“Throughout history, pessimistic books warning of a coming Armageddon have outsold optimistic books a hundred to one. Pessimists win fame and adoration. Those who attempt to refute a doomsday thesis are called naïve, or simpletons, and are often attacked as incompetent. And this, despite the fact that the doomsday criers have always been wrong, and those who refute them have always been right. But no one ever goes back to check the record, to realize that humanity has been panicked into
