Notes - Same as Ever - A Guide to What Never Changes

June 29, 2025

Chapter 1: Hanging by a Thread

This chapter introduces the profound idea that the world often "hangs by a thread," meaning that tiny, random, and unforeseeable events can have monumental consequences, leading to either magic or mayhem. The author argues that despite our tendency to believe we can predict the future, history reveals an overwhelming influence of chance.

• A Personal Story: The Ski Accident The author shares a deeply personal and illustrative story about his own life-saving, inexplicable decision. Growing up as a ski racer in Lake Tahoe, he was part of a close-knit team. On February 21, 2001, after a significant blizzard, the author and two friends, Brendan Allan and Bryan Richmond, decided to ski out-of-bounds terrain known for its challenging conditions. They experienced a small avalanche on their first run, which they laughed off. When his friends decided to go for a second run, the author inexplicably chose not to, offering instead to drive around and pick them up. His friends never showed up at the pick-up spot. Later that night, Bryan's mom called, worried about her son not showing up for work, prompting the author and others to realize the gravity of the situation. Search and rescue teams were deployed, and they found a massive, fresh avalanche debris field where the friends had skied. Brendan and Bryan were found buried under six feet of snow, having died ten feet from each other. The author reflects that his decision not to go on the second run, which almost certainly saved his life, had no rational explanation—it was a "complete fluke, a random and thoughtless bit of dumb luck".

• Historical Examples of Serendipitous Impact The chapter extends this idea to historical events, demonstrating how seemingly minor details altered the course of major events:

  • The Battle of Long Island (1776): George Washington's army was crushed by the British, and all the British needed to do was sail up the East River to wipe out Washington's cornered troops. However, the wind was not blowing in the right direction, making sailing impossible, and allowing Washington's troops to escape. Historian David McCullough suggests that without this wind, there might have been no United States of America.
  • The Sinking of the Lusitania (1915): Captain William Turner shut down the fourth boiler room of the Lusitania to save money, delaying its voyage by a day. This delay caused the ship to sail directly into the path of a German submarine, leading to its sinking and the deaths of nearly twelve hundred passengers. This event became a crucial trigger for the U.S. to enter World War I. Had the boiler room been operating, the ship would have arrived a day earlier and likely avoided the attack.
  • The Assassination Attempt on FDR (1933): Giuseppe Zangara, a tiny man, stood on a chair to aim his gun at Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He fired five shots, but one hit Chicago mayor Anton Cermak instead, who died. Roosevelt went on to become president and transform the U.S. economy with the New Deal, policies that his potential successor, John Nance Garner (who would have become president had FDR been hit), opposed. This random near-miss profoundly shaped the U.S. economy for decades.

• The Interconnectedness of History and the Difficulty of Forecasting The chapter emphasizes that every current event has a complex "family tree" of causes, making it challenging to understand why things happened, how long they might last, or when they might recur. The common saying "To know where we’re going, you have to know where we’ve been" is countered with the more realistic idea that "if you know where we’ve been, you realize we have no idea where we’re going" because events compound in unfathomable ways. The key is to base predictions on how people behave rather than on specific events, as human responses to greed, fear, opportunity, and risk are timeless. Forecasting events is difficult because it often overlooks the "And then what?" question, as initial events trigger a chain of unpredictable offspring events. The absurdity of past connections should humble our confidence in predicting future ones. It's crucial to have a wider imagination, as everything can change tomorrow due to a "tiny accident no one’s thinking about".

Chapter 2: Risk Is What You Don’t See

This chapter delves into the nature of risk, asserting that while people are generally good at predicting the future, they often miss the surprises that tend to be "all that matter". The biggest risk is inherently what nobody anticipates, because a lack of foresight means a lack of preparedness, amplifying potential damage.

• The Hidden Nature of Catastrophe The story of American astronaut Victor Prather illustrates this concept vividly. In 1961, during a high-altitude balloon test of NASA's new space suit, Prather successfully completed his mission. Upon descending and landing in the ocean as planned, he opened his helmet's faceplate to get fresh air. A small mishap occurred as he was being connected to the rescue helicopter: Prather slipped and fell into the ocean. Because his faceplate was open, water rushed into his suit, and he drowned. This tragic outcome highlights that despite immense planning and contingencies by an organization as meticulous as NASA, a "tiny thing no one had considered" invited catastrophe. As financial advisor Carl Richards put it, "Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything".

• Hindsight Bias and Unpredictable Major Events The chapter argues that major news stories—such as COVID-19, 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or the Great Depression—are impactful primarily because they were surprises, virtually "on no one’s radar until they arrived". It questions the common belief that historical calamities were inevitable, using the example of economist Irving Fisher's famous declaration in October 1929 that "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau". In hindsight, the subsequent Great Depression seems obvious, yet Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller confirmed that "nobody forecasted that". This leads to the conclusion that either past generations were blinded by delusion, or the present generation is fooled by hindsight. The Economist magazine's annual forecasts, for instance, failed to mention COVID-19 or Russia invading Ukraine in their respective pre-event issues, simply because these were impossible to foresee. The key insight is that "The biggest news, the biggest risks, the most consequential events are always what you don’t see coming". Moreover, asking what the biggest risks are is like asking what you expect to be surprised about; if you knew, you would prepare, making it less risky. Therefore, risk can never be truly mastered.

• Blind Spots and Preparedness The chapter reveals the extent of public and expert blind spots, citing a 1930 poll where "unemployment" ranked eighteenth among the biggest U.S. problems, even a year into what we now call the Great Depression. This lack of awareness amplified its impact. It further notes the limitations of historical knowledge, confined to what was recorded or photographed, which is a tiny, often misinterpreted fraction of what happened. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman's observation that "The idea that what you don’t see might refute everything you believe just doesn’t occur to us" underscores this human tendency.

  To push towards a more helpful direction, the chapter suggests two things:

  1. Invest in preparedness, not prediction: Like California preparing for an earthquake without knowing when or where it will strike, it’s better to expect that risk will arrive than to rely on specific, often inaccurate, forecasts. Expectations are more valuable than forecasts in a world where risk is unseen.
  2. Be overly prepared for unseen risks: If you only prepare for what you can envision, you'll be unprepared for what you can't. For example, the right amount of savings should feel "a little too much" or "excessive," as preparation shouldn't make sense in a world where major historical events would have seemed absurd beforehand. The story of Harry Houdini, a master of surviving big risks he planned for, but who died from a casual punch he didn't see coming, perfectly illustrates that "What you don’t see coming always is" the biggest risk.

Chapter 3: Expectations and Reality

This chapter posits that your happiness is primarily dictated by your expectations. It explores the paradox that as material conditions improve over time (due to increasing wealth, technology, and medicine), overall happiness often remains unchanged because people's expectations rise in parallel, driven largely by comparison to others.

• The Paradox of Progress and Envy The author cites Montesquieu, who observed 275 years ago that wishing for happiness is easy, but wishing to be happier than others is difficult because "we believe others to be happier than they are". This inherent comparison means that luxuries quickly become necessities, as seen in the example of a low-income American today with Advil and sunscreen, who might not feel better off than John D. Rockefeller (who lacked these), because happiness is gauged relative to peers. Investor Charlie Munger's remark that the world is driven more by "envy" than "greed" highlights this point.

• The Myth of the Golden Age: The 1950s The chapter debunks the nostalgic view of the 1950s as America's golden age of middle-class prosperity. While there's a common image of a secure, single-earner family with modest housing and cars, economic metrics tell a different story. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, was significantly lower in the 1950s compared to today ($29,000 in 1955 vs. $70,784 in 2021), and hourly wages are nearly 50% higher now. Homeownership rates were lower, homes were smaller, food consumed a larger portion of household budgets (29% vs. 13% today), and workplace deaths were three times higher.

  So, why the nostalgia? The crucial factor was the relative equality of circumstances. World War II's wage controls led to flatter pay, reducing the income gap between low- and high-income workers. This created an era where it was easy to keep expectations in check, as "few people in your social circle lived dramatically better than you did". People felt better off not just because they were better off, but because their circumstances were similar to those around them, meaning economic growth translated directly into perceived happiness. This equilibrium was short-lived, however, as stratified growth emerged by the 1980s, and social media today further exacerbates envy by showcasing inflated lifestyles.

• The Power of Expectations The chapter illustrates the profound impact of expectations on perceived well-being:

  • Will Smith on Fame: Becoming famous is amazing (exceeds expectations), being famous is a "mixed bag" (meets expectations), and losing fame is miserable (falls below expectations).
  • Naomi Osaka on Winning: The tennis player felt winning a tournament brought "relief" rather than joy, suggesting her expectations had risen to the point where winning was merely a baseline.
  • Harry Truman's Presidency: Initially "universally panned" after Franklin Roosevelt's death due to low expectations, Truman is now consistently ranked among the top ten presidents. His low starting point meant any success "blew people’s minds".
  • Gary Kremen, Match.com Founder: With $10 million at age 43, Kremen still worked 60-80 hour weeks because he didn't feel he had "nearly enough money" in Silicon Valley, where $10 million made you "nobody". This shows wealth is relative, and expectations are anchored to those around you.

  The core message is that "Actual circumstances don’t make much difference... What generates the emotion is the big gap between expectations and reality". This invisible but powerful force (expectations) is often ignored because it doesn't have a price tag. While people diligently work to improve income and skills, they often neglect managing their expectations. The chapter concludes with Charlie Munger's advice: "The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life". Happiness is a two-part equation: what you have and what you expect/need, and the expectation side is often more within your control.

