Notes

INTRODUCTION

power posing: In case you haven’t been following the scholarly controversies around power posing, you should know that the original findings have not held up well to replication. When an experimenter tells you to put your body in a confident and expansive stance (like Wonder Woman), it is unlikely to induce hormonal changes. However, it may lead you to tell the experimenter that you’re feeling more confident. Whether that increases your ability to repel bullets or fly invisible jets has not yet been tested. Joseph P. Simmons and Uri Simonsohn, “Power Posing: P-Curving the Evidence,” Psychological Science 28, no. 5 (March 20, 2017): 687–93, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616658563.

“you can never be too rich”: (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 8th ed. [New York: Oxford University Press, 2014], s.v. “Duchess of Windsor”). But of course being too thin or too confident can be dangerous, for different reasons.

Aristotle quotes: Complete Works of Aristotle, Jonathan Barnes, ed., vol. 2, The Revised Oxford Translation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

Roosevelt quote: Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906).

CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS CONFIDENCE?

Musk stories and quotes: Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (New York: HarperCollins, 2015).

More confident entrepreneurs: Mathew L. A. Hayward, William R. Forster, Saras D. Sarasvathy, and Barbara L. Fredrickson, “Beyond Hubris: How Highly Confident Entrepreneurs Rebound to Venture Again,” Journal of Business Venturing 25, no. 6 (2010): 569–78.

Confident applicants are more likely to get hired: Jack L. Howard and Gerald R. Ferris, “The Employment Interview Context: Social and Situational Influences on Interviewer Decisions,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 26, no. 2 (1996): 112–36.

confident political candidates are more likely to get elected: Harold M. Zullow and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Pessimistic Rumination Predicts Defeat of Presidential Candidates, 1900 to 1984,” Psychological Inquiry 1, no. 1 (1990): 52–61.

both confidence and success may share: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Confidence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt (London: Penguin, 2013).

CHOSEN 1 tattooed: Khadrice Rollins, “What Is the Origin of LeBron James’s Chosen One Tattoo?,” Sports Illustrated, May 30, 2018, https://www.si.com/nba/2018/05/30/origin-lebron-james-chosen-1-tattoo.

“I’m back to sleeping”: Kate Samuelson, “Tesla Has Tons of Problems and Elon Musk Says He’s Sleeping at the Factory to Fix Them,” Fortune, April 3, 2018, https://fortune.com/2018/04/03/elon-musk-sleeping-tesla-factory/.

overprecision emerges in: Don A. Moore, Elizabeth R. Tenney, and Uriel Haran, “Overprecision in Judgment,” in Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, ed. George Wu and Gideon Keren (New York: Wiley, 2015), 182–212.

Research on “flashbulb memories”: Christopher F. Chabris and Daniel J. Simons, The Invisible Gorilla (New York: Crown, 2010).

When researchers cross-checked: Jennifer M. Talarico and David C. Rubin, “Confidence, Not Consistency, Characterizes Flashbulb Memories,” Psychological Science 14, no. 5 (2003): 455–61.

World population statistic: U.S. and World Population Clock, U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/popclock/.

Orville Wright’s first powered flight: “The Wright Brothers: The First Successful Airplane,” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/wright-brothers/online/fly/1903/.

Dean Hovey’s hourly wage: Malcolm Gladwell, “Creation Myth,” New Yorker, July 6, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/creation-myth.

Depth of the Mariana Trench: Becky Oskin, “Mariana Trench: The Deepest Depths,” LiveScience, December 6, 2017, https://www.livescience.com/23387-mariana-trench.html.

Tesla corporation 2018 revenue: Tesla, Inc, Tesla Fourth Quarter & Full Year 2018 Update, https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/0b913415-467d-4c0d-be4c-9225c2cb0ae0.

Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize: Noble Media AB 2019, “Daniel Kahneman—Facts,” NobelPrize.org, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2002/kahneman/facts/.

Price for which Google buys YouTube: Andrew Ross Sorkin and Jeremy W. Peters, “Google to Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion,” New York Times, October 9, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/business/09cnd-deal.html.

LeBron James’s average points-per-game: NBA Media Ventures, LLC, “LeBron James,” NBA Stats, https://stats.nba.com/player/2544/

William James’s first Harvard class: Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).

Maya Angelou’s Presidential Medal of Freedom: World Heritage Encyclopedia, “List of Honors Received by Maya Angelou,” http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/list_of_honors_received_by_maya_angelou.

“no problem in judgment”: Scott Plous, The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, McGraw-Hill Series in Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993).

“the most significant”: Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

overconfidence is the mother: Max H. Bazerman and Don A. Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 8th ed. (New York: Wiley, 2013).

“Perhaps the most robust”: Werner F. M. De Bondt and Richard H. Thaler, “Financial Decision-Making in Markets and Firms: A Behavioral Perspective,” in Finance, Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science, ed. Robert A. Jarrow, Voijslav Maksimovic, and William T. Ziemba, vol. 9 (North Holland, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1995), 385–410.

Overconfidence may contribute: Dominic D. P. Johnson, Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

Many have noted: Michael Lewis, The Big Short (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).

NINA and NINJA loans: Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, “The Giant Pool of Money,” This American Life, May 9, 2008, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/355/the-giant-pool-of-money.

“But as long as the music”: Cyrus Sanati, “Prince Finally Explains His Dancing Comment,” New York Times, DealBook, https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/prince-finally-explains-his-dancing-comment/.

“I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone”: Barry Ritholtz, “Putting an End to Wall Street’s ‘I’ll Be Gone, You’ll Be Gone’ Bonuses,” Washington Post, March 12, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/putting-an-end-to-wall-streets-ill-be-gone-youll-be-gone-bonuses/2011/03/08/ABDjpJS_story.html.

Kruger showed how easy: Justin Kruger, “Lake Wobegon Be Gone! The ‘Below-Average Effect’ and the Egocentric Nature of Comparative Ability Judgments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77, no. 2 (1999): 221–32.

People think they use: Justin Kruger and Kenneth Savitsky, “On the Genesis of Inflated (and Deflated) Judgments of Responsibility: Egocentrism Revisited,” Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes 108, no. 1 (2009): 972–89, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.06.002.

“more confidence is placed”: J. Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2012).

“I am not a writer”: Josh Jones, “John Steinbeck Has a Crisis in Confidence While Writing The Grapes of Wrath,” Open Culture, 2017, http://www.openculture.com/2017/07/john-steinbeck-has-a-crisis-in-confidence-while-writing-the-grapes-of-wrath.html.

“I have written eleven books”: Sanyin Siang, “Got The Imposter Syndrome? Here Are 3 Strategies For Dealing With It,” Forbes, April 17, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/sanyinsiang/2017/04/17/impostersyndrome/#49880cc3e5fe.

“I thought it was a big fluke”: Abel Riojas, “Jodie Foster, Reluctant Star,” 60 Minutes, July 12, 1999, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jodie-foster-reluctant-star-07-12-1999/.

The impostor syndrome was first named: Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Ament Imes, “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice 15, no. 3 (1978): 241.

Currie quote: Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know (New York: HarperCollins, 2014).

it is the most hardworking: Francis J. Flynn and Rebecca L. Schaumberg, “When Feeling Bad Leads to Feeling Good: Guilt-Proneness and Affective Organizational Commitment,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 1 (2012): 124.

Only a third: Caroline Hoxby and Christopher Avery, “The Missing ‘One-Offs’: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2013, no. 1 (Spring 2013), https://doi.org/10.1353/eca.2013.0000.

talented kids from poor families: David Leonhardt, “Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor,” New York Times, March 16, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/education/scholarly-poor-often-overlook-better-colleges.html.

“I suck at writing”: Hugh Howey, “I Suck at Writing,” hughhowey.com, February 4, 2014, http://www.hughhowey.com/i-suck-at-writing/.

“Today will be good”: David Rakoff, Half Empty (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 59.

Jung praises William James: “William James,” Harvard University Department of Psychology, https://psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/william-james.

Freud praises William James: Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, 1961).

“I was, body and soul”: Kendra Cherry, “William James Biography (1842–1910),” Very Well Mind, 2018, https://www.verywellmind.com/william-james-biography-1842-1910-2795545.

“the first lecture”: Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James: As Revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, Together with His Published Writings (Oxford, England: Little, Brown, 1935).

James’s story of leaping the chasm: William James, “Some Reflections on the Subjective Method,” in Essays on Philosophy: The Works of William James (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).

study of the effectiveness of visualization: Lien B. Pham and Shelley E. Taylor, “From Thought to Action: Effects of Process- versus Outcome-Based Mental Simulations on Performance,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25, no. 2 (1999): 250–60.

