Ryan Forman

“Take the mad cow “threat” for example: Over a decade of hype, it only killed people (in the highest estimates) in the hundreds as compared to car accidents (several hundred thousands!)—except that the journalistic description of the latter would not be commercially fruitful. (Note that the risk of dying from food poisoning or in a car accident on the way to a restaurant is greater than dying from mad cow disease.) This sensationalism can divert empathy toward wrong causes: cancer and malnutrition being the ones that suffer the most from the lack of such attention. Malnutrition in Africa and Southeast Asia no longer causes the emotional impact—so it literally dropped out of the picture. In that sense the mental probabilistic map in one’s mind is so geared toward the sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“The market movements in the eighteen months after September 11, 2001, were far smaller than the ones that we faced in the eighteen months prior—but somehow in the mind of investors they were very volatile. The discussions in the media of the “terrorist threats” magnified the effect of these market moves in people’s heads. This is one of the many reasons that journalism may be the greatest plague we face today—as the world becomes more and more complicated and our minds are trained for more and more simplification.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets