Kahneman, of course, wouldn’t have been surprised. In a 1977 memo to DARPA that he’d written with Amos Tversky, on how to best reach specific military objectives, he warned that knowing about a bias didn’t mean you wouldn’t exhibit it; it could still look highly attractive: “Erroneous intuitions resemble visual illusions in a crucial respect: both types of error remain compellingly attractive even when the person is fully aware of their nature.” I might realize that my thinking has been fallacious—but if I still like my plan, I can trick myself into thinking it remains a good idea. Sure, there
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