This document discusses the psychological bias of social proof and how it relates to human behavior and decision making. [1] Social proof is the tendency to copy the actions of others in an ambiguous situation. It is most influential under conditions of uncertainty or when testimonials come from similar others. [2] Evolution programmed humans with social proof as a survival mechanism, but it can also lead people to make foolish decisions by blindly following the crowd. [3] Two examples are discussed - a video on how social proof affects bird flocking behavior, and how Amazon uses data on similar customers to influence purchasing decisions.

1. The
Psychology
of Human
Misjudgment-
IV

2. Bias # 5
Social
Proof

3. Which line on the right do you think is the same size as the line on the left?

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRh5qy09nNw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA

5. Safety in Numbers
Video on “safety in numbers”

6. Birds of a feather flock together...
Evolution programmed “social proof” in us. It gave us a survival advantage...

7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlOX3PaVKs

8. Social
proof most
influential
under two
conditions

9. Uncertainty and doubt – when people are unsure, when the situation is ambiguous, they are more
likely to copy others

10. Testimonials from “similar others”

11. Persuasion very effective if it comes from peers
People follow lead of “similar others”

12. Amazon.com uses data analytics to identify “similar Others”

13. “SIMILAR OTHERS”

14. “SIMILAR OTHERS”

15. “similar Others”

17. hardwired to herd
Real pain and social pain are felt in the same parts of the brain.
Chandler would make a good investor.
Being a successful investor requires not feeling any social pain by doing something thats
very unpopular...

18. We can get more wiser or more foolish by following the crowd…
When does the wisdom of the crowds becomes madness of the mobs?
There are domains where one is better off relying on the crowd

19. Wisdom of Crowds as Social Proof

20. For me, its very useful to quickly zoom into the 10 most emailed articles on
NYT.
So, when it comes to reading news in NYT, I rely on the “wisdom of the
crowds”
In some domains wisdom of crowds works. In some (like financial markets)
it doesn’t.

21. “If you want to have a better
performance than the crowd,
you must do things
differently from the crowd.”
But when it comes to investing, you are on a VERY different terrain...
“People are always asking me where is the outlook good, but that’s the wrong question... “The right question is:
Where is the outlook the most miserable? I call this the Principle of Maximum Pessimism... “Let me explain how
it works. In almost every activity of normal life people try to go where the outlook is the best... “You look for a
job in an industry with a good future, or build a factory where prospects are best. But my contention is if you
are selecting publicly traded investments, you have to do the opposite... “You’re trying to buy a share at the
lowest possible price in relation to what that corporation is worth... “And there is only one reason a share goes
to a bargain price: Because other people are selling. There is no other reason... “To get a bargain price, you’ve
got to look for where the public is most frightened and pessimistic.”
Reversion to the mean

22. “You pay a very high price
in the stock market for a
cheery consensus.”

23. “Most managers have very little incentive to
make the intelligent-but-with-some-chance-
of-looking-like-an-idiot decision.
“Their personal gain/loss ratio is all too obvious: if an unconventional decision works out well, they get a pat
on the back and, if it works out poorly, they get a pink slip. (Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a
group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press...
“John Maynard Keynes said in his masterful The General Theory: “Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for
reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” (Or, to put it in less elegant terms,
lemmings as a class may be derided but never does an individual lemming get criticized.)”
Social Proof + Incentive Caused Bias

