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Unfortunately, good stories are so compelling to us when we take the role of psychologist or social analyst that we do not realize that at best they constitute just a starting point for analysis.

— Robyn Dawes Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001)

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More quotes by Robyn Dawes

The world as postulated by the recovered-memory theorists is not an impossible one—just an extraordinarily unlikely one.

Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001)

Believing you’re good at something just because you do it—without any information that you’re doing it well—is indeed irrational.

Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001)

Prediction is not the same thing as understanding, but in the absence of prediction, we can certainly doubt understanding.

Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001)

True scientific demonstration involves convincing an observer who is outside the process, particularly one not deeply and emotionally enmeshed in it.

Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001)

I know better than to say “that’s absurd” to someone trained in Freudian analysis, because such a therapist will simply interpret such an assertion as confirmation of whatever is proposed.

Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robyn Dawes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.