Jim Kwik, in Limitless, his thought-provoking book on thinking, points out what I’ll call the habitual shortcutting that stands in the way of successful investing:
“In an ideal world, being able to get as many perspectives on a topic as possible would be enormously valuable in helping us to form our own opinions. Unfortunately, that’s rarely how it plays out in the real world. Instead, we tend to identify a handful of sources with which we align and then give those sources extreme influence over our thinking and decision-making.”
“What we think we know about the topic can stand in the way of our ability to absorb new information.”
The second one reminds me of the following attributed to Mark Twain:
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”