WEBVTT 1 00:00:12.367 --> 00:00:13.400 Michael Lewis is here. 2 00:00:13.400 --> 00:00:16.868 His books have sold more than, count it, nine million copies. 3 00:00:16.868 --> 00:00:20.167 Three have been adapted into successful feature films. 4 00:00:20.167 --> 00:00:23.200 His new book is called "The Undoing Project." 5 00:00:23.200 --> 00:00:26.701 It tells the story of two Israeli psychologists, 6 00:00:26.701 --> 00:00:30.701 Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman and their groundbreaking work 7 00:00:30.701 --> 00:00:34.367 uncovering the human biases of the human mind. 8 00:00:34.367 --> 00:00:36.934 New York Times says the book combines intellectual rigor 9 00:00:36.934 --> 00:00:38.868 with complex portraiture. 10 00:00:38.868 --> 00:00:41.367 Mr. Lewis has written one hell of a love story 11 00:00:41.367 --> 00:00:43.534 and a tragic one at that. 12 00:00:43.534 --> 00:00:46.100 I'm pleased to have Michael Lewis back at this table. 13 00:00:46.100 --> 00:00:46.634 Welcome. 14 00:00:46.634 --> 00:00:47.400 Thanks. 15 00:00:47.400 --> 00:00:50.734 It's worth noting how you came to know 16 00:00:50.734 --> 00:00:52.767 these two guys. 17 00:00:52.767 --> 00:00:53.601 Yeah. 18 00:00:53.601 --> 00:00:55.400 I mean, it was accidental. 19 00:00:55.400 --> 00:00:57.868 Most of the folks are. 20 00:00:57.868 --> 00:01:02.100 But I had written "Money Ball", which was about the way, 21 00:01:02.100 --> 00:01:04.601 in my mind, the way markets misvalued people, 22 00:01:04.601 --> 00:01:05.767 in that case, baseball players. 23 00:01:05.767 --> 00:01:07.767 But it was like misjudged these players so that there were 24 00:01:07.767 --> 00:01:10.234 cheap ones and expensive ones, and so on and so forth. 25 00:01:10.234 --> 00:01:12.601 And my interest was kind of that. 26 00:01:12.601 --> 00:01:15.934 It's like why -- if baseball players can be misjudged, 27 00:01:15.934 --> 00:01:17.067 who can't be? 28 00:01:17.067 --> 00:01:21.634 And I never asked question of why it happened. 29 00:01:21.634 --> 00:01:26.534 And a review after the book came out by Cass Sunstein and Dick 30 00:01:26.534 --> 00:01:29.300 Thaler in the New Republic, they say -- I mean, they say 31 00:01:29.300 --> 00:01:31.834 basically, Michael Lewis has written a good story 32 00:01:31.834 --> 00:01:33.200 but he doesn't seem to understand that there's 33 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:34.534 a source for all this stuff. 34 00:01:34.534 --> 00:01:38.434 That actually there's these two Israeli psychologists who did 35 00:01:38.434 --> 00:01:41.567 work on the biases in the human mind, the cognitive biases, 36 00:01:41.567 --> 00:01:43.868 that lead to things like baseball players being 37 00:01:43.868 --> 00:01:46.501 misjudged, and political candidates being misjudged, 38 00:01:46.501 --> 00:01:50.200 and doctors misdiagnosing diseases. 39 00:01:50.200 --> 00:01:51.767 And most importantly how the mind works. 40 00:01:51.767 --> 00:01:52.367 And how the mind works. 41 00:01:52.367 --> 00:01:55.901 And he said these two guys are named Amos Tversky 42 00:01:55.901 --> 00:01:56.634 and Danny Kahneman. 43 00:01:56.634 --> 00:01:59.901 You know, I went and read some of the stuff. 44 00:01:59.901 --> 00:02:01.400 I was embarrassed I never heard of them. 45 00:02:01.400 --> 00:02:04.167 Kahneman just won the Nobel Prize in economics, 46 00:02:04.167 --> 00:02:05.801 even though he wasn't an economist. 47 00:02:05.801 --> 00:02:10.100 And finally, what happened was, I was having drinks with a 48 00:02:10.100 --> 00:02:12.801 psychology professor friend of mine named Dacher Keltner. 49 00:02:12.801 --> 00:02:13.467 Who you -- 50 00:02:13.467 --> 00:02:14.901 I dedicated the book too, because it never 51 00:02:14.901 --> 00:02:15.968 would have happened without him. 52 00:02:15.968 --> 00:02:18.367 And I said, you know, this had been irking me, there's like 53 00:02:18.367 --> 00:02:20.634 this origin story to Moneyball, you know, 54 00:02:20.634 --> 00:02:23.000 and I don't know what it is. 55 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.367 And he says, well, Danny Kahneman has a house just up 56 00:02:25.367 --> 00:02:29.167 the hill from you and he's a friend, I'll hook you up. 57 00:02:29.167 --> 00:02:32.234 And it turned out, Amos Tversky had died in 1996, 58 00:02:32.234 --> 00:02:33.634 but Kahneman was still alive. 59 00:02:33.634 --> 00:02:34.601 Before the Nobel Prize. 60 00:02:34.601 --> 00:02:36.901 Well before the Nobel Prize, six years. 61 00:02:36.901 --> 00:02:41.300 And so I went up and saw Danny and we started the relationship 62 00:02:41.300 --> 00:02:44.267 over years, and I would listen to him talk about this 63 00:02:44.267 --> 00:02:46.367 relationship he had with Amos Tversky. 64 00:02:46.367 --> 00:02:51.601 It didn't take long I realized the one term I had taught at 65 00:02:51.601 --> 00:02:54.367 the University of California Berkley, one of my favorite 66 00:02:54.367 --> 00:02:57.234 students was a kid name Orin Tversky who happened to be 67 00:02:57.234 --> 00:02:59.300 Amos Tversky's oldest child. 68 00:02:59.300 --> 00:03:01.100 And we had a friendship. 69 00:03:01.100 --> 00:03:04.100 And so, the Tversky family was very generous in kind of 70 00:03:04.100 --> 00:03:06.801 opening up his papers and his life to me. 71 00:03:06.801 --> 00:03:08.467 To the extent they could. 72 00:03:08.467 --> 00:03:11.100 And Danny, after, oh, it took him two or three years to get 73 00:03:11.100 --> 00:03:12.701 his mind around the idea I was going to write a book 74 00:03:12.701 --> 00:03:14.634 about him, but that's how it started. 75 00:03:14.634 --> 00:03:16.767 And it really was pretty organic. 76 00:03:16.767 --> 00:03:20.534 And it took quite a bit of time for me to see just what this 77 00:03:20.534 --> 00:03:23.033 story was and how to tell it. 78 00:03:23.033 --> 00:03:28.100 And so, I took quite a bit of time to say this is a book -- 79 00:03:28.100 --> 00:03:31.033 You, in fact, you were not sure 80 00:03:31.033 --> 00:03:32.467 you were up to it. 81 00:03:32.467 --> 00:03:33.601 True. 82 00:03:33.601 --> 00:03:38.200 It's not the first time I felt that way, but I felt more that 83 00:03:38.200 --> 00:03:41.367 way than I ever felt before, and there were a couple reasons. 84 00:03:41.367 --> 00:03:44.033 The superficial reasons were at the heart of the book, 85 00:03:44.033 --> 00:03:46.734 you've got an intellectual discipline psychology that 86 00:03:46.734 --> 00:03:49.100 I had to teach myself about. 87 00:03:49.100 --> 00:03:53.968 And you had a backdrop of Israel in the early days, 88 00:03:53.968 --> 00:03:58.300 which is a really peculiar interesting place at war, 89 00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:00.801 and I knew a bit about it but I didn't know enough about it 90 00:04:00.801 --> 00:04:03.501 to feel authoritative about creating that setting. 91 00:04:03.501 --> 00:04:07.434 But the biggest thing I think, the source of hesitancy 92 00:04:07.434 --> 00:04:15.133 was the -- I normally feel intellectually equal to 93 00:04:15.133 --> 00:04:16.567 my subjects. 94 00:04:16.567 --> 00:04:18.734 I can get my mind around my subjects, 95 00:04:18.734 --> 00:04:20.667 and what they're talking about. 96 00:04:20.667 --> 00:04:24.801 In this case, the fertility and the power in these guys' minds 97 00:04:24.801 --> 00:04:26.400 was daunting. 98 00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:28.534 And I knew that basically I was going to be in the position of 99 00:04:28.534 --> 00:04:30.934 the B student trying to write about the A students. 100 00:04:30.934 --> 00:04:33.167 And I felt like, you know, I said this, I felt like 101 00:04:33.167 --> 00:04:35.400 a gnat trying to hug two elephants. 102 00:04:35.400 --> 00:04:39.067 I mean, I wasn't sure I could get my arms around them. 103 00:04:39.067 --> 00:04:42.000 I also knew in the back of my mind, Danny Kahneman is 104 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:46.000 the world's sharpest critic and doubter of things. 105 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:48.367 And I knew no matter what I did, he was going to 106 00:04:48.367 --> 00:04:50.567 find it wanting. 107 00:04:50.567 --> 00:04:54.300 And so I knew I had a living subject with whom I had failed 108 00:04:54.300 --> 00:04:55.734 before I had started. 109 00:04:55.734 --> 00:04:59.067 He's the great doubter, but go back to how 110 00:04:59.067 --> 00:05:02.167 Israel had shaped him and how their experience in the military 111 00:05:02.167 --> 00:05:03.033 had shaped who they were. 112 00:05:03.033 --> 00:05:05.000 They're very different characters. 113 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:07.400 And in fact, "The New York Times" quote I had in the 114 00:05:07.400 --> 00:05:10.534 introduction said, "...combines intellectual rigor with complex 115 00:05:10.534 --> 00:05:12.701 portraiture, Mr. Lewis has written one hell of 116 00:05:12.701 --> 00:05:15.601 a love story, a tragic one at that." 117 00:05:15.601 --> 00:05:18.901 They felt how? 118 00:05:18.901 --> 00:05:20.200 It wasn't sexual. 119 00:05:20.200 --> 00:05:23.367 When they traveled together they were occasionally mistaken 120 00:05:23.367 --> 00:05:24.501 as for a gay couple. 121 00:05:24.501 --> 00:05:24.934 Right. 122 00:05:24.934 --> 00:05:26.267 Because they were inseparable. 123 00:05:26.267 --> 00:05:28.234 And one could finish the other's sentences. 124 00:05:28.234 --> 00:05:31.434 They're clearly were in love with each other, 125 00:05:31.434 --> 00:05:33.968 but they were heterosexual men. 126 00:05:33.968 --> 00:05:39.501 They -- so as Danny put it to me once, but he said it in very, 127 00:05:39.501 --> 00:05:42.434 very many ways, he said, you know, you go through life 128 00:05:42.434 --> 00:05:44.567 and you're in love with women and so on. 129 00:05:44.567 --> 00:05:46.501 But with Amos I was wrapped. 130 00:05:46.501 --> 00:05:51.567 And I think he felt, I know he felt that Amos understood 131 00:05:51.567 --> 00:05:53.534 his mind better than anyone understood his mind, 132 00:05:53.534 --> 00:05:55.367 better than he himself understood it. 133 00:05:55.367 --> 00:05:58.601 And I knew he felt -- I mean, like an old Jerry Maguire thing, 134 00:05:58.601 --> 00:05:59.400 you complete me. 135 00:05:59.400 --> 00:06:01.667 I think they both felt like there was a piece of themselves 136 00:06:01.667 --> 00:06:03.701 missing that they found in the other, 137 00:06:03.701 --> 00:06:07.534 but they were so different. 138 00:06:07.534 --> 00:06:11.033 They were even to their friends in Israel the least likely 139 00:06:11.033 --> 00:06:12.734 people to even be friends. 140 00:06:12.734 --> 00:06:16.400 And nobody could imagine what was going on behind 141 00:06:16.400 --> 00:06:18.701 the closed door when they were working. 142 00:06:18.701 --> 00:06:23.934 So it was a love of people who are very, very, very different 143 00:06:23.934 --> 00:06:24.968 from each other. 144 00:06:24.968 --> 00:06:28.434 And if they don't have that, 145 00:06:28.434 --> 00:06:29.901 they don't bother doing the work. 146 00:06:29.901 --> 00:06:32.634 In fact at some point, it was pretty clear that the work 147 00:06:32.634 --> 00:06:34.601 is an excuse just to be together. 148 00:06:34.601 --> 00:06:35.367 I'm serious. 149 00:06:35.367 --> 00:06:37.801 It's an excuse to be together. 150 00:06:37.801 --> 00:06:40.901 They're exploring human nature and how the human mind works, 151 00:06:40.901 --> 00:06:42.501 but the joy is just being together. 