For visualization to be effective: Shelley E. Taylor et al., “Harnessing the Imagination: Mental Simulation, Self-Regulation, and Coping,” American Psychologist 53, no. 4 (1998): 429–39.

subliminal audio tapes: Philip M. Merikle, “Subliminal Auditory Messages: An Evaluation,” Psychology and Marketing 5, no. 4 (December 1, 1988): 355–72, https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.4220050406.

“Pride goeth before”: Proverbs 16:18 (King James Version).

being too sure of yourself: Jeffrey B. Vancouver, Kristen M. More, and Ryan J. Yoder, “Self-Efficacy and Resource Allocation: Support for a Non-monotonic, Discontinuous Model,” Journal of Applied Psychology 93, no. 1 (2008): 35–47, https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.35.

Vancouver’s Mastermind study: Jeffrey B. Vancouver et al., “Two Studies Examining the Negative Effect of Self-Efficacy on Performance,” Journal of Applied Psychology 87, no. 3 (2002): 506–16.

Oettingen’s research on how imagining success can lead to failure: Gabriele Oettingen, “Positive Fantasy and Motivation,” in The Psychology of Action: Linking Cognition and Motivation to Behavior, ed. Peter M. Gollwitzer and John A. Bargh (New York: Guilford, 1996), 236–59.

Raynor on overconfident businesses: Michael Raynor, The Strategy Paradox: Why Committing to Success Leads to Failure (and What to Do about It) (New York: Crown Business, 2007).

On the risks of exaggerating children’s talents: Polly Young-Eisendrath, The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance (New York: Little, Brown, 2008).

“I certainly don’t try”: Vance, Elon Musk.

CHAPTER 2: HOW MIGHT I BE WRONG?

“For the Lord himself”: 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 (King James Version).

“I was an engineer”: Michael Gryborski, “Tribute to Harold Camping on Family Radio Network Leaves Out Any Mention of His End Times Prophecies,” Christian Post, December 30, 2013, https://www.christianpost.com/news/tribute-to-harold-camping-on-family-radio-network-leaves-out-any-mention-of-his-end-times-prophecies-111693/.

Rationale behind Camping’s prophecy: Judgment Day, Family Radio, archived from the original on June 8, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20110608223300/http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/judgment/judgment.html.

“I don’t even think”: “Harold Camping Interview (Judgement Day),” YouTube video, posted by “BibleandScience2,” April 12, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlWlcU7UvpU.

Economic study of faith in the prophecy: Ned Augenblick et al., “The Economics of Faith: Using an Apocalyptic Prophecy to Elicit Religious Beliefs in the Field,” Journal of Public Economics 141 (2016): 38–49.

the way human minds search for evidence: Joshua Klayman and Young-won Ha, “Confirmation, Disconfirmation, and Information in Hypothesis Testing,” Psychological Review 94, no. 2 (1987): 211–28.

In one classic psychology study: Mark Snyder and William B. Swann Jr., “Hypothesis-Testing Processes in Social Interaction,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36, no. 11 (1978): 1202–12.

radio stations in the Christian Family Radio network: “Find the Nearest Stations,” Family Radio, accessed September 29, 2019, https://www.familyradio.org/stations/.

deaths worldwide due to motor vehicle accidents: “Road Traffic Injuries,” World Health Organization, December 7, 2018, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries.

Jeff Bezos’s net worth: Forbes, “Jeff Bezos,” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#2dbb1b171b23.

Year King Charles I was beheaded: British Library, “Execution of Charles I,” The British Library Board, http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item103698.html.

Deaths due to the 9/11 attacks: “September 11 Terror Attacks Fast Facts,” CNN, October 22, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/27/us/september-11-anniversary-fast-facts/index.html.

Amazon revenues: Amazon, Annual Report to Shareholders, 2018, https://ir.aboutamazon.com/static-files/0f9e36b1-7e1e-4b52-be17-145dc9d8b5ec.

Year of Oliver Cromwell’s death: “Cromwell’s Health and Death,” The Cromwell Association, http://www.olivercromwell.org/wordpress/?page_id=1757.

Deaths at Masada: Abraham Wasserstein, ed., Flavius Josephus: Selections from His Works (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 186–300.

Bridgewater Associates’ assets under management: Tom Huddleston Jr., “Billionaire Ray Dalio Says This Is How to Be ‘Truly Successful,’” CNBC, August 22 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/bridgewater-associates-ray-dalio-how-to-be-truly-successful.html.

Saints canonized by Pope John Paul II: Peter Stanford, “How Many Saints Are There?,” Guardian, May 13, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/may/13/pope-francis-how-many-saints.

Probability estimate: Instead of reporting the 5th and 95th percentiles from a subjective probability distribution, when asked for a 90 percent confidence interval, people are more likely to report upper and lower bounds on a range of what seem like plausible possibilities. These wind up, on average, being closer to the 25th and 75th percentiles. Karl Halvor Teigen and Magne Jørgensen, “When 90% Confidence Intervals Are 50% Certain: On the Credibility of Credible Intervals,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 19, no. 4 (2005): 455–75.

Fox and Tversky study of probability estimation: Craig R. Fox and Amos Tversky, “A Belief-Based Account of Decision under Uncertainty,” Management Science 44, no. 7 (1998): 879–95, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.44.7.879.

Stats on causes of death: “Health Statistics and Information Systems,” World Health Organization, 2018, http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/estimates/en/index1.html.

Study of social priming: John A. Bargh, Mark Chen, and Lara Burrows, “Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71, no. 2 (August 1996): 230–44, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230.

Failure to replicate social priming: Stéphane Doyen et al., “Behavioral Priming: It’s All in the Mind, but Whose Mind?,” PLoS ONE 7, no. 1 (January 18, 2012): e29081, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029081.

“If we are uncritical”: Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

“consider the opposite”: Charles G. Lord, Mark R. Lepper, and Elizabeth Preston, “Considering the Opposite: A Corrective Strategy for Social Judgment,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47, no. 6 (1984): 1231–43.

Cromwell quote: Oliver Cromwell, “Letters and Speeches—Letter 129,” The Cromwell Association, http://www.olivercromwell.org/wordpress/?page_id=2303#letters.

“The human understanding”: Francis Bacon, The New Organon, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000). First published 1620.

Zealots fled to the mountain fortress: Historians believe that it was actually a radical Zealot splinter group, the Sicarii (the “Dagger-Men”), who holed up in Masada. One of their leaders, Menahem ben Judah, claimed to be the Jewish messiah, the one who would deliver the Jews from oppression and usher in the “world to come.” A contest for leadership with Eleasar, another Zealot leader, left him dead before the group fled to Masada.

“The fundamental cause”: Bertrand Russell, “The Triumph of Stupidity,” in Mortals and Others: American Essays, 1931–1935, Volumes 1 and 2 (New York: Routledge, 2009).

“I’m wrong all the time”: Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong (New York: Ecco, 2010).

we believe the things we believe: Lee Ross and Andrew Ward wrote about the “naive realism” that leads us to believe that our own beliefs and opinions are the most rational, reasonable, and defensible. “Naive Realism in Everyday Life: Implications for Social Conflict and Misunderstanding,” in Values and Knowledge, ed. E. Reed, E. Turiel, and T. Brown (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 103–35.

overconfidence may be getting worse: Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York: Atria Books, 2010).

“They don’t set”: E. J. Mundell, “U.S. Teens Brimming With Self-Esteem,” MedicineNet.com, 2008, https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=94175.

when people force themselves: Don A. Moore, Ashli Carter, and Heather H. J. Yang, “Wide of the Mark: Evidence on the Underlying Causes of Overprecision in Judgment,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 131 (2015): 110–20.

If I just ask: Uriel Haran, Don A. Moore, and Carey K. Morewedge, “A Simple Remedy for Overprecision in Judgment,” Judgment and Decision Making 5, no. 7 (2010): 467–76.

Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles: “Leadership Principles,” AmazonJobs, 2018, https://www.amazon.jobs/principles.

“People who are right”: Taylor Soper, “‘Failure and Innovation Are Inseparable Twins’: Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Offers 7 Leadership Principles,” GeekWire, October 28, 2016, https://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-offers-6-leadership-principles-change-mind-lot-embrace-failure-ditch-powerpoints/.

Amazon’s leadership principles: “Leadership Principles.”

Job description for devil’s advocate: The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911), s.v. “Promotor Fidei,” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12454a.htm.

