Looking at history makes you realize how precarious the world is.
Sometimes the major events that changed the course of history were caused by completely unexpected encounters or careless decisions made without much thought.
It can lead to wonderful results or it can lead to tragedy.
Writer Tim Urban said:
“If you were to travel back in time to a world before you were born, you wouldn’t be able to do anything rash.
Because we know that even the smallest action can have a huge impact on the future.”
--- p.27, from “This Precarious World”

There is an irony that is felt when looking into history.
The thing is, we usually know how a story ends, but we don't know where it begins.
Let me give you an example.
What caused the 2008 financial crisis? To answer that question, we must first understand the structure of the mortgage market.
So what has affected the mortgage market? To understand, we need to understand how interest rates have fallen over the past 30 years.
What factors led to the decline in interest rates? To understand, we must first understand inflation in the 1970s.
Why did inflation occur in the 1970s? To understand, we need to examine the monetary system of the 1970s and the impact of the Vietnam War.
Why did the Vietnam War happen? To understand, we need to understand how Americans developed a fear of communism during the Cold War following World War II.
If we keep going on like this, it will go on and on forever.

--- p.40, from “This Precarious World”

It is no exaggeration to say that NASA is the most planned and thorough organization on Earth.
Moreover, sending humans to the moon isn't something you can simply do with folded hands and a prayer of good luck, so they must have prepared even more thoroughly. NASA had Plan A, Plan B, and even Plan C for every imaginable risk.
But even then, one tiny mistake that no one thought of brought about disaster.
Financial planner Carl Richards said:
“Risk is what remains after you think you've considered every scenario.”
--- p.49, from “The Invisible, Risk”

I guarantee you that it will continue to be so in the future.
The biggest risk and most important news story of the next decade will be something no one is talking about right now.
It doesn't matter what year it is when you read this book.
The reason I can say this with confidence is because it has always been this way.
The very nature of unpredictability is what makes risk dangerous.

--- p.53, from “The Invisible, Risk”

If someone says something will happen and it actually happens, then their prediction is correct.
If someone says something will happen and it doesn't, then their prediction was wrong.
People only think this way.
Because thinking that way takes less mental energy and is more comfortable.
It's difficult to convince people (or yourself) that the outcome could have been different when the actual outcome is right in front of you.
The point is this.
People believe they want an accurate view of the future, but what they really want is certainty.

--- p.102, from “Probability and Certainty”

Let's think about an event that is described as 'once in a century'.
A hundred-year flood, a hurricane, an earthquake, a financial crisis, fraud, a pandemic, a political collapse, a recession, and so on.
Many horrific events can be called "once-in-a-century" events. "Once-in-a-century" doesn't mean they happen once every 100 years.
This means that there is about a 1 percent chance of that event occurring in any given year.
This feels like a low probability.
But if there are hundreds of individual, once-in-a-century events, what are the odds that one of them will occur in a given year? It's quite high.

--- p.106, from “Probability and Certainty”

In a perfect world, the importance of information would not depend on the storytelling skills of its conveyer.
But the world we live in is one where people get bored easily, lack patience, are easily swayed by emotions, and want complex information to be easily digestible, like a scene from a story.
Let's take a closer look around.
In any context where information flows—whether it's products, businesses, politics, knowledge, education, or culture—great stories win.
Stephen Hawking once said of his physics books:
“Someone told me that.
“For every equation added to a book, sales would drop by half.” What readers want is a memorable story, not a boring lecture.

-pp.
129-130, from “A Great Story Wins”

Historian Stephen Ambrose argues that in late 1944, U.S. commanders Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley had the best rational judgment needed to formulate wartime strategy, but they missed one detail.
That was how crazy Hitler was.
A source close to Bradley said at the time:
“If we had fought against rational men, they would have surrendered long ago.” But they were not rational men.
And that fact, that fact that is difficult to measure with logic and reason, determined everything.