152 00:06:42.501 --> 00:06:44.534 Did they work with one typewriter? 153 00:06:44.534 --> 00:06:46.434 In the beginning, they worked -- 154 00:06:46.434 --> 00:06:48.801 they didn't have a typewriter. 155 00:06:48.801 --> 00:06:51.701 But they'd sit side by side and write it together. 156 00:06:51.701 --> 00:06:56.033 And one of the people who happened to catch a passing 157 00:06:56.033 --> 00:06:57.634 glimpse of them working together, he said it felt like 158 00:06:57.634 --> 00:06:59.601 people brushing each other's teeth. 159 00:06:59.601 --> 00:07:01.567 You can't imagine how they did this. 160 00:07:01.567 --> 00:07:04.067 Side by side -- yes, do whatever they were doing. 161 00:07:04.067 --> 00:07:09.501 And they'd write, you know, a sentence a day was fast. 162 00:07:09.501 --> 00:07:10.267 Yes. 163 00:07:10.267 --> 00:07:15.834 And the -- so, and the character as you say, I mean Tversky, 164 00:07:15.834 --> 00:07:19.601 I mean he is a literary, they're both literary characters. 165 00:07:19.601 --> 00:07:26.067 Tversky, anybody who encountered him came away with a sense 166 00:07:26.067 --> 00:07:28.634 they'd met somebody unlike any other person they ever met. 167 00:07:28.634 --> 00:07:32.567 Someone who wants to design an intelligence test, 168 00:07:32.567 --> 00:07:36.601 and the intelligence test was the longer after you meet Amos, 169 00:07:36.601 --> 00:07:39.300 it takes you to figure out Amos is smarter than you, 170 00:07:39.300 --> 00:07:40.667 the stupider you are. 171 00:07:40.667 --> 00:07:43.567 That he is -- everybody said that's the smartest man 172 00:07:43.567 --> 00:07:46.934 in the world, and he was not pretentious about it. 173 00:07:46.934 --> 00:07:49.567 And he was kind of a normal guy who happened to be endowed with 174 00:07:49.567 --> 00:07:50.834 this incredible brain. 175 00:07:50.834 --> 00:07:54.767 And a warrior, I mean, he had been trained by society to be 176 00:07:54.767 --> 00:07:59.534 a Spartan warrior, who was a killer, and without a shred 177 00:07:59.534 --> 00:08:01.234 of doubt, totally self-serving. 178 00:08:01.234 --> 00:08:02.400 Whereas? 179 00:08:02.400 --> 00:08:05.434 Danny was a holocaust survivor. 180 00:08:05.434 --> 00:08:07.234 He was a small child. 181 00:08:07.234 --> 00:08:09.601 He spent hiding in barns and living in chicken coops in 182 00:08:09.601 --> 00:08:12.567 Southern France, watching his father die because he couldn't 183 00:08:12.567 --> 00:08:16.834 seek medical care, escaped France after the war. 184 00:08:16.834 --> 00:08:21.534 But for the rest of his life there's a kind of evasiveness 185 00:08:21.534 --> 00:08:24.167 about him like it's almost as if he's still in hiding. 186 00:08:24.167 --> 00:08:29.734 Like he doesn't -- people always felt kind of removed. 187 00:08:29.734 --> 00:08:32.467 He was always at some removed, some formal distance from him 188 00:08:32.467 --> 00:08:35.133 from them, and also from his own mind. 189 00:08:35.133 --> 00:08:38.634 He was never became wedded to anything, 190 00:08:38.634 --> 00:08:39.601 or committed to anything. 191 00:08:39.601 --> 00:08:41.267 He would have all these ideas. 192 00:08:41.267 --> 00:08:44.367 What he is is an incredibly fertile poet 193 00:08:44.367 --> 00:08:46.100 novelist kind of mind. 194 00:08:46.100 --> 00:08:49.567 That he has startling insight after startling insight 195 00:08:49.567 --> 00:08:53.033 with some analytical ability, not Amos'. 196 00:08:53.033 --> 00:08:57.267 And he was the idea-generating machine. 197 00:08:57.267 --> 00:08:59.367 And he never had the confidence -- 198 00:08:59.367 --> 00:09:00.934 Danny was the idea-generating machine. 199 00:09:00.934 --> 00:09:02.100 Yes, I think so. 200 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:03.100 I mean, Amos -- 201 00:09:03.100 --> 00:09:05.367 You're not saying one was smarter than the 202 00:09:05.367 --> 00:09:07.067 other, you're saying they had different kinds of intelligence. 203 00:09:07.067 --> 00:09:08.100 Different kinds of intelligence. 204 00:09:08.100 --> 00:09:08.968 He was a poet. 205 00:09:08.968 --> 00:09:11.367 You know, it gives a lot of the idea that science and art 206 00:09:11.367 --> 00:09:12.634 are two different things. 207 00:09:12.634 --> 00:09:16.000 It was like someone who has kind of a classic stereotypical 208 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:16.868 scientific mind. 209 00:09:16.868 --> 00:09:19.100 With someone who has a kind of -- not quite stereotypical, 210 00:09:19.100 --> 00:09:20.434 but very artistic mind. 211 00:09:20.434 --> 00:09:22.567 And you see science is a product, I mean, there's 212 00:09:22.567 --> 00:09:24.868 an awful lot of artistic creativity in good science. 213 00:09:24.868 --> 00:09:27.100 Were they united by the same curiosity? 214 00:09:27.100 --> 00:09:28.534 Oh, absolutely. 215 00:09:28.534 --> 00:09:31.868 I mean, they were Jews after World War II, living in a state 216 00:09:31.868 --> 00:09:34.567 of Israel that looked like it could be extinguished 217 00:09:34.567 --> 00:09:35.968 at any moment. 218 00:09:35.968 --> 00:09:39.300 They were naturally interested in how the mind deals with 219 00:09:39.300 --> 00:09:43.000 uncertainty, and how it makes judgments and decisions when 220 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:46.400 the situation is inherently probabilistic. 221 00:09:46.400 --> 00:09:48.701 And life depended on it, I think. 222 00:09:48.701 --> 00:09:52.267 And they thought they were getting at something because 223 00:09:52.267 --> 00:09:57.567 everything in human life goes through the mind that if you can 224 00:09:57.567 --> 00:10:02.634 describe the kind of the tricks the mind plays on you 225 00:10:02.634 --> 00:10:04.734 in different situations, you're describing something really 226 00:10:04.734 --> 00:10:06.267 fundamental to human nature. 227 00:10:06.267 --> 00:10:09.200 And they were getting it -- I think the spirit that really 228 00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:14.300 informs them is their sense that humanity, 229 00:10:14.300 --> 00:10:16.300 human beings are inherently fallible. 230 00:10:16.300 --> 00:10:19.868 The fact that we are wired for certain kinds of mistakes, 231 00:10:19.868 --> 00:10:22.133 and it's not shameful. 232 00:10:22.133 --> 00:10:23.801 We shouldn't be ashamed of our fallibility. 233 00:10:23.801 --> 00:10:25.300 We should just seek to understand it and try to 234 00:10:25.300 --> 00:10:29.701 adapt to it, rather than pretend we're infallible. 235 00:10:29.701 --> 00:10:32.133 And that was at the center of all their work. 236 00:10:32.133 --> 00:10:35.534 That was one of the ideas, is we're going to demonstrate the 237 00:10:35.534 --> 00:10:38.367 inherent fallibility of man, so we can start to deal with it. 238 00:10:38.367 --> 00:10:39.701 Is that one of the things that you can just 239 00:10:39.701 --> 00:10:41.601 make a long stretch here and say that's one of the things 240 00:10:41.601 --> 00:10:44.501 that happened in the U.S. election? 241 00:10:44.501 --> 00:10:47.234 Fallibility of our -- you know what's going to happen and -- 242 00:10:47.234 --> 00:10:50.300 You know, you can watch what's going on 243 00:10:50.300 --> 00:10:52.501 through the lens they built. 244 00:10:52.501 --> 00:10:55.868 And they say a few things at once about the election. 245 00:10:55.868 --> 00:11:00.000 One of the frightening things about Donald Trump is 246 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:02.467 his insistence on his own infallibility. 247 00:11:02.467 --> 00:11:07.367 That we know now that the mind is capable of doing 248 00:11:07.367 --> 00:11:08.801 all kinds of strange things. 249 00:11:08.801 --> 00:11:11.801 And if you're not suspicious at all of your own mind, you're 250 00:11:11.801 --> 00:11:15.901 likely to be way, way, way too confident about your judgments. 251 00:11:15.901 --> 00:11:18.534 And his inability to modulate his judgment, to think, 252 00:11:18.534 --> 00:11:19.601 oh, I'm just right. 253 00:11:19.601 --> 00:11:21.100 And if he's wrong he then just makes up a story 254 00:11:21.100 --> 00:11:22.567 about why he was right. 255 00:11:22.567 --> 00:11:25.000 They also described this. 256 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:26.300 They call it hindsight bias. 257 00:11:26.300 --> 00:11:29.200 That I knew it was coming, even when I didn't know 258 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:29.968 it was coming. 259 00:11:29.968 --> 00:11:30.801 That's their phrase. 260 00:11:30.801 --> 00:11:32.367 I mean, that's one of the students actually, 261 00:11:32.367 --> 00:11:33.801 dreamed up the phrase. 262 00:11:33.801 --> 00:11:38.033 But that's their insight that people seek to make the world 263 00:11:38.033 --> 00:11:40.534 seem more certain than it actually is. 264 00:11:40.534 --> 00:11:42.734 And one of the ways they do it is they tell stories about what 265 00:11:42.734 --> 00:11:44.634 happened and explain what they could never have predicted 266 00:11:44.634 --> 00:11:48.634 because it was unpredictable, and some ways inexplicable. 267 00:11:48.634 --> 00:11:51.601 So they would have had things to say about Trump, 268 00:11:51.601 --> 00:11:53.300 they would have things to say about Trump's voters. 269 00:11:53.300 --> 00:11:57.501 The way people are attracted to over-confidence. 270 00:11:57.501 --> 00:11:59.968 You know, a president -- Obama has this problem. 271 00:11:59.968 --> 00:12:01.734 He's had this problem from the very beginning. 272 00:12:01.734 --> 00:12:05.701 He's actually intellectually honest, and he's aware of that 273 00:12:05.701 --> 00:12:07.434 his judgments might be wrong. 274 00:12:07.434 --> 00:12:10.801 But you can't as president come up to the podium and say 275 00:12:10.801 --> 00:12:12.067 I might be wrong here. 276 00:12:12.067 --> 00:12:15.501 You have to project total certainty and that's false. 277 00:12:15.501 --> 00:12:19.234 What has Obama said he was wrong about? 278 00:12:19.234 --> 00:12:21.868 What has he said he was wrong about? 279 00:12:21.868 --> 00:12:23.200 I mean, he's done it often. 280 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:27.601 I have to start thinking about but it's enabled him to 281 00:12:27.601 --> 00:12:29.501 change his mind, gay marriage. 282 00:12:29.501 --> 00:12:32.934 I mean, what he actually thought and what he said he thought 283 00:12:32.934 --> 00:12:35.534 maybe are two different things, but he pretended to be, 284 00:12:35.534 --> 00:12:38.234 have problems with it and he allowed the country to change. 285 00:12:38.234 --> 00:12:39.534 That may have been a political maturity. 286 00:12:39.534 --> 00:12:41.367 It might have been, it might have been. 287 00:12:41.367 --> 00:12:42.734 (CROSSTALK) 288 00:12:42.734 --> 00:12:45.067 ...that it is now politically viable to do it. 289 00:12:45.067 --> 00:12:47.801 But he was able to do it politically because 290 00:12:47.801 --> 00:12:50.567 he persuasively is a person who does change his mind, 291 00:12:50.567 --> 00:12:51.868 is capable of changing his mind. 292 00:12:51.868 --> 00:12:53.300 Facts change, I change my mind. 293 00:12:53.300 --> 00:12:56.434 The opinion on the ground changed too 294 00:12:56.434 --> 00:12:57.133 in that case. 295 00:12:57.133 --> 00:12:57.701 That's right. 