crush my dreams with probability and statistics?

This is a joke but I can not lie about the pessimism in this book. I have always viewed investing and entrepreneurship positively and have always seen myself doing either or both. However, Daniel Kahneman constantly writes about how impossible investing is. Multiple examples and case studies in this book relate to top financial analysts and CFOs being completely lost in their jobs. They are unable to predict the market and that too with years of experience. Furthermore, only 35% of businesses survive more than 5 years. This crushed me when I read this because I realised that I was overconfident in my abilities and optimistic. I guess that now I have a more grounded view of the world but at what cost…