"Against the Gods" [.]

[fiefoe]

The last quarter of the book centers on some relatively new findings in the dismal science, such as Kahneman & Tversky's 'failure of invariance', and Thaler's 'endowment effect'. Also, according to chaos theorists, all the signals are tiny and everything else is mere noise. (Macbeth got there first, sorry.)

Some punchlines that hit home, and make getting out of the bed seem a waste of time:

• Most people would "choose not to choose regret".
• Where it counts, the stock market's behavior conforms to the rational model -- there are very few opportunities to profit by betting against irrational investors.
  
• Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.  [G.K. Chesterton]
• Things that make us feel better are far fewer than things that make us feel bad. People are more sensitive to negative stimuli.

However, I'd rather hang onto this nice mental image, as seen on Oprah: a supremely fit housewife bending backward to drink from a glass, supported by a pair of folding chairs.