"The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story the mind has managed to construct."
"I have always believed that scientific research is another domain where a form of optimism is essential to success: I have yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate the importance of what he or she is doing, and I believe that someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most researchers."
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Source: Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.299, Macmillan
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