--- p.146, from “What Statistics Miss”

On September 10, 2008, Lehman Brothers' financial health appeared sound.
The bank's capital adequacy ratio (an indicator that evaluates a financial institution's ability to absorb losses) was 11.7 percent.
This was a higher figure than the previous quarter.
It was higher than Goldman Sachs or Bank of America.
That was a higher capital adequacy ratio than Lehman Brothers had in 2007, when the financial industry was booming.
And 72 hours later, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. The only thing that changed in those three days was investor confidence in the bank.

--- p.152, from “What Statistics Miss”

One result led to another.
The desire to achieve growth targets ultimately pushed out rational analysis and judgment.
The saturation of Starbucks stores has reached an extreme.
Even during a boom, same-store sales growth fell by 50 percent.
Howard Schultz wrote in a 2007 email to executives:
“As we grew from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000, we made a series of decisions that, in retrospect, diluted the ‘Starbucks experience.’”
--- p.186, from “More, Faster”

Investor Patrick O'Shaughnessy said:
“I’ve met a lot of people who have achieved amazing things, and they usually don’t seem happy.
Rather, it would be more accurate to say that it looked ‘distressed.’ Fear, pain, and adversity are powerful motivators that positive emotions can never match.
This is a great lesson from history.
And this lesson ultimately leads us to this realization:
'Think carefully and decide what kind of life you want.' A life without any worries, pain, or stress seems like a happy one.
But there is no motivation or progress in that kind of life.
No one welcomes adversity with open arms.
But we must recognize that it is the most powerful fuel for creative problem solving and innovation.

--- p.212-213, from “The Moment When Magic Happens”

If I were to ask, “What are the chances that the average American will be twice as wealthy in 50 years?” it would sound far-fetched.
It seems highly unlikely that will happen.
Becoming twice as rich as you are now? Doubling your wealth? That seems like an ambitious goal.
But if you ask me, “What are the chances that we will achieve an average annual growth rate of 1.4 percent over the next 50 years?” I would be called a pessimist.
People will say.
“One percent? Just that?” But the two above are the same thing.
We always have, and we always will.

--- p.225, from “Tragedy is fleeting, miracles take a long time”

It is important to be able to judge how much of a bothersome problem or inconvenience is best to tolerate.
Most people don't realize this fact.
President Franklin Roosevelt was the strongest man in the world, but he was paralyzed from the waist down and had to rely on an aide to help him even to the bathroom.
He once said:
“If you can’t use your legs, you want orange juice, but when people bring you milk, you have to know how to say, ‘No thanks,’ and drink the milk.” President Roosevelt knew how much inefficiency and inconvenience he had to endure.

--- p.280, from “All journeys are inherently difficult”

Jason Zweig, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, identifies three paths for professional writers:
1.
You can make a lot of money by lying to people who want to hear it.
2.
You can make a living by telling the truth to those who want to hear it.
3.
If you tell the truth to those who want to hear lies, you'll get kicked in the butt.
Could the power of incentives be more clearly encapsulated? And it reminds us why people sometimes behave in ways that are irrational or even unconventional.

--- p.325, from “Incentives: The Most Powerful Force in the World”

It's easy to follow the advice of the investment world and say, "I'll be greedy when others are fearful," but it's not so easy to put it into practice.
Making such assurances underestimates how much your thinking and goals can change when the market actually turns sour.
The reason why market conditions can lead to the adoption of previously unexpected goals and perspectives is that it's not just asset prices that change during a downturn.
If I asked you to imagine what you would do if a stock fell 30 percent, you would imagine everything else remaining the same and only the stock fell 30 percent.
But things don't work that way in the world.

--- p.345, from “You have to experience it to know”

'After suffering, we long for stability.' It's easy to say this when looking at history.
“Look at that.
“If you just look far ahead and endure a little, you will eventually recover and somehow survive.” However, this is a statement that forgets the fact that the human mind is more difficult to recover than buildings or the economy.
We can observe and measure almost everything in the world, but we cannot measure people's moods, fears, hopes, resentments, goals, motivations, and expectations.
Partly for that very reason, incomprehensible things have happened and will continue to happen throughout history.

--- p.384, from “Wounds heal, but scars remain”