The Premise Of This Book Is That

We Are Prone To Overestimate How Much We Understand About The World And To Underestimate The Role Of Chance In Events.

One Thing We Have Lost, That We Had In The Past, Is A Sense Of Progress, That Things Are Getting Better. There Is A Sense Of Volatility, But Not Of Progress.

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.

The Psychologist, Paul Rozin, An Expert On Disgust, Observed That A Single Cockroach Will Completely Wreck The Appeal Of A Bowl Of Cherries, But A Cherry Will Do Nothing At All For A Bowl Of Cockroaches.

People Just Hate The Idea Of Losing. Any Loss, Even A Small One, Is Just So Terrible To Contemplate That They Compensate By Buying Insurance, Including Totally Absurd Policies Like Air Travel.