Enrique Abeyta on investing and skepticism

I spend a lot of time on human psychology.  Negative feedback has eight times the impact on us psychologically and chemically.  And so you always sound a lot smarter if you come out and pull ideas apart...  So me sitting here and telling you why something will work never is going to sound as smart as me pulling an idea apart and telling you why it won't work.  But the fact is, when we're investing, to make money we need to buy things that work.  It is important to avoid the things that don't work, but if you just avoid things that don't work, but don't find the ones that do work, what was the point?

~ Enrique Abeyta, interview with Dan Ferris, Stansberry Investor Hour, 41:45 mark, June 12, 2023

Joel Tillinghast: "Every skilled investor I've met has been a curious and a lifelong learner"

Every skilled investor I've met has been a curious and a lifelong learner.  They read broadly and constantly.  For anticipating the future, it's more important to understand why things happen than what happened...  Curiosity needs to be balanced with skepticism.  Everyone needs a spam filter and a crap detector - some way of classifying and throwing away redundant or wrong information.  Things are often not as they seem in finance.  Be skeptical and willing to challenge ideas others take for granted.

~ Joel Tillinghast, Big Money Thinks Small, p. 41

Carl Sagan on science and skepticism

Science is more than a body of knowledge.  It's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.  If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan - political or religious - who comes ambling along.

It's a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on.  It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a Constitution or Bill of Rights.  The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education, otherwise we don't run the government; the government runs us.

~ Carl Sagan, interview with Charlie Rose, 3:00 mark, May 27, 1996

Albert Einstein on authority

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

~ Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein
1979

Kevin Duffy on being a skeptic

I'm so skeptical I'm skeptical of my own skepticism.

~ Kevin Duffy