The stories people told themselves, when the odds were either unknown or unknowable, were naturally too simple. “This tendency to consider only relatively simple scenarios,” they concluded, “may have particularly salient effects in situations of conflict. There, one’s own moods and plans are more available to one than those of the opponent. It is not easy to adopt the opponent’s view of the chessboard or of the battlefield.” The imagination appeared to be governed by rules. The rules confined people’s thinking. It’s far easier for a Jew living in Paris in 1939 to construct a story about how
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