In the next 396 years: David Gibson, “Does Being Pope Give You an Inside Track to Sainthood?,” Religion News Service, April 23, 2014, https://religionnews.com/2014/04/23/analysis-does-being-pope-give-you-an-inside-track-to-sainthood/.

he canonized 813 people in a single day: “How Do You Become a Saint? What to Know about Canonization,” NBC News, April 25, 2014, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/new-saints/how-do-you-become-saint-what-know-about-canonization-n89846.

Research attests to the enormous value: James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Random House, 2005).

averaging opinions usually winds up being more accurate: Jack B. Soll and Richard P. Larrick, “Strategies for Revising Judgment: How (and How Well) People Use Others’ Opinions,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition 35, no. 3 (2009): 780–805.

“vocally self-critical”: “Leadership Principles,” AmazonJobs, 2018, https://www.amazon.jobs/principles.

deviance and protest: In 2015, the good people of Berkeley protested a plan to cut down eucalyptus trees in a large county park. Protesters feared if they held their protest away from the park, no one would notice. So they gathered on the UC Berkeley campus, stripped naked, and hugged the trees. Tracey Taylor, “In Berkeley, Protesters Get Naked to Try to Save Trees,” Berkeleyside (blog), July 18, 2015, https://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/07/18/in-berkeley-protesters-strip-naked-to-try-to-save-trees.

Richard Lyons, leadership and feedback: Personal communication with the author, August 10, 2010.

The former Minnesota senator: Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate (New York: Twelve, 2017).

courage that Franken again displayed: Jane Mayer, “The Case of Al Franken,” New Yorker, July 22, 2019.

CHAPTER 3: WHAT IS POSSIBLE?

Wright brothers stories and quotes: John Robert McMahon, The Wright Brothers: Fathers of Flight (Boston: Little, Brown, 1930).

It is the largest chemical producer in the world: “The World’s Largest Chemical Companies,” WorldAtlas, accessed September 15, 2019, https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-are-the-world-s-largest-chemical-producing-companies.html.

these point predictions: A “point prediction” is just a simple numerical estimate of an uncertain quantity. In the case of product sales forecasts, a point prediction is a single number intended to represent what really is a distribution of possible sales figures.

About 15 percent of participants estimated the risk at 50 percent: Baruch Fischhoff and Wändi Bruine de Bruin, “Fifty-Fifty = 50%?,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 12, no. 2 (1999): 149–63.

if their partner had HIV: Susan S. Witte et al., “Lack of Awareness of Partner STD Risk among Heterosexual Couples,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 42, no. 1 (2010): 49–55.

a quarter to half: Seth C. Kalichman and Dena Nachimson, “Self-Efficacy and Disclosure of HIV-Positive Serostatus to Sex Partners.,” Health Psychology 18, no. 3 (1999): 281; Michael D. Stein et al., “Sexual Ethics: Disclosure of HIV-Positive Status to Partners,” Archives of Internal Medicine 158, no. 3 (1998): 253–57.

the actual risk of infection: “HIV Risk Behaviors,” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS, 2018, https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/estimates/riskbehaviors.html; Pragna Patel et al., “Estimating Per-Act HIV Transmission Risk: A Systematic Review,” Aids 28, no. 10 (2014): 1509–19.

The actual lifetime risk is about 40 percent: “Lifetime Risk of Developing or Dying from Cancer,” American Cancer Society, accessed May 17, 2018, https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer.html.

16 percent: Fischhoff and De Bruin, “Fifty-Fifty = 50%?”

The subjective probability weighting function: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (March 1979): 263–92. In fairness, this figure does not look exactly like the one from their paper.

Fossil fuel companies exploit uncertainty: Union of Concerned Scientists, The Climate Accountability Scorecard (2018) (Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018), accessed July 16, 2019, https://www.ucsusa.org/climate-accountability-scorecard-2018.

Carnegie Mellon undergraduates: Don A. Moore and Deborah A. Small, “When It’s Rational for the Majority to Believe That They Are Better than Average,” in Rationality and Social Responsibility: Essays in Honor of Robyn M. Dawes, ed. Joachim I. Krueger (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008), 141–74.

Probability winning the Pennsylvania State Lottery when this study was conducted in 2003: “Powerball Game Information,” Pennsylvania Lottery, numbers games, February 2003, http://www.palottery.com/lottery/cwp/view.asp?a=3&q=457089&lotteryNav=%7C29736%7C.

“not that many videos”: Richard E. Ferdig, Society, Culture, and Technology: Ten Lessons for Educators, Developers, and Digital Scientists (Pittsburgh: ETC Press, 2018).

Google for $1.65 billion: Dealbook, “Google to Buy YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock,” New York Times, October 9, 2006, https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/google-to-buy-youtube-for-165-billion-in-stock/.

Grant Eizikowitz, “How to Get a Billion Views on YouTube,” Business Insider, 2018, http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-billion-views-viral-hit-youtube-2018-4.

a big team of collaborators: This list of collaborators includes Tom Wallsten, Joe Tidwell, Sam Swift, Terry Murray, Emile Servan-Schreiber, Jenn Logg, Welton Chang, Pavel Atanasov, Jason Dana, Liz Tenney, Jonathan Baron, Lyle Ungar, and others.

On the liability of experts’ ideologies: Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

training turned out to be successful: Barbara A. Mellers et al., “Psychological Strategies for Winning a Geopolitical Forecasting Tournament,” Psychological Science 25, no. 5 (2014): 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524255.

Laplace and his omniscient demon: Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (New York: Wiley, 1825).

The story of Gombaud and Pascal: Dan Ma, “One Gambling Problem That Launched Modern Probability Theory,” Introductory Statistics (blog), November 12, 2010, https://introductorystats.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/one-gambling-problem-that-launched-modern-probability-theory/.

Duke on the difference between poker amateurs and heavyweights: Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets (New York: Penguin, 2018).

interviews, as they are commonly used: Robert M. Guion and Scott Highhouse, Essentials of Personnel Assessment and Selection (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006).

from .38 to .53: Better methods include objective tests of candidates’ abilities and structured interviews. Interviews should be structured so that every candidate meets with the same interviewers in the same order and each interviewer asks each candidate precisely the same questions. The questions should provide hard-to-fake tests of work-relevant skills and abilities, and each response should be scored accordingly. Don A. Moore, “How to Improve the Accuracy and Reduce the Cost of Personnel Selection,” California Management Review 60, no. 1 (August 7, 2017): 8–17, https://doi.org/10.1177/0008125617725288.

Tim Anderson’s batting average as of September 15, 2019: “Major League Baseball Player Stats,” MLB.com 2019, http://mlb.mlb.com/stats/sortable.jsp.

an increase in batting average: Mikhail Averbukh, Scott Brown, and Brian Chase, “Baseball Pay and Performance” (unpublished manuscript, 2015), https://docplayer.net/9999190-Baseball-pay-and-performance.html.

Ryan Belz on The Price is Right: Erin Nyren, “‘The Price Is Right’ Contestant Breaks Plinko Record, Loses Mind,” Variety, 2017, https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/the-price-is-right-plinko-record-1202445944/.

Quincunx experiments: Don A. Moore, Ashli Carter, and Heather H. J. Yang, “Wide of the Mark: Evidence on the Underlying Causes of Overprecision in Judgment,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 131 (2015): 110–20.

CHAPTER 4: HOW BAD COULD IT BE?

Max’s insurance: This analysis assumes risk neutrality, which is usually the wisest risk attitude to hold. Matthew Rabin and Max Bazerman, “Fretting about Modest Risks Is a Mistake,” California Management Review 61, no. 3 (2019): 34–48. However, human intuition can generate strong risk preferences based on arbitrary or normatively irrelevant considerations. For instance, people are often risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (1979): 263–91. Thinking about collecting on Max’s insurance could feel like a loss relative to getting a real job or feel like a gain relative to being unemployed. Wisdom counsels that an attitude of risk neutrality is useful for avoiding these biases.

Sports fans, for example: Cade Massey, Joseph P. Simmons, and David A. Armor, “Hope over Experience: Desirability and the Persistence of Optimism,” Psychological Science 22, no. 2 (2011): 274–81; Joseph P. Simmons and Cade Massey, “Is Optimism Real?,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (November 2012): 630–34, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027405.

Partisan political pollsters: Brian Palmer, “Why Are There Democratic and Republican Pollsters?,” Slate, April 23, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/04/partisan_polling_why_are_there_democratic_and_republican_pollsters_.html.

Jerry Yang stories: Kate Pickert, “Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang,” Time, November 19, 2008, http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1860424,00.html.

“All of you know”: Pickert, “Yahoo! CEO.”