Chapter 4: Wild Minds

This chapter explores the inherent paradox that "People who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you won’t like". It argues that exceptional individuals, admired for their unique strengths, often possess other "abnormal characteristics" that are less appealing but are inseparable from their genius.

• The Inseparable Package of Genius

  • Eliud Kipchoge: The world's best marathon runner is described as "not human" by fellow runners because he could sit in perfect silence and contentment for hours, a trait admired for its discipline but indicative of a mind that operates differently from the norm.
  • John Boyd: Considered "probably the greatest fighter pilot to ever live," Boyd revolutionized his field with groundbreaking insights into air combat. His manual became the official tactics guide for fighter pilots and is still used today. However, Boyd was also a "maniac"—rude, erratic, disobedient, impatient, and prone to outrageous behavior like screaming at superiors or chewing calluses off his hands in meetings. The Air Force loved his insights but "couldn’t stand Boyd the man," often blocking his promotions despite his brilliance. His unique mindset, which allowed him to think differently about flying, also made him indifferent to established customs.
  • Isaac Newton: John Maynard Keynes discovered that a significant portion of Newton's private papers, presumed to be on mathematics and physics, were dedicated to "alchemy, sorcery, and trying to find a potion for eternal life". Keynes questioned if Newton's genius existed in spite of or because of his curiosity about impossible things. The chapter suggests it's often impossible to separate these seemingly "crazy" aspects from their genius.
  • General George Patton: The anecdote of Patton exchanging insults with a Russian general, then laughing and toasting, illustrates how extremely successful people often operate with abnormal characteristics that are not always "positive, polite, endearing, or appealing".

• The Trade-offs of Success and Reversion to the Mean The author proposes that people abnormally good at one thing tend to be abnormally bad at something else, as if the brain has limited "bandwidth" for knowledge and emotion.

  • Elon Musk: Musk is presented as a prime example. His vision to take on established industries (GM, Ford, NASA), colonize Mars, and make audacious claims (humanity is a simulation) comes from a mindset that believes "normal constraints don’t apply" to him. This same mindset, however, leads to behaviors like disregarding "Twitter etiquette" or making "untenable promises to shareholders". The chapter emphasizes that the visionary genius and the "distorted I-don't-care-about-your-customs" reality are "risk-reward trade-offs of the same personality trait" and cannot be separated.
  • Steve Jobs and Walt Disney: Both are cited as examples of geniuses who could also be "monsters" or push their companies to the "razor’s edge of bankruptcy" due to their ambitions.

  The chapter concludes that the same personality traits that drive people to the top (determination, optimism, confidence) also increase the odds of pushing them "over the edge". This contributes to "reversion to the mean" as a common historical pattern in economies, markets, and careers. Finally, it encourages introspection when choosing role models, asking if one is willing to do a "wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap" with that person's entire life, including their less desirable traits.

Chapter 5: Wild Numbers

This chapter focuses on the universal human struggle with probability and uncertainty, highlighting how people often "don’t want accuracy. They want certainty".

• The Illusion of Certainty The chapter opens with a joke by Jerry Seinfeld, who, when asked if he worried about his old car not having an airbag, replied, "in your whole life how often have you needed an airbag?". This humorously illustrates how people struggle to think about probability in everyday life. A Stanford professor's test method, where students had to assign a confidence percentage to their answers (with 100% wrong leading to test failure), is presented as a powerful way to teach the consequences of assuming certainty in an uncertain world.

  The Zero Dark Thirty movie scene, where the CIA director demands a "yes or no" answer regarding Osama bin Laden's location despite analysts providing probabilistic estimates (60%-80% chance), further exemplifies this. The underlying issue is that "Probability is about nuance and gradation. But in the real world people pay attention to black-and-white results". People crave certainty to alleviate the "painful reality of not knowing what’s going to happen next". Even President Obama stated the odds of finding bin Laden were "fifty-fifty," and a SEAL involved in the mission noted the team's own 50/50 odds of survival, yet the successful outcome often obscures the high probability of failure.

• Underestimating Rare Events in a Large World Another significant problem is the human inability to comprehend very large or very small numbers, leading to underestimation of rare events. The example of Evelyn Marie Adams winning the lottery twice, with initial odds calculated at 1 in 17 trillion for one person, is re-evaluated by mathematicians to be a much more likely 1 in 30 when considering the millions of people playing weekly. This demonstrates that "With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is apt to happen". Physicist Freeman Dyson explains that what seems like a "miracle" (a one-in-a-million chance event) should statistically occur roughly once a month in a normal person's life, given the millions of events experienced daily.

  This principle applies equally to "terrible things," like "one-hundred-year events" (floods, financial crises, pandemics) which have a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. With hundreds of such independent events, the odds of something bad happening in any given year are "not bad" at all. Historical periods, even those remembered as "good times," were "pockmarked with chaos," like the 1958 recession being worse for unemployment than any single month of the 2008 Great Recession, or the near collapse of the global financial system in 1998.

• The Gloomy Global News Landscape The chapter argues that the problem is exacerbated by the modern information environment. In 1900, information was largely local, and people's horizons were limited. However, the rise of radio, TV, the internet, and social media has made information global, leading to a decline in local news. This wider scope of news makes it more pessimistic because: 1) "Bad news gets more attention than good news" as pessimism feels more urgent, and 2) when attention expands globally, "the odds of something terrible happening in any given moment are 100 percent". Thus, the world feels historically broken not because it is, but because "we just see more of the bad stuff that’s always happened than we ever saw before". The world historically "breaks about once every ten years," and increased connectivity ensures we hear about every instance of "havoc".

• The Appeal of False Certainty and Insufficient Data The desire for certainty remains strong. Bertrand Russell is quoted: "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt". Charlie Munger's "Doubt-Avoidance Tendency" explains how the brain quickly removes doubt. Despite experts often being terrible at predicting the future (as shown by Professor Philip Tetlock's research), people still turn to "authoritative-sounding people who promise to satisfy that need" for predictability. Furthermore, many real-world fields, like economics, offer too few sample sizes (e.g., only seven recessions in fifty years) to truly measure predictive skill, leaving everyone to "guess" or prefer those who profess certainty. The example of a valet service having one accident per ten thousand parks, seen as "recklessness" by management but statistically a very good record, illustrates how people find it hard to distinguish "unfortunate odds" from "recklessness" when consequences are painful. Probability often "goes out the window" when things hurt.

Chapter 6: Best Story Wins

This chapter firmly asserts that "The best story wins," not necessarily the most rational or correct idea. It argues that compelling narratives are more powerful and persuasive than cold statistics, capturing attention and inspiring action.

• The Power of Narrative Over Facts

  • Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech: On August 28, 1963, King's iconic speech at the Lincoln Memorial did not go according to his prepared script. Midway through, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, "Tell ’em about the dream, Martin! Tell ’em about the dream!". King then put aside his notes and famously improvised the most celebrated portion of his speech, which "evok[ed] emotion and connect[ed] the dots in millions of people’s heads in a way that changed history". This demonstrates how a powerful story, even unplanned, can be more effective than a meticulously prepared but less resonant message.
  • Mark Twain's Writing Process: Twain would read his work aloud to his wife and kids, cutting passages that bored them and doubling down on those that widened their eyes or made them lean forward. This highlights his focus on engaging the audience emotionally.

• Storytelling as Repackaging, Not Just Discovery The chapter illustrates that success often comes from how information is presented, not just from new discoveries:

  • Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: Despite an anthropologist's review claiming Harari's facts were "not new" and his original ideas often "wrong," Sapiens sold over twenty-eight million copies. Harari himself admitted, "There is absolutely nothing there that is new... It was really reading the kind of common knowledge and just presenting it in a new way". This exemplifies that "excellent writing" and captivating storytelling can lead to immense fame even without new research.
  • Ken Burns's The Civil War: This documentary, released in 1990, became a phenomenon with forty million viewers and numerous awards, even though it merely "took 130-year-old existing information and weave[d] it into a (very) good story". Burns's meticulous attention to elements like music, matching sentences to a song's beat, shows how seemingly small details in presentation can make a huge difference in engaging an audience.
  • Bill Bryson: His popular books, like The Body: A Guide for Occupants, are essentially anatomy textbooks with "no new information, no discoveries," yet they become bestsellers due to his compelling storytelling.
  • Historical Influencers: Charles Darwin wasn't the first to discover evolution, but wrote the most compelling book. Benjamin Graham's popularity over John Burr Williams in valuing stocks is attributed to Graham's ability to "write a good paragraph". Elon Musk's success combines engineering skill with an ability to get investors to believe his vision.

• The Role of Story in Attention and Perception The chapter contrasts the fame of the Titanic sinking (1,500 lives lost) with the obscurity of far deadlier Chinese and Filipino ferry disasters, suggesting that the Titanic's story potential (famous passengers, firsthand accounts, movies) is why it "sticks out". This highlights that the world is not always swayed by facts or objectivity. People are "bored, impatient, emotional, and need complicated things distilled into easy-to-grasp scenes". Stephen Hawking's observation that "each equation I included in the book would halve the sales" underscores this.

