The Data Detective

A more plausible explanation is that we are drawn to surprising news, and surprising news is more often bad than good.

All this suggests that one cure for conformity is to make decisions with a diverse group of people, people who are likely to bring different ideas and assumptions to the table.

Often, looking for an explanation really means looking for someone to blame.

One of the reasons facts don’t always change our minds is that we are keen to avoid uncomfortable truths.

the psychologist Steven Pinker calls the “curse of knowledge” is a constant obstacle to clear communication: once you know a subject fairly well, it is enormously difficult to put yourself in the position of someone who doesn’t know it.

Her book argues that all too often, the people responsible for the products and policies that shape our lives implicitly view the default customer—or citizen—as male.

just as the most brilliant thinkers of the age failed to make progress while practicing in secret, secret algorithms based on secret data are likely to lead to missed opportunities for improvement.

superforecasting is a matter of having an open-minded personality.

Our brains fill in the gaps—which is why we see what we expect to see and hear what we expect to hear,