Publisher Description
How the very things we create to protect ourselves, like money market funds or anti-lock brakes, end up being the biggest threats to our safety and wellbeing.
We have learned a staggering amount about human nature and disaster — yet we keep having car crashes, floods, and financial crises. Partly this is because the success we have at making life safer enables us to take bigger risks. As our cities, transport systems, and financial markets become more interconnected and complex, so does the potential for catastrophe.
How do we stay safe? Should we? What if our attempts are exposing us even more to the very risks we are avoiding? Would acceptance of danger make us more secure? Is there such a thing as foolproof?
In Foolproof, Greg Ip presents a macro theory of human nature and disaster that explains how we can keep ourselves safe in our increasingly dangerous world.
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This book is so much fun to read that it’s easy to forget it’s also very important. We live, now, in a world of constant risk–financial, geopolitical, meteorological. There are so many risks that many of us become either numb or blindly panicked or, somehow, both. Greg Ip has written a beautiful guide to thinking properly about the risks we face. It is a book that can make you feel empowered and optimistic, even as it details some of the scariest challenges we face. It’s a book we need now, in a world that has become so complex that it’s outrun our human brain’s ability to make proper sense of the risks we face. But don’t read it because it’s important. Read it because it’s fun, it has good narratives, some psychology, a bit of (easy, enjoyable) maths and a lot of clear, common sense. You will feel smarter and more capable and you will have tons of stories to tell your friends.
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Adam Davidson, co-founder and co-host of Planet MoneyÂ
