Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward.

If you have a patient in a doctor's office who's just been told they have terminal cancer but there's this operation they could perform right now that might save their lives. ... They have a 90 percent chance of surviving the operation — if you tell them that, they respond one way. If you tell them ... that they have a 10 percent chance of being killed by the operation, they are about three times less likely to have the operation.

The sports world is an echo chamber. All it takes is one quote from a general manager and a thousand sports columns bloom.

In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.

All of a sudden the market is all about algos and routers.

The sheer quantity of brain power that hurled itself voluntarily and quixotically into the search for new baseball knowledge was either exhilarating or depressing, depending on how you felt about baseball. The same intellectual resources might have cured the common cold, or put a man on Pluto.

It's such a pain in the ass to write a book, I can't imagine writing one if I'm not interested in the subject.