296 00:12:57.701 --> 00:12:59.868 So he could do it. 297 00:12:59.868 --> 00:13:08.000 But I'm just -- the -- so this -- and what they would also say 298 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:15.167 is that whether knowingly or not, Trump successfully 299 00:13:15.167 --> 00:13:18.200 exploited the weaknesses in the human mind. 300 00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:22.067 The ability to prey upon these kind of -- he had an ability to 301 00:13:22.067 --> 00:13:23.701 prey upon the kind of kinks in the mind. 302 00:13:23.701 --> 00:13:28.167 So, for example, if you want to -- if you give people a really 303 00:13:28.167 --> 00:13:31.734 vivid story about a Mexican immigrant who happened to murder 304 00:13:31.734 --> 00:13:34.901 somebody, you can whip up a general idea that this is what 305 00:13:34.901 --> 00:13:37.634 Mexican immigrants do, and people don't stop to think, 306 00:13:37.634 --> 00:13:41.067 well, actually, we can determine statistically whether 307 00:13:41.067 --> 00:13:42.734 Mexican immigrants are more likely to do this 308 00:13:42.734 --> 00:13:43.734 than the average person. 309 00:13:43.734 --> 00:13:45.934 We can probably see they aren't. 310 00:13:45.934 --> 00:13:46.968 But people don't think that way. 311 00:13:46.968 --> 00:13:50.267 They think in terms of vivid examples. 312 00:13:50.267 --> 00:13:51.868 But if you define a real story they can 313 00:13:51.868 --> 00:13:54.701 give power to a narrative that has nothing to do 314 00:13:54.701 --> 00:13:55.567 with statistics. 315 00:13:55.567 --> 00:13:58.367 And one of Danny and Amos's great points 316 00:13:58.367 --> 00:14:02.067 is that the mind thinks in stereotypes, 317 00:14:02.067 --> 00:14:05.234 that stereotypes are a tool for the mind. 318 00:14:05.234 --> 00:14:08.267 In classification the mind makes very crude stereotypes. 319 00:14:08.267 --> 00:14:12.400 And you can get people to make the mistake of thinking someone 320 00:14:12.400 --> 00:14:14.133 is a really great baseball player because they kind of look 321 00:14:14.133 --> 00:14:17.467 like a great baseball player, or make a mistake that they aren't 322 00:14:17.467 --> 00:14:20.234 a good basketball player because they happened to be 6.2 inch 323 00:14:20.234 --> 00:14:23.534 Asian point guard, and you'd be Jeremy Lin. 324 00:14:23.534 --> 00:14:29.000 And Trump, he seems to both think in terms very crudely 325 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:32.033 without leaning against it, in terms of stereotypes, and he 326 00:14:32.033 --> 00:14:34.901 preys on that tendency in other people's mind. 327 00:14:34.901 --> 00:14:37.133 So the essential idea that they had was that 328 00:14:37.133 --> 00:14:38.734 the mind is fallible. 329 00:14:38.734 --> 00:14:40.934 That's a good start, yeah. 330 00:14:40.934 --> 00:14:42.934 That's at the core. 331 00:14:42.934 --> 00:14:44.467 Fallible, systematically fallible. 332 00:14:44.467 --> 00:14:48.067 So it's not just make mistakes, but we all make 333 00:14:48.067 --> 00:14:49.434 a certain kind of mistake. 334 00:14:49.434 --> 00:14:52.968 And if we do that, if our un-reason is not just kind of 335 00:14:52.968 --> 00:14:56.534 random firing of emotions or whatever, then whole markets can 336 00:14:56.534 --> 00:14:58.968 make a mistake because we all go in a certain direction 337 00:14:58.968 --> 00:15:00.734 that's a mistake. 338 00:15:00.734 --> 00:15:04.234 So that's one of the ideas at their core. 339 00:15:04.234 --> 00:15:07.300 And they explored it in some detail what those mistakes were, 340 00:15:07.300 --> 00:15:10.601 and they did it with kind of a curious kind of science. 341 00:15:10.601 --> 00:15:12.200 And if you look at all these discoveries that 342 00:15:12.200 --> 00:15:16.067 they made about the human mind and how it works, can you go 343 00:15:16.067 --> 00:15:19.534 and attribute that to one of the other or do you have to say in 344 00:15:19.534 --> 00:15:22.234 every case it is something that they came through, 345 00:15:22.234 --> 00:15:25.234 that they came to together. 346 00:15:25.234 --> 00:15:26.367 That's the question. 347 00:15:26.367 --> 00:15:29.100 That's the question that unraveled the relationship. 348 00:15:29.100 --> 00:15:31.067 Everybody asked that question. 349 00:15:31.067 --> 00:15:32.234 Who did it? 350 00:15:32.234 --> 00:15:34.300 That sounds more like Amos. 351 00:15:34.300 --> 00:15:36.100 And that's what people -- Amos -- because Amos was so 352 00:15:36.100 --> 00:15:39.534 breathtakingly intelligent on the surface. 353 00:15:39.534 --> 00:15:42.234 People saw the work and they said, well, we could see how 354 00:15:42.234 --> 00:15:45.234 Amos might have done this, more than we can see how Danny 355 00:15:45.234 --> 00:15:46.567 might have done this. 356 00:15:46.567 --> 00:15:50.300 And so long as they were in Israel, people didn't pay much 357 00:15:50.300 --> 00:15:51.534 attention to who did what. 358 00:15:51.534 --> 00:15:53.467 But the answer is you can't. 359 00:15:53.467 --> 00:15:57.434 The answer is -- the work they did separately from each other, 360 00:15:57.434 --> 00:15:59.367 it was nothing like the work they did. 361 00:15:59.367 --> 00:16:04.267 The work they did together was had its own voice, and neither 362 00:16:04.267 --> 00:16:06.701 one of them would have been able to do it alone, and they both 363 00:16:06.701 --> 00:16:08.934 acknowledged that to themselves and to each other 364 00:16:08.934 --> 00:16:09.968 and to the world. 365 00:16:09.968 --> 00:16:11.067 World didn't want to hear it. 366 00:16:11.067 --> 00:16:15.834 So Amos got -- given for the joint work a McArthur Genius 367 00:16:15.834 --> 00:16:18.367 award, you know, without Danny. 368 00:16:18.367 --> 00:16:20.501 He was given -- he was admitted to the National Academy of 369 00:16:20.501 --> 00:16:22.267 Sciences, without Danny. 370 00:16:22.267 --> 00:16:26.033 One thing he was given the fastest -- I was told by 371 00:16:26.033 --> 00:16:30.367 the Stanford administration, the fastest tenure appointment 372 00:16:30.367 --> 00:16:31.968 in the history of Stanford University. 373 00:16:31.968 --> 00:16:34.167 They found out he was available, maybe on the market 374 00:16:34.167 --> 00:16:36.434 in the morning, and that afternoon they gave Amos 375 00:16:36.434 --> 00:16:38.200 a job offer. 376 00:16:38.200 --> 00:16:40.234 And Danny, they didn't think to give Danny a job offer. 377 00:16:40.234 --> 00:16:45.400 So the world corroded, sought to kind of -- as Amos said, 378 00:16:45.400 --> 00:16:48.834 he said for some reason the world hostile the collaboration, 379 00:16:48.834 --> 00:16:50.701 maybe like a hostile marriage. 380 00:16:50.701 --> 00:16:54.167 That people need to assign individual credit, but the 381 00:16:54.167 --> 00:16:58.300 couple was under constant self from the outside, especially the 382 00:16:58.300 --> 00:17:02.634 academic world to kind of say who did what, and that was 383 00:17:02.634 --> 00:17:07.667 a horrible mistake because when they were together, 384 00:17:07.667 --> 00:17:12.100 Danny actually said in an interview that never got 385 00:17:12.100 --> 00:17:16.234 published in the early '80s, he said, you know together we're -- 386 00:17:16.234 --> 00:17:19.367 separately we're OK, together we're a genius. 387 00:17:19.367 --> 00:17:25.133 And the idea that you have to pick it apart is such a shame. 388 00:17:25.133 --> 00:17:27.901 Let them just stay together, there's a magic there. 389 00:17:27.901 --> 00:17:30.868 And why did they break up? 390 00:17:30.868 --> 00:17:33.200 They came back together because Amos was dying. 391 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:34.968 When you read the story -- yes, 392 00:17:34.968 --> 00:17:36.834 Danny pushed him away. 393 00:17:36.834 --> 00:17:39.701 A number of people felt with Amos, through the course of 394 00:17:39.701 --> 00:17:42.934 Amos's life, that Amos's voice was so strong 395 00:17:42.934 --> 00:17:44.601 that he drowned out them. 396 00:17:44.601 --> 00:17:49.100 And they felt -- they were consumed by him. 397 00:17:49.100 --> 00:17:51.200 You spent a lot of time with Amos, you couldn't get 398 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:52.601 Amos out of your head. 399 00:17:52.601 --> 00:17:56.734 And Danny could deal with that, but -- 400 00:17:56.734 --> 00:17:58.267 so here's what I think happened. 401 00:17:58.267 --> 00:18:00.834 What happened on the surface was Amos got all the credit. 402 00:18:00.834 --> 00:18:02.434 Danny got very little of it. 403 00:18:02.434 --> 00:18:04.267 Amos's status went through the roof. 404 00:18:04.267 --> 00:18:07.400 You know, he's like a global academic rock star. 405 00:18:07.400 --> 00:18:11.200 And Danny was maybe a little envious. 406 00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:13.734 But I don't actually think that's what drove them apart. 407 00:18:13.734 --> 00:18:18.934 I think what drove them apart was Danny's perception that as 408 00:18:18.934 --> 00:18:22.100 their situations, their status became unequal, 409 00:18:22.100 --> 00:18:24.033 that Amos's feelings for him changed. 410 00:18:24.033 --> 00:18:27.133 That Amos started to kind of believe the press clippings. 411 00:18:27.133 --> 00:18:28.100 That's what Danny thought. 412 00:18:28.100 --> 00:18:29.367 Thought, right. 413 00:18:29.367 --> 00:18:33.400 And he felt maybe a little condescended to, or that Amos 414 00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:36.567 became -- Danny became just another person Amos could be 415 00:18:36.567 --> 00:18:38.234 slightly contemptuous about. 416 00:18:38.234 --> 00:18:42.300 And I don't know if that's true, I think Danny felt that way. 417 00:18:42.300 --> 00:18:46.767 And it was incredibly wounding because they were in love. 418 00:18:46.767 --> 00:18:49.434 And he pushed him away. 419 00:18:49.434 --> 00:18:50.801 He fled. 420 00:18:50.801 --> 00:18:52.601 So he ceased to collaborate with Amos. 421 00:18:52.601 --> 00:18:55.734 But Amos must have seen it coming, and he 422 00:18:55.734 --> 00:18:58.868 couldn't because his extraordinary intelligence -- 423 00:18:58.868 --> 00:19:00.300 You must have seen couples. 424 00:19:00.300 --> 00:19:02.801 The typical -- the stereotype is like the powerful man 425 00:19:02.801 --> 00:19:04.801 and the woman who's actually really important to him 426 00:19:04.801 --> 00:19:05.968 who he doesn't acknowledge. 427 00:19:05.968 --> 00:19:07.434 And she just gets sick of it. 428 00:19:07.434 --> 00:19:09.367 The dynamic is kind of that. 429 00:19:09.367 --> 00:19:13.367 And Amos, there's a line that Amos writes to Danny, that to 430 00:19:13.367 --> 00:19:15.701 me captures the spirit of Amos's inability 431 00:19:15.701 --> 00:19:17.400 to deal with Danny's emotion. 432 00:19:17.400 --> 00:19:19.934 He says I don't get your sensitivity metric. 433 00:19:19.934 --> 00:19:20.968 (LAUGHTER) 434 00:19:20.968 --> 00:19:24.367 So I think there were limits. 435 00:19:24.367 --> 00:19:25.601 Sensitivity metric. 436 00:19:25.601 --> 00:19:27.200 There were limits to Amos's emotional 437 00:19:27.200 --> 00:19:29.100 intelligence with Danny. 438 00:19:29.100 --> 00:19:32.434 I think he thought just judging from the correspondence which 439 00:19:32.434 --> 00:19:37.634 I had my hands on, that Danny should not need the bucking up 440 00:19:37.634 --> 00:19:39.367 that he seemed to need. 441 00:19:39.367 --> 00:19:43.300 That it would be insulting to Danny to condescend to Danny 442 00:19:43.300 --> 00:19:44.234 to make him feel better. 443 00:19:44.234 --> 00:19:45.434 How long did you work on this? 444 00:19:45.434 --> 00:19:46.934 Eight years. 445 00:19:46.934 --> 00:19:49.434 So it's now 2016, that's 2000. 446 00:19:49.434 --> 00:19:50.300 I met him in '08. 447 00:19:50.300 --> 00:19:53.400 The honest answer, I met him in '07. 