“Yahoo is positioned”: “Yahoo! Investor Presentation Details Financial Plan,” Business Wire, March 18, 2008, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20080318005764/en/Yahoo%21-Investor-Presentation-Details-Financial-Plan.

Optimism won in a landslide: David A. Armor, Cade Massey, and Aaron M. Sackett, “Prescribed Optimism: Is It Right to Be Wrong about the Future?,” Psychological Science 19 (2008): 329–31.

“Your belief that you have it”: Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 92.

Confident political candidates: Harold M. Zullow, Gabriele Oettingen, Christopher Peterson, and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Pessimistic Explanatory Style in the Historical Record: CAVing LBJ, Presidential Candidates, and East versus West Berlin,” American Psychologist 43, no. 9 (1988): 673.

Confidence predicts cancer mortality: Joanne V. Wood, Shelley E. Taylor, and Rosemary R. Lichtman, “Social Comparison in Adjustment to Breast Cancer,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, no. 5 (1985): 1169–83.

Confident entrepreneurs: Pia Arenius and Maria Minniti, “Perceptual Variables and Nascent Entrepreneurship,” Small Business Economics 24, no. 3 (April 1, 2005): 233–47, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-005-1984-x.

Confident athletes: Pamela S. Highlen and Bonnie B. Bennett, “Psychological Characteristics of Successful and Nonsuccessful Elite Wrestlers: An Exploratory Study,” Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology 1, no. 2 (1979): 123–37.

Competence can explain the correlation between confidence and success: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Confidence: Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, Insecurity, and Self-Doubt (London: Penguin, 2013).

“It’s not bragging”: “30 of Muhammad Ali’s Best Quotes,” USA Today, June 3, 2016, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/boxing/2016/06/03/muhammad-ali-best-quotes-boxing/85370850/.

impersonating a doctor: Frank Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can (New York: Broadway Books, 2000).

In a study I conducted: Elizabeth R. Tenney, Jennifer M. Logg, and Don A. Moore, “(Too) Optimistic about Optimism: The Belief That Optimism Improves Performance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108, no. 3 (2015): 377–99, https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000018.

Americans estimated their chances: Jennifer S. Lerner et al., “Effects of Fear and Anger on Perceived Risks of Terrorism: A National Field Experiment,” Psychological Science 14, no. 2 (2003): 144–50.

Fears of terrorism: Alvin Chang, “Americans’ Sustained Fear from 9/11 Has Turned into Something More Dangerous,” Vox, September 11, 2017, https://www.vox.com/2016/9/9/12852226/fear-witches-terrorists.

Iraq war, casualties and costs: Daniel Trotta, “Iraq War Costs U.S. More than $2 Trillion,” Reuters, March 14, 2013, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary/iraq-war-costs-u-s-more-than-2-trillion-study-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314.

60 percent of men: Laura Blue, “Study Shows More Than Half of All Americans Will Get Heart Disease,” Time, November 7, 2012.

“As soon as you think”: Susan Casey, The Wave (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 39.

“If you want to be a successful entrepreneur”: Sujan Patel, “7 Things Confident Entrepreneurs Never Do,” Entrepreneur, November 10, 2014, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238960.

advice encouraging would-be entrepreneurs to bolster their confidence: Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman, Straight Talk for Startups (New York: HarperCollins, 2018).

one-third of them: Arnold C. Cooper, Carolyn Y. Woo, and William C. Dunkelberg, “Entrepreneurs’ Perceived Chances for Success,” Journal of Business Venturing 3, no. 2 (1988): 97–109.

“Successful entrepreneurship involves”: James Surowiecki, “Do the Hustle,” New Yorker, January 5, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/13/do-the-hustle.

nearly 80 percent: Jose Mata and Pedro Portugal, “Life Duration of New Firms,” Journal of Industrial Economics 42, no. 3 (1994): 227–46.

the average entrepreneurial venture: Tobias J. Moskowitz and Annette Vissing-Jørgensen, “The Returns to Entrepreneurial Investment: A Private Equity Premium Puzzle?,” American Economic Review 92, no. 4 (2002): 745–78.

the BATNA: R. Fisher, W. Ury, and B. Patton, Getting to Yes (Boston: Houghton Miffilin, 1981).

Chinese pollution study: Valerie J. Karplus, Shuang Zhang, and Douglas Almond, “Quantifying Coal Power Plant Responses to Tighter SO₂ Emissions Standards in China,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 27 (June 18, 2018): 7004–9, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1800605115.

Samuelson’s bet: Paul A. Samuelson, “Risk and Uncertainty: A Fallacy of Large Numbers,” Scientia 98 (1963): 108–13.

The logic behind the sentiment: Kahneman and Tversky, “Prospect Theory.”

6 percent of all people: Jamie Ducharme, “Why Some People Have Aviophobia, or Fear of Flying,” Time, July 6, 2018, http://time.com/5330978/fear-of-flying-aviophobia/.

score probability estimates: The solution here is to employ a quadratic scoring rule like the Brier score. Published in 1950 in a meteorology journal, the Brier score was devised as a tool for assessing weather forecasters’ estimates on the probability of rain. Glenn W. Brier, “Verification of Forecasts Expressed in Terms of Probability,” Monthly Weather Review 78, no. 1 (1950): 1–3. They provide a probability, but we observe only whether it rained or not. The way to score them to reward accuracy is to square the distance between their prediction and the truth. So, if p is the probability the forecaster assigns to rain, and it rains, then the score is (1−p)². Lower scores indicate better performance: If the forecaster predicts 100 percent chance of rain and it rains, the score is 0 (since p=1 and (1−1)²=0). Forecasting a 0 percent chance of rain when it rains yields a score of 1 (since p=0 and (1−0)²=1). Traditionally, the Brier score sums scores for all possible outcomes; in this case, that means adding in the score for the prediction on it not raining, in this case (0−(1−p))². Computed this way, the Brier score is an error score: the worst score is a 2 and the best is a 0. Those who find error scores confusing can either think of this like the game of golf (in which higher scores are bad) or simply reverse score the Brier score by subtracting it from 2.

Apple’s bet on the Newton: Harry McCracken, “Newton, Reconsidered,” Time, June 1, 2012, http://techland.time.com/2012/06/01/newton-reconsidered/.

Apple had sold something like 1.4 billion: “Global Apple iPhone Sales from 3rd Quarter 2007 to 2nd Quarter 2018 (in Million Units),” Statista.com, 2018, https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/.

Profits per iPhone: “Apple Earned $151 Profit Per iPhone in Q3 2017: Counterpoint,” Press Trust of India, December 28, 2017, https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/apple-earned-151-profit-per-iphone-in-q3-2017-counterpoint-1793083.

CHAPTER 5: CLARIFY

Koby’s given name: “Koby,” IMDb, accessed April 19, 2019, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm9697725/.

“longest, loudest, and oddest”: Shawn Patrick, “Colorado ‘American Idol’ Contestant Makes Judges Cringe,” iHeartRadio, March 12, 2018, https://www.iheart.com/content/2018-03-12-colorado-american-idol-contestant-makes-judges-cringe/.

“I thought I sang”: “Koby Auditions for American Idol with Original Song You Have to Hear—American Idol 2018 on ABC,” YouTube video, posted by “American Idol,” March 11, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmj6sNmv-yQ.

A large literature: Mark D. Alicke and Olesya Govorun, “The Better-than-Average Effect,” in The Self in Social Judgment, ed. Mark D. Alicke, David Dunning, and Joachim Krueger (New York: Psychology Press, 2005), 85–106.

The most frequently cited: Ola Svenson, “Are We Less Risky and More Skillful than Our Fellow Drivers?,” Acta Psychologica 47 (1981): 143–51.

pay people for being accurate: That’s not because rewarding accuracy eliminates the motive to impress others, but increasing the incentives for accuracy enhances its relative importance. For instance, if I expected to get $1 million prize for an accurately estimating my performance, I would try hard to be accurate. I will still care about impressing others or feeling good about myself, but these motives would shrink in importance relative to the motivation to earn the reward for being accurate.

monetary incentives for accuracy: Elanor F. Williams and Thomas Gilovich, “Do People Really Believe They Are Above Average?,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44, no. 4 (2008): 1121–28; Erik Hoelzl and Aldo Rustichini, “Overconfident: Do You Put Your Money on It?,” Economic Journal 115, no. 503 (2005): 305–18.

clarifying the standards: Jennifer M. Logg, Uriel Haran, and Don A. Moore, “Is Overconfidence a Motivated Bias? Experimental Evidence,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 147, no. 10 (2018): 1445–65, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000500.

overplacement reduced substantially: Michael M. Roy and Michael J. Liersch, “I Am a Better Driver than You Think: Examining Self-Enhancement for Driving Ability,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 43, no. 8 (2013): 1648–59.

inaccurate claims of superiority disappear: Jean-Pierre Benoît, Juan Dubra, and Don A. Moore, “Does the Better-than-Average Effect Show That People Are Overconfident? Two Experiments,” Journal of the European Economic Association 13, no. 2 (2015): 293–329.

