Quotes from Michael Lewis

Danny pensaba que la inmensa mayoría de la gente del sector estaba cegada por sus intereses y era incapaz de ver los riesgos que había creado.

It was an argument about the precautionary principle v. the scientist's desire not to make a mistake, coupled with risk aversion that was all too characteristic of public health bureaucrats. It was literally driving Carter nuts.

What most scouts thought of as a learned skill of secondary importance the A's management had come, through hard experience, to view virtually as a genetic trait, and the one most likely to lead to baseball success.

And so you might have good reason to pray for a tornado, whether it comes in the shape of swirling winds, or a politician. You imagine the thing doing the damage that you would like to see done, and no more. It's what you fail to imagine that kills you.

Cheese pizzas are the FDA's problem; pepperoni pizzas are supervised by the USDA.

For more than twenty years, the bond market's complexity had helped the Wall Street bond trader to deceive the Wall Street customer. It was now leading the bond trader to deceive himself.

Human Error, by a British psychologist aptly named James Reason.

On the Psychology of Prediction

What is remarkable about his study is that it respects all of Japan's sacred cows–that the rock core of the city won't be much affected, that people will respond as humanely and efficiently as they do in government reports, that no important officials will perish, that skyscrapers will stand–and still it predicts Armageddon.

Communicable diseases were the diseases that created crises.

supernatural gift, but it was a matter as much of his limitations as of his strengths. He could see human society in ways that most businessmen could not, because he was not very much a part of it. And consciously or not, by retiring to his floating island, he preserved this precious limitation.

Historical Interpretation: Judgment Under Uncertainty," Amos had called it. With a flick of the wrist, he showed a roomful of professional historians just how much of human experience could be reexamined in a fresh, new way, if seen through the lens he had created with Danny.

Just after Netscape I was interested in a vertical market," he began, deploying the usual Internet lingo. A vertical market was a market for a single good or service, like books or travel. A horizontal market was a market that cut across many different goods and services, like a Web browser.

She spent huge amounts of time with the public-health nurses, for instance, and treated them not as subordinates but as teachers. She insisted on seeing patients directly, which was truly odd.

The Decision to Seed Hurricanes," a paper coauthored by Stanford professor Ron Howard.

I always thought that the biggest opportunity on the Internet was the vertical markets," Clark continued. "I didn't know anything about health care, but I was looking for something worth doing and…

He'd played sports in high school, and then proved that a young man with the build of St. Francis of Assisi could play wide receiver for the Harvard varsity football team.

The food-stamps program," he says, instantly, when I ask him for his biggest concern. The Trump budget had proposed cutting food stamps by more than 25 percent over the next ten years and more or less abandoning the notion that the country should provide some minimum level of nutrition to its citizens.

The Internet changes everything," said Long. "Everyone can get connected on the Internet.

There was a reason for this: To acknowledge uncertainty was to admit the possibility of error. The entire profession had arranged itself as if to confirm the wisdom of its decisions.

been charged with any sort of crime was the employee who had taken something from Goldman Sachs. I'd

Redelmeier had actually co-written an article about that: "Elevator Buttons as Unrecognized Sources of Bacterial Colonization in Hospitals.

The same Republican senators from farm states who said they abhorred government spending of almost any sort became radical socialists when the conversation turned to handouts to big grain producers.

It was an open question as to which was more mysterious to a male NASA engineer: outer space or the American female. They appeared to have better data on outer space.