  Storytelling is presented as a powerful "leverage" for complex ideas, allowing difficult topics like physics to be explained simply through relatable narratives. The most persuasive stories resonate with what people "want to believe is true" or align with their "firsthand" experiences. Good stories can unify diverse audiences, making them "clap at the same time, to laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time". This skill of "guiding people’s attention to a single point is one of the most powerful life skills". The chapter encourages readers to question who has the "right answer" but is ignored due to inarticulateness, and what they believe due to "good marketing".

Chapter 7: Does Not Compute

This chapter contends that "The world is driven by forces that cannot be measured" and that many things "don’t make any sense" when viewed through a purely rational or numerical lens. It highlights the human element, which is often difficult to quantify but carries immense influence.

• The Limits of Quantification The central example is Robert McNamara, who, after successfully using data-driven, operations science approaches to turn around Ford Motors, applied the same rigid quantification to the Vietnam War as Secretary of Defense. He demanded daily, weekly, and monthly charts tracking every conceivable war statistic. However, Edward Lansdale, head of special operations, pointed out a crucial missing element: "The feelings of the Vietnamese people". This immeasurable factor proved vital, as Ho Chi Minh famously asserted, "You will kill ten of us, and we will kill one of you, but it is you who will tire first". The chapter argues that some things are "immeasurably important" and their lack of quantification causes people to discount or deny their relevance. While Lord Kelvin stated, "When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory," the danger lies in assuming that if something can't be measured, "it doesn’t matter". Jeff Bezos's quote, "when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right," supports the idea that our measurement methods can be flawed when human factors are involved.

• Irrationality in War and Human Performance

  • The Battle of the Bulge: American generals were surprised by Germany's final push in World War II because, based on their rational assessment of German resources (lack of troops, fuel, food, bad weather), it "made no sense for Germany to attack". They overlooked Hitler's irrationality and detachment from reality, which mattered more than any measurable factor.
  • Archibald Hill's Athletic Research: British physiologist Archibald Hill, a Nobel laureate, initially focused on measuring physical limits like heart capacity to predict running performance. While this worked in the lab, it failed to predict real-world race winners. He eventually realized that athletic performance is not just physical capability but also "what your brain is willing to endure" for risk and reward in a given moment. The brain's survival instinct regulates exertion, meaning physical limits in a lab differ from those in an Olympic final or when being chased by an ax murderer. This "behavioral and psychological side" was "much harder to measure" but critical. Just as John Maynard Keynes found economies have "animal spirits," Hill discovered bodies have "moral factors".

• Unquantifiable Forces in Finance and Life Investor Jim Grant's quote about valuing common stock emphasizes that economic value is not solely determined by rational metrics; it's influenced by human behaviors that lead to irrational acts like witch burnings or believing Orson Welles's Martian invasion broadcast. Every investment price is a "number from today multiplied by a story about tomorrow," and these stories are "bizarre reflections of people’s hopes, dreams, fears, insecurities, and tribal affiliations," amplified by social media.

  • Lehman Brothers' Collapse (2008): Despite strong financial metrics (e.g., tier 1 capital ratio higher than Goldman Sachs), Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 72 hours. The only thing that changed was "investors’ faith in the company"—an unquantifiable factor that proved decisive.
  • GameStop's Surge (2021): Conversely, GameStop, on the verge of collapse, saw its stock surge due to becoming a "cultural obsession on Reddit". Again, the "stories people told themselves" were the most important, unmeasurable, and unpredictable variable.

  The chapter concludes that relying solely on data and logic for the economy would lead to perpetual confusion. The fundamental truth is that "whatever someone wants has value, regardless of the reason (if any)," meaning emotions often drive economic outcomes. The danger lies in becoming "McNamara-like," over-obsessed with models and expecting rational answers for everything, when the real world is a "never-ending chain of absurdity, confusion, messy relationships, and imperfect people". To thrive, one must accept this reality. Innovation and advancement come from "people in this world whose minds work differently from ours," and a clean set of rational rules would stifle progress. What's rational for one person might be crazy for another due to differing time horizons, goals, and risk tolerances. The power of incentives and stories over statistics also ensures that what "computes" rationally is often not what drives real-world outcomes.

Chapter 8: Calm Plants the Seeds of Crazy

This chapter identifies a fundamental and repeating "life cycle of greed and fear" in which periods of calm inherently sow the seeds for future instability.

• The Cycle of Greed and Fear The cycle begins with the assumption that good news is permanent, leading to obliviousness, denial, then panic, and finally acceptance of bad news. Once bad news is accepted, it's then assumed to be permanent, leading to obliviousness, denial, and eventually acceptance of good news, restarting the cycle.

• Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis: Stability Destabilizes Economist Hyman Minsky's seminal theory, the "financial instability hypothesis," is central to this chapter. Minsky observed that when an economy is stable, people become optimistic and confidently take on debt, which paradoxically makes the economy unstable. His big idea was that "stability is destabilizing"; prolonged prosperity leads to financial relations that create instability.

  • Stock Market Example: If the stock market were guaranteed never to go down, people would rationally invest all their money, even taking on debt or selling kidneys, driving stock prices to absurdly high valuations. This inflated state would make markets "hanging on by a thread," extremely sensitive to any "sniff of anything less than perfection," and thus far more likely to crash. The very idea of stability creates a rational impulse to bid prices so high that they cause instability. Therefore, "Calm plants the seeds of crazy. Always has, always will".

• The Paradox of Safety and Vulnerability The chapter applies this concept to modern life and public health. Historian Dan Carlin notes that modern life is safer due to a dramatic decline in infectious disease deaths (94% decline from 1900 to 2014). However, this improvement has created an anomaly: "The decline in deaths from infectious diseases has made the world less equipped to handle them—maybe not medically, but certainly psychologically". What was a tragic but expected part of life a century ago became "tragic and inconceivable" in modern times, making the COVID-19 pandemic so shocking and overwhelming. The long period of calm before 2020 meant people underestimated the odds of a pandemic, leading to unpreparedness and skepticism towards warnings from epidemiologists. This is another instance of "Calm planted the seeds of crazy".

• Paranoia, Enantiodromia, and The "Top" A common irony is that paranoia leads to success because it keeps one alert, but success leads to abandoning paranoia, which then causes decline. Carl Jung's theory of enantiodromia—that an excess of something gives rise to its opposite—is introduced. The example of California's record rain in 2017 leading to record vegetation growth, which then dried out in 2018 to fuel record wildfires, illustrates how "record rain directly led to record fires". This "calm planting the seeds of crazy" causes us to underestimate the odds and consequences of things going wrong; things become most dangerous when perceived as safest.

  Finally, the chapter discusses the tendency to "overshoot what seems reasonable". Jerry Seinfeld ending his hit TV show at its peak because he "had no interest in knowing where the top is" by experiencing the decline, is contrasted with human behavior in markets. Most people "insist on knowing where the top is," and the only way to find it is to "keep pushing until we’ve gone too far". Market valuations and prices are driven by feelings and stories, which constantly change and cannot be predicted. The human desire to get rich means that if there's any perceived opportunity, someone will "open the box," pushing markets past sanity and into periods of "overdose on pessimism and optimism". This is why "crazy doesn’t mean broken. Crazy is normal". The chapter advocates recognizing "the power of enough" and being content with reasonable risk and returns, like investor Chamath Palihapitiya aiming for 15% annual compounding over 50 years.

Chapter 9: Too Much, Too Soon, Too Fast

This chapter explores the universal human tendency to push good ideas or valuable things beyond their natural limits, asserting that "A good idea on steroids quickly becomes a terrible idea". It highlights that most things have an optimal size and speed, and attempts to accelerate or enlarge them often backfire.

• The Limits of Scaling: Physical and Biological The tragic story of Robert Wadlow, the largest human known to history, serves as a central metaphor. Despite his immense size (nearly nine feet tall, five hundred pounds), which fiction might portray as superhuman, Wadlow's life was one of fragility and strain. His body mechanics couldn't keep up with his abnormal growth, requiring steel leg braces, causing little feeling below his knees, and ultimately leading to a deadly infection from high blood pressure in his legs. This demonstrates that "You can’t triple the size of a human and expect triple the performance—the mechanics don’t work like that. ...There are limits to scaling".

  • J.B.S. Haldane's insights: Biologist Haldane further illustrated this with examples like a giant flea being unable to jump thousands of feet (due to increased air resistance and energy requirements) or a wet mouse struggling to move under its own body weight in water. He concluded that "For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form".

• Scaling Pitfalls in Business and Investing

  • Investing: Investment history shows that stocks yield fortunes in the long run, but punish those who demand quick returns. The chapter presents a chart showing that positive returns are almost guaranteed over 10+ year time horizons, but much less so over shorter periods. It argues that 90% of investing blunders are caused by trying to "compress this natural, 'most convenient' time horizon".
  • Starbucks' Overexpansion: Starbucks, once a model of growth, began opening 2,500 stores per year by 2007 (a new store every four hours). This rapid expansion, driven by the need to hit growth targets, led to the "watering down of the Starbucks experience" and eventual store closures and stock decline. CEO Howard Schultz acknowledged, "Growth... is not a strategy. It is a tactic. And when undisciplined growth became a strategy, we lost our way". This illustrates that businesses also have a "most convenient size," beyond which scaling revenue leads to even faster scaling of "disappointed customers".
  • Harvey Firestone's Wisdom: The tire tycoon warned against trying to "get the business all at once" because factories can't handle it, and the business can't be held. This applies to corporate mergers and management styles; what works for a small company can destroy a large one.