Clarifying what it means: Logg, Haran, and Moore, “Is Overconfidence a Motivated Bias?”

Online resources offer advice: Steve Piazzale, “How to Demonstrate You Are Results-Oriented to Get Hired,” techfetch, June 16, 2013, http://blog.techfetch.com/demonstrate-results-oriented-hired/.

how to make their organization’s culture: Lou Adler, “How to Create a Results-Oriented Culture,” Inc., November 25, 2014, https://www.inc.com/lou-adler/how-to-create-a-results-oriented-culture.html.

Some see a choice: Matthew Lieberman, “Should Leaders Focus on Results, or on People?,” Harvard Business Review, December 27, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/12/should-leaders-focus-on-results-or-on-people.

luck plays a role: Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

more difficult component to quantify: I enthusiastically recommend a few books I have found useful for helping me think about uncertainties, probabilities, and probability distributions: Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Crown, 2015), Annie Duke; Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts (New York: Portfolio, 2018); and Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t (New York: Penguin Press, 2012).

Lake Wobegon: Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days (New York: Viking, 1985).

NCLB relied on standardized testing: James Traub, “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND; Does It Work,” New York Times, November 10, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/education/no-child-left-behind-does-it-work.html.

“None of these companies”: John Jacob Cannell, “Nationally Normed Elementary Achievement Testing in America’s Public Schools: How All 50 States Are above the National Average,” Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 7, no. 2 (1988): 5–9.

“Publishers are more interested”: John Jacob Cannell, “The Lake Wobegon Effect Revisited,” Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice 7, no. 4 (1988): 12–15.

Ditto’s study: Peter H. Ditto et al., “Spontaneous Skepticism: The Interplay of Motivation and Expectation in Responses to Favorable and Unfavorable Medical Diagnoses,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29, no. 9 (2003): 1120–32.

people naturally apply different standards: Ziva Kunda “The Case for Motivated Reasoning.” Psychological Bulletin 108, no. 3 (1990): 480–98.

Trump found the PDB too dense and boring: Ben Brimelow, “Trump Reportedly Isn’t Reading the Fabled President’s Daily Briefing—Breaking a Tradition Followed by the Last 7 Presidents,” Business Insider, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-doesnt-read-daily-briefings-oral-listens-2018-2.

Trump asked for a daily briefing of positive press reports: Leah DePiero, “Trump Received Folder of Positive News Twice a Day under Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus: Report,” Washington Examiner, 2017, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-received-folder-of-positive-news-twice-a-day-under-sean-spicer-and-reince-priebus-report.

Celebrity CEOs: Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate, “Superstar CEOs,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 124, no. 4 (2009): 1593–1638.

Many Tesla shareholders shuddered: “Elon Musk Smokes Weed with Joe Rogan,” YouTube video, posted by “Jay Nail,” September 7, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19WWHzQsHrI.

he might have been on LSD: Chris Woodyard, “Elon Musk’s Tweet on Taking Tesla Private Now Dogged by Drugs Claim from Rapper Azealia Banks,” USA Today, August 22, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/08/22/elon-musks-tweet-taking-tesla-private-now-dogged-drugs-claims-rapper-azealia-banks/1057815002/.

$20 million fine: Matthew Goldstein, “Elon Musk Steps Down as Chairman in Deal with S.E.C. over Tweet about Tesla,” New York Times, November 6, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/business/tesla-musk-sec-settlement.html.

On average, corporate acquisitions: Gregor Andrade, Mark Mitchell, and Erik Stafford, “New Evidence and Perspectives on Mergers,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 15, no. 2 (2001): 103–20.

“the poster child”: Lizzy Gurdus, “Cramer: GE Has Become ‘the Poster Child for Bad Acquisitions,’” CNBC, November 13, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/13/cramer-ge-has-become-the-poster-child-for-bad-acquisitions.html.

“I didn’t know a diddly”: “Learn as You Churn,” Economist, April 6, 2006, https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2006/04/06/learn-as-you-churn.

Joe Cassano story: Michael Lewis, “The Man Who Crashed the World,” Vanity Fair, August 2009.

AIG-FP became liable for something like $25 billion in losses: Gregory Gethard, “Falling Giant: A Case Study of AIG,” Investopedia, accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/american-investment-group-aig-bailout.asp.

The story of Enron’s demise: Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (New York: Portfolio, 2003).

McLean’s insightful investigation: Bethany McLean, “Is Enron Overpriced? It’s in a Bunch of Complex Businesses. Its Financial Statements Are Nearly Impenetrable. So Why Is Enron Trading at Such a Huge Multiple?,” Fortune, March 5, 2001, http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/03/05/297833/index.htm.

Ray Dalio attempted to make his company: Ray Dalio, Principles: Life and Work (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).

“When you’re critized”: Prachi Bhardwaj, “The Jeff Bezos Approach to Handling Criticism Is a Good Rule Everyone Should Follow,” Business Insider, April 30, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/how-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-handles-criticism-2018-4.

confronting our imperfections: Dolly Chugh, The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias (New York: HarperBusiness, 2018).

grit—the tendency to persist: Angela L. Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (New York: Scribner, 2016).

costs for escalating our commitment: Barry M. Staw, “Knee-Deep in the Big Muddy: A Study of Escalating Commitment to a Chosen Course of Action,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 16, no. 1 (1976): 27–44; Jeffrey Z. Rubin et al., “Factors Affecting Entry into Psychological Traps,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 24, no. 3 (1980): 405–26.

reluctant to sell losing stocks: Terrance Odean, “Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?,” Journal of Finance 53, no. 5 (1998): 1775–98.

People have trouble ending abusive relationships: Michael J. Strube, “The Decision to Leave an Abusive Relationship: Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Issues,” Psychological Bulletin 104, no. 2 (1988): 236–50.

“auction fever”: Gillian Ku, Deepak Malhotra, and J. Keith Murnighan, “Towards a Competitive Arousal Model of Decision Making: A Study of Auction Fever in Live and Internet Auctions,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 96, no. 2 (2005): 89–103, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2004.10.001.

how companies make decisions: Paul Nutt, Why Decisions Fail: Avoiding the Blunders and Traps That Lead to Debacles (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2002).

Shane Frederick highlights: Shane Frederick et al., “Opportunity Cost Neglect,” Journal of Consumer Research 36, no. 4 (2009): 553–61.

It is easy to lie: Andrew Gelman and Eric Loken, “The Statistical Crisis in Science,” American Scientist 102, no. 6 (November–December 2014): 460, https://doi.org/10.1511/2014.111.460.

CHAPTER 6: FORECAST

Lion Air flight 610: “Timeline: Boeing 737 Max Jetliner Crashes and Aftermath,” Chicago Tribune, August 7, 2019, https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-viz-boeing-737-max-crash-timeline-04022019-story.html.

over one hundred thousand: “How Many Airplanes Fly Each Day in the World?,” Quora, question answered by “Snehal Kumar,” accessed May 8, 2019, https://www.quora.com/How-many-airplanes-fly-each-day-in-the-world.

about four hundred people: “Accidents Statistics : Fatalities by Year,” airfleets.net, accessed May 7, 2019, https://www.airfleets.net/crash/fatalities_year.htm.

less than 0.05 deaths: Laurie F. Beck, Ann M. Dellinger, and Mary E. O’Neil. “Motor Vehicle Crash Injury Rates by Mode of Travel, United States: Using Exposure-Based Methods to Quantify Differences.” American Journal of Epidemiology 166, no. 2 (July 15, 2007): 212–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwm064.

The ASRS: “Program Briefing,” Aviation Safety Reporting System, https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/summary.html.

Google’s use of postmortems: John Lunney, Sue Lueder, and Gary O’Connor, “Postmortem Culture: How You Can Learn from Failure,” re:Work (blog), April 24, 2018, https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/postmortem-culture-how-you-can-learn-from-failure/.

postmortem form: “Google’s Postmortem Exercise,” http://perfectlyconfident.com/postmortem/.

Google spent over $585 million: Bruce Upbin, “Google+ Cost $585 Million to Build (Or What Rupert Paid for MySpace),” Forbes, June 30, 2011, https://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2011/06/30/google-cost-585-million-to-build-or-what-rupert-paid-for-myspace/.

