“We afford automatic respect to superstar business moguls, politicians, and actors and to anyone flying around in a private jet, as if their accomplishments must reflect unique qualities not shared by those forced to eat commercial airline food. And we place too much confidence in the overly precise predictions of people - political pundits, financial experts, business consultants - who claim a track record demonstrating expertise.”
“The fact that human intuition is ill suited to situations involving uncertainty was known as early as the 1930's, when researchers noted that people could neither make up a sequence of numbers that pa...”
Leonard Mlodinow
“The outline of our lives, like the candles flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“Random events often come like the raisins in a box of cereal - in groups, streaks, and clusters. And although Fortune is fair in potentialities, she is not fair in outcomes.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“The theory of randomness is fundamentally a codification of common sense.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“The nasty thing about the availability bias is that it insidiously distorts our view of the world by distorting our perception of past events and our environment.”
Leonard Mlodinow