Rolf Dobelli quotes

Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss author and entrepreneur known for his insightful books on decision-making and cognitive biases. With a background in philosophy and business, Dobelli's work combines practical advice with cutting-edge research to help readers make better choices in both their personal and professional lives. A best-selling author, Dobelli's books have been translated into over 30 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. His popular book, "The Art of Thinking Clearly," delves into common thinking errors and provides strategies for avoiding them. Dive into Dobelli's work to enhance your decision-making skills and gain a fresh perspective on how to navigate life's challenges.

Professional swimmers don’t have perfect bodies because they train extensively. Rather, they are good swimmers because of their physiques. How their bodies are designed is a factor for selection and not the result of their activities. Similarly, female models advertise cosmetics and thus, many female consumers believe that these products make you beautiful. But it is not the cosmetics that make these women model-like. Quite simply, the models are born attractive and only for this reason are they candidates for cosmetics advertising. As with the swimmers’ bodies, beauty is a factor for selection and not the result. Whenever we confuse selection factors with results, we fall prey to what Taleb calls the swimmer’s body illusion.

- Rolf Dobelli

If your hunter-gatherer buddies suddenly bolted, it made sense to follow suit—regardless of whether a saber-toothed tiger or a boar had startled them. If you failed to run away, and it turned out to be a tiger, the price of a first-degree error was death. On the other hand, if you had just fled from a boar, this lesser mistake would have cost you only a few calories. It paid to be wrong about the same things. Whoever was wired differently exited the gene pool after the first or second incidence. We are the descendants of those homines sapientes who tend to flee when the crowd does. But in the modern world, this intuitive behavior is disadvantageous. Today’s world rewards single-minded contemplation and independent action. Anyone who has fallen victim to stock market hype has witnessed that.

- Rolf Dobelli

He distributed coffee mugs to half of the students and told them they could either take the mug home or sell it at a price they could specify. The other half of the students who didn’t get a mug were asked how much they would be willing to pay for a mug. In other words, Thaler set up a market for coffee mugs. One would expect that roughly 50 percent of the students would be willing to trade—to either sell or buy a mug. But the result was much lower than that. Why? Because the average owner would not sell below $5.25, and the average buyer would not pay more than $2.25 for a mug. We can safely say that we are better at collecting things than at casting them off. Not only does this explain why we fill our homes with junk, but also why lovers of stamps, watches, and pieces of art part with them so seldomly.

- Rolf Dobelli