448 00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:54.567 You met Amos. 449 00:19:54.567 --> 00:19:56.667 I met Danny in '07, Amos was long gone. 450 00:19:56.667 --> 00:19:59.501 Amos died in 1996. 451 00:19:59.501 --> 00:20:05.501 I saw the book in my head by about 2010. 452 00:20:05.501 --> 00:20:08.901 And told Danny, and took me another couple years to kind of 453 00:20:08.901 --> 00:20:12.701 make him feel OK about it, and then another year before I felt 454 00:20:12.701 --> 00:20:15.534 I had the nerve myself to write it. 455 00:20:15.534 --> 00:20:19.000 So I really worked on it exclusively only for a couple 456 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:20.767 years, two or three years. 457 00:20:20.767 --> 00:20:23.167 Did he say that he thought that a book about 458 00:20:23.167 --> 00:20:25.167 the two of them would over exaggerate the difference 459 00:20:25.167 --> 00:20:25.968 in their characters. 460 00:20:25.968 --> 00:20:26.901 Yeah. 461 00:20:26.901 --> 00:20:29.434 He said in order to make it work on the page you have to 462 00:20:29.434 --> 00:20:31.000 exaggerate our differences. 463 00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:32.701 Now, I didn't. 464 00:20:32.701 --> 00:20:34.968 Anybody who knows them and reads that will say -- 465 00:20:34.968 --> 00:20:36.734 will not say I did it. 466 00:20:36.734 --> 00:20:38.501 Because the differences were cartoonish, 467 00:20:38.501 --> 00:20:43.601 they were already so striking. 468 00:20:43.601 --> 00:20:47.767 Danny, I think, is a little more invested than anybody would 469 00:20:47.767 --> 00:20:50.133 imagine, in the idea he was more similar to Amos 470 00:20:50.133 --> 00:20:51.267 than they understood. 471 00:20:51.267 --> 00:20:55.701 They were similar in some ways, but not in ways -- and I point 472 00:20:55.701 --> 00:20:59.100 that out, but not in the ways that people around them 473 00:20:59.100 --> 00:21:00.634 really noticed. 474 00:21:00.634 --> 00:21:01.934 Go ahead. 475 00:21:01.934 --> 00:21:06.133 So he was -- he justifiably had concerns that 476 00:21:06.133 --> 00:21:08.100 I would have to write them as caricatures. 477 00:21:08.100 --> 00:21:10.801 And he just had concerns that these ideas are complicated, 478 00:21:10.801 --> 00:21:13.601 I'm going to muck it up trying to explain them to people. 479 00:21:13.601 --> 00:21:19.367 And I think he also, in retrospect, had concerns that 480 00:21:19.367 --> 00:21:22.234 I was going to force him to relive the most painful, I mean 481 00:21:22.234 --> 00:21:26.367 it was wonderful too, relationship in his life. 482 00:21:26.367 --> 00:21:33.534 Because two incredibly, I mean, world historic intellects 483 00:21:33.534 --> 00:21:39.601 meet and fall in love, the intensity of the thing 484 00:21:39.601 --> 00:21:43.100 it's almost like a physical pain. 485 00:21:43.100 --> 00:21:44.033 OK. 486 00:21:44.033 --> 00:21:46.767 So there's intense pain, it's no longer there. 487 00:21:46.767 --> 00:21:49.100 You lost something, his intense sense of loss? 488 00:21:49.100 --> 00:21:50.033 Yeah, and regret. 489 00:21:50.033 --> 00:21:52.267 I think he has huge regret. 490 00:21:52.267 --> 00:21:54.067 That he walked away. 491 00:21:54.067 --> 00:21:56.300 Yeah, what they might have been able to do. 492 00:21:56.300 --> 00:21:57.567 He was working. 493 00:21:57.567 --> 00:21:59.367 So, there were two things they were working on. 494 00:21:59.367 --> 00:22:01.634 The undoing project is what they called, what they were 495 00:22:01.634 --> 00:22:03.367 working on when they broke up. 496 00:22:03.367 --> 00:22:05.400 But they were working on exploring the way the human 497 00:22:05.400 --> 00:22:07.667 imagination operated. 498 00:22:07.667 --> 00:22:11.567 And Danny was also had this great idea, really interesting 499 00:22:11.567 --> 00:22:17.534 idea, to explore the difference between the happiness people 500 00:22:17.534 --> 00:22:21.701 anticipate from some good or experience, compared to the 501 00:22:21.701 --> 00:22:24.033 happiness they actually experience in the moment, 502 00:22:24.033 --> 00:22:27.033 compared to the happiness they remember from the experience. 503 00:22:27.033 --> 00:22:29.901 How different forms of what economists would call utilities. 504 00:22:29.901 --> 00:22:32.000 So there's not one utility, there's like experience, 505 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:33.367 and expected, and remembered. 506 00:22:33.367 --> 00:22:35.834 He wanted Amos to help -- to do -- to work on this, 507 00:22:35.834 --> 00:22:38.300 and this work just didn't get done. 508 00:22:38.300 --> 00:22:42.033 The love that they felt, simply love of 509 00:22:42.033 --> 00:22:45.000 one mind for another, and understanding, I have met 510 00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:46.534 something really special. 511 00:22:46.534 --> 00:22:48.567 You know, my mind has met another mind 512 00:22:48.567 --> 00:22:49.667 that's really special. 513 00:22:49.667 --> 00:22:52.200 Or did it have to do with a broader sense. 514 00:22:52.200 --> 00:22:55.200 You know, I like everything about Danny, and Danny thinks 515 00:22:55.200 --> 00:22:57.667 I like everything about him, it's not just this sort of 516 00:22:57.667 --> 00:23:00.534 giant intellectual connection. 517 00:23:00.534 --> 00:23:02.634 No, it was more than intellectual -- 518 00:23:02.634 --> 00:23:05.834 there was a very emotional connection. 519 00:23:05.834 --> 00:23:07.667 What was that? 520 00:23:07.667 --> 00:23:12.167 Well, I think for these kinds of people, 521 00:23:12.167 --> 00:23:14.234 the intellectual connection is emotional. 522 00:23:14.234 --> 00:23:18.934 That the discovery of things in their own minds 523 00:23:18.934 --> 00:23:24.567 is as good as sex, and maybe better. 524 00:23:24.567 --> 00:23:31.667 And the feelings it generates when they realize the value of 525 00:23:31.667 --> 00:23:35.634 their own thoughts is intense. 526 00:23:35.634 --> 00:23:39.367 But I think, I mean they made each other laugh constantly. 527 00:23:39.367 --> 00:23:42.167 They made sense of the world around them, together in a way 528 00:23:42.167 --> 00:23:43.167 they couldn't do it as individually. 529 00:23:43.167 --> 00:23:44.200 They did things together they couldn't 530 00:23:44.200 --> 00:23:44.901 do separately. 531 00:23:44.901 --> 00:23:45.734 Well -- 532 00:23:45.734 --> 00:23:46.601 Let's stay there. 533 00:23:46.601 --> 00:23:48.634 They did things together they couldn't do separately. 534 00:23:48.634 --> 00:23:49.501 Correct. 535 00:23:49.501 --> 00:23:51.367 In terms of the way they looked at the world, 536 00:23:51.367 --> 00:23:52.534 in terms of everything. 537 00:23:52.534 --> 00:23:52.968 Yeah. 538 00:23:52.968 --> 00:23:56.367 I mean, in Israel, they aren't just a couple of academics that 539 00:23:56.367 --> 00:23:58.267 are just sitting there, they're going off and fighting in a war 540 00:23:58.267 --> 00:23:59.234 every six years. 541 00:23:59.234 --> 00:24:02.434 And they're advising the Israeli Air Force how to train their 542 00:24:02.434 --> 00:24:04.968 pilots, and the Israeli government what to do about 543 00:24:04.968 --> 00:24:06.367 the Arabs on their border. 544 00:24:06.367 --> 00:24:07.534 And, you know, it's one thing after another. 545 00:24:07.534 --> 00:24:11.868 They're putting in to practice things that they're thinking. 546 00:24:11.868 --> 00:24:14.767 So it's real and relevant at the same time. 547 00:24:14.767 --> 00:24:18.534 The thoughts -- this isn't too much of a stretch, 548 00:24:18.534 --> 00:24:21.000 that the thoughts they have might help preserve this society 549 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:23.467 and their culture. 550 00:24:23.467 --> 00:24:25.234 So -- 551 00:24:25.234 --> 00:24:27.868 Without the other they felt incomplete? 552 00:24:27.868 --> 00:24:30.734 I think that's true. 553 00:24:30.734 --> 00:24:31.767 I think that's true. 554 00:24:31.767 --> 00:24:35.467 I think that they discovered something of themselves in 555 00:24:35.467 --> 00:24:37.667 the other that they couldn't find anywhere else. 556 00:24:37.667 --> 00:24:42.667 You see both of them seeking partnerships after they split, 557 00:24:42.667 --> 00:24:46.167 and none of them were nearly -- not even close. 558 00:24:46.167 --> 00:24:47.934 This is a quote from you, what they were engaged 559 00:24:47.934 --> 00:24:52.234 in, right from the beginning was undoing a false view 560 00:24:52.234 --> 00:24:54.934 man has in himself. 561 00:24:54.934 --> 00:24:58.801 So the false view man has is that he's always right. 562 00:24:58.801 --> 00:25:01.267 It's more that people are basically rational -- 563 00:25:01.267 --> 00:25:07.801 and the mind is a highly -- is an exquisitely evolved tool that 564 00:25:07.801 --> 00:25:11.734 solves problems, is designed to solve all the problems. 565 00:25:11.734 --> 00:25:16.567 What is it they found about the irrationality? 566 00:25:16.567 --> 00:25:19.067 If it's not rational it's irrational. 567 00:25:19.067 --> 00:25:20.934 Irrational is produced by what? 568 00:25:20.934 --> 00:25:22.667 They were actually careful not to use 569 00:25:22.667 --> 00:25:24.701 the word rational because they didn't want to get into a debate 570 00:25:24.701 --> 00:25:26.467 about what rationality was. 571 00:25:26.467 --> 00:25:27.701 But, certainly, it's suboptimal. 572 00:25:27.701 --> 00:25:30.567 That people would do things, maybe show how people would, 573 00:25:30.567 --> 00:25:34.567 you know, say they prefer A to B and B to C, but then turn 574 00:25:34.567 --> 00:25:36.467 around and say they like C better than A. 575 00:25:36.467 --> 00:25:39.067 Or they would show the way people respond -- chose -- 576 00:25:39.067 --> 00:25:40.634 when they chose between things. 577 00:25:40.634 --> 00:25:42.167 They didn't choose between the things, they chose between 578 00:25:42.167 --> 00:25:43.567 descriptions of the things. 579 00:25:43.567 --> 00:25:46.567 So I'll give you a terrifying example. 580 00:25:46.567 --> 00:25:50.634 They did a study -- Amos did a study where the doctor 581 00:25:50.634 --> 00:25:54.901 illustrated the point the day Amos had made 582 00:25:54.901 --> 00:26:02.767 that if a patient, you, Charlie, I tell you, I'm the doctor, 583 00:26:02.767 --> 00:26:04.200 you're the patient. 584 00:26:04.200 --> 00:26:07.534 We just get news that you have terminal cancer. 585 00:26:07.534 --> 00:26:09.234 That you're going to die -- maybe it's going to kill you 586 00:26:09.234 --> 00:26:10.667 in six or seven years. 587 00:26:10.667 --> 00:26:13.000 This is a great point, I know where it's going. 588 00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:14.667 But, guess what, there's an operation 589 00:26:14.667 --> 00:26:17.200 we can do right now but we've got to do it now. 590 00:26:17.200 --> 00:26:19.067 But it's risky. 591 00:26:19.067 --> 00:26:20.801 And we got to decide whether we're going to do it. 592 00:26:20.801 --> 00:26:25.767 And if the way this is presented to us, patient and doctor, 593 00:26:25.767 --> 00:26:29.501 is that there's a ten percent chance you're going to die 594 00:26:29.501 --> 00:26:33.067 during this operation, we are half as likely to have 595 00:26:33.067 --> 00:26:36.400 the operation, than if it's presented as a 90 percent chance 596 00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:37.901 you're going to survive the operation. 