RIP Daniel Kahneman

Probably the best written tribute that I can think of, is a ~3000 words piece by Jason Zweig, from way back in 2001— before Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, and much before his 2011 bestselling book.  A few excerpts:

When people ask me which investment thinker I’ve learned the most from, they expect names like Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch and John Bogle. But I always give the same answer: Daniel Kahneman.

He’s not a great stock picker like Buffett, a masterful fund manager like Lynch or a crusader for investors’ rights like Bogle. Instead, Kahneman is a psychologist at Princeton University who studies how people estimate odds and calculate risks--the very essence of investing. To my mind, Kahneman has done more than anyone else alive to shed light on how to improve our investing judgment and manage risk intelligently.

For each of us, risk doesn't reside only in the market. It lurks inside ourselves--in the way we misinterpret information, fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we do or overreact to the market’s swings. By teaching me the paradox that the most powerful thing I can learn is how little I can ever possibly know, Danny Kahneman has set me free.

And here’s the man  himself, talking about overconfidence: link to video