Happiness is complicated. There are two components. One is strongly genetic; the second is a question of how you feel at any moment. I am pretty content, but I had a very pessimistic mother, and I’ve always been known as a pessimist.
It was always assumed I would be a professor. I grew up thinking it.
There is a powerful idea that we should want to be richer. I went to a financial advisor in the States and said: “I don’t really want to get richer, but I would like to continue to live like I do.” She said: “I can’t work with you.”
Collaboration is not only more creative, it is more fun. Amos Tversky, my research partner, and I were better together than on our own. We sort of knew that. Mostly it was extremely pleasant not trying to work everything out yourself.
A sense of irony is essential. When we wrote our first paper, “The Law of Small Numbers”, we were laughing all the time we wrote it. A colleague we showed it to said: “This is going to change things.” I didn’t take him seriously.
Many people now say they knew a financial crisis was coming, but they didn’t really. After a crisis we tell ourselves we understand why it happened and maintain the illusion that the world is understandable. In fact, we should accept the world is incomprehensible much of the time.
More here – The Guardian