597 00:26:37.901 --> 00:26:40.667 (CROSSTALK) 598 00:26:40.667 --> 00:26:41.701 One is framed as a loss 599 00:26:41.701 --> 00:26:43.067 and one is basically a gain. 600 00:26:43.067 --> 00:26:48.834 But do you describe the same things, this is the exact same 601 00:26:48.834 --> 00:26:50.234 thing, a 90 percent chance of survival, 602 00:26:50.234 --> 00:26:51.501 a ten percent chance of death. 603 00:26:51.501 --> 00:26:54.534 The doctors changed their mind about whether 604 00:26:54.534 --> 00:26:55.934 to do this operation. 605 00:26:55.934 --> 00:27:00.667 So, I think it's fair to say that's kind of irrational. 606 00:27:00.667 --> 00:27:04.734 But the point here is the frame of assumption 607 00:27:04.734 --> 00:27:05.567 in the question. 608 00:27:05.567 --> 00:27:08.567 Frame the question can project the answer. 609 00:27:08.567 --> 00:27:09.200 Right. 610 00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:12.901 The choices and decisions people make are heavily influenced by 611 00:27:12.901 --> 00:27:15.567 the kind of architecture around when they're making it. 612 00:27:15.567 --> 00:27:17.234 For example, if you go on a holiday, 613 00:27:17.234 --> 00:27:18.934 this is another example right from your book. 614 00:27:18.934 --> 00:27:22.067 You go on a holiday, the first two days are rainy and awful, 615 00:27:22.067 --> 00:27:24.067 or the first five days, and the last two days 616 00:27:24.067 --> 00:27:25.400 are sunny and wonderful. 617 00:27:25.400 --> 00:27:27.267 You're going to remember the sunny and wonderful. 618 00:27:27.267 --> 00:27:29.901 So if you go in the first two days -- 619 00:27:29.901 --> 00:27:31.667 This is related, this is a reviewer 620 00:27:31.667 --> 00:27:33.968 actually, who said that, but this is Danny -- 621 00:27:33.968 --> 00:27:38.200 Danny did studies -- I mean who does this stuff? 622 00:27:38.200 --> 00:27:40.000 Danny did studies of people's colonoscopies, 623 00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:43.567 back when colonoscopies were painful, and he was studying -- 624 00:27:43.567 --> 00:27:50.000 he had this idea which broadly turned out to be true, that -- 625 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:53.534 you and I go through the same colonoscopy, say, and it takes 626 00:27:53.534 --> 00:27:56.934 two hours, and we endure exactly the same amount of pain 627 00:27:56.934 --> 00:27:58.300 for those two hours. 628 00:27:58.300 --> 00:28:02.000 But at the end of those two hours, they just say, 629 00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:05.100 at some intense level of pain they say, Charlie, 630 00:28:05.100 --> 00:28:06.000 you're done, you can go. 631 00:28:06.000 --> 00:28:09.434 But they keep me on the table for another hour 632 00:28:09.434 --> 00:28:11.934 enduring some pain, but just less pain. 633 00:28:11.934 --> 00:28:13.901 I would have endured more total pain because I had that 634 00:28:13.901 --> 00:28:15.367 extra hour, right? 635 00:28:15.367 --> 00:28:17.734 Because it ends on a less miserable note, 636 00:28:17.734 --> 00:28:20.467 I will remember it more fondly than you do. 637 00:28:20.467 --> 00:28:22.834 And I'm more likely to come back for another colonoscopy. 638 00:28:22.834 --> 00:28:25.434 So you gave an example with pleasure. 639 00:28:25.434 --> 00:28:26.667 I was giving one with pain. 640 00:28:26.667 --> 00:28:29.767 He called it the peak end rule, that the way things end 641 00:28:29.767 --> 00:28:32.534 have a disproportionate influence over the people's 642 00:28:32.534 --> 00:28:34.868 experience of the event. 643 00:28:34.868 --> 00:28:36.033 Movie makers know this. 644 00:28:36.033 --> 00:28:37.734 The ending is so much more important than anything else 645 00:28:37.734 --> 00:28:38.567 in the movie. 646 00:28:38.567 --> 00:28:40.367 How people feel when they walk out of the theatre 647 00:28:40.367 --> 00:28:42.601 is driven by with what's just on the screen. 648 00:28:42.601 --> 00:28:43.734 That is why they test all this different endings 649 00:28:43.734 --> 00:28:44.868 and not different middles. 650 00:28:44.868 --> 00:28:48.901 So this -- 651 00:28:48.901 --> 00:28:50.534 Is it a -- 652 00:28:50.534 --> 00:28:51.934 Think how bizarre this is, right? 653 00:28:51.934 --> 00:28:54.467 That if I'm trying to get you to come back for another 654 00:28:54.467 --> 00:28:59.634 colonoscopy in five years, what I should do is make you string 655 00:28:59.634 --> 00:29:02.634 it out and make it even worse than it actually has to be 656 00:29:02.634 --> 00:29:04.567 in order for you to end on a less -- 657 00:29:04.567 --> 00:29:05.701 A less painful note. 658 00:29:05.701 --> 00:29:08.634 Yes, and you can manipulate people's choices 659 00:29:08.634 --> 00:29:13.167 and people's experiences that way. 660 00:29:13.167 --> 00:29:15.000 What was startling that you discovered 661 00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:18.033 about what they knew? 662 00:29:18.033 --> 00:29:20.100 I assume there is some variations of this, 663 00:29:20.100 --> 00:29:22.701 but go ahead. 664 00:29:22.701 --> 00:29:26.701 There are so many different little insights 665 00:29:26.701 --> 00:29:27.734 like nuggets. 666 00:29:27.734 --> 00:29:28.534 They are nuggets. 667 00:29:28.534 --> 00:29:29.801 There are bunch of a lot of little nuggets, 668 00:29:29.801 --> 00:29:31.367 they find along the trail. 669 00:29:31.367 --> 00:29:39.000 So the big thing that is hammered home into my brain from 670 00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:43.634 spending all this time with him is how hard it is to preserve 671 00:29:43.634 --> 00:29:47.467 a proper sense of uncertainty about the world around you. 672 00:29:47.467 --> 00:29:50.634 How hard it is to not leap to conclusions, 673 00:29:50.634 --> 00:29:56.033 leap to overconfident guesses, predictions about 674 00:29:56.033 --> 00:29:56.901 what's going to happen. 675 00:29:56.901 --> 00:30:00.167 And realize that there are so many different paths reality 676 00:30:00.167 --> 00:30:07.067 can take and as Amos says, Amos says reality is not a point. 677 00:30:07.067 --> 00:30:09.634 It's a cloud of possibilities that in any given time 678 00:30:09.634 --> 00:30:11.968 the world can go in lots of different directions, 679 00:30:11.968 --> 00:30:13.367 in small and big ways. 680 00:30:13.367 --> 00:30:14.834 But we don't want to see it that way. 681 00:30:14.834 --> 00:30:17.033 We want to see it having been much more deterministic 682 00:30:17.033 --> 00:30:17.701 than it is. 683 00:30:17.701 --> 00:30:20.267 One might listen to their own personal 684 00:30:20.267 --> 00:30:23.534 characteristics with the nature of Amos and the nature of Danny, 685 00:30:23.534 --> 00:30:26.701 Danny being more doubtful and say that this is, 686 00:30:26.701 --> 00:30:32.167 this shows that Danny's personality is the prevailing 687 00:30:32.167 --> 00:30:33.801 question about the mind. 688 00:30:33.801 --> 00:30:34.767 It is more doubting. 689 00:30:34.767 --> 00:30:35.834 It is less certain. 690 00:30:35.834 --> 00:30:39.367 It is less -- whereas Amos had gone through life being viewed-- 691 00:30:39.367 --> 00:30:40.067 Totally certain. 692 00:30:40.067 --> 00:30:41.200 Totally certain. 693 00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:44.367 Being viewed as the most brilliant, the most right, 694 00:30:44.367 --> 00:30:45.067 the most -- 695 00:30:45.067 --> 00:30:48.267 Yes, and he was sometimes insufferable this way. 696 00:30:48.267 --> 00:30:49.367 And you know what everybody says? 697 00:30:49.367 --> 00:30:52.634 But therefore Danny is more reflective of 698 00:30:52.634 --> 00:30:55.133 the result that they determined was the most accurate 699 00:30:55.133 --> 00:30:55.901 picture of the mind. 700 00:30:55.901 --> 00:30:57.767 Danny lived his life much more true to the work. 701 00:30:57.767 --> 00:31:00.167 That is absolutely right. 702 00:31:00.167 --> 00:31:01.667 This is absolutely true. 703 00:31:01.667 --> 00:31:04.200 That Danny was the human embodiment of the work 704 00:31:04.200 --> 00:31:05.267 and Amos was not. 705 00:31:05.267 --> 00:31:06.534 And Amos was jolted. 706 00:31:06.534 --> 00:31:10.534 It took Danny's incredible capacity talent for doubt 707 00:31:10.534 --> 00:31:13.234 and questioning to jolt Amos's self-certainty. 708 00:31:13.234 --> 00:31:20.367 And Amos, just Amos had a sense that whatever his instincts were 709 00:31:20.367 --> 00:31:21.601 were right. 710 00:31:21.601 --> 00:31:30.133 And the thing that most people thought was, Amos's case, 711 00:31:30.133 --> 00:31:31.167 he was kind of right. 712 00:31:31.167 --> 00:31:33.300 He was right about so much. 713 00:31:33.300 --> 00:31:36.267 But when he was wrong, he didn't handle it well. 714 00:31:36.267 --> 00:31:42.367 He was not the embodiment of the work that Danny was. 715 00:31:42.367 --> 00:31:44.167 We live in a digital world today 716 00:31:44.167 --> 00:31:48.100 in which there is so much data out there. 717 00:31:48.100 --> 00:31:52.667 And there's a huge giant industry growing up in terms of 718 00:31:52.667 --> 00:31:55.968 individual companies, individual institutions which is 719 00:31:55.968 --> 00:31:59.534 the capacity to analyze data gives you decision-making 720 00:31:59.534 --> 00:32:01.734 ability that you've never had before. 721 00:32:01.734 --> 00:32:04.367 That is data, the power of data. 722 00:32:04.367 --> 00:32:06.567 Yes, the power of technology. 723 00:32:06.567 --> 00:32:09.234 What are they saying about that? 724 00:32:09.234 --> 00:32:11.200 They would say it's all good in that 725 00:32:11.200 --> 00:32:15.033 they would say it's partly a response to what we know. 726 00:32:15.033 --> 00:32:19.534 If human gut instincts were really great, like if they 727 00:32:19.534 --> 00:32:22.734 were right on all the time, you wouldn't need Moneyball. 728 00:32:22.734 --> 00:32:25.734 You wouldn't need statistical analysis of baseball players. 729 00:32:25.734 --> 00:32:27.834 You'd look and say I know that guy is a good baseball player. 730 00:32:27.834 --> 00:32:29.367 Because Moneyball was based -- 731 00:32:29.367 --> 00:32:31.667 It was based on using statistics defined. 732 00:32:31.667 --> 00:32:32.767 As much as you could know. 733 00:32:32.767 --> 00:32:34.167 As much as you could know, looking for 734 00:32:34.167 --> 00:32:37.200 knowledge about the player in the performance statistics. 735 00:32:37.200 --> 00:32:41.634 And the idea is only valuable if you can find things in 736 00:32:41.634 --> 00:32:44.133 the performance statistics that the human eye is missing. 737 00:32:44.133 --> 00:32:47.167 And the human eye was missing quite a bit. 738 00:32:47.167 --> 00:32:53.367 So the, with their relationship to the big data movement is 739 00:32:53.367 --> 00:32:58.734 they kind of explain partly the power of big data, it's partly 740 00:32:58.734 --> 00:33:02.567 a response to the poverty of human intuition. 741 00:33:02.567 --> 00:33:06.133 Just partly, I mean, partly it's actually being able to 742 00:33:06.133 --> 00:33:10.767 create new information, but partly it's a response 743 00:33:10.767 --> 00:33:12.200 to human limitations. 744 00:33:12.200 --> 00:33:13.667 Ok, take the people that you wrote about 745 00:33:13.667 --> 00:33:15.133 in Moneyball. 746 00:33:15.133 --> 00:33:16.567 Did they know who these characters where? 747 00:33:16.567 --> 00:33:19.267 Did they know anything about the link between what they were 748 00:33:19.267 --> 00:33:23.801 doing and what Danny and Amos had done? 749 00:33:23.801 --> 00:33:24.968 This is funny. 