24. “Exchange Alley was in a fever of excitement... The company's stock, which had been at a hundred and thirty the previous day, gradually rose to
three hundred......and continued to rise with the most astonishing rapidity during the whole time that the bill in its several stages was under
discussion. It seemed at that time as if the whole nation had turned stock-jobbers. Exchange Alley was every day blocked up by crowds, and Cornhill
was impassable for the number of carriages. Every body came to purchase stock.
The inordinate thirst of gain that had afflicted all ranks of society was not to be slaked even in the South Sea. Other schemes, of the most
extravagant kind, were started. The share-lists were speedily filled up, and an enormous traffic carried on in shares, while, of course, every means
were resorted to to raise them to an artificial value in the market. Every person interested in the success of the project endeavored to draw a knot of
listeners around him…
Exchange Alley was crowded with attentive groups. One rumor alone, asserted with the utmost confidence, had an immediate effect upon the stock.
Visions of ingots danced before their eyes. Innumerable joint-stock companies started up everywhere. They soon received the name of Bubbles...
Some of these schemes were plausible enough... But they were established merely with the view of raising the shares in the market.
But the most absurd and preposterous of all, and which shewed, more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started
by an unknown adventurer, entitled “A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.”

26. "I can
calculate the
movement of
the stars, but
not the
madness of
men". - Issac
Newton

29. 500% return in
17 months

30. Down 80% in 5
years

31. 300% return in
18 months

32. -92% return in
32 months
1.
The speculative public is incorrigible. In financial terms it cannot
count beyond 3. It will buy anything, at any price, if there seems to be some
"action" in progress. It will fall for any company identified with "franchising,"
computers, electronics, science, technology, or what have you, when the
particular fashion is raging. – BG in The Intelligent Investor.

34. The speculative public
is incorrigible. In
financial terms it
cannot count beyond 3.
It will buy anything,
at any price, if there
seems to be some
"action" in progress. It
will fall for any
company identified with
"franchising,"
computers,
electronics, science,
technology, or what
have you, when the
particular fashion is
raging. – Ben Graham

35. “This is a world inhabited not by people who
have to be persuaded to believe but by
people who want an excuse to believe.”-
John Kenneth Galbraith
People want to latch on to just about any reason to do what they have
already decided to do…
But what about money managers? Why do they behave like sheep? Or rather
like zebras?

36. Ralph Wanger in “A Zebra in Lion Country”
“Zebras have the same problems as institutional portfolio managers. First, both seek profits. For portfolio
managers, above-average performance; for zebras, fresh grass... “Secondly, both dislike risk. Portfolio
managers can get fired; zebras can get eaten by lions... “Third, both move in herds. They look alike, think alike
and stick close together... “If you are a zebra, and live in a herd, the key decision you have to make is where
you stand in relation to the rest of the herd…
“When you think that the conditions are safe, the outside of the herd is the best, for there the grass is fresh,
while those in the middle see only grass which is half-eaten or trampled down… The aggressive zebras, on the
outside of the herd, eat much better…”

37. “On the other hand – or other hoof – there comes a time when lions
approach.”

38. “The outside zebras end up as lion lunch, and the skinny zebras in the
middle of the pack may eat less well but they are still alive…”

39. “A portfolio
manager for an
institution such
as a bank’s wealth
management
department cannot
afford to be an
Outside Zebra.
“For him, the optimal strategy is simple: stay in the centre of the herd at all times... “As long as he continues to buy the
popular stocks he cannot be faulted. To quote one portfolio manager, “It really doesn't matter a lot to me what happens
to Johnson & Johnson as long as everyone has it and we all go down together. But on the other hand, he cannot afford
to try for large gains on unfamiliar stocks which would leave him open to criticism if the idea fails…”

40. “Needless to say, this Inside Zebra philosophy doesn't appeal to us as long-
term investors.. We have tried to be Outside Zebras most of the time, and
there are plenty of claw marks on us."
Ralph Wanger in “A Zebra in Lion Country”

41. We are willing
to look foolish
as long as we
don't feel we
have acted
foolishly.

42. A committee is a
group of people
who keep
minutes and
waste hours -
Mark Mobius,
Templeton
Funds

43. My idea of a
consensus is
to look in the
mirror

44. Why does this happen?
What models explain this?
Why do independent directors no speak against stupid resolutions?

45. The Bystander Effect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0ac

46. Kitty
Genovese
Murder of Kitty Genovese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese
We don’t just copy the actions of others, we also copy their inactions...