Google Glass: “The Google Glass Epic Fail: What Happened?,” BGR (blog), June 27, 2015, https://bgr.com/2015/06/27/google-glass-epic-fail-what-happened/.

some companies help their employees accept failure: John Danner and Mark Coopersmith, The Other “F” Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2015).

“Students? A new search engine?”: “The Anti-Portfolio,” website of Bessemer Venture Partners, accessed June 2, 2019, https://www.bvp.com/anti-portfolio/.

Muilenburg boast: Chris Isidore, “Boeing Boasted about Streamlined Approval for the 737 Max. Now It’s Cleaning up the Mess,” CNN, April 4, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/03/business/boeing-737-max-crisis/index.html.

Boeing’s safety assessment included errors: Dominic Gates, “Flawed Analysis, Failed Oversight: How Boeing, FAA Certified the Suspect 737 MAX Flight Control System,” Seattle Times, March 17, 2019, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/.

Orders for new 737 Max: Jackie Wattles, “Boeing CEO Says New Software Update Has Been Tested by Most 737 Max Customers,” CNN, April 11, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/11/business/boeing-software-dennis-muilenburg/index.html.

ultimate cost to Boeing’s bottom line: David Gelles, “Boeing 737 Max Troubles Add Up: $8 Billion and Counting,” New York Times, July 18, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/business/boeing-737-charge.html.

“premortem analysis”: Gary Klein’s work on premortems built on the ideas of Mitchell, Russo, and Pennington, who showed that what they called “prospective hindsight” can help people identify possible reasons for future successes and failures. Deborah J. Mitchell, J. Edward Russo, and Nancy Pennington, “Back to the Future: Temporal Perspective in the Explanation of Events,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 2, no. 1 (1989): 25–38, https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.3960020103.

Klein’s premortem instructions: Gary Klein, “Performing a Project Premortem,” Harvard Business Review 85, no. 9 (2007): 18–19.

“The time to take counsel”: “George S. Patton,” Great Thoughts Treasury, accessed June 21, 2019, http://www.greatthoughtstreasury.com/author/george-s-patton-fully-george-smith-patton-jr.

Kahneman’s premortem instructions: Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 264.

“If we’re going to die”: Jack McCaffery, “McCaffery: Sixers Finding That NBA Has Plenty of ‘Danger,’” Delaware County Daily Times, December 5, 2017, https://www.delcotimes.com/sports/mccaffery-sixers-finding-that-nba-has-plenty-of-danger/article_a5ec2d61-3e73-5f53-ae4b-3d6173084d3a.html.

Julie Norem calls it defensive pessimism: Julie K. Norem, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking (Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2001).

the hardest workers are motivated by the potential guilt they envision: Francis J. Flynn and Rebecca L. Schaumberg, “When Feeling Bad Leads to Feeling Good: Guilt-Proneness and Affective Organizational Commitment,” Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 1 (2012): 124.

“Invert, always invert”: Michael Simmons, “What Self-Made Billionaire Charlie Munger Does Differently,” Inc., November 2015, https://www.inc.com/michael-simmons/what-self-made-billionaire-charlie-munger-does-differently.html.

on disaster preparedness: Ian I. Mitroff and Gus Anagnos, Managing Crises Before They Happen: What Every Executive and Manager Needs to Know about Crisis Management (New York: AMACOM, 2000).

Perrow on normal accidents: Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

Facebook’s storm drills: Robert Hof, “Interview: How Facebook’s Project Storm Heads Off Data Center Disasters,” Forbes, September 11, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2016/09/11/interview-how-facebooks-project-storm-heads-off-data-center-disasters/.

“This was not only”: Marion Lloyd, “Soviets Close to Using A-Bomb in 1962 Crisis, Forum Is Told,” Boston Globe, October 13, 2002, available at http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/sovietsbomb.htm.

Arkhipov story: Rachel Souerbry, “This Man Singlehandedly Prevented World War III—And You’ve Probably Never Heard of Him,” All That’s Interesting, June 7, 2018, https://allthatsinteresting.com/vasili-arkhipov.

“didn’t like talking about it”: Secrets of the Dead, season 12, episode 6, “The Man Who Saved the World,” directed by Eamon Fitzpatrick, aired October 23, 2012, on PBS, https://www.pbs.org/video/secrets-deadman-who-saved-world-full-episode/.

Backcasting: John Bridger Robinson, “Energy Backcasting: A Proposed Method of Policy Analysis,” Energy Policy 10, no. 4 (1982): 337–44.

research by Armor, Massey, and Sackett: David A. Armor, Cade Massey, and Aaron M. Sackett, “Prescribed Optimism: Is It Right to Be Wrong about the Future?,” Psychological Science 19 (2008): 329–31.

Unpleasant Truths vs. Comforting Lies: “Cartoon—Comforting Lies vs. Unpleasant Truths,” Henry Kotula (blog), February 17, 2017, https://henrykotula.com/2017/02/17/cartoon-comforting-lies-vs-unpleasant-truths/.

The Secret has sold: https://www.thesecret.tv/about/rhonda-byrnes-biography/.

Delusional optimism just makes reality: A. Peter McGraw, Barbara A. Mellers, and Ilana Ritov, “The Affective Costs of Overconfidence,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 17, no. 4 (2004): 281–95.

people experience the pain of losses: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (March 1979): 263–92.

excessively optimistic beliefs: Botond Kőszegi and Matthew Rabin, “Reference-Dependent Consumption Plans,” American Economic Review 99, no. 3 (2009): 909–36.

students are more optimistic at the beginning of the semester: James A. Shepperd, Judith A. Ouellette, and Julie K. Fernandez, “Abandoning Unrealistic Optimism: Performance Estimates and the Temporal Proximity of Self-Relevant Feedback,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70, no. 4 (1996): 844–55.

As the moment of truth: Scott Richardson, Siew Hong Teoh, and Peter D. Wysocki, “The Walk-Down to Beatable Analyst Forecasts: The Role of Equity Issuance and Insider Trading Incentives,” Contemporary Accounting Research 21, no. 4 (2004): 885–924.

Savoring anticipated pleasures: George Loewenstein and Drazen Prelec, “Negative Time Preference,” American Economic Review 81, no. 2 (1991): 347–52.

fooling yourself: William von Hippel and Robert L. Trivers, “The Evolution and Psychology of Self-Deception,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (2011): 1–56.

“I demand that the world”: Helen Keller, Optimism: An Essay (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1903).

Definition of optimism: Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Optimism,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/optimism.

Nate Silver was derided: Ryan Grim, “Nate Silver Is Unskewing Polls—All of Them. Here’s How,” Huffington Post, November 5, 2016, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nate-silver-election-forecast_n_581e1c33e4b0d9ce6fbc6f7f.

Clinton lost: Matt Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro, “Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment,” New York Times, November 9, 2016, accessed September 22, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-president.html.

When forecasts of the economy: Paul Beaudry and Tim Willems, “On the Macroeconomic Consequences of Over-Optimism,” SSRN, 2018, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3194836; David Leonhardt, “The Experts Keep Getting the Economy Wrong,” New York Times, March 15, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/opinion/us-economy-stagnation-growth.html.

terminally ill cancer patients: Haider Javed Warraich, “The Cancer of Optimism,” New York Times, May 4, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/opinion/sunday/the-cancer-of-optimism.html.

hope for a cure despite its minuscule probability: David Schultz, “Many Terminal Cancer Patients Mistakenly Believe a Cure Is Possible,” National Public Radio, October 25, 2012.

half of all health-care expenses: Daniel Callahan, “Costs of Medical Care at the End of Life,” New York Times, January 10, 2013.

Deciding to delude yourself about the future: Richard W. Robins and Jennifer S. Beer, “Positive Illusions about the Self: Short-Term Benefits and Long-Term Costs,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, no. 2 (2001): 340–52.

insanity quote: There is controversy about whether credit for this quote really belongs to Einstein. But someone did say it. See Christina Sterbenz, “12 Famous Quotes That Always Get Misattributed,” Business Insider, October 7, 2013, https://www.businessinsider.com/misattributed-quotes-2013-10.

Original plan for California high-speed rail: “Building a High-Speed Train Network,” California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2000, http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/BPlan_2000_FactSheet.pdf.

1 percent of passenger-miles: “U.S. Passenger Miles,” Bureau of Transportation Statistics, accessed September 29, 2019, https://www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-miles.

China alone: “High Speed Trains Worldwide: A Ranking,” Omio, June 2019, accessed September 29, 2019, https://www.omio.com/trains/high-speed.

High-Speed Rail Authority aspired: Ralph Vartabedian, “On California High-Speed Rail Project, Newsom to Scale Back Consultants but Push Ahead,” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-project-update-20190501-story.html.