• Natural Examples of Haste Making Waste

  • Trees: Young tree saplings growing slowly under a canopy develop dense, hard wood. However, a tree planted in an open field gorges on sunlight, grows quickly, but develops soft, airy wood prone to disease. "A tree that grows quickly rots quickly and therefore never has a chance to grow old".
  • Fish Growth: Fish grown in abnormally warm water (faster growth) die 15% earlier than average, while those with slowed-down growth in cold water live 30% longer. Supercharged growth diverts resources from "maintenance and repair of damaged biomolecules," while slow growth allows for increased allocation to these vital functions. As a researcher noted, "a machine built in haste to fail quicker than one put together carefully and methodically, and our study suggests that this may be true for bodies too".

The chapter concludes that "forced growth, accelerated growth, artificial growth—that tends to backfire". The author stresses that "most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity". Yet, the common human impulse is to pursue things faster and bigger, a problem that "always has been a problem, and always will be".

Chapter 10: When the Magic Happens

This chapter explores the profound observation that "Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t," leading to the biggest changes and most important innovations during or immediately after terrible events.

• Tragedy as a Catalyst for Change

  • The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911): This devastating fire in a New York City garment factory, where 146 workers (mostly young immigrant women) died due to locked doors and unusable fire escapes, served as a powerful catalyst. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the tragedy, was so appalled that she dedicated her life to fighting for workers' rights. She later became the first woman cabinet member (Secretary of Labor) under President Franklin Roosevelt and considered the Triangle fire the spiritual beginning of the New Deal. This highlights how "Stress, pain, discomfort, shock, and disgust—for all its tragic downsides, it’s also when the magic happens".

• Necessity as the Mother of Invention (Military Innovation) The chapter notes that many major innovations throughout modern history, from cars and airplanes to radar, the internet, and antibiotics, were either directly developed by or heavily influenced by the military.

  • Early applications of cars and planes, for instance, were envisioned for mounting machine guns or dropping bombs, rather than civilian commute or vacation.
  • The reason militaries are such engines of innovation is that they face "Really Big Problems That Need to Be Solved Right Now". Unlike incentives for profit or career advancement, the threat of "we’re all going to die and Adolf Hitler might take over the world" fuels "the most incredible problem-solving and innovation in the shortest period of time". During World War II, the government's approach was to develop discoveries for war value, "and damn the expense!". This demonstrates that the same people with the same intelligence have "wildly different potential under different circumstances".

• Productivity Surges from Adversity

  • The Great Depression (1930s): Despite being one of America's darkest economic periods (25% unemployment, 89% stock market fall), the 1930s was "by far, the most productive and technologically progressive decade in U.S. history". Total factor productivity surged, with the U.S. economy producing 40% more output by 1941 with virtually no increase in hours worked.
  • Key Drivers of 1930s Productivity:
    • Road Construction: Driven by the New Deal's Public Works Administration, road construction surged, connecting the nation and dramatically cutting travel times.
    • Electrification: The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) brought electricity to rural areas, freeing up household labor and contributing to female workforce participation.
    • Necessity-Driven Innovation: The first supermarket opened in 1930, combining food sales under one roof to make economics work during high unemployment. Laundromats were invented when washing machine sales fell. Factories under pressure for efficiency adopted assembly line methods, leading to a 41% increase in output per hour.
    • Education: More young people stayed in school, leading to a surge in high school graduation rates. The author contends that these technical leaps would likely not have happened without the desperation of the Depression, forcing bold government action and urgent efficiency from businesses. Big, fast changes "happen only when they’re forced by necessity".

• The Balance of Stress and Complacency While stress-induced innovation is powerful, there's a delicate balance; excessive stress can cripple innovation as resources shift from problem-solving to mere survival. Conversely, periods of excessive comfort, wealth, and low responsibility can lead to "some of the worst, dumbest, least-productive human behavior". President Richard Nixon's observation about the "unhappiest people" being those in wealthy, leisurely environments highlights that purpose and struggle are what give life meaning. Entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson notes that "Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity". This leads to the realization that while no one wishes for hardship, it is "the most potent fuel of problem-solving, serving as both the root of what we enjoy today and the seed of opportunity for what we’ll enjoy tomorrow".

Chapter 11: When the Magic Happens

Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t.

The text highlights a constant truth in history: the biggest changes and most important innovations tend to occur during, and after, a terrible event. This happens when people are panicked, shocked, worried, and when the consequences of not acting quickly are too painful to bear.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: A Catalyst for Change

On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out in a New York City garment factory, predominantly staffed by immigrant women, many of them young teenagers. Firefighters’ ladders could only reach the sixth floor, four stories below the trapped workers. Panicked, workers jumped to their deaths because the factory doors and fire escapes had been locked to prevent unscheduled breaks. The tragedy, which concluded in less than thirty minutes and claimed 146 lives, was witnessed by Frances Perkins. Perkins, who later became the first woman U.S. Secretary of Labor, was appalled by the preventable deaths. She and countless others devoted their lives to fighting for workers' rights, viewing the fire as a "never-to-be-forgotten reminder" and effectively the spiritual beginning of the New Deal, which reshaped the U.S. economy with a focus on worker protections. This event exemplifies how stress, pain, discomfort, shock, and disgust can be catalysts for "magic" and significant progress.

Military Innovation: Problems Drive Progress

Early cars and airplanes were initially viewed for their military applications, such as mounting machine guns or dropping bombs, rather than for civilian use like commuting or vacation travel. The U.S. Army purchased the first "flyer" from the Wright brothers in 1908. Many significant innovations, including radar, atomic energy, the internet, microprocessors, and antibiotics, either originated directly from or were heavily influenced by the military. This is because militaries face "Really Big Problems That Need to Be Solved Right Now," providing extreme incentives for innovation, such as the motivation to prevent hostile takeovers. Under such urgent circumstances, money and manpower are removed as obstacles, fostering collaboration difficult to achieve in calm times. As Shopify founder Toby Lütke stated, "Nothing can become truly resilient when everything goes right".

The Great Depression: An Unseen Leap in Productivity

Despite being one of the darkest periods in American history, with nearly a quarter of Americans unemployed and the stock market falling 89%, the 1930s were the most productive and technologically progressive decade in U.S. history. Total factor productivity reached unprecedented levels, with the U.S. economy producing 40% more output by 1941 than in 1929, with virtually no increase in hours worked.

• Road Construction: Driven by the New Deal's Public Works Administration, road construction surged, significantly cutting travel times (e.g., Pennsylvania Turnpike reduced travel between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg by 70%) and connecting regions like Marin County via the Golden Gate Bridge. This made the century-old railroad network truly efficient.
• Electrification: The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) brought electricity to rural areas, increasing coverage from less than 10% in 1935 to nearly 50% by 1945. This introduced labor-saving appliances like washing machines and refrigerators, contributing to female workforce participation and economic growth.
• Efficiency in Daily Life: The first supermarket opened in 1930, and laundromats were invented, born out of the necessity to make food selling economical and provide washing machine rentals during widespread unemployment. Factories also intensified pressure for efficiency, leading to a 41% increase in output per hour during the Depression decade.
• Education: Many young people stayed in school due to lack of other options, causing high school graduation rates to surge to levels not seen again until the 1960s.

These advances were largely forced by necessity, as a severely damaged economy prompted people to try anything to fix it. This illustrates that big, fast changes often happen only when forced by dire circumstances. Other examples include the rapid scientific progress during World War II, innovation in drilling techniques after the 2008 oil shock, and the astounding development of vaccines during COVID-19.

The Downside of Calm: Complacency and Lack of Purpose

There is a delicate balance between helpful stress and crippling disaster. When everything is abundant—wealth, optimism, low responsibility, and perceived absence of threats—it can lead to some of the "worst, dumbest, least-productive human behavior". President Richard Nixon observed that the unhappiest people are those with endless leisure but "no purpose". Entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson noted that "Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity". Fear, pain, and struggle are motivators that positive feelings can never match. Therefore, one should "be careful what you wish for", as a carefree, stress-free life, while appealing, can prevent motivation and progress, making hardship a potent fuel for problem-solving and future opportunity.

Chapter 12: Overnight Tragedies and Long-Term Miracles

Good news comes from compounding, which always takes time, but bad news comes from a loss in confidence or a catastrophic error that can occur in a blink of an eye.

The Slow Miracle of Declining Heart Disease

In September 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack. While a significant event at the time, what followed has been a quiet miracle: the age-adjusted death rate from heart disease has declined over 70% since the 1950s. This improvement means that 25 million more Americans have been saved from heart disease over the last sixty-five years than if the mortality rate had not improved. However, this extraordinary progress often goes unnoticed because the improvement happened too slowly for anyone to perceive it, with an average annual decline of just 1.5%.

This illustrates that the most important things result from compounding, which requires time and is therefore easy to ignore. New technologies, for instance, often take years or decades to be recognized for their full potential and adopted by the masses. Similarly, economic growth, like the eightfold increase in real GDP per capita in the U.S. over the last century, averages about 3% per year, making it imperceptible in any given year or even decade. Progress in careers, social advancements, brands, companies, and relationships also operates on this slow, compounding principle.

