Psychology

Book Review: All Therapy Books. Scott Alexander. slatestarcodex.com . Nov 20, 2019.

Scott’s thesis: Each of the therapy books on their own can be convincing. But they should be taken in the context of All Therapy Books, which as a category are pretty worrying.

Dodo Bird Verdict : All psychotherapies are about equally good, and the only things that matters are “nonspecific factors” like how much patients like their therapist.

Behavioralists believe that:

• Investors are not rational in present and future valuations of securities.
• There are substantial barriers to efficient arbitrage.

The Irrational Behavior of Individual Investors

Overconfidence

People tend to be overconfident, e.g. in a survey, 94% of male respondents believed that their athleticism was above average.

Hindsight bias makes the world seem predictable. Investors might think they can beat the market.

The tendency of “growth” stocks to underperform “value” stocks shows how overoptimistic growth forecasts are.