Boston’s “Big Dig”: Sean P. Murphy, “Big Dig’s Red Ink Engulfs State,” Boston Globe, July 17, 2008, http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/17/big_digs_red_ink_engulfs_state/.

the planning fallacy: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Intuitive Prediction: Biases and Corrective Procedures,” in TIMS Studies in Management Science, vol. 12 (Mclean, VA: Decisions and Designs, 1977), 313–27; Roger Buehler, Dale W. Griffin, and Michael Ross, “Exploring the ‘Planning Fallacy’: Why People Underestimate Their Task Completion Times,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67, no. 3 (1994): 366–81.

If you don’t want to be late, enumerate: Justin Kruger and Matt Evans, “If You Don’t Want to Be Late, Enumerate: Unpacking Reduces the Planning Fallacy,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40, no. 5 (2004): 586–98.

People are less likely: Christopher D. B. Burt and Simon Kemp, “Construction of Activity Duration and Time Management Potential,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 8, no. 2 (1994): 155–68.

auctions like this: Technically, these are “reverse auctions.” In regular auctions, buyers bid against each other, raising the price. In reverse auctions, sellers compete by lowering their bids.

time and materials pricing: Naturally, more complex compromises are possible. For instance, the buyer could pay a low fixed cost but agree to pay some portion of time and materials costs past a certain point. Again, such an arrangement works best when the buyer can trust the seller’s cost accounting.

CHAPTER 7: CONSIDER OTHER PERSPECTIVES

Quotes from Ray Dalio and stories about Bridgewater: Ray Dalio, Principles: Life and Work (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).

Bridgewater assets under management: Tom Huddleston Jr., “Billionaire Ray Dalio Says This Is How to Be ‘Truly Successful,’” CNBC, August 22 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/bridgewater-associates-ray-dalio-how-to-be-truly-successful.html.

poker players asking her, “Wanna bet?”: Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets (New York: Penguin, 2018).

losing sixty pounds: The one who ate one hundred burgers is not the same person who took the weight-loss bet, in case you were wondering. Michael Kaplan, “Pro Poker Players Bet Away from the Table, Too,” New York Times, June 29, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/fashion/29bets.html.

“This led to some good-natured ribbing”: Duke, Thinking in Bets.

Warren Buffett’s bet with Protégé Partners: Carol Loomis, “Buffett’s Bet: Hedge Funds Can’t Beat the Market,” Fortune, June 9, 2008, http://archive.fortune.com/2008/06/04/news/newsmakers/buffett_bet.fortune/index.htm.

Protégé’s hedge funds could manage was a 2.2 percent annual gain: Emily Price, “Warren Buffett Won a $1 Million Bet, but the Real Winner Is Charity,” Fortune, December 30, 2017, http://fortune.com/2017/12/30/warren-buffett-million-dollar-bet/.

“naive realism”: Lee Ross and Andrew Ward, “Naive Realism in Everyday Life: Implications for Social Conflict and Misunderstanding,” in Values and Knowledge, ed. E. Reed, E. Turiel, and T. Brown (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 103–35; K. Dobson and R. L. Franche, “A Conceptual and Empirical Review of the Depressive Realism Hypothesis,” Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science 21 (1989): 419–33.

“It is only by the collision”: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1859).

Outcome of Hennigan’s Des Moines bet: Kaplan, “Pro Poker Players.”

Day traders lose money: Brad M. Barber et al., “Learning, Fast or Slow,” Review of Asset Pricing Studies (forthcoming), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2535636.

Rational people will agree: Robert J. Aumann, “Agreeing to Disagree,” Annals of Statistics 4 (1976): 1236–39.

Overconfidence as an explanation for market trading: Kent D. Daniel, David A. Hirshleifer, and Avanidhar Sabrahmanyam, “Overconfidence, Arbitrage, and Equilibrium Asset Pricing,” Journal of Finance 56, no. 3 (2001): 921–65.

the more investors trade: Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean, “Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors,” Journal of Finance 55, no. 2 (2000): 773–806.

Buffett quote: Warren Buffett, “Chairman’s Letter—1987,” 1987, available at http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1987.html.

an annualized 23 percent loss: Brad M. Barber, Yi-Tsung Lee, Yu-Jane Liu, Terrance Odean, and Ke Zhang, “Learning Fast or Slow?,” Review of Asset Pricing Studies (forthcoming).

put your money in index funds: Burton Gordon Malkiel, A Random Walk down Wall Street (New York: Norton, 1973).

Galton’s article: Francis Galton, “Vox Populi (The Wisdom of Crowds),” Nature 75, no. 7 (1907): 450–51.

Sir Francis Galton: Yes, this is the same Francis Galton who made an appearance in chapter 3. There, we credited him for the Galton Board, also known as the Quincunx, so useful for illustrating the binomial distribution. He was also, as it happens, Charles Darwin’s cousin. He got around.

These lessons have been reprised: James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Random House, 2005).

The average poll includes: “FAQs,” National Council on Public Polls, accessed June 5, 2019, http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/6.

A poll of that size: Andrew Gelman, “How Can a Poll of Only 1,004 Americans Represent 260 Million People with Only a 3 Percent Margin of Error?,” Scientific American, March 15, 2004, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll-of-only-100/.

the crowd within: Stefan M Herzog and Ralph Hertwig, “The Wisdom of Many in One Mind,” Psychological Science 108 (2009): 9020–25.

“Song of Myself”: Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” accessed September 22, 2019, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version.

General Motors went from: Alfred P. Sloan, My Years With General Motors (New York: Anchor Books, 1963).

“Gentlemen, I take it”: “Alfred Sloan,” Economist, January 3, 2009, https://www.economist.com/news/2009/01/30/alfred-sloan.

US president Abraham Lincoln: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).

When everyone shares the same bias: Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds.

“group polarization”: Helmut Lamm and David G. Myers, “Group Induced Polarization of Attitudes and Behavior,” in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. Leonard Berkowitz, vol. 2 (San Diego: Academic Press, 1978), 147–95.

Study of group polarization in residents of Boulder and Colorado Springs: David Schkade, Cass R. Sunstein, and Reid Hastie, “What Happened on Deliberation Day?,” California Law Review 95 (2007): 915–40.

Studies of grant funding committees: Warren Thorngate, Robyn M. Dawes, and Margaret Foddy, Judging Merit (New York: Psychology Press, 2008).

the evidence supporting these claims is weak and inconsistent: Don A. Moore and Amelia S. Dev, “Individual Differences in Overconfidence,” in Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, ed. Virgil Zeigler-Hill and Todd Shackelford (New York: Springer, 2017).

no systematic evidence: And even some anecdotal evidence suggesting the opposite. In the days before our phones’ turn-by-turn directions saved us, it was always my wife who refused to stop to ask for directions. We only sometimes got lost. Getting directions from the phone has done wonders for our marriage.

restricted to particular stereotypically male domains: Pedro Bordalo et al., “Beliefs about Gender,” American Economic Review 109, no. 3 (March 2019): 739–73, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20170007.

Failure to replicate male overplacement: Don A. Moore and Samuel A. Swift, “The Three Faces of Overconfidence in Organizations,” in Social Psychology of Organizations, ed. Rolf Van Dick and J. Keith Murnighan (Oxford, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2010), 147–84.

women show more overplacement: Bordalo et al., “Beliefs about Gender.”

Some books that discuss gender differences: Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013).

women might make better investment decisions: Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean, “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116, no. 1 (2001): 261–93.

If being too sure: Samantha C. Paustian-Underdahl, Lisa Slattery Walker, and David J. Woehr, “Gender and Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness: A Meta-Analysis of Contextual Moderators,” Journal of Applied Psychology 99, no. 6 (2014): 1129; Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, Leigh Plunkett Tost, and Katherine W. Phillips, “Agentic Women and Communal Leadership: How Role Prescriptions Confer Advantage to Top Women Leaders,” Journal of Applied Psychology 95, no. 2 (2010): 221–35.

“believe, irrationally, that they”: Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman, Straight Talk for Startups: 100 Insider Rules for Beating the Odds—From Mastering the Fundamentals to Selecting Investors, Fundraising, Managing Boards, and Achieving Liquidity (New York: HarperCollins, 2018).

“discover something new”: “‘The Dropout’ Part 1: Where Ex-Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Got Her Start,” YouTube video, posted by “ABC News,” March 16, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG_F118ruOM.

The story of Holmes and Theranos: John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018).

“I want to create”: Roger Parloff, “This CEO Is Out for Blood,” Fortune, June 12, 2014, http://fortune.com/2014/06/12/theranos-blood-holmes/.

