In real conversations, we are always trying to outguess each other.

Use "entropy" and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what "entropy" is.

Bernoulli's real contribution was to coin a word. The word has been translated into English as "utility". It describes this subjective value people place on money.

At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.

Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of the philosophy of science.

Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.

People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don't really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection of what things are “supposed to cost.”