Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

by Rory Sutherland

Some scientists believe that driverless cars will not work unless they learn to be irrational. If such cars stop reliably whenever a pedestrian appears in front of them, pedestrian crossings will be unnecessary and jaywalkers will be able to march into the road, forcing the driverless car to stop suddenly, at great discomfort to its occupants. To prevent this, driverless cars may have to learn to be ‘angry’, and to occasionally maliciously fail to stop in time and strike the pedestrian on the shins.

Whether something makes sense in theory matters less than whether it works in practice.

‘The heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing,’ as Pascal put it.*

‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’

As Shakespeare wrote, ‘there is

nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’.

Niels Bohr* apparently once told Einstein, ‘You are not thinking; you are merely being logical.’