Diwakar Raghavan's Key Ideas from The Art of Thinking Clearly
by Rolf Dobelli

This bias or error is about how one can systematically overestimate their chances of success. The probability of your start up being successful, of you becoming a royalty winning writer or becoming the next Led Zeppelin are next to zero, and yet, we ignore it. The reason we ignore it is the success stories that we hear about. Let's say , we hear of one Soldier who made it out of the war, a hero, and alive, and we assume that war is safe.

• Cosmetics products are sold by beautiful models and the products have no causal effect on their good looks
• Good universities are good because they take good students in and not the other way around
• And the main analogy from which the error gets its name , swimmers with great physique are good swimmers in most cases, and not the other way around

In short , the intent to seek relation between every choice and corresponding results is erroneous as we maybe making wrong assumptions

We tend to try to see patterns where none exist

• Patterns in clouds
• Faces in food
• Patterns in stokc markets

There are lot of stuff in which we may think there is a pattern but more often than not theu are just conicidental.

Humans are oversensitive to patterns

When you think you have a pattern, consider it luck and the analyse it or have it analysed through and expert. Try to disprove it.