The Instant Shock of Bad News

In contrast to the slow nature of good news, bad news is rarely shy or subtle; it arrives instantly and overwhelms attention. Major events like Pearl Harbor and September 11 unfolded within about an hour. The COVID-19 pandemic upended lives in less than thirty days. Lehman Brothers, a 158-year-old company, went from an all-time high to bankruptcy in less than fifteen months. There is no equivalent speed in the other direction because while growth faces competition, decline encounters little resistance.

Complex to Make, Simple to Break

The text draws an analogy between human life and creation: making a human is incomprehensibly complex, involving billions of neurons and organ systems. Death, however, is simple, often caused by a lack of blood or oxygen. This principle, "complex to make, simple to break," is pervasive. Construction requires skilled engineers, but demolition requires only a sledgehammer. While growth and progress are ultimately more powerful than setbacks, setbacks dominate attention due to their swiftness. This leads to a normal state of affairs where slow progress occurs amid a constant drumbeat of bad news.

Underestimating Progress and the Power of Compounding

People often find it preposterous to imagine the average American being twice as rich fifty years from now, yet this is equivalent to an average annual growth rate of just 1.4%. This highlights our difficulty in contextualizing long-term, compounding progress.

Chapter 13: Tiny and Magnificent

When little things compound into extraordinary things.

The chapter reveals a common theme: most catastrophes arise from a series of tiny, easily dismissed risks that multiply and compound into something massive. Conversely, many amazing achievements result from small, seemingly insignificant elements compounding into something extraordinary.

The Paradox of Small Nuclear Bombs

The Soviet Union developed Tsar Bomba, a nuclear bomb fifteen hundred times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima, so destructive that countries were unlikely to use it due to the certainty of mutual destruction. In an attempt to reduce the risk of full-scale nuclear war, smaller, less deadly nuclear bombs like Davy Crockett (650 times less powerful than Hiroshima) were developed, seen as more "responsible" for battlefield use. However, this backfired: these tiny nukes were more likely to be used, lowering the threshold for nuclear engagement and thus increasing the overall risk of a large-scale nuclear attack. As physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who helped create the atomic bomb, later admitted, pushing for smaller nukes was a mistake because it increased the odds of a larger attack. This demonstrates how big risks are often overlooked because they are merely a chain reaction of small events, each easily dismissed.

Compounding Catastrophes: The Great Depression and COVID-19

The Great Depression, despite its massive impact, was not predicted by anyone in 1929. Instead, it resulted from a combination of individually minor issues—an overvalued stock market, real estate speculation, and poor farm maintenance—that compounded. The text describes a chain reaction: stock market falls, bosses lose savings, people are laid off, mortgages default, banks fail, people lose savings, stop spending, businesses fail, and the cycle repeats.

Similarly, the catastrophic impact of COVID-19 seemed sudden, but it was a multiplication of small, individually unsurprising risks: a new virus transfer to humans, human interaction, initial mystery, suppressed bad news, denial by other countries, and unpreparedness leading to blunt-force lockdowns. The Tenerife airport disaster in 1977, the deadliest aircraft accident in history, was also the result of "Eleven separate coincidences and mistakes, most of them minor" compounding into a massive collision. The world historically "breaks about once per decade" due to these compounding smaller events, a non-intuitive truth that leads people to consistently underestimate big risks.

The Magnificence of Compounding: Evolution and Investing

On the flip side, the most astounding force in the universe is evolution. Its power lies not just in selecting favorable traits, but in doing so over 3.8 billion years. This immense timeframe allows minuscule changes to compound into extraordinary results that are "indistinguishable from magic". Physicist Albert Bartlett noted, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function".

In investing, this is evident in an investor who consistently achieves mediocre annual returns but, over many years, ends up in the top percentage of all investors due to the power of sustained compounding. Thus, the most important question in investing is not "How can I earn the highest returns?" but "What are the best returns I can sustain for the longest period of time?".

Underestimating Future Innovations

A common historical view is that past innovation was magnificent, but future innovation is limited because all "low-hanging fruit" has been picked. However, Thomas Edison, a prolific tinkerer, challenged this in 1908, stating that the age of invention "hasn’t started yet" and predicting "Greater. Much greater" development "Along all lines" in the next 50 years. He understood that big innovations are built slowly by combining many small discoveries. For example, Edison didn't invent the first light bulb but significantly improved its brightness and longevity, building on dozens of prior breakthroughs.

The path from a small discovery to a world-changing invention is often unpredictable and indirect. The airplane, initially seen for military reconnaissance, indirectly led to nuclear power plants via aerial bombs. ARPANET, a 1960s defense project, became the foundation for the internet, leading to applications like Google Maps and Instagram. Polaroid film was discovered from crystals in sick dogs' urine. Facebook began as a way for college students to share pictures and became a global political lever. This unpredictability makes all innovation hard to forecast and easy to underestimate.

Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection suggests that variance equals strength: the more diverse a population, the more chances for new useful traits to emerge. Similarly, it's easy to dismiss current innovations as minor, but they are the seeds for future compounding breakthroughs. The value of new technology isn't just what it does, but how others with different skills can "manipulate it into" something unforeseen. This concept of "emergent effects" means that two seemingly "boring" things can combine to create "one world-changing thing".

Chapter 14: Elation and Despair

Progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist.

This balance is presented as a vital life skill. The ideal financial plan is to "save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist". More broadly, it means to "plan like a pessimist and dream like an optimist".

Admiral Jim Stockdale: The Stockdale Paradox

Admiral Jim Stockdale, the highest-ranking Vietnam prisoner of war, endured routine torture but never lost faith he would prevail. When asked who had the hardest time in prison, he revealed it was the "optimists"—those who constantly expected to be home by Christmas, only to have their spirits shattered when another Christmas passed in captivity. Stockdale's balance was to have unwavering faith that things will get better while simultaneously accepting the brutal facts of the present reality. He understood that "Things will eventually get better. But we’re not going home by Christmas". This counterintuitive mix is powerful when applied correctly.

The American Dream in the Great Depression

The phrase "The American dream" was coined by James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America. The timing is notable, as 1931 was a period when the dream appeared most shattered, with nearly 25% unemployment, high wealth inequality, food riots, and segregated schools. Yet, Adams's book surged in popularity. The American Dream gained traction precisely because conditions were so dire; people needed to believe it was possible, even without visible evidence. This relates to "depressive realism," a theory that depressed people have a more accurate view of the world's risks and fragility, while being "blissfully unaware" (the opposite) fuels us to continue working despite objective hardships.

Bill Gates: Confidence and Paranoia

Bill Gates, a relentless visionary who dropped out of college to put a computer on every desk, exhibited unshakable confidence. However, he also possessed an almost paradoxical paranoia: from Microsoft's inception, he insisted on having enough cash to sustain the company for twelve months with no revenue. He explained this by stating that he was "always worried" about meeting payroll, understanding that future business in technology was not guaranteed. This demonstrates that one can only be an optimist in the long run if they are pessimistic enough to survive the short run.

The Spectrum of Outlooks

The text describes optimism and pessimism existing on a spectrum.

• Pure optimists believe everything is great and will always be, dismissing negativity as a character flaw, often rooted in ego.
• Pure pessimists believe everything is terrible and will remain so, seeing positivity as a character flaw, also rooted in ego, and equally detached from reality. Both extremes are dangerous. The "sweet spot" is the rational optimist: one who acknowledges that history is a "constant chain of problems and disappointments and setbacks, but who remain optimistic because they know setbacks don’t prevent eventual progress". They may seem inconsistent but are simply looking further ahead.

The Trick to Long-Term Success

The key in any field—finance, careers, relationships—is "being able to survive the short-run problems so you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth". Saving like a pessimist and investing like an optimist requires balancing seemingly conflicting skills. The author emphasizes that being "financially unbreakable" allows one to stick around for compounding to work wonders, thus potentially achieving the biggest returns. History shows that the long run is usually good, while the short run is usually bad. Reconciling these two realities and managing them with conflicting skills is challenging, but failure to do so often leads to becoming a bitter pessimist or a bankrupt optimist.

Chapter 15: Casualties of Perfection

There is a huge advantage to being a little imperfect.

The common urge to maximize efficiency and perfection in pursuits often comes with an easily overlooked downside.

Evolution's Imperfection

The natural world demonstrates that there is no perfect species; all species eventually face extinction, with 99% already gone. Biologist Ivan Schmalhausen's work suggests that a species becoming "very good at one thing" tends to make it vulnerable in another area. For example, a larger lion can catch more prey but is a bigger target, and a taller tree gets more sunlight but is more susceptible to wind damage. Thus, species rarely evolve to be perfect, as perfecting one skill compromises another that may become critical for survival. Nature often settles for "a lot of good enough, below-potential traits". Evolution's 3.8 billion years of testing prove that "some inefficiency is good".

The Value of Wasted Time and "Underemployment"

Psychologist Amos Tversky remarked that "the secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours". Purposefully leaving gaps of free time in one's schedule, though seemingly inefficient, can be the most valuable hours for creative thinking and solving tough problems. Many people return from vacation with new insights after having time to "clear their mind". This suggests that "thought jobs" function better with time devoted to "wandering and being curious," even if outside traditional work hours. For instance, Secretary of State George Shultz's "hour of solitude" was crucial for strategic thinking, and Albert Einstein found ideas flowing during walks or while gazing at the ceiling. Charlie Munger observed that Warren Buffett spends "half of all the time he spends is sitting on his ass and reading," allowing him significant time to think. The modern eight-hour workday, suited for repetitive tasks, may not be ideal for jobs requiring deep thought and creativity, where strategic breaks can enhance productivity.

