Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

There is a narrow and tightly limited area within which economic theory allows people to act. Once they reach the edges of that area, they freeze, rather like the dog.

One great problem with metrics is that they destroy diversity because they force everybody to pursue the same narrow goal, often in the same narrow way, or to make choices using the exact same criteria.

The psychological complexity of human behaviour is reduced to a narrow set of assumptions about what people want, which means they design a world for logical rather than psycho-logical people.

our conscious brain has not evolved to be aware of many of the instinctive factors that drive our actions.

Food has become remarkably inefficient,

There remains one problem, which is the possibility that people may cheat immediately before they leave the game.*

Research later showed that individuals whose appendix had been removed were four times more likely to suffer from clostridium difficile colitis, an infection of the colon.

And the best way for evolution to encourage or prevent a behaviour is to attach an emotion to it.

The theory is that free markets are principally about maximising efficiency, but in truth, free markets are not efficient at all.