Here’s a curious fact about human beings: we have a really hard time realizing that something isn’t there.

We very often fail to see our present circumstances in right perspective.

human beings cannot distinguish between real dangers and imagined ones.

We do not spontaneously learn that we don't learn that we don't learn. The problem lies in the structure of our minds: we don't learn rules, just facts, and only facts. Metarules (such as the rule that we have a tendency to not learn rules) we don't seem to be good at getting. We scorn the abstract; we scorn it with passion.

He defaults to thinking that what he doesn't see is not there, or what he does not understand does not exist. At the core, he tends to mistake the unknown for the nonexistent.

we can’t see what we aren’t looking for, and don’t notice what we don’t notice.

We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize that we don’t.

Many fail to grasp what they have seen,
and cannot judge what they have learned,
although they tell themselves they know.

Reality is something the human race doesn't handle very well.

Isn't it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.

Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

Oh, the irony. Cognitive biases prevent us from understanding cognitive biases.

They didn't put two and two together. They didn't even know what they knew. I don't know what's the matter with people, they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way — by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!