Artificial intelligence already finishes our emails, texts, and search queries. The next step may be far more significant—helping us make decisions before we even realize we need to make them.
Human beings often treat virtue like a bank account. The trouble begins when they start spending against it.
Human beings love simple answers. Reality tends to prefer complicated ones.
Modern society often confuses expertise with infallibility. The two are very different things.
The more people invest in a decision, the harder it becomes to abandon it—even when the evidence says they should.
Human beings are remarkably skilled at explaining their own behavior. The challenge is that good explanations don’t always lead to good decisions.
Many bad outcomes begin with good intentions. The challenge is that reality responds to consequences, not motives.
People tend to move toward rewards and away from consequences. Understanding incentives often explains behavior better than understanding intentions.
Food, entertainment, shopping, and validation now arrive almost instantly. Unfortunately, health, wealth, relationships, and wisdom still operate on a much slower schedule.
Most people don’t start with evidence and arrive at a conclusion. They start with a conclusion and look for evidence. Human nature has been doing it for centuries.