47. The effective saints of civilization…
They don’t fall under biases from overinfluence of authority or social
proof...

48. “If fifty
million
people say a
foolish thing,
it is still a
foolish
thing.” -
Anatole
France

49. Bias # 6
DOPAMINE

50. frontline: dot con | PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dotcon/
The scene shows how Americans went crazy over dotcoms. It also shows
how ecstatic employees of E-Loan felt when their stock options in the
company which had just gone public became so valuable that some of them
became millionaires.

51. These are E-Loan employees. The company just listed. It has NO business. It’s office is EMPTY.
The market value of the company is $2 billion.
Notice they just had an unexpected pleasant surprise.
We are VERY INTERESTED
in studying such people. What happens to them? What is their “state of
mind?”
They are so happy, and so foolish (we know this of course with the benefit of hindsight as almost
all dotcoms fell by more than 90% post listing).
People were equally ecstatic during Tulipomania, The South Sea Bubble.

52. People are
Most
Credulous
when they
are most
happy
Walter Bagehot was right. When people are happy, they will believe almost
anything. They become extremely suggestible.
We want to know what’s happening inside the brains of very happy people
who just made an unexpected killing in the stock market, or won a lottery,
or won in the casino...

53. “This is a world inhabited not by people who
have to be persuaded to believe but by
people who want an excuse to believe.”-
John Kenneth Galbraith
People want to latch on to just about any reason to do what they have
already decided to do…
Galbraith was right.
You should read two of his books - The Great Crash 1929, and A Short
History of Financial Euphoria.
“Financial Euphoria”. Nice term. Is it similar to other kinds of euphorias?
What other domains exist in which humans experience euphoria?

54. There is no
difference
between a man
who just made
a killing in
the markets
and a man who
is high on
cocaine
Doctors cannot tell the difference from fMRI scans between the two.
So we now know that doing drugs and making a killing in the markets are virtually
identical.

55. YouTube - Meth Dopamine Effects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy-nNQEQ1io

56. If lab rats are wired up to receive tiny pulses of electrical stimulation in the dopamine centers of the brain
when they press a lever, they often begin tapping it nonstop to the exclusion of other activities, including
eating and drinking
They would rather starve to death than live without that dopamine surge inside their brains.
The human equivalent of this Lab Rat is there in all of us…
After all, don’t we keep on clicking on link after link on the internet, using the mice of our comps just to get a
novelty-induced kick? Internet addiction is like all other addictions…
What are the consequences of internet addiction?

58. “The thrill of the chase blinded the pursuers to
the consequences of the catch.” - Buffett

59. Addicted gamblers chain themselves to slot machines
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt, until they are too heavy to be
broken” - Buffett

60. Studying the business of gambling and gambling addiction is a great way to learn
about human nature.
What I really love is how it gets rationalized…
If you work for a gambling casino as an employee, how would you respond to the
idea that gambling is bad for civilization?
Are their functional equivalents of gambling casinos? How about day-trading? Or
speculating in derivatives?

61. Nothing
sedates
rationality
like large
doses of
effortless
money
I love this quote. He knows what it must be like to make a lot of money.

62. What happens to a gambler who through sheer randomness wins the jackpot? What is he going to think? Was it luck? Of course not.
He is going to think “his system works.” And then he is going to think “this is just the beginning, and I am on a roll, I can see the
future, nothing can stop me - I am the master of the universe.”
For him, this one time-lucky gain would look like the initial cash flow from a growing perpetuity he just created with his “effort.” He
will start having “delusions of grandeur,” he will start thinking, “why do I have to even go to my clinic to see my patients and earn
only so much, I can do much better by just using my system to get rich.”
What’s going on in the head of this man? Well, his head is practically drowning in a rush of dopamine…
General principle: When your dopamine levels are high, you risk becoming over-confident and foolish.
This is a man in a “HOT STATE”. So were the people who worked for E-Loan at the time they learnt they were paper millionaires. So
were the people who thought they had become rich permanently because they owned a very rare and very precious tulip bulb.
Are there any other “HOT STATES?” Yes there are...

