This anchoring to a number is the reason people do not react to their total accumulated wealth, but to differences of wealth from whatever number they are currently anchored to. This is the major conf...
Think of the difficulty in forecasting in terms of branches growing out of a tree; at every fork we have a multiplication of new branches. To see how our intuitions about these nonlinear multiplicativ...
They had all the means to develop a spinning machine, but nobody tried—another example of knowledge hampering optionality. They probably needed someone like Steve Jobs—blessed with an absence of colle...
They game the system while citizens pay the price. At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control. The chief ethical rule is the...
They agree that chess training only improves chess skills but disagree that classroom training (almost) only improves classroom skills.
These were the days before I decided to climb up the mountain, speak slowly and in a priestly tone, and try shaming people rather than insulting them.
There is a simple test to define path dependence of beliefs (economists have a manifestation of it called the endowment effect). Say you own a painting you bought for $20,000, and owing to rosy condit...
The very same desire for order, interestingly, applies to scientific pursuits-it is just that, unlike art, the (stated) purpose of science is to get to the truth, not to give you a feeling of organiza...
The tradition has been to think that aging causes bone weakness (bones lose density, become more brittle), as if there was a one-way relationship possibly brought about by hormones (females start expe...
The stock exchanges have converted from open outcry where wild traders face each other, yelling and screaming as in a souk, then go drink together. Traders were replaced by computers, for very small v...
The policies we need to make decisions on should depend far more on the range of possible outcomes than on the expected final number. I
The only article Lady Fortuna has no control over is your behavior. Good luck.
The notion of economies of scale—that companies save money when they become large, hence more efficient—is often, apparently behind company expansions and mergers. It is prevalent in the collective co...
The formation of our beliefs is fraught with superstitions—even today (I might say, especially today). Just as one day some primitive tribesman scratched his nose, saw rain falling, and developed an e...
The fact that you survived is a condition that may weaken your interpretation of the properties of the survival, including the shallow notion of cause.
The epiphany I had in my career in randomness came when I understood that I was not intelligent enough, nor strong enough, to even try to fight my emotions.
The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons w...
The bias lowers our perception of the risks we incurred in the past, particularly for those of us who were lucky to have survived them. Your
The best way to verify that you are alive is by checking if you like variations. Remember that food would not have a taste if it weren’t for hunger; results are meaningless without effort, joy without...
Such trait of absence of marriage to ideas is indeed rare among humans. Just as we do with children, we support those in whom we have a heavy investment of food and time until they are able to propaga...