750 00:33:24.968 --> 00:33:26.767 I wouldn't have known, because I didn't know that, 751 00:33:26.767 --> 00:33:28.367 I wouldn't have thought to ask them. 752 00:33:28.367 --> 00:33:33.133 It turns out yes. 753 00:33:33.133 --> 00:33:37.067 Paul Depodesta who was the Jonah Hill character in 754 00:33:37.067 --> 00:33:41.267 the movie, Paul who was the stack geek that Brad Pitt brings 755 00:33:41.267 --> 00:33:46.033 in, the Billy Beane brought into the Oakland A's. 756 00:33:46.033 --> 00:33:50.234 He was steeped in behavioral economics, self-taught, 757 00:33:50.234 --> 00:33:52.467 which was spawned by Danny and Amos's work. 758 00:33:52.467 --> 00:33:53.434 That's the field they created. 759 00:33:53.434 --> 00:33:56.734 Right, and I'll tell you what interested him? 760 00:33:56.734 --> 00:33:59.367 They are taking advantage of these mistakes 761 00:33:59.367 --> 00:34:00.834 in the marketplace. 762 00:34:00.834 --> 00:34:03.701 And he realized they were categories of mistakes. 763 00:34:03.701 --> 00:34:06.367 There were kinds of mistakes that there were particular 764 00:34:06.367 --> 00:34:11.501 biases that the scouts had that they were exploiting so he 765 00:34:11.501 --> 00:34:14.300 needed to kind of know what those were, so he was very aware 766 00:34:14.300 --> 00:34:18.701 of the work, but via behavioral economics. 767 00:34:18.701 --> 00:34:21.934 Funny enough the other channel of influence in Moneyball was 768 00:34:21.934 --> 00:34:26.901 Bill James, who was the, he was the original kind of questioner 769 00:34:26.901 --> 00:34:31.434 of conventional baseball wisdom, who had this self-published -- 770 00:34:31.434 --> 00:34:34.734 he's now world-famous and works with the Boston Red Sox. 771 00:34:34.734 --> 00:34:38.167 But he was just looking at baseball players in new ways 772 00:34:38.167 --> 00:34:40.300 leaning heavily on statistics. 773 00:34:40.300 --> 00:34:43.567 When I was going through Amos's file cabinets, 774 00:34:43.567 --> 00:34:46.000 I found letters from Bill James. 775 00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:48.701 Wow. 776 00:34:48.701 --> 00:34:50.667 Asking what? 777 00:34:50.667 --> 00:34:53.400 It was Bill James interacting. 778 00:34:53.400 --> 00:34:56.601 Amos was interacting in a three-way conversation 779 00:34:56.601 --> 00:35:00.934 with a statistician at Yale named Robert Ableson. 780 00:35:00.934 --> 00:35:04.167 And James and Ableson were going back and forth and they were 781 00:35:04.167 --> 00:35:06.501 referring to Amos and Amos's work. 782 00:35:06.501 --> 00:35:11.067 Abelson was and James -- it was in the air. 783 00:35:11.067 --> 00:35:16.133 They were present and I didn't realize it. 784 00:35:16.133 --> 00:35:21.234 So I think it was a very small world when James starts writing 785 00:35:21.234 --> 00:35:25.267 in the late '70s and early '80s people who are saying a lot of 786 00:35:25.267 --> 00:35:29.968 conventional wisdom's wrong and now we have tools with computing 787 00:35:29.968 --> 00:35:35.267 power, so we have tools for kind of showing how it's wrong. 788 00:35:35.267 --> 00:35:36.501 Does Epstein from the Cubs who was 789 00:35:36.501 --> 00:35:39.667 at the Red Sox, is he a disciple of this? 790 00:35:39.667 --> 00:35:41.667 Oh my God. 791 00:35:41.667 --> 00:35:43.367 He is a child of it. 792 00:35:43.367 --> 00:35:46.701 He would say I'm sure he would distance himself a little bit, 793 00:35:46.701 --> 00:35:50.000 because politically you can't weld together the old baseball 794 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:52.934 world with the new baseball world without some deference 795 00:35:52.934 --> 00:35:54.267 to the old baseball world. 796 00:35:54.267 --> 00:35:57.234 He has a different kind of tightrope to walk than 797 00:35:57.234 --> 00:36:00.267 Billy Dean, did who was just gonna smash everything. 798 00:36:00.267 --> 00:36:05.968 But Theo Epstein, well for that matter, virtually 799 00:36:05.968 --> 00:36:09.767 everybody was successful this year in the playoffs. 800 00:36:09.767 --> 00:36:15.033 The Indians' general managers, too, were heavily reliant 801 00:36:15.033 --> 00:36:18.400 on sophisticated statistical analysis. 802 00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:22.267 But you know that is not to say there's not a role 803 00:36:22.267 --> 00:36:23.567 for human beings. 804 00:36:23.567 --> 00:36:26.667 It's just the role is different than what it historically 805 00:36:26.667 --> 00:36:27.801 has been. 806 00:36:27.801 --> 00:36:29.567 What is the role for human beings? 807 00:36:29.567 --> 00:36:32.434 It is gathering information that's not in 808 00:36:32.434 --> 00:36:33.634 the algorithm. 809 00:36:33.634 --> 00:36:37.167 It's like, you know, you're about, it's nice to know when 810 00:36:37.167 --> 00:36:39.367 you're looking at, say, the performance statistics of a 811 00:36:39.367 --> 00:36:42.367 college player and he looks like he is great, that he has 812 00:36:42.367 --> 00:36:45.801 a cocaine addiction or that he got in a car accident 813 00:36:45.801 --> 00:36:46.934 the day before the draft. 814 00:36:46.934 --> 00:36:48.033 Does this have anything to do with the rise of 815 00:36:48.033 --> 00:36:49.767 artificial intelligence? 816 00:36:49.767 --> 00:36:51.234 Funny you ask that, because Amos was asked 817 00:36:51.234 --> 00:36:54.701 that very question in 1981. 818 00:36:54.701 --> 00:36:58.634 And he turned to the interviewer and he said my work has less to 819 00:36:58.634 --> 00:37:01.834 do with artificial intelligence than it does natural stupidity. 820 00:37:01.834 --> 00:37:02.901 (LAUGHTER) 821 00:37:02.901 --> 00:37:08.934 So I don't, I mean you can make an argument that the reason 822 00:37:08.934 --> 00:37:11.667 artificial intelligence is supplanting human intelligence 823 00:37:11.667 --> 00:37:13.200 is the weakness of human intelligence, 824 00:37:13.200 --> 00:37:15.267 the same way you make the argument for big data, 825 00:37:15.267 --> 00:37:18.167 but they didn't see their work that way. 826 00:37:18.167 --> 00:37:19.434 I see it called the new field of 827 00:37:19.434 --> 00:37:20.767 behavioral economics. 828 00:37:20.767 --> 00:37:23.434 It drives psychologists crazy 829 00:37:23.434 --> 00:37:24.434 because it isn't. 830 00:37:24.434 --> 00:37:25.300 Exactly. 831 00:37:25.300 --> 00:37:25.901 Yes. 832 00:37:25.901 --> 00:37:28.033 It's cognitive psychology. 833 00:37:28.033 --> 00:37:28.501 Exactly. 834 00:37:28.501 --> 00:37:29.934 Yeah. 835 00:37:29.934 --> 00:37:32.601 So economists are really good at branding. 836 00:37:32.601 --> 00:37:33.868 That is why. 837 00:37:33.868 --> 00:37:35.400 They're really good at branding. 838 00:37:35.400 --> 00:37:37.634 They grab the stuff. 839 00:37:37.634 --> 00:37:41.300 I mean look Dick Thaler is the bridge in economics 840 00:37:41.300 --> 00:37:45.234 for their work, Richard Thaler, and he has a lot of interesting 841 00:37:45.234 --> 00:37:46.634 ideas of his own. 842 00:37:46.634 --> 00:37:50.400 And he gave it the name behavioral economics. 843 00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:52.667 There was actually a discussion what are we going to call this. 844 00:37:52.667 --> 00:37:56.934 It's a fine name, but it's not fair to psychology. 845 00:37:56.934 --> 00:37:58.300 Do they teach this at the Harvard Business 846 00:37:58.300 --> 00:38:00.100 School or Stanford Business School? 847 00:38:00.100 --> 00:38:02.601 Yes, oh my God, absolutely, 848 00:38:02.601 --> 00:38:05.067 it's catnip for these guys. 849 00:38:05.067 --> 00:38:09.033 They show them, I actually interviewed professors at 850 00:38:09.033 --> 00:38:10.734 the Harvard Business School, it doesn't find its way into 851 00:38:10.734 --> 00:38:12.734 the book, because it wasn't part of the narrative. 852 00:38:12.734 --> 00:38:15.901 What they do in the very beginning, some of these 853 00:38:15.901 --> 00:38:19.901 teachers, they want to show the people, incoming class, 854 00:38:19.901 --> 00:38:22.634 their minds are not as great as they think. 855 00:38:22.634 --> 00:38:26.901 And so what they do is, I mean, this is one typical thing 856 00:38:26.901 --> 00:38:29.667 they do in Harvard Business School beginning class. 857 00:38:29.667 --> 00:38:33.534 They say everybody write down the last two digits of your 858 00:38:33.534 --> 00:38:36.133 cell phone number on a piece of paper, tuck it away, 859 00:38:36.133 --> 00:38:38.634 and hand it in with your name on it. 860 00:38:38.634 --> 00:38:41.934 Now, I want you to estimate the percentage of countries 861 00:38:41.934 --> 00:38:44.701 in the United Nations that are from Africa. 862 00:38:44.701 --> 00:38:50.734 And they show that the people who have high digits on their 863 00:38:50.734 --> 00:38:53.801 cell phones estimate higher numbers for the African -- 864 00:38:53.801 --> 00:38:57.133 The last two digits are 78, say, or 98. 865 00:38:57.133 --> 00:39:00.567 You might say that 28 percent of the countries 866 00:39:00.567 --> 00:39:03.000 in the U.N. are from Africa, but if your last two digits on your 867 00:39:03.000 --> 00:39:06.367 cell phone are 02, you might say there are five percent. 868 00:39:06.367 --> 00:39:09.367 This is tricks your mind does? 869 00:39:09.367 --> 00:39:10.701 It tricks your mind plays on you, 870 00:39:10.701 --> 00:39:13.567 Danny and Amos call this anchoring. 871 00:39:13.567 --> 00:39:16.534 I took completely an irrelevant piece of information 872 00:39:16.534 --> 00:39:19.133 introduced before the question you're asking 873 00:39:19.133 --> 00:39:20.634 queers the answer to the question. 874 00:39:20.634 --> 00:39:22.200 See, what's scary about this -- 875 00:39:22.200 --> 00:39:23.801 It's very scary. 876 00:39:23.801 --> 00:39:25.200 There's a lot that is scary. 877 00:39:25.200 --> 00:39:26.100 Exactly. 878 00:39:26.100 --> 00:39:31.000 A lot of this stuff is in fact irrational. 879 00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:34.501 The mind can do crazy things. 880 00:39:34.501 --> 00:39:36.601 We're talking about all kinds of decisions 881 00:39:36.601 --> 00:39:41.667 that are made every day that may be life and death? 882 00:39:41.667 --> 00:39:44.534 That may have to do with the future of nations. 883 00:39:44.534 --> 00:39:45.834 May have to do with -- 884 00:39:45.834 --> 00:39:47.267 Sentencing criminals. 885 00:39:47.267 --> 00:39:49.701 Yes, have to do with great discoveries, 886 00:39:49.701 --> 00:39:51.667 all kinds of things. 887 00:39:51.667 --> 00:39:54.834 It's touched, they have touched so many 888 00:39:54.834 --> 00:39:56.234 spheres of human activity. 889 00:39:56.234 --> 00:39:58.634 And I mean this is why I fell in love with this story. 890 00:39:58.634 --> 00:40:02.934 This relationship, it all starts with the fire 891 00:40:02.934 --> 00:40:06.801 of the relationship leads to all that. 892 00:40:06.801 --> 00:40:09.067 Two things I want to ask you about because 893 00:40:09.067 --> 00:40:11.767 I have a lot more too -- you quote Voltaire. 894 00:40:11.767 --> 00:40:14.534 Doubt is not a pleasant condition... 895 00:40:14.534 --> 00:40:17.601 "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, 896 00:40:17.601 --> 00:40:22.234 but certainty is an absurd one." 897 00:40:22.234 --> 00:40:24.300 I mean, a loud condemnation of certainty. 898 00:40:24.300 --> 00:40:25.067 Yes. 899 00:40:25.067 --> 00:40:29.200 This is right at the center of what these guys 900 00:40:29.200 --> 00:40:32.367 are introducing into existence. 901 00:40:32.367 --> 00:40:34.300 Not so much certain to please. 902 00:40:34.300 --> 00:40:37.100 Yes, in fact, if people ask like what advice 903 00:40:37.100 --> 00:40:38.133 can I get from your book? 904 00:40:38.133 --> 00:40:39.534 Here's a piece of advice. 