Slack in Systems: The Perils of "Just-in-Time"

"Just-in-time" manufacturing, designed for maximum efficiency by relying on last-minute shipments rather than stocking parts, dominated for twenty years. However, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed its fragility: supply chains broke, and manufacturers, despite a consumer spending boom, had to shut down factories due to shortages of crucial components. Their goal of "no room for error" backfired spectacularly. The text argues that "a little inefficiency across the whole supply chain would have been the sweet spot," and that while "room for error is often viewed as a cost," it can yield "some of the highest payoffs imaginable" in the long run. Similar dynamics apply to investing, where cash is an "inefficient drag" in bull markets but "as valuable as oxygen" during bear markets, and leverage offers efficiency but high risk.

The Danger of Precision Over "Good Enough"

In investing, there's a saying: "it’s better to be approximately right than precisely wrong". Yet, much intellectual effort in the industry is spent pursuing "decimal-point exactness," which can delude people into thinking they're maximizing opportunity while actually leaving no room for error in their analysis. The author advocates for a "good enough" forecasting model, confident in long-term progress and market allocation of rewards, but acknowledging inevitable mistakes, accidents, and booms/busts. Keeping forecasts simple frees up time and bandwidth for more important activities, like studying timeless human behaviors. The core insight is that the more perfect one tries to become, the more vulnerable one generally is.

Chapter 16: It’s Supposed to Be Hard

Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding that it hurts.

The chapter explores the allure and danger of shortcuts, emphasizing that true value often requires enduring hardship.

The Donner Party: A Shortcut to Disaster

In 1846, the Donner family and their party of 87 embarked on a grueling journey to California. Midway, exhausted, they took a supposed shortcut through Utah, advised by an explorer, believing it would save three to four days. This advice was disastrously wrong: the "shortcut" was longer and more arduous, leading them through a scorching desert, causing loss of oxen, and adding a crucial month to their journey. This delay forced them to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains in a brutal winter, leading to starvation and, eventually, cannibalism among the survivors. Their infamous ordeal was a direct consequence of being "tempted by a shortcut".

"The Trick Is Not Minding That It Hurts"

A scene in Lawrence of Arabia illustrates this principle: Lawrence puts out a match with his fingers without flinching, and when asked for the "trick" by another man yelping in pain, he replies, "The trick is not minding that it hurts". This is presented as a vital life skill: enduring necessary pain rather than seeking hacks or shortcuts. In modern contexts, this means focusing on the fundamental, hard work (e.g., writing good content for social media) rather than superficial "hacks". Technology often inflates expectations for quick results, making shortcuts even more appealing, but true prizes rarely come without effort. Charlie Munger advises that "The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want".

Jerry Seinfeld: Embracing the Hard Way

When discussing his sitcom, Jerry Seinfeld observed that getting good material from comedy writers was difficult. David Letterman's reply, "Wouldn’t it be weirder if they were good?" and Seinfeld's realization, "It’s supposed to be hard," underscore that the extraordinary achievements of individuals like Seinfeld, Michael Jordan, or Serena Williams are admired precisely because they are "unfathomably hard". Seinfeld micromanaged every detail of his show, stating, "If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way".

The Inevitable Costs of Success

Jeff Bezos states that "Very few people ever achieve" enjoying even half of their work life, because "everything comes with overhead" and "pieces that you don’t like". This applies across all professions, from Supreme Court justices to university professors. The price of pursuing anything worthwhile is rarely monetary; instead, it's paid in "stress, uncertainty, dealing with quirky people, bureaucracy, other peoples’ conflicting incentives, hassle, nonsense, long hours, and constant doubt". Acknowledging this "price that must be paid" is crucial, as there are "few coupons, and sales are rare".

The "Optimal Amount of Bullshit"

Author Steven Pressfield observed that some "smartest people" he met "couldn’t function in the world" because they "couldn’t take the bullshit". This leads to the insight that since inefficiency (or "bullshit") is "ubiquitous," the goal shouldn't be to avoid all of it, but to determine "What is the optimal amount to put up with so I can still function in a messy and imperfect world?". A zero-tolerance policy for differences, emotions, or inefficiencies will lead to failure in anything requiring interaction with others. Some "bad things" paradoxically become larger problems if one tries to eliminate them entirely (e.g., a grocery store could eliminate theft with strip searches, but would lose all customers). The "optimal level of theft is never zero".

Therefore, a "unique skill" is identifying the right amount of hassle and nonsense to endure to succeed. Compounding, for instance, is "fueled by endurance," making "sitting through periods of insanity" an optimal acceptance of hassle, not a defect. Running a company is described as "eating glass while being punched in the face," and the willingness to deal with such "hassle is the entire reason why it can be lucrative". Accepting this optimal level of inefficiency provides a clearer, more realistic view of how the world operates. The chapter concludes that a good rule of thumb is to "identify the price and be willing to pay it," which often means accepting an "optimal amount of hassle".

Chapter 17: Keep Running

Most competitive advantages eventually die.

The chapter emphasizes that the only thing harder than gaining a competitive advantage is keeping one.

Cope’s Rule: Evolution's Paradox of Size

Nineteenth-century paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope observed a trend, later called Cope's Rule, that animals tend to evolve toward larger body sizes over time (e.g., horses from small dogs, humans growing taller). This is intuitive because larger species are often better at capturing prey and can support bigger brains. However, this tendency is "counterbalanced by the tendency of extinction to kill off larger species". Body size, like financial leverage, "accentuates the gains but amplifies the losses". Large animals are fragile; an ant can fall from 15,000 times its height unharmed, but a human dies from a fall at ten times their height. Larger animals also require more land and food, move slowly, reproduce slowly, and may not adapt easily, making them vulnerable. Evolution encourages growth, then punishes it, demonstrating that dominant creatures are often huge, but enduring ones are smaller (T-Rex < cockroach < bacteria).

The Downfall of Sears: A Default Outcome

Sears in the 1970s was a retail giant, the "Amazon of its day," expanding successfully into finance and admired for its efficiency. Yet, it eventually collapsed, becoming a "shell of its former self," with its stock falling 73%. This story is not unique but rather the "default outcome of once-dominant companies," as almost 40% of public companies lost all their value between 1980 and 2014.

Five major factors tend to erode competitive advantages:

1. Hubris: Success breeds overconfidence, leading leaders to believe they cannot be wrong. This is devastating when competitors target outlier success. Size, success, and hubris form a cycle leading to decline.
2. Scale: Strategies that work for a small company become impossible for a large one. Large investment funds, for instance, are less nimble than smaller ones. This is linked to the Peter Principle, where talented individuals are promoted until they fail.
3. Loss of Paranoia: People work hard to achieve a competitive advantage with the goal of eventually relaxing. This relaxation removes the "paranoia" that fueled their success, allowing competitors and a changing world to "creep in unnoticed".
4. Skill Obsolescence: A valuable skill in one era may not translate to the next.
5. Luck: Some success is attributable to being in the right place at the right time, and the "reversion to reality that unmasks good luck" is often only clear with hindsight.

The Red Queen Hypothesis: Running to Stay in Place

Evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen's "Red Queen hypothesis" challenged the conventional wisdom that older species were more likely to endure. His data showed that the probability of extinction for a species is "effectively independent of its age". This is because competition is a relentless "arms race"; any advantage gained by one species instantly incentivizes competitors to improve. There are "no permanent advantages"; everyone is "madly scrambling all the time," but no one becomes "extinction-proof". Just as the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland must "Keep running" just to stay in place, so too must businesses, products, careers, countries, and relationships. This implies that one should never be surprised when something dominant in one era dies off in the next. The key takeaway is to "keep running," as no competitive advantage is so powerful that it allows rest, and resting often "seeds their own demise".

Chapter 18: The Wonders of the Future

It always feels like we’re falling behind, and it’s easy to discount the potential of new technology.

The chapter outlines a typical path of human response to what eventually becomes a world-changing new technology: from initial ignorance, to seeing it as a toy, to finally considering it indispensable, then too powerful, and in need of regulation. It is inherently difficult to foresee the full potential of a small invention.

Thomas Edison's Unwavering Optimism

In 1908, The Washington Post asked Thomas Edison if the age of invention was "passing." Edison, astonished, replied, "Why, it hasn’t started yet." He confidently predicted "Greater. Much greater" mechanical and scientific development "Along all lines" in the next 50 years. Edison understood that big innovations don't appear suddenly; they are built slowly by combining numerous small discoveries over time. He himself didn't invent the first light bulb, but greatly improved upon existing arc lamps, making them practical. He believed that an "apparently small discovery" could lead to a "host of experimenters and inventors" playing with its variations, ultimately resulting in "great things" that no one could foresee.

Unpredictable Paths of Innovation

The history of technology is replete with examples where initial predictions for an invention drastically differed from its eventual impact. Early forecasts for the airplane only envisioned mail delivery and sky racing, but it unexpectedly led to aerial bombs, then nuclear bombs, and ultimately peaceful nuclear power. Similarly, ARPANET, a 1960s U.S. Department of Defense project for Cold War secrets, became the foundation for the internet, enabling applications like Google Maps and TurboTax today. Polaroid film was discovered accidentally from unique crystals in the urine of sick dogs. Facebook, initially for college students to share pictures, became a powerful force in global politics within a decade. These examples illustrate that innovation is hard to predict and easy to underestimate because the path from A to Z can be so complex and lead to such strange destinations.