63. Unexpected pleasant surprises make people ecstatic because of the dopamine surge they produce
Getting what you expected produces no dopamine kick
However, an unexpected gain fires up the brain (neurons go from firing 3 times a second to 40
times a second)
If expected reward fails to materialize, dopamine dries up
If you want to make your girl/boy friend really happy, give her/him an expected pleasant surprise
-but don’t make a habit of it for then it will cease to be a surprise.

64. Dopamine system loves novel stimuli. Variety is the spice dope of [market] life
Vivid stock market screens and real time charts offer frequent change (i.e. volatility) and sometimes unexpected good
surprises, thereby producing surges of dopamine which results in addiction.
Day traders, like cocaine addicts, are in it more for the dopamine than for the money.
Internet addiction - our lowing attention spans, caused due to distractions...
We love observing fast action because its EXCITING!

65. “Severe change and exceptional
returns usually don't mix.
“Most investors, of course, behave as if just the opposite were true. That is,
they usually confer the highest price-earnings ratios on exotic-sounding
businesses that hold out the promise of feverish change…”

66. “That prospect lets investors fantasize [THINK DOPAMINE] about future profitability rather than face today's
business realities. For such investor-dreamers, any blind date is preferable to one with the girl next door, no
matter how desirable she may be.”
IPOs, New Hot Stocks e.g. dotcoms, Fashion industry, Movie business, Music business, Airline industry
Average person buys more aggressively in response to recent price rises - expectation of further rises

67. “We make bricks in Texas
which use the same
process as in
Mesopotamia.” - Munger
Warren Buffett has made most of his money in businesses which you may
consider as BORING - Carpets, furniture, insurance, candy, cola…
People who invest in “exciting” businesses - are they doing it for the money
or the dope?

68. Bias # 7
Over-influence
of Authority

69. The Milgram experiment is the most cited experiment in social psychology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzTuz0mNlwU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmFCoo-cU3Y
Psychology textbooks include this experiment in the chapter that deals with conformity or authority.
However, something as big as this (a lollapalooza outcome) simply cannot be explained by ONE model.
There are other models in force here. Can you identify them?

70. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w
The Milgram experiment has been replicated several times. And every time
the results are the same. The majority of the participants go all the way...

71. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmFCoo-cU3Y

72. “More
Hideous
crimes have
been
committed in
the name of
obedience
than in the
name of
rebellion.”
- C.P. SNOW
Throughout history, the plea “I was only following orders” has been offered
to excuse actions carried out on behalf of orders that were foolish,
destructive, or illegal.

73. The Jonestown Massacre is another much-studied incident in social
psychology textbooks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7IxGGfpSWk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9rSN05Pi94
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_myD9eXv20U
Again, something as big as this, cannot be explained by one model alone.

74. http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16

75. As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity
against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of
them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in
private life. - George Orwell.

76. We are conditioned to blindly accept authority. After all mom is always right
isn’t it?

77. The Hospital
Experiment
From Cialdini’s Influence:
Group of researchers, composed of doctors and nurses with connections to three hospitals.
To twenty-two separate nurses’ stations on various surgical, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric wards, one of the researchers made
an identical phone call in which he identified himself as a hospital physician and directed the answering nurse to give twenty
milligrams of a drug (Astrogen) to a specific ward patient.
(1) The prescription was transmitted by phone, in direct violation of hospital policy. (2) The medication itself was unauthorized;
Astrogen had not been cleared for use nor placed on the ward stock list. (3) The prescribed dosage was obviously and dangerously
excessive. The medication containers clearly stated that the “maximum daily dose” was only ten milligrams, half of what had been
ordered. (4) The directive was given by a man the nurse had never met, seen, or even talked with before on the phone.

