Surprise

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Middlesex (2002)

  I asked him what had happened and he told me. Milton had charged through customs. Father Mike had also been on the bridge. He was now in the hospital. Milton's old briefcase had been found in the wreckage of the Gremlin, full of money. Father Mike had con- fessed everything to the police, the kidnapping ruse, the ransom. When this had sunk in, I asked, "How's Mom?" "She's all right. She's holding up. She's pissed at Milt." "Pissed?" "For going out there. For not telling her. She's glad you're com- ing home. That's what she's focusing on. You coming back for the fu- neral. So that's good." We were scheduled to take the red-eye out that night. The funeral was the next morning. Chapter Eleven had been dealing with the bu- reaucratic side of things, getting the death certificates and placing the obituaries. He asked me nothing about my time in San Francisco or at Sixty-Niners. Only when we were on the plane and Chapter Eleven had had a few beers did he allude to my condition. "So, I guess I can't call you Callie anymore." "Call me whatever you want." "How about 'bro'?" "Fine with me." He was quiet, blinking. There was the usual lag time while he thought. "I never heard much about what happened out there at that 515 clinic. I was up in Marquette. I wasn't talking to Mom and Dad that much." "I ran away." "Why? "They were going to cut me up." I could feel him staring at me, with that outer glaze that con- cealed considerable mental activity. "It's a little bit weird for me," he said. "It's weird for me, too." A moment later he let out a laugh. "Hah! Weird! Pretty fucking weird." I was shaking my head in comic despair. "You can say that again. Bro." Confronted with the impossible, there was no option but to treat it as normal. We didn't have an upper register, so to speak, but only the middle range of our shared experience and ways of behaving, of joking around. But it got us through. "One good thing about this gene I have, though," I said. "What?" "I'll never go bald." "Why not?" "You have to have DHT to go bald." "Huh," said Chapter Eleven, feeling his scalp. "I guess I'm a little heavy on the DHT. I guess I'm what they'd call DHT-rich."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  showingup my brother.The outbreak ofsomuchshootinghastaken me completely bysurprise.I havelooked throughmyfather'sWorld WarII scrapbook many times;I have seenVietnamontelevision;I have ingested countlessmovies about AncientRomeor thebattlesof the Middle Ages.Butnone ofithasprepared meforwarfarein my own hometown. Thestreet we aremoving downis lined withleafy elms. Carsare parked atthecurb. Wepasslawnsandporch furniture, bird feeders andbirdbaths. AsIlook upatthecanopyof elms,the sky isjust beginningtogrowlight. Birdsmove amongthebranches, and squirrels,too.Akiteis stuckupinonetree. Overalimbofan- other,someone'stennisshoesdangle withthelacesknotted. Directiy belowthesesneakers,Iseeastreetsign.It is full ofbulletholes, butI managetoreadit:Pingree.Allof a suddenIrecognize whereI am. ThereisValue Meats!And NewYorkerClothes. Iamsohappytosee themthat for a momentIdon't registerthatbothplacesare on fire. Lettingthetanks getaway, Iride upadrivewayandstopbehind a tree. I get off my bikeand peekacrossthestreetatthediner.The zebraheadsignisstillintact.Therestaurantisnotburning.At that moment,however,thefigurethathasbeenapproachingtheZebra Roomentersmyfieldofvision.FromthirtyyardsawayIseehimlift abottleinhishand.He lightstheraghangingfromthebottle's mouthand withanot terriblygoodarmflingstheMolotovcocktail throughthe frontwindow ofthe Zebra Room.Andasflameserupt within thediner, the arsonistshouts inanecstaticvoice: "Opa,motherfucker!" Isaw himonlyfromthe back. It was not yet fullylight. Smoke rosefrom theadjacent burning buildings.Still,inthefirelight,I thought Irecognizedthe blackberetofmy friendMariusWyxze- wixard Challouehliczilczese Grimes beforethefigureranoff. "OpaF Insidethe diner,my father heardthewell-knowncryof Greek waiters, and beforehe knew whatwashappeningthe place was going uplike a flaming appetizer.The ZebraRoomhadbecome a saganakil As the booths caught fire,Miltonraced behindthecounter tograbthe fireextinguisher. Comingout