Fisher's Fundamental Theorem and Emergent Effects

Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection suggests that variance equals strength in evolution: a diverse population has more chances to develop new, useful traits, even if their utility is initially unknown. This applies to innovation as well; while it's easy to dismiss current startups or scientific discoveries as less significant than past breakthroughs, we "never know how multiple innovations will collide" to form something great. Progress is made "step-by-step, slowly over time," meaning "tiny little innovations that no one thinks much of are the seeds for what has the potential to compound into something great".

The value of new technology extends beyond its initial function; it includes "everything you can imagine and read into it," and what "someone else with a totally different skill set and point of view can eventually manipulate it into". This concept of "emergent effects" means that "One boring thing plus one boring thing can equal one world-changing thing". This also applies to careers, where a combination of "few mediocre skills mixed together at the right time becomes multiple times more successful than someone who’s an expert in one thing". The chapter concludes by noting that the first long-distance wireless message in 1908, an apparently small event, eventually seeded the technology enabling the writing and publishing of this book 114 years later.

Chapter 19: Harder Than It Looks and Not as Fun as It Seems

"The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit".

The chapter argues that most people do not genuinely disclose their internal struggles, fears, or insecurities, presenting instead a "window-dressed version of ourselves". The saying "an expert is always from out of town" highlights that it's easier to convince people you're special if they don't know you well enough to see your imperfections.

"Everything Is Sales": Crafting an Image

The text posits that "Everything is sales," not just in a career sense, but in how everyone, consciously or subconsciously, crafts an image of themselves to others. This image is filtered, advertising strengths and concealing flaws. This explains why "almost everything looks better from the outside". A friend, for instance, might perceive a competitor company as superior without having worked there, because they only see the polished external image, not the internal "messy personalities and difficult decisions" that are common in "loosely functioning disasters" like businesses. Instagram shows beach vacations, not flight delays; résumés highlight wins, not doubts; and business titans achieve mythical status because their ordinary or awful decision-making moments are not public.

Cracks in the Facade: The Reality Behind Success

Occasionally, reality cracks open the carefully crafted facades. Warren Buffett's biography revealed a challenging family life, collateral damage from prioritizing stock picking. The "fairy-tale charmed" life of Bill and Melinda Gates was exposed by their "nasty divorce". Elon Musk, a visionary, cried when discussing the "excruciating" mental toll of Tesla's struggles and the sacrifice of time with his children. The author shares his own experience of hiding a chronic stutter, illustrating that people conceal many struggles, from depression to phobias, behind a "facade of normalcy".

The Consequences of Blindness to Others' Struggles

This phenomenon leads to several insights:

1. Self-Doubt: When people are acutely aware of their own struggles but blind to others', it's easy to assume others possess a secret skill. Viewing successful people as "superhuman" discourages others from trying, when in reality, many are "normal people who played the odds right".
2. Overvaluing Opinions: If someone is seen as extraordinary, their opinions on unrelated topics may be overvalued (e.g., a hedge fund manager's political views). It's crucial to distinguish between specific talent to be celebrated and ideas that should never be questioned.
3. Lack of Forgiveness: Recognizing that everyone deals with unadvertised problems fosters greater forgiveness for oneself and others.

Ultimately, "Most things are harder than they look and not as fun as they seem".

Chapter 20: Incentives: The Most Powerful Force in the World

When the incentives are crazy, the behavior is crazy. People can be led to justify and defend nearly anything.

The chapter asserts that incentives are the most powerful force in the world.

The Pervasive Influence of Incentives

Jason Zweig's cynical advice for professional writers highlights the power of incentives: "Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich". This dynamic extends to many areas. A Nigerian scammer, Akinola Bolaji, justified conning vulnerable widows by stating, "Definitely there is always conscience. But poverty will not make you feel the pain". Rapper Notorious B.I.G. explained that he began selling crack in fourth grade because it offered "real, real money" far more quickly than pursuing art, his initial passion. Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko speculated that scientists in Galileo's era who believed Earth revolved around the sun remained silent because "they had families to feed". These examples illustrate that people are susceptible to incentives and can be led to justify or defend "almost anything". The author suggests that while 3-5% of people might be truly crazy, "easily 50 percent or more" would do something crazy if the incentives were right. A key challenge is that people are often blind to how incentives impact their own decisions. As Ben Franklin wrote, "If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason".

Real-World Examples of Incentive-Driven Behavior

The text describes a pizza delivery man who became a subprime mortgage banker in 2005, earning more in a day than he previously did in a month. Despite knowing the mortgage market was a "joke" and unsustainable, the financial incentive to provide for his family made quitting "unbelievably high". This applies to many involved in the 2008 financial crisis, from bankers to real estate agents and politicians, where incentives favored "not rocking the boat" even as the market became unsustainable.

Incentives can also be cultural or tribal. El Chapo, a violent drug lord, was popular and protected in his poor Mexican village because he provided for locals, such as funding weddings. In such cases, good people might support bad behavior due to strong social and financial incentives.

People also tend to believe what they want to believe. The Heaven's Gate cult, expecting a spaceship behind a comet, returned a telescope for being "broken" when it didn't show the spaceship. Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine, realized that creating a magazine based purely on "Facts" was impossible because "Show me a man who thinks he’s objective and I’ll show you a man who’s deceiving himself". This bias is prevalent in service industries, where "do nothing" might be the best advice, but "do something" is often the career incentive for experts in fields like investing, law, and medicine.

Conclusions on Incentives

• Crazy Behavior: When good, honest people are incentivized into irrational behavior, the world "goes off the rails" more often. Moral boundaries stretch due to certain incentives, leading to wars, recessions, frauds, and market bubbles.
• Good Behavior: Conversely, one might underestimate the amount of good people can accomplish when their incentives align toward progress.
• Unsustainable Trends: "Extremes are the norm," and unsustainable trends can persist longer than expected because social and financial incentives prevent people from accepting reality.

The chapter proposes a self-reflection question: "Which of my current views would change if my incentives were different?". If the answer is "none," it suggests being "blinded by your incentives".

Chapter 21: Now You Get It

Nothing is more persuasive than what you’ve experienced firsthand.

The chapter argues that people often have no idea how they'll respond to extreme shifts in circumstances until they "get knocked in the head by experience".

The Great Depression: A Dramatic Shift in Beliefs

The Great Depression rapidly and dramatically changed Americans' views. After voting Herbert Hoover in by a landslide in 1928, they voted him out by a landslide in 1932. Policies previously considered fringe, like taxpayer-funded old-age pension insurance, were suddenly embraced, leading to the overwhelming passage of the Social Security Act in 1935. Such drastic changes occur when life is "upended," hopes are "dashed," and dreams are "uncertain," leading people to try "wild ideas" out of desperation. Comedian Trevor Noah observed on apartheid that "If you find the right balance between desperation and fear, you can make people do anything".

In 1930s Germany, devastating hyperinflation preceded the Great Depression, and many civilians welcomed Hitler's measures because he brought jobs. When someone helps you out of an emergency, you tend to give them your support, even if their methods are questionable. Varlam Shalamov, a gulag survivor, wrote that under high stress, "a man becomes a beast in three weeks," illustrating how quickly normal people can crack. Similarly, World War II soldiers, despite training, could not truly understand combat until they experienced it firsthand.

Historical Shifts and Personal Views

These extreme examples highlight how stress and desperation lead people to embrace ideas and goals they never would otherwise. Historically, this explains shifts like the acceptance of 94% tax rates after World War II, and the Reagan revolution, which gained traction when Americans, exhausted by 1970s inflation and unemployment, were ready to hear that government was the problem. This implies that our personal policy views are also susceptible to unexpected hardship.

In investing, the common advice "I will be greedy when others are fearful" is easier said than done. This is because people tend to imagine a stock market crash as only a price decline, without the accompanying "screwups" by people, companies, and politicians that sap confidence and shift priorities from growth to preservation. This mental shift is hard to contextualize in booming economies.

The Impact of Firsthand Experience

Chris Rock joked that teachers and bullies both educate kids, but learning to deal with bullies provides the "real experience with risk and uncertainty" that is invaluable as an adult. This dynamic also applies to good fortune. Apollo astronauts, having achieved the incredible feat of walking on the moon, expressed surprise at how quickly they adapted, and felt it was not as momentous as outsiders might expect. Michael Collins noted that Buzz Aldrin resented not being first on the moon more than he appreciated being second. Outsize success rarely brings as much happiness as an outsider might expect, because imagined future fortunes are envisioned in a vacuum, while reality includes a mix of good and bad competing for attention. Ultimately, firsthand experience adds a complexity to understanding that mere imagination cannot replicate.

Chapter 22: Time Horizons

Saying “I’m in it for the long run” is a bit like standing at the base of Mount Everest, pointing to the top, and saying, “That’s where I’m heading.” Well, that’s nice. Now comes the test.

The chapter highlights that long-term thinking is easier to believe in than to achieve, and its difficulty is precisely why it's so lucrative. The actual price of long-term commitment involves skills and a mentality often minimized or oversimplified.

The Long Run Is a Collection of Short Runs

To effectively embrace the long term, one must understand that "The long run is just a collection of short runs you have to put up with". A ten-year time horizon does not exempt one from recessions, bear markets, meltdowns, or surprises within that period. In fact, "The longer your time horizon, the more calamities and disasters you’ll experience". As baseball player Dan Quisenberry said, "The future is much like the present, only longer".