“that our little girls”: Carreyrou, Bad Blood.

“God wants his people”: Art Harris and Michael Isikoff, “The Good Life at PTL: A Litany of Excess,” Washington Post, May 22, 1987, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/05/22/the-good-life-at-ptl-a-litany-of-excess/b694ac2f-516c-42ad-ba52-9998763670b0/.

The Bakkers justified: J. Bakker and K. Abraham, I Was Wrong (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996).

Most people think of themselves: Scott T. Allison, David M. Messick, and George R. Goethals, “On Being Better but Not Smarter than Others: The Muhammad Ali Effect,” Social Cognition 7, no. 3 (1989): 275–95.

We are most prone: Jonathon D. Brown, “Understanding the Better than Average Effect: Motives (Still) Matter,” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 38, no. 2 (December 28, 2011): 209–19, https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211432763.

many people feel that they suffer: Joe Langford and Pauline Rose Clance, “The Imposter Phenomenon: Recent Research Findings Regarding Dynamics, Personality and Family Patterns and Their Implications for Treatment,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training 30, no. 3 (1993): 495.

ads featured workers clad in their “bunny suits”: “Intel Pentium MMX (1997) TV Ad—‘Play That Funky Music’ (TV Spot 1),” YouTube video, posted by “CheesyTV,” March 7, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zyjSBSvqPc.

Gordon Moore: Gordon Moore (no relation) gets the credit for Moore’s law, which describes the rate of increase in the processing speed of computers.

Grove and Moore story: Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company (New York: Crown, 2010).

Kahneman’s committee: Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

“If there is any one secret”: “Henry Ford 150,” website of MotorCities National Heritage Area and the Henry Ford Heritage Association, accessed June 7, 2019, https://www.henryford150.com/.

CHAPTER 8: FIND THE MIDDLE WAY

Honnold is different: Honnold does poop, just like other climbers. One can only assume he held it for the hours he was climbing El Cap. Even at the scary parts. What makes Honnold different from most climbers is that they rightly regard free climbing as somewhere between reckless and insane.

“The best strategy”: Matt Ray, “Free Solo: Alex Honnold on What It Takes to Free Climb,” RedBull.com, May 8, 2019, https://www.redbull.com/us-en/alex-honnold-interview-free-solo.

absence of underprecision: Don A. Moore, Elizabeth R. Tenney, and Uriel Haran, “Overprecision in Judgment,” in Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, ed. George Wu and Gideon Keren (New York: Wiley, 2015), 182–212.

“I have not failed”: J. L. Elkhorne, “Edison—The Fabulous Drone,” 73 Amateur Radio, March 1967.

Edison’s failed inventions: Erica R. Hendry, “7 Epic Fails Brought to You by the Genius Mind of Thomas Edison,” Smithsonian.com, November 30, 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/7-epic-fails-brought-to-you-by-the-genius-mind-of-thomas-edison-180947786/.

“I think there’s a seventy percent”: Joshua Quittner, “Person of the Year 1999: Jeff Bezos,” Time Asia, December 1999, http://edition.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/magazine/99/1227/cover3.html.

“I predict that one day”: Dominic Rushe, “Jeff Bezos Tells Employees ‘One Day Amazon Will Fail,’” Guardian, November 16, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/16/jeff-bezos-amazon-will-fail-recording-report.

confidence is the fundamental basis: Francisco Dao, “Without Confidence, There Is No Leadership,” Inc., March 1, 2008, https://www.inc.com/resources/leadership/articles/20080301/dao.html.

confidence increases people’s influence: Cameron Anderson et al., “A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103, no. 4 (2012): 718–35, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029395.

“Top con artists”: Frank Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can (New York: Broadway Books, 2000).

specific, factual claims: Elizabeth R. Tenney et al., “Is Overconfidence a Social Liability? The Effect of Verbal versus Nonverbal Expressions of Confidence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 116, no. 3 (2019): 396–415.

it can be hard to discredit them: Jessica A. Kennedy, Cameron Anderson, and Don A. Moore, “When Overconfidence Is Revealed to Others: Testing the Status-Enhancement Theory of Overconfidence,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 122, no. 2 (2013): 266–79.

“Experts who acknowledge”: Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

“First and foremost”: The Decriminalization of Illegal Drugs: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform, 106th Cong. (1999), https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg64343/html/CHRG-106hhrg64343.htm.

Gaertig and Simmons research: Celia Gaertig and Joseph P. Simmons, “Do People Inherently Dislike Uncertain Advice?,” Psychological Science 29, no. 4 (2018): 504–20, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0956797617739369.

the expression of confidence: Anderson et al., “A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence.”

Voltaire quote: “Letter to Frederick William, Prince of Prussia (28 November 1770),” in Voltaire in His Letters: Being a Selection from His Correspondence, trans. S. G. Tallentyre (New York: Putnam, 1919), 232.

Piccinino’s story: “Italy Bridge: The Lives Lost to the Genoa Bridge Collapse,” BBC, August 19, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45193882.

An article heralding: Guglielmo Mattioli, “What Caused the Genoa Bridge Collapse—and the End of an Italian National Myth?,” Guardian, February 26, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/26/what-caused-the-genoa-morandi-bridge-collapse-and-the-end-of-an-italian-national-myth.

“Fifty years ago”: “Genoa’s Morandi Bridge Disaster ‘A Tragedy Waiting to Happen,’” France 24, August 15, 2018, https://www.france24.com/en/20180815-italy-genoa-morandi-bridge-disaster-structural-problems.

recommended new measures to maintain and reinforce the bridge: Mattioli, “What Caused the Genoa Bridge Collapse.”

Bridge maintenance fell: Gaia Pianigiani, Elisabetta Povoledo, and Richard Pérez-Peña, “Italy Bridge Was Known to Be in Trouble Long Before Collapse,” New York Times, August 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/world/europe/italy-genoa-bridge-collapse.html.

“The capacity to develop”: Shelley E. Taylor and Jonathon D. Brown, “Illusion and Well-Being: A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health,” Psychological Bulletin 103, no. 2 (1988): 193–210, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.103.2.193.

Confidence associated with longevity among cancer victims: Joanne V. Wood, Shelley E. Taylor, and Rosemary R. Lichtman, “Social Comparison in Adjustment to Breast Cancer,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, no. 5 (1985): 1169–83.

Taylor and Brown favor positive illusions: Shelley E. Taylor and Jonathon D. Brown, “Positive Illusions and Well-Being Revisited: Separating Fact from Fiction,” American Psychologist 49, no. 11 (1994): 972–73.

believing that everybody worships: Cameron Anderson et al., “Knowing Your Place: Self-Perceptions of Status in Face-to-Face Groups,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91, no. 6 (2006): 1094–110.

false positives or false negatives: This formulation classifies the decision not to reinforce the bridge as your positive (optimistic) action and the decision to shore it up as your negative (pessimistic) action. Rhetorically, it works. Go with it.

we live in the best of all possible worlds: Gottfried W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, trans. E. M. Huggard, ed. Austin Farrer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952 [1710]).

The world is richer: Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Penguin, 2018).

The Madoff story: Diana B. Henriques, The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust (New York: Macmillan, 2011).

La Villehuchet’s suicide note: Alex Berenson and Matthew Saltmarsh, “Madoff Investor’s Suicide Leaves Questions,” New York Times, January 1, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/business/02madoff.html.

Rates of death: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Penguin, 2012).

This path of self-acceptance: Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance (New York: Bantam, 2003).

“choose the mean”: Plato, Republic, trans. George M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1974).

Maimonides advised balance: Moses Maimonides, Joseph Isaac Gorfinkle, and Shmuel Ibn Tibbon, The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics (Sacramento Creative Media Partners, 2018).

“So don’t be too good”: Ecclesiastes 7:16–18 (Good News Translation).

“Every praiseworthy characteristic”: Abu Amina Elias, “Moderation and Balance in Islam,” Faith in Allah (blog), January 2, 2016, https://abuaminaelias.com/moderation-and-balance-in-islam/.

supported by accurate self-knowledge: Elizabeth R. Tenney, Simine Vazire, and Matthias R. Mehl, “This Examined Life: The Upside of Self-Knowledge for Interpersonal Relationships,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 7 (2013): e69605, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0069605.

“Learn about yourself”: Sean Illing, “Why Do Marriages Succeed or Fail?,” Vox, 2018, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/10/5/16379910/marriage-love-relationships-eli-finkel.

“Modern history has demonstrated”: Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (New York: Random House, 2019).

Democracies have thrived: Pinker, Enlightenment Now.