905 00:40:39.534 --> 00:40:40.934 My piece of advice is if you're looking for people who are 906 00:40:40.934 --> 00:40:43.601 giving you advice, whether it's your political leaders 907 00:40:43.601 --> 00:40:48.567 or your doctor or your financial advisor, if they are really, 908 00:40:48.567 --> 00:40:50.501 really confident and totally sure what they're telling you, 909 00:40:50.501 --> 00:40:53.434 and the direction of the stock market or the diagnosis of 910 00:40:53.434 --> 00:40:55.767 your disease or how they're going to fix the economy, 911 00:40:55.767 --> 00:40:59.667 count it against them, in fact, don't hire them. 912 00:40:59.667 --> 00:41:02.934 What you want is someone who has the capacity to doubt 913 00:41:02.934 --> 00:41:06.367 his own predictions, because they are inherently, 914 00:41:06.367 --> 00:41:08.033 inherently fallible. 915 00:41:08.033 --> 00:41:12.434 They are not -- we do not live in a deterministic world. 916 00:41:12.434 --> 00:41:15.167 Something can always come along and surprise them and 917 00:41:15.167 --> 00:41:19.000 to retain that capacity, that understanding that you can't, 918 00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:21.601 they might be wrong, that is a sign of both 919 00:41:21.601 --> 00:41:22.934 intelligence and honesty. 920 00:41:22.934 --> 00:41:26.067 But does what they discovered give you metrics 921 00:41:26.067 --> 00:41:29.367 or an understanding how to make wiser decisions? 922 00:41:29.367 --> 00:41:32.968 You know there are two answers to that. 923 00:41:32.968 --> 00:41:34.701 One is no and the other's yes. 924 00:41:34.701 --> 00:41:40.801 So the no answer is they would say, I think, that these 925 00:41:40.801 --> 00:41:44.934 cognitive illusions, the tricks of the mind are a lot like 926 00:41:44.934 --> 00:41:49.467 optical illusions, that the mind -- the way the mind is fooled -- 927 00:41:49.467 --> 00:41:52.000 Like the way the eye is fooled when you suffer an optical 928 00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:57.133 illusion, even when someone shows you that the water on 929 00:41:57.133 --> 00:42:00.667 the desert highway is not water, it's a mirage, 930 00:42:00.667 --> 00:42:03.133 you still see the mirage, you don't stop seeing it. 931 00:42:03.133 --> 00:42:05.434 The cognitive illusions are like that. 932 00:42:05.434 --> 00:42:11.167 Even when they're pointed out people still, it doesn't change. 933 00:42:11.167 --> 00:42:15.367 However, I tell you what I think. 934 00:42:15.367 --> 00:42:19.367 I think that they introduced paths to dealing 935 00:42:19.367 --> 00:42:20.868 with the weaknesses. 936 00:42:20.868 --> 00:42:25.667 And one of them is other people are good at 937 00:42:25.667 --> 00:42:27.467 seeing your mistakes. 938 00:42:27.467 --> 00:42:30.701 You may be tricked by the optical illusion, 939 00:42:30.701 --> 00:42:32.367 but they can see you being tricked. 940 00:42:32.367 --> 00:42:34.968 So creating a decision-making environment where you have 941 00:42:34.968 --> 00:42:38.033 checks on you is a really, really smart idea. 942 00:42:38.033 --> 00:42:39.534 And in practical ways, they introduced that 943 00:42:39.534 --> 00:42:41.601 to lots of places. 944 00:42:41.601 --> 00:42:45.033 Malcolm Gladwell said about you, you know, 945 00:42:45.033 --> 00:42:46.200 that he's in awe of you. 946 00:42:46.200 --> 00:42:47.601 Malcolm Gladwell is a pretty good writer. 947 00:42:47.601 --> 00:42:48.601 Great writer. 948 00:42:48.601 --> 00:42:50.267 Says he is in awe of you, and he said it was 949 00:42:50.267 --> 00:42:53.200 like watching Tiger Woods. 950 00:42:53.200 --> 00:42:56.100 Are other people better at understanding your magic 951 00:42:56.100 --> 00:42:58.200 than you are? 952 00:42:58.200 --> 00:43:02.601 I mean, is it more simply industry for you rather than 953 00:43:02.601 --> 00:43:05.400 poetry and rather than -- do you know what I mean? 954 00:43:05.400 --> 00:43:08.501 It's not work for me so it's not industry, 955 00:43:08.501 --> 00:43:09.601 because that implies work. 956 00:43:09.601 --> 00:43:13.868 I get enormous pleasure out of what I do, enormous pleasure. 957 00:43:13.868 --> 00:43:15.267 But do you understand it? 958 00:43:15.267 --> 00:43:17.234 I mean, do you understand what it is you have? 959 00:43:17.234 --> 00:43:19.467 I'm not an idiot savant. 960 00:43:19.467 --> 00:43:24.033 I do basically understand what I'm doing when I do it, but 961 00:43:24.033 --> 00:43:30.767 I don't feel -- Malcolm likes my books more than I do and 962 00:43:30.767 --> 00:43:34.367 I would actually, Malcolm might have done a better job 963 00:43:34.367 --> 00:43:35.834 with this I think. 964 00:43:35.834 --> 00:43:39.400 I think my limitations as a writer and I bump up 965 00:43:39.400 --> 00:43:40.567 against them. 966 00:43:40.567 --> 00:43:44.000 I can see what I've got going for me too 967 00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:45.501 and I try to play to my strengths. 968 00:43:45.501 --> 00:43:47.267 Well, define what you have going for you. 969 00:43:47.267 --> 00:43:49.000 I'm good at creating characters on a page 970 00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:51.467 and propelling a narrative forward, a narrative that 971 00:43:51.467 --> 00:43:53.367 seduces people into learning about things. 972 00:43:53.367 --> 00:43:56.400 So that once you get them you can take them anywhere. 973 00:43:56.400 --> 00:43:59.501 And the feeling that trust that you create between writer and 974 00:43:59.501 --> 00:44:03.534 reader so they say well this is awfully weird there's algebra 975 00:44:03.534 --> 00:44:06.534 in the footnote on page 242 but I'm going to trust this is 976 00:44:06.534 --> 00:44:08.601 something I need to get through. 977 00:44:08.601 --> 00:44:10.767 You create the feeling of trust they're not going to waste 978 00:44:10.767 --> 00:44:13.901 the reader's time and energy, I think I do that pretty well. 979 00:44:13.901 --> 00:44:15.367 Ok, take a look at this list. 980 00:44:15.367 --> 00:44:18.434 Liar's Poker, The Money Culture, Pacific Grip, 981 00:44:18.434 --> 00:44:21.167 The New New Thing, Next, Moneyball, Coach, 982 00:44:21.167 --> 00:44:24.234 The Blind Side, Home Game, Boomerang, The Big Short, 983 00:44:24.234 --> 00:44:29.000 Flash Boys, and now this, "The Undoing Project." 984 00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:31.767 Where do you put this? 985 00:44:31.767 --> 00:44:33.000 You know, I never said this about a book 986 00:44:33.000 --> 00:44:37.767 before, but it's the best book I've written. 987 00:44:37.767 --> 00:44:40.200 Because it's done better or because... 988 00:44:40.200 --> 00:44:43.033 The level of, degree of difficulty was high. 989 00:44:43.033 --> 00:44:50.167 But it is also the quality of the material, the importance of 990 00:44:50.167 --> 00:44:52.567 the material is just off the charts. 991 00:44:52.567 --> 00:44:54.534 When Amos died, what did he know? 992 00:44:54.534 --> 00:44:59.067 Did he feel like, oh my God, we're just getting going 993 00:44:59.067 --> 00:45:00.601 and here I am going away. 994 00:45:00.601 --> 00:45:01.801 You know the last thing he wanted to know was 995 00:45:01.801 --> 00:45:05.767 whether and I think there's some evidence that he kept 996 00:45:05.767 --> 00:45:08.567 himself alive just to find out was whether Netanyahu was going 997 00:45:08.567 --> 00:45:10.367 to win his first election. 998 00:45:10.367 --> 00:45:14.067 When he waited for the election results, heard them, 999 00:45:14.067 --> 00:45:15.567 and said I won't see peace in my lifetime, 1000 00:45:15.567 --> 00:45:23.067 but I never was going to anyway, and so -- 1001 00:45:23.067 --> 00:45:24.701 He was of the labor side of Israeli politics. 1002 00:45:24.701 --> 00:45:29.000 Yes, he and Danny were both, they wrote 1003 00:45:29.000 --> 00:45:31.667 about this, they wrote about this hawk spot and the bias 1004 00:45:31.667 --> 00:45:33.234 for hawkish behavior. 1005 00:45:33.234 --> 00:45:34.367 Talk about bias as something, 1006 00:45:34.367 --> 00:45:36.501 that is part of what they said too. 1007 00:45:36.501 --> 00:45:40.501 Biases were the mistakes that the mind was, 1008 00:45:40.501 --> 00:45:42.133 that the mechanisms generated. 1009 00:45:42.133 --> 00:45:44.300 You could know the mechanisms by the mistakes they made. 1010 00:45:44.300 --> 00:45:47.501 So, you know there are gazillion biases that have names, 1011 00:45:47.501 --> 00:45:50.534 but the ones, I think they are responsible for naming like 1012 00:45:50.534 --> 00:45:54.868 "recency bias" which just means you're over waiting 1013 00:45:54.868 --> 00:45:57.300 the likelihood of whatever just happened happening again. 1014 00:45:57.300 --> 00:45:59.234 You know you are over waiting, so if a hurricane hits 1015 00:45:59.234 --> 00:46:03.601 New Orleans and floods it, everybody for several years 1016 00:46:03.601 --> 00:46:05.267 is thinking that is the thing that is going to happen next 1017 00:46:05.267 --> 00:46:06.267 is another hurricane. 1018 00:46:06.267 --> 00:46:07.501 Terrorist attack. 1019 00:46:07.501 --> 00:46:09.834 You're worried about the same terrorist attack instead of 1020 00:46:09.834 --> 00:46:12.601 worrying about what's actually probably more likely have. 1021 00:46:12.601 --> 00:46:13.968 Did Danny give you access to his letters 1022 00:46:13.968 --> 00:46:16.634 the same way you had access to all of Amos's letters. 1023 00:46:16.634 --> 00:46:17.701 He didn't have any. 1024 00:46:17.701 --> 00:46:21.801 They were all burned in the Oakland fire of '89. 1025 00:46:21.801 --> 00:46:22.767 He lost everything. 1026 00:46:22.767 --> 00:46:27.200 So he gave me access to what he acknowledged was, I think what 1027 00:46:27.200 --> 00:46:29.901 he actually feigned was a much worse memory than it actually 1028 00:46:29.901 --> 00:46:32.934 is, he pretended he had a fallible memory. 1029 00:46:32.934 --> 00:46:36.968 He seems to remember some stuff but you know Amos's papers 1030 00:46:36.968 --> 00:46:38.801 were the only papers I had access to. 1031 00:46:38.801 --> 00:46:41.467 And what did you get from Amos's papers? 1032 00:46:41.467 --> 00:46:43.467 They were wonderful. 1033 00:46:43.467 --> 00:46:46.033 Wonderful because? 1034 00:46:46.033 --> 00:46:47.934 He is such a clear -- He was such a clear 1035 00:46:47.934 --> 00:46:50.834 personality, everything he did just expressed himself. 1036 00:46:50.834 --> 00:46:53.801 Every note he made on the page. 1037 00:46:53.801 --> 00:46:57.234 He was still alive on the stuff, but he kept letters between him 1038 00:46:57.234 --> 00:46:59.801 and Danny including both sides of the correspondence. 1039 00:46:59.801 --> 00:47:02.267 That was really helpful, when they were breaking up. 1040 00:47:02.267 --> 00:47:07.767 Did he ever use the expression I love you? 1041 00:47:07.767 --> 00:47:08.801 No, no. 1042 00:47:08.801 --> 00:47:12.534 There's a manly reticence as Danny put it. 1043 00:47:12.534 --> 00:47:13.601 No. 1044 00:47:13.601 --> 00:47:16.534 No, but it's between every line. 1045 00:47:16.534 --> 00:47:23.801 And Amos had a thing with his papers. 1046 00:47:23.801 --> 00:47:28.634 Someone described the way he handled his mail. 1047 00:47:28.634 --> 00:47:30.434 Amos didn't do anything he didn't want to do including 1048 00:47:30.434 --> 00:47:32.300 opening a letter he didn't want to open. 1049 00:47:32.300 --> 00:47:36.767 And he would have his stacks of mail for a week, down a table. 1050 00:47:36.767 --> 00:47:37.934 So here's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 1051 00:47:37.934 --> 00:47:39.367 Friday, Saturday. 