again,he held the hose,like alemon wedgewrapped in cheesecloth, overtheflames,andpre- pared to squeeze... .. .whensuddenly he stopped. And nowIrecognizeafamiliar expression onmy father's face, the expression heworesooften atthe 249 dinnertable,thefarawaylookof a manwho couldnever stopthink- ing aboutbusiness. Success dependson adapting tonewsituations. And whatsituation wasnewerthanthis?Flameswere climbing the walls;thephotoof Jimmy Dorseywascurling up.AndMilton was askinghimself a few,pertinent questions.Forinstance:How would heeverrunarestaurantinthisneighborhoodagain? And:What do you supposethealreadydepressedreal estatepriceswould be tomor- rowmorning?Most important ofall:How was it a crime? Didhe starttheriot?DidhethrowtheMolotovcocktail?Like Tessie,Mil- ton'smindwassearchingthebottomdrawerofhisdesk,inparticular a fatenvelopecontainingthethreefireinsurancepolicies fromsepa- ratecompanies.Hesaw themin his mind's eye;hereadthefire in- demnitycoverage,and added them up. Thefinal sum, $500,000, blindedhimtoeverythingelse.Haifamillionbucks!Miltonlooked aroundwithwild,eager eyes. TheFrench toast signwasinflames. Thezebra-skinbarstoolswerelikearowoftorches.Andmadly,he turnedandhurriedoutsidetothe Oldsmobile ... Whereheencounteredme. "Callie!Whatthehell are you doinghere?" "Icame to help." "What'sthematterwithyou!" Miltonshouted. But despitethe angerinhisvoicehe was downonhisknees,huggingme.I wrapped myarms aroundhisneck. "Therestaurant'sburningdown,Daddy." "I knowitis." Ibegantocry. "It'sokay," myfathertoldme, carryingmeto thecar."Let'sgo homenow.It'sallover." Sowasitariot ora guerrillauprising?Let meanswerthatques- tion withother questions.Afterthe riotwasover, were,orwerethere not,cachesofweaponsfoundallover theneighborhood? Andwere theseweapons,orweretheynot,AK-47s andmachine guns?And why had GeneralThrockmortondeployedhis tanksonthe EastSide, miles fromthe rioting? Was thatthekindof thingyoudidto subdue anunorganizedgangofsnipers?Or was itmore in keepingwithmil- itary strategy?Was itlikeestablishing a front lineina war? Believe whatever you want.Iwassevenyearsold and followedatank into battle andsaw whatIsaw.Itturnedoutthat whenitfinallyhap- 250 pened, the revolutionwasn'ttelevised.On TVthey calleditonly a riot. The followingmorning, as the smokecleared,thecity'sflagcould once againbeseen.Rememberthesymbol onit? A phoenixrising fromits ashes. Andthewords beneath?Spemmusmeliora;resurgct cineribus."We hope for betterthings; itwillrisefromtheashes." 251 miDDLESEK |fu hameful as it istosay,theriotswerethe best thing thateverhap- wl pened tous. Overnight wewentfrombeingafamilydesperately QJJ tryingtostayinthemiddleclasstoonewithhopes ofsneaking intotheupper,or at least theupper-middle.Theinsurancemoney didn'tamounttoquiteasmuch as Miltonhadanticipated. Twoof thecompaniesrefused topaythefullamount, citing excessiveinsur- anceclauses.Theypaidonly a quarteroftheirpolicies'value.Still, takenalltogether, themoneywasmuchmore thantheZebra Room had beenworth,anditallowedmyparentstomakesomechangesin ourlives. Ofallmy childhoodmemories,nonehas themagic, the pure dreaminess, ofthenight we heard a honkoutsideourhouseand lookedoutthewindow toseethata spaceshiphadlandedinour driveway. Ithadsetdownnoiselesslynexttomy mother's stationwagon. Thefront lights flashed.The back endgaveoffaredglow.Forthirty secondsnothingmorehappened. But thenfinallythewindowofthe spaceship slowlyretracted toreveal,instead ofaMartianinside,Mil- ton.Hehad shavedoff hisbeard. "Getyour mother," hecalled,smiling. "We'regoingforalittle ride." Not a spaceship then,but close:a1967 CadillacFleetwood,asin- tergalactic acaras Detroiteverproduced.(The moonshotwasonly 252

