What I've Been Reading

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis.  What could we expect when a best writer of our generation writes about one of the best friendships of this generation? Only Michael Lewis can pull this off !!

That was another thing colleagues and students noticed about Danny: how quickly he moved form his enthusiasms, how easily he accepted failure. It was as if he expected it. But he wasn't afraid of it. He'd try anything. He thought of himself as someone who enjoyed, more than most, changing his mind. "I get a sense of movement and discovery whenever I find a flaw in my thinking," he said. His theory of himself dovetailed neatly with this moodiness. In his darker moods, he become fatalistic - and was so wasn't surprised or disturbed when he did fail. (He'd been proven right!) In his up moments he was so full of enthusiasm that seemed to forget the possibility of failure, and would run with any new idea that comes his way. "He could drive people up the wall with his volatility," said fellow Hebrew University psychologist Maya Bar-Hillel. "Something was genius one day and crap the next, and the genius the next day and crap the next." What drove other crazy might have helped to keep Danny same. His moods were grease for his idea factory. 

In Amos's company Danny felt funny too - and he'd never felt that way before. In Danny's company Amos, too, became a different person:uncritical. Or, at least uncritical of whatever came from Danny. He didn't even poke fun in jest. He enabled Danny to feel, in a way he hand't before, confident. Maybe for the first time in his Danny was playing offense. "Amos did not write in a defensive crouch," e said. "There was something liberating about the arrogance - it was extremely rewarding to feel like Amos, smarter than almost everyone." 

The men who revealed our innate stupidity couldn't control their innate biases that affected their friendship... And that should teach us so much about human nature.