Hello Jason,

As usual, an interesting article (and a follow-up of the previous one). In this one, you don't really shake up the textbook definition of intuition but simply promote it to a level where spontaneous thinking is free of biases (or I would rather say has less bias). This would take sustained effort and a lot of practice to master because the human brain is wired to make quick 'guesstimates' in order to function smoothly. These back-of-the-envelope calculations allow us to attend to tasks that would otherwise take conscious effort to perform. In other words, the ability of the brain to form a judgement at extreme speeds really comes with a trade-off: less rational and accurate decisions. And this steadily graduates from our spontaneous ability to make split-second decisions to even ones where we have time to think for - like investments. I like the idea of 'non attachment' and if I have understood your interpretation correctly, I may have practised it for long (it's just that I don't call it the same thing). The idea is to eliminate biases in thinking at even the subconscious level through sustained effort. For that, sometimes I am my own critic. Should I have done that? Does it make objective sense? Am I falling back upon history to answer the future? And so on.... Not sure if this helps but I have noticed keeping a boundary to our imagination is what truly hinders our thinking (and gives rise to biases). Our imagination is formed by our experiences and restricted by our senses of perception. In other words, sometimes being logical also does not equate to being imaginative. If investors do that, there would be more important questions to be answered even after they are able to think objectively - Can risk be quantified by mere standard deviation? Does CAPM hold in the real world? and so on.... My point here is, eliminating biases within the realm of the standard financial and economic literature would help little. We need to spread our imagination further to a point where we challenge the tenets of a system if the system is incorrect. That is where we may be able to truly make a difference with our evolved thinking.

Regards,
Jimmy