British politicians used to be good at misleading people without actually lying.

Each additional child that you have is going to divide your time and your attention. You're going to have to cram them into a smaller house. They're going to have to share rooms, or you might have to move into the suburbs, somewhere cheaper, further away from where the job is.

Trying to be able to have, let's say, more than three partners was absolutely impossible, at least for my own relationships.

Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.

There's lots and lots of guys out there. The question is trying to find the right one.

Loss aversion is a really disproportionate anxiety about stuff that doesn't matter very much. So for instance, if you lose $5, you feel really bad about the $5 you've lost. You're cursing yourself. You're going through it again and again. If, on the other hand, you find $5, you go - hey, great, five bucks. And you've forgotten about it really quickly.

Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.