78. Yet, in 95 percent of the instances, the nurses went straightaway to the
ward medicine cabinet, where they secured the ordered dosage of Astrogen
and started for the patient’s room to administer it. It was at this point that
they were stopped by a secret observer, who revealed the nature of the
experiment...

79. Flight Simulator Experiment cited by Charlie Munger:
“You get a pilot and a co-pilot. The pilot is the authority figure. They don’t
do this in airplanes, but they’ve done it in simulators. They have the pilot
do something where the co-pilot, who's been trained in simulators a long
time - he knows he’s not to allow the plane to crash - they have the pilot to
do something where an idiot co-pilot would know the plane was going to
crash, but the pilot’s doing it, and the co-pilot is sitting there, and the pilot
is the authority figure. 25% of the time the plane crashes…”

80. Mr. Buffett has correctly called stock market as a “semi-psychotic creature given to extremes of elation and despair.”
However, the vast majority of people, and academic finance in particular, treat market prices as correct and give it the respect reserved for
authority figures….
Buffett writes the following about Ben Graham’s “Mr. Market” metaphor in his book, “The Intelligent Investor”:
“Ben Graham explained why in Chapter 8 of The Intelligent Investor. There he introduced “Mr. Market,” an obliging fellow who shows up every
day to either buy from you or sell to you, whichever you wish. The more manic-depressive this chap is, the greater the opportunities available to
the investor. That's true because a wildly fluctuating market means that irrationally low prices will periodically be attached to solid businesses. It
is impossible to see how the availability of such prices can be thought of as increasing the hazards for an investor who is totally free to either
ignore the market or exploit its folly.”
By giving too much importance to Mr. Market, most investors make a fundamental mistake of converting their basic strength into a weakness

81. The Pied Pier of Hamlyn was a very charming authority figure and when he
cast his spell, everyone followed. The consequences for following for this
blind obedience were not good.
There have been many pied pipers in financial history….

82. Mr. Harshad Mehta and Mr. Ketan Parikh were two pied pipers India has
seen.
No doubt there will be others…

83. The consequences for people who followed these pied pipers were
disastrous.
Remember that it wasn’t just the “gullible” individuals who drowned. There
were many institutional “investors” who had the same fate. Indeed, at one
point there were funds created with a declared plan to invest “only in the K10
(the top ten favorites of Mr. Ketan Parikh) stocks.”
The funds took in a lot of money. And then drowned...

84. When evaluating management beware of the authority. You may think they know better, but very
often they don’t.
They are just too close to the situation. They often miss the BIG PICTURE, which a mature
seasoned security analyst can have.
See “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization.” - People too close to a situation experience
noise which mis-influences them.
Keep you skeptical hat on when you meet management. And don’t forget to carry a few pinches of
salt...

85. “Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the
infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation... Learn from science that you must
doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the
ignorance of experts.”- Feynman

86. “In some disciplines, “expert” is the closest thing to a fraud performing no better than a
computer using a simple algorithm.” - Taleb
Be wary of “experts”

87. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4jt3686C6U

88. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI

89. “There are 60,000 economists in the U.S., many of them employed full-time trying to forecast recessions and
interest rates, and if they could do it successfully twice in a row, they'd all be millionaires by now...as far as I
know, most of them are still gainfully employed, which ought to tell us something.” - Peter Lynch, One Up On
Wall Street

90. We make no attempt
to predict how
security markets
will behave;
successfully
forecasting short
term stock price
movements is
something we think
neither we nor
anyone else can do.

