Creativity is what happens when a mind encounters an obstacle. It's the human process of finding a way through, over, around, or beneath. No obstacle, no creativity.#1620•
Preface
Yet as we've seen, and shall see many times again, that's not a bad thing. Restrictions birth creativity. The laws on what shapes can't do come packaged with case studies illuminating what they can. In design projects ranging from sturdy buildings to useful paper to planet-destroying space stations, geometry inspires even as it constrains.#1617•
Chapter 16
Lotteries, by contrast, are simple. Plain outcomes. Clear probabilities. A social scientist's dream. You see, the behavioral economist is not here to play, just to watch you play.#2104•
14. Weird Insurance
Our ignorance of fate can force us to collaborate against it. We have built a democracy from our uncertainty—and new knowledge threatens that balance, as sure as flood or fire.#2105•
15. How to Break the Economy with a Single Pair of Dice
Independence irons out extremes; dependence amplifies them.#2106•
Chapter 24
True negatives are less fun. They're like thinking you'd tidied the house and done the laundry, only to realize that, nope, that was just in your head. You'd rather know the truth, but you wish it were otherwise.#3550•
By contrast, false negatives are haunting. They're like looking for your lost keys in the right place but somehow not seeing them. You'll never know how close you were.#3548•
Last is the scariest category of all: false positives. They are, in a word, "flukes," falsehoods that, on a good hair day, pass for truths.#3546•