First, justification of overoptimism on grounds that “it brought us here” arises from a far more serious mistake about human nature: the belief that we are built to understand nature and our own nature and that our decisions are, and have been, the result of our own choices. I beg to disagree. So many instincts drive us. Second, a little more worrisome than the first point: evolutionary fitness is something that is continuously touted and aggrandized by the crowd who takes it as gospel. The more unfamiliar someone is with the wild Black Swan–generating randomness, the more he or she believes
...more