91. Like a Don Juan or a Casanova, the chartist has an unending series of short
affairs with stocks. First there is observation, a watching of the head and
shoulders, the neckline, and the shape of the bottom. Flirtation may involve
some resistance or some support. As involvement increases, congestion
builds. There may be penetration of old tops, or a violation of former lows.
These give way to mounting excitement and then climax, followed by the
warm afterglow of profit taking. – Burton Malkiel

92. Burton Malkiel "The market's rise after
a period of
reaccumulation is a
bullish sign.
Nevertheless, fulcrum
characteristics are not
yet clearly present and
a resistance area exists
40 points higher in the
Dow, so it is clearly
premature to say the
next leg of the bull
market is up.
“If, in the coming weeks, a test of the lows holds and the market breaks out of its flag, a
further rise would be indicated. Should the lows be violated, a continuation of the
intermediate term downturn is called for. In view of the current situation, it is a distinct
possibility that traders will sit in the wings awaiting a clearer delineation of the trend and the
market will move in a narrow trading range." If you ask me exactly what it means, I'm afraid I
cannot tell you, but I think the technician probably had the following thing in mind: "If the
market does not go up or down, it will remain unchanged."– Burton Malkiel

93. We believe that short-
term forecasts of
stock or bond prices
are useless. The
forecasts may
tell you a great deal
about the forecaster;
they tell you nothing
about the future.)

94. short-term market
forecasts are poison and
should be kept locked up
in a safe place, away from
children and also from
grown-ups who behave in
the market like children.

95. We have two
classes of
forecasters:
Those who
don't know –
and those who
don't know
they don't
know –
Galbraith.

96. We will continue
to ignore
political and
economic
forecasts, which
are an expensive
distraction for
many investors
and businessmen.
Thirty years ago, no one could have foreseen the huge expansion of the Vietnam War, wage and price controls, two oil shocks,
the resignation of a president, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a one-day drop in the Dow of 508 points, or treasury bill
yields fluctuating between 2.8% and 17.4%.
But, surprise - none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham's investment principles. Nor did they
render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear
of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital. Indeed, we have usually made our best purchases when
apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the
foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.
Social Proof + Authority (predictions by experts),

97. Tetlock is the fella who demonstrated the lunacy of the idea of most “experts” in social science...
People who make prediction their business— people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in
newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables—are no
better than the rest of us. When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it,
either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or
wrong for the right reasons.
Required Reading:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books1

98. “The fox
knows many
things, but
the
hedgehog
knows one
big thing.” -
Isaiah
Berlin
Tetlock borrows a marvelous metaphor from Isaiah Berlin.
A Hedgehog knows how to curl itself into a ball to escape its enemies.
That’s all he knows. A fox on the other hand has many more models in his
head...

99. Berlin divides writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who
view the world through the lens of a single defining idea...

100. ...and foxes who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the
world cannot be boiled down to a single idea.

101. Follow Single Doctrine Avoid Ideology
One Big Idea Lots of Ideas (multi-disciplinary)
Flexible Mind (Know how to
Cling on to their One Big Idea
deal with surprise)
Confirmation Bias No Confirmation Bias
Overconfident Doubtful
Articulate Not very Articulate
Poor predictive ability, but
Better Predictors
occasionally bang on target
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox
http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02007/jan/26/why-foxes-are-better-
forecasters-than-hedgehogs/

102. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUkbdjetlY8
Here is an example of a hedgehog…

103. When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. They insist
that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong
for the right reasons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayGcF8dnTV0

104. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaO69CF5mbY
Feynman, clearly was a fox - full of doubt, and never certain about almost
anything...

105. Fox or
Hedgehog?
How to Spot
them?
Tetlock:
“Count how often they press the brakes on trains of thought. Foxes often qualify their arguments with
"however" and "perhaps," while hedgehogs build up momentum with "moreover" and "all the more so."
Foxes are not as entertaining as hedgehogs. But enduring a little tedium is worth it if you want realistic
odds on possible futures.”
“Listen to yourself talk to yourself. If you're being swept away with enthusiasm for some particular
course of action, take a deep breath and ask: Can I see anything wrong with this? And if you can't, start
worrying; you are about to go over a cliff.”

106. Thank you