Sublime

until either a choice is made or the set is narrowed down enough to switch over to a compensatory evaluation of the finalists.

the proper way to elicit information from a group is not by starting with a public discussion but by confidentially collecting each person’s judgment.

His model could explain Anthony’s risk aversion, but it cannot explain Betty’s risk-seeking preference for the gamble, a behavior that is often observed in entrepreneurs and in generals when all their options are bad.

In general, the higher the predictability, the wider the range of predicted values.

The story of a child dying because an algorithm made a mistake is more poignant than the story of the same tragedy occurring as a result of human error, and the difference in emotional intensity is readily translated into a moral preference.

Another group of students saw the same two questions, but in reverse order:

The upshot is that people tend to be overly optimistic about their relative standing on any activity in which they do moderately well.

Taleb suggests that we humans constantly fool ourselves by constructing flimsy accounts of the past and believing they are true.