The Need for Alignment and Patience

Your individual belief in the long run is insufficient; partners, coworkers, spouses, and friends must also be committed to the journey. For example, an investment manager might believe in the "long run" after a 40% loss, but if investors bail, the firm won't survive to benefit from eventual recovery. This challenge often stems from the "gap between what you believe and what you can convince other people of". Financial professionals often lean towards short-termism because clients tend to flee at the first sign of trouble, a behavior compounded by investors' poor communication about market realities.

Patience vs. Stubbornness

Long-term thinking can become a "crutch" for those who are wrong but unwilling to change their minds, claiming they're "just early" or that "Everyone else is crazy". To genuinely practice long-term thinking, one must distinguish between true patience and stubbornness. The solution is to identify the "very few things in your industry that will never change" (candidates for long-term thinking) and put everything else in a category that requires "constant need of updating and adapting".

Flexibility: The Key to Enduring

A fixed long-term horizon can be as reliant on chance as a short one (e.g., a 10-year horizon set to end in 2020, just as the world fell apart). Flexibility is far superior. While time is essential for compounding's "magic," the odds of success are greatly enhanced by mixing a long time horizon with a flexible or indefinite end date. Benjamin Graham's concept of "margin of safety" makes precise forecasts unnecessary; greater flexibility reduces the need to know what happens next.

Permanent vs. Expiring Information

The chapter also touches on information consumption:

• Permanent information is timeless, focusing on fundamental human behaviors (e.g., how people react to unfathomable risk). It never expires, compounds over time, and explains why things happen, fostering deeper understanding.
• Expiring information is fleeting (e.g., quarterly profits). It garners more attention due to volume and urgency, but quickly loses relevance.

The insight is that reading more permanent information (books) helps develop filters and frameworks to better understand expiring information (news).

Chapter 23: Trying Too Hard

There are no points awarded for difficulty.

The chapter discusses the enduring human tendency to be drawn to complexity and intellectual stimulation, often discounting things that are simple but highly effective. It cautions that it's possible to "try too hard" and be "too attracted to complexity," which can "backfire spectacularly".

The War on Cancer: Overlooking Simplicity

Despite extraordinary progress in understanding cancer cells, the "war on cancer" struggles because it focuses too much on treatment and not enough on prevention. This is partly because prevention is perceived as "boring" compared to the "intellectually stimulating" science and prestige of cancer treatments. MIT cancer researcher Robert Weinberg admitted that persuading people to quit smoking would have a greater impact on cancer than anything he, as a biologist, could do, but it wasn't intellectually stimulating enough for him or many other scientists. This illustrates how complexity is favored for its excitement, even when simplicity might be more effective.

The Allure of Complexity

Computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra wrote that "Simplicity is the hallmark of truth—we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction... The sore truth is that complexity sells better". This is evident in legal documents like mortgage contracts or the U.S. tax code, which are far longer and more complex than the U.S. Constitution. While sometimes necessary, often a "handful of simple variables drives the majority of outcomes," and added complexity is unnecessary filler that is "intellectually seductive, wastes your time, or is designed to confuse or impress you".

Nature offers a counter-example: evolution simplifies over time, reducing duplicate body parts and making the remaining ones more useful (e.g., teeth, jawbones, skulls). It's a "simplification" that prioritizes effectiveness over redundancy. John Reed notes that learning a complex field means identifying a "few core principles" (3-12), as the "million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles". For example, in finance, "spending less than you make, saving the difference, and being patient is perhaps 90 percent of what you need to know," yet colleges teach complex derivatives.

Reasons for complexity's appeal:

1. Impression of Control: Dealing with more variables (e.g., a hundred-tab spreadsheet) creates a comforting impression of control and signals greater knowledge, even if it's not truly effective.
2. Mystique: Unintelligible complexity can create a mystique around experts, leading people to accept their views at face value.
3. Signaling Effort: Length in writing (e.g., a nonfiction book) signals that the author has devoted significant time to the topic, implying deeper insight, even if readers don't finish it.
4. Feels Like a Workout: Simple, clear explanations don't provide the "cognitive bench press" feeling that laborious learning does, leading to a preference for harder, less efficient methods.

The Wisdom of "Law of Averages"

Nineteenth-century doctor Thomas McCrae once misdiagnosed a common ailment, with his professor then insisting it was a rare disease requiring surgery. McCrae's initial, simple diagnosis was correct, and he later realized he was "fortunate for never having heard of the rare disease," as it allowed him to focus on the "most likely diagnosis" rather than being burdened by searching for rare conditions. He concluded that "some of us are too much attracted by the thought of rare things and forget the law of averages in diagnosis". This highlights that "there are no points awarded for difficulty," and that being overly attracted to complexity can backfire.

Chapter 24: Wounds Heal, Scars Last

What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?.

The chapter's core insight is that "Wounds heal, but scars last". While physical damage may be repaired, the psychological impact of traumatic experiences can permanently alter a person's outlook on risk, reward, opportunities, and goals. It argues that most disagreements are not about facts, but about people with different experiences talking past each other.

Physical Healing vs. Enduring Scars

After September 11, 2001, the Pentagon, though struck by a plane, shows no trace of the crash. However, nearby Reagan National Airport still bears the "scars" everywhere in the form of strict, ongoing security measures. This illustrates that while the physical wound heals, the memory and behavioral changes remain.

Similarly, the physical devastation of the Eastern Front in World War II, where over thirty million people died, was largely cleaned up by 1960, and Japan's economy recovered and surged after its post-war collapse. Recessions and business failures also heal and recover over time. However, the psychological "scars" endure. A study of WWII survivors found them more likely to suffer from diabetes and depression, less likely to marry, and less satisfied with life as older adults. Those who lived through the Great Depression, even during the prosperous 1950s, were "gnawed at by a constant lurking fear" and "craved security," influencing their views on ambition and risk-taking for the rest of their lives. This is partly why history can be baffling: people's moods, fears, hopes, and expectations are unmeasurable.

Pavlov's Dogs: Trauma Resets Behavior

Ivan Pavlov's dogs, famously conditioned to drool at the sound of a bell, seemingly "forgot their learned behavior" after enduring a traumatic flood in 1924, some even developing completely different personalities. Pavlov concluded that extreme danger can lead to a "profound and prolonged loss of balance in nervous and psychic activity," causing neuroses and psychoses. While people generally have short memories, "hard-core stress leaves a scar," permanently resetting expectations and changing ingrained behaviors. "A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions".

Generational Impact of Shared Experiences

This explains why the Great Depression generation remained wary of risk and debt, saving more money for the rest of their lives. Similarly, post-World War II Europe, physically destroyed, developed a "craving for social and personal security," leading to the adoption of widespread welfare state policies like universal health care, unlike America. Historian Michael Howard noted that "war and welfare go hand in hand," as war crushes one's sense of control, making state intervention appear as salvation. Different generations, shaped by events like the inflation of the 1970s or the dot-com crash, will think about the world in fundamentally different ways.

The Root of Disagreement: Experience, Not Logic

After major, unexpected events, two tendencies emerge:

1. Assume repetition: People assume the event will recur with greater force.
2. Forecast with conviction: They forecast future events with strong conviction, despite the original event being improbable and unpredictable. The more impactful the surprise, the truer this becomes, and those who haven't experienced it will struggle to understand this point of view.

The oldest story is disagreement. While reasons for disagreement can be selfishness or ignorance, a better question to ask is: "What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have?". This question, though uncomfortable as it implies personal ignorance, contains the most answers to why people disagree. Despite increased access to information, disagreement may even be more prevalent today because "The more the Internet exposes people to new points of view, the angrier people get that different views exist". Ultimately, disagreement is rooted in differing experiences and will remain constant.

Questions

The book concludes by stating that while humans consistently rebel at uncertainty and prefer to believe the future is predictable, a more effective approach is to look backward and broadly, studying the "big things the past has never avoided" rather than attempting to predict specific changes. By focusing on "what never changes," one stops trying to predict uncertain events and spends more time understanding timeless human behavior.

The author then offers a list of self-reflection questions, related to the book's themes, for the reader to ponder:

• Who has the right answers but I ignore because they’re not articulate?
• Which of my current views would I disagree with if I were born in a different country or generation?
• What do I desperately want to be true so much that I think it’s true when it’s clearly not?
• What is a problem that I think applies only to other countries/industries/careers that will eventually hit me?
• What do I think is true but is actually just good marketing?
• What haven’t I experienced firsthand that leaves me naive about how something works?
• What looks unsustainable but is actually a new trend we haven’t accepted yet?
• Who do I think is smart but is actually full of it?
• Am I prepared to handle risks I can’t even envision?
• Which of my current views would change if my incentives were different?
• What are we ignoring today that will seem shockingly obvious in the future?
• What events very nearly happened that would have fundamentally changed the world I know if they had occurred?
• How much have things outside my control contributed to things I take credit for?
• How do I know if I’m being patient (a skill) or stubborn (a flaw)?
• Who do I look up to that is secretly miserable?
• What hassle am I trying to eliminate that’s actually an unavoidable cost of success?
• What crazy genius that I aspire to emulate is actually just crazy?
• What strong belief do I hold that’s most likely to change?
• What’s always been true?
• What’s the same as ever?