1052 00:47:39.367 --> 00:47:43.434 When the new mail came, anything he hadn't opened from a week ago 1053 00:47:43.434 --> 00:47:44.601 he just threw in the garbage can, 1054 00:47:44.601 --> 00:47:46.701 including dinner invitations, bills. 1055 00:47:46.701 --> 00:47:49.968 He said if they can't do anything to me -- if I hadn't 1056 00:47:49.968 --> 00:47:52.434 opened it in a week, it must not be important. 1057 00:47:52.434 --> 00:47:53.834 He just didn't keep stuff. 1058 00:47:53.834 --> 00:47:57.367 So what he kept in those file cabinets was just, it was, 1059 00:47:57.367 --> 00:48:01.701 there was, it had meaning to it, there was a reason he kept it 1060 00:48:01.701 --> 00:48:03.734 and so it was letters. 1061 00:48:03.734 --> 00:48:07.300 It was letters and notes to himself about the work 1062 00:48:07.300 --> 00:48:08.868 he was doing. 1063 00:48:08.868 --> 00:48:09.501 Notes to himself? 1064 00:48:09.501 --> 00:48:10.467 He did notes when they were breaking up. 1065 00:48:10.467 --> 00:48:13.901 I have notes that he made in preparation for the phone call 1066 00:48:13.901 --> 00:48:15.701 with Danny, defending himself. 1067 00:48:15.701 --> 00:48:19.534 He had lists of things Danny was going to charge, he was a list 1068 00:48:19.534 --> 00:48:22.367 maker and he would make a list, he is making a list of 1069 00:48:22.367 --> 00:48:24.501 the charges that Danny's going to level at him 1070 00:48:24.501 --> 00:48:25.834 on the phone call and his responses. 1071 00:48:25.834 --> 00:48:26.667 And his responses? 1072 00:48:26.667 --> 00:48:27.434 Yes. 1073 00:48:27.434 --> 00:48:30.200 And I got so I knew him well enough so even though it was all 1074 00:48:30.200 --> 00:48:33.167 kind of short handy, I mean, it is all, you know, a word here, 1075 00:48:33.167 --> 00:48:34.801 I knew exactly what he was talking about. 1076 00:48:34.801 --> 00:48:37.968 Two final questions, why did they say that 1077 00:48:37.968 --> 00:48:42.367 the Israeli military was the shaping influence of their life? 1078 00:48:42.367 --> 00:48:45.667 Well, young men facing those kinds 1079 00:48:45.667 --> 00:48:46.767 of circumstances -- 1080 00:48:46.767 --> 00:48:50.667 (CROSSTALK) 1081 00:48:50.667 --> 00:48:52.300 I think more particularly in Danny -- 1082 00:48:52.300 --> 00:48:53.701 the vulnerability of the state, yes. 1083 00:48:53.701 --> 00:48:59.000 Amos found himself having to be very brave, very young. 1084 00:48:59.000 --> 00:49:02.534 He had shrapnel in his body when he died still. 1085 00:49:02.534 --> 00:49:05.934 He said to people that you know it's odd that these things that 1086 00:49:05.934 --> 00:49:08.567 are kind of random acts of bravery when I was 19 1087 00:49:08.567 --> 00:49:09.834 defined me for the rest of my life. 1088 00:49:09.834 --> 00:49:11.634 Because everybody thought I was brave I had to be brave 1089 00:49:11.634 --> 00:49:14.167 about everything. 1090 00:49:14.167 --> 00:49:20.267 Danny, by nature, I think he would have been, if not for 1091 00:49:20.267 --> 00:49:24.534 World War II, he would have been an ethereal French intellectual 1092 00:49:24.534 --> 00:49:28.167 and he would have been happy in the academy and never out of it. 1093 00:49:28.167 --> 00:49:29.801 Israel forced him. 1094 00:49:29.801 --> 00:49:31.767 The army forced him into the world. 1095 00:49:31.767 --> 00:49:34.701 And the first thing he does of real substance in the army 1096 00:49:34.701 --> 00:49:39.300 in his early 20's, he does Moneyball for Israeli military. 1097 00:49:39.300 --> 00:49:42.868 He redesigned the officer's selection system and they still 1098 00:49:42.868 --> 00:49:46.934 use the algorithm that he created to select officers. 1099 00:49:46.934 --> 00:49:50.767 So he got a sense of himself at a very young age as someone 1100 00:49:50.767 --> 00:49:53.133 whose thoughts had big practical consequences. 1101 00:49:53.133 --> 00:49:54.968 What's "The Undoing Project?" 1102 00:49:54.968 --> 00:49:55.734 It's what they were working on 1103 00:49:55.734 --> 00:49:56.601 when they broke up. 1104 00:49:56.601 --> 00:49:57.367 Which is? 1105 00:49:57.367 --> 00:50:01.634 Which is the, Danny had noticed after his 1106 00:50:01.634 --> 00:50:06.033 nephew, beloved nephew two days before his release from Israeli 1107 00:50:06.033 --> 00:50:09.968 Air Force had flown his fighter jet upside down into the ground 1108 00:50:09.968 --> 00:50:11.801 and killed himself by mistake. 1109 00:50:11.801 --> 00:50:13.901 He thought he was going up and something happened 1110 00:50:13.901 --> 00:50:15.467 and he flew down. 1111 00:50:15.467 --> 00:50:20.434 The way everybody was grief stricken, Danny being Danny, 1112 00:50:20.434 --> 00:50:23.100 didn't experience the grief, he experienced, he watched 1113 00:50:23.100 --> 00:50:28.000 the grief, and his own grief he kind of stepped back from it. 1114 00:50:28.000 --> 00:50:30.901 How everybody was going, if only, if only he had been 1115 00:50:30.901 --> 00:50:32.734 released two days earlier. 1116 00:50:32.734 --> 00:50:34.968 If only the flare hadn't gone off and blinded him 1117 00:50:34.968 --> 00:50:35.934 in that moment. 1118 00:50:35.934 --> 00:50:40.267 And he noticed there were rules to the way people undid 1119 00:50:40.267 --> 00:50:41.534 the death of his nephew. 1120 00:50:41.534 --> 00:50:44.701 They didn't say if only there wasn't an Israeli air force. 1121 00:50:44.701 --> 00:50:47.367 Their imagination didn't go all the places that it could go. 1122 00:50:47.367 --> 00:50:49.934 It went to some very specific, it followed some very 1123 00:50:49.934 --> 00:50:51.200 specific channels. 1124 00:50:51.200 --> 00:50:55.167 He and Amos began to study the way people undid tragedy 1125 00:50:55.167 --> 00:50:58.400 as a way to get at the human imagination worked 1126 00:50:58.400 --> 00:51:00.200 and they started to establish some rules. 1127 00:51:00.200 --> 00:51:03.234 Like, if you wanted to undo something like, and create an 1128 00:51:03.234 --> 00:51:06.400 alternative reality, you pick the thing that happened at 1129 00:51:06.400 --> 00:51:10.634 the end and the first thing, you work from the back in the end 1130 00:51:10.634 --> 00:51:11.200 and you work backwards. 1131 00:51:11.200 --> 00:51:13.133 The first thing you can do to undo the outcome, you do. 1132 00:51:13.133 --> 00:51:16.000 So Comey's emails, you want to do this election, 1133 00:51:16.000 --> 00:51:17.367 everybody went right to those e-mails. 1134 00:51:17.367 --> 00:51:22.300 Why not her speeches to Goldman Sachs or campaign strategy? 1135 00:51:22.300 --> 00:51:24.100 She went right to Comey's -- 1136 00:51:24.100 --> 00:51:24.801 Yeah. 1137 00:51:24.801 --> 00:51:27.267 That is where the mind, there are a million things that could 1138 00:51:27.267 --> 00:51:28.701 have happened to change that election. 1139 00:51:28.701 --> 00:51:32.534 And people go -- 1140 00:51:32.534 --> 00:51:35.567 The imagination as Danny said is lazy. 1141 00:51:35.567 --> 00:51:39.667 This is why when people watch sporting events, your football 1142 00:51:39.667 --> 00:51:42.467 team loses when the field goal misses the 38 yard field goal 1143 00:51:42.467 --> 00:51:43.467 at the end of the game. 1144 00:51:43.467 --> 00:51:44.567 You blame the field goal kicker. 1145 00:51:44.567 --> 00:51:45.767 He gets fired. 1146 00:51:45.767 --> 00:51:47.434 When there are a hundred things your football team could have 1147 00:51:47.434 --> 00:51:50.400 done, so that field goal didn't make any difference. 1148 00:51:50.400 --> 00:51:51.767 Somebody misses the tackles, somebody misses 1149 00:51:51.767 --> 00:51:52.868 the blocks, the pass. 1150 00:51:52.868 --> 00:51:55.200 Bill Buttner had to leave Boston because 1151 00:51:55.200 --> 00:51:57.400 a ground ball went through his legs at the end of the World 1152 00:51:57.400 --> 00:52:00.133 Series game against the Nets and he was ostracized in Boston, 1153 00:52:00.133 --> 00:52:01.367 because he lost the game. 1154 00:52:01.367 --> 00:52:02.501 But he didn't lose the game. 1155 00:52:02.501 --> 00:52:04.868 A thousand things could have happened in that game that would 1156 00:52:04.868 --> 00:52:06.567 have rendered that ground ball meaningless. 1157 00:52:06.567 --> 00:52:09.367 So they were explaining that. 1158 00:52:09.367 --> 00:52:13.267 Finally, what does Danny think of the book? 1159 00:52:13.267 --> 00:52:15.067 Mixed emotions. 1160 00:52:15.067 --> 00:52:19.767 But in the end, I think warmth and gratitude, 1161 00:52:19.767 --> 00:52:21.734 that is where we are. 1162 00:52:21.734 --> 00:52:26.934 That he found it painful to relive the whole thing. 1163 00:52:26.934 --> 00:52:29.133 I think he finds it painful to revisit his character before 1164 00:52:29.133 --> 00:52:35.868 he wins the Nobel Prize, and but generally, I mean, it's a loving 1165 00:52:35.868 --> 00:52:39.167 project and it's an admiring work. 1166 00:52:39.167 --> 00:52:40.234 And I think he senses that. 1167 00:52:40.234 --> 00:52:45.167 We're dine, we're having lunch in a couple weeks, and -- 1168 00:52:45.167 --> 00:52:46.234 First time you've seen him since 1169 00:52:46.234 --> 00:52:47.033 the book was published? 1170 00:52:47.033 --> 00:52:47.701 Yes. 1171 00:52:47.701 --> 00:52:49.100 Did he see it beforehand? 1172 00:52:49.100 --> 00:52:49.834 No. 1173 00:52:49.834 --> 00:52:51.567 I don't mean to add it. 1174 00:52:51.567 --> 00:52:53.934 No, no, no. 1175 00:52:53.934 --> 00:52:57.501 So all the subjects of books, I've told them, it's going to be 1176 00:52:57.501 --> 00:52:59.734 a jarring experience, because someone else is recording your 1177 00:52:59.734 --> 00:53:02.534 life and even if I get it exactly right, it is going to 1178 00:53:02.534 --> 00:53:04.367 feel, you're going to feel the way you felt when you heard 1179 00:53:04.367 --> 00:53:06.300 your voice on a tape recorder for the first time. 1180 00:53:06.300 --> 00:53:08.567 It feels alien, that is not me. 1181 00:53:08.567 --> 00:53:12.234 I would just ask you to let people who know you well, 1182 00:53:12.234 --> 00:53:14.367 judge whether that is off or not off. 1183 00:53:14.367 --> 00:53:16.968 And of course there's going to be some, 1184 00:53:16.968 --> 00:53:18.701 it's not going to be perfect. 1185 00:53:18.701 --> 00:53:23.534 But I think, my sense is he thinks it's pretty close. 1186 00:53:23.534 --> 00:53:27.267 At least he knows how hard I tried. 1187 00:53:27.267 --> 00:53:29.067 That is the big thing. 1188 00:53:29.067 --> 00:53:32.367 He knows I gave it the old college try and there's not 1189 00:53:32.367 --> 00:53:33.701 much else I could have done. 1190 00:53:33.701 --> 00:53:34.601 And you had some doubt at the beginning 1191 00:53:34.601 --> 00:53:35.734 as to whether you were up to it? 1192 00:53:35.734 --> 00:53:36.868 Absolutely I had doubt whether 1193 00:53:36.868 --> 00:53:37.667 I was up to it. 1194 00:53:37.667 --> 00:53:38.934 He understands that? 1195 00:53:38.934 --> 00:53:41.200 Yes, he would. 1196 00:53:41.200 --> 00:53:42.501 Thank you, Michael. 1197 00:53:42.501 --> 00:53:43.167 Thank you, Charlie. 1198 00:53:43.167 --> 00:53:43.801 Thank you very much. 1199 00:53:43.801 --> 00:53:46.934 The book is called "The Undoing Project: A friendship -- " 1200 00:53:46.934 --> 00:53:48.000 listen to these words -- 1201 00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:51.767 A friendship that changed our minds. 1202 00:53:51.767 --> 00:53:53.501 Michael Lewis for the hour. 1203 00:53:53.501 --> 00:53:54.467 Thank you for joining us. 1204 00:53:54.467 --> 00:53:55.701 We'll see you next time.