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Aus WOMAN OPENS the door of the apartment. She wears ripped jeans and a loose tank top, woven of some mutant technical performance cotton. Her hair is up in a clip, and perched on a delicate nose are a pair of swoopy black-framed glasses that angle along the same steep slope of her cheekbones. The combination of hair and glasses together gives the impression of a costume chosen for an extremely sexy woman to wear in order to indicate that, no, it’s not what you think, dear viewer: This woman is smart! As is always intended with that disguise, Reese couldn’t help notice that this woman is, in fact, very sexy. “Come in, you two!” cries Sexy-Smart, and she welcomes Reese with a hug that, in its unexpected affection, Reese would put somewhere between suddenly discovered long-lost relative and cult leader thanking you for your impending sacrifice. The woman introduces herself as the host of the party. “T love your place,” Reese says generically, without even yet having fully stepped inside, simply noting how from the door, in the evening angle of the light, the windows made long boxes of illuminated gold that draped diagonally over invitingly feminine living room furniture. Sexy-Smart looks confused. “This is Kathy’s place,” she corrects Reese. “I’m Kathy’s yoga instructor, but she lets me use her apartment for my dOTERRA parties.” She doesn’t give her own name. “Kathy is such a good real estate agent,” Katrina says helpfully. “So of course she has a cute place.” That afternoon, when Katrina called Reese to invite her to a doTERRA party thrown by her real estate agent, who was also one of Katrina’s good friends, Reese agreed to attend without totally understanding the situation. What Reese did understand was that Katrina was extending an invitation for Reese to meet her friends, a variety of invite that almost never came from any of Reese’s usual cis crushes. She never met their families or their friends. Never traveled for holidays. The last two Christmases, she did the same thing: bought a tiny pine tree, set it on her dresser, and decorated it with a string of lights from her local dollar store. Then she spent Christmas Eve alone, thinking about her erstwhile lovers while taking selfies reading beside the tree, as evidence for the trial in which her counsel would plead that no, Reese was not sad, she didn’t care about being alone, like that famous t-shirt said, she was SINGLE AND LOVING IT. Therefore, although Reese played it cool, the lifting of the quarantine between Reese and the rest of Katrina’s friends carried momentous and solemn import. It was only on the way to the party that it occurred to Reese that she had no idea what a doOTERRA party was. “What’s a doTERRA?” Reese asked. “It’s an essential oil company,” Katrina said. “We'll have to sit through a presentation, but at the end, I think we make face scrubs.”

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "I'lltake theblue suit,please,thankyou," Leftysaysinhisbest English. (And here, too,the shopownerseemsto owe Zizmo a favor.He gives thema20 percentdiscount.) Meanwhile, on Hurlbut, Father Stylianopoulos,headpriest of Assumption Greek OrthodoxChurch,hasfinallycomeover to bless thehouse. Desdemona watchesthepriestnervouslyashedrinksthe glass ofMetaxa shehasofferedhim.WhensheandLeftybecame membersofhis congregation,the old priesthad asked,asaformality, iftheyhad received an Orthodoxwedding.Desdemona hadreplied intheaffirmative.Shehad grown up believingthatpriests couldtell whether someonewastellingthetruthornot, but Father Stylian- opouloshad onlynoddedandwrittentheirnamesinto the church register.Nowhe sets downhisglass.Hestandsandrecitesthebless- ing,shakingholywateronthethreshold.Beforehe'sfinished,how- ever,Desdemona'snosebeginsactingupagain.Shecansmellwhat thepriesthadforlunch.Shecandetectthearomaunderhisarms as hemakesthesignof thecross.Atthedoor,lettinghimout,sheholds herbreath."Thank you, Father. Thankyou."Stylianopoulosgoeson hisway.Butit'sno use. Assoon assheinhalesagain,shecansmell thefertilized flower beds andMrs.Czeslawskiboiling cabbagenext doorand whatsheswearsmustbeanopenjarofmustard some- where,allthese scentsgonewaywardonher,asshe putsa hand to her stomach. Right thenthe bedroom doorswings open.Sourmelinastepsout. Powder and rougecoveronesideofherface;theother side,bare, looks green."Do yousmellsomething?"sheasks. "Yes. Ismell everything." "Oh myGod." "What is it>" "Ididn't thinkthiswouldhappentome.To you maybe.Butnot tome." And now we areinthe DetroitLightGuardArmory,laterthat night, 7:00 p.m.Anassembledaudienceoftwothousandsettles down asthe houselightsdim. Prominent business leaders greeteach other with handshakes. Jimmy Zizmo,in a newcream-colored suit with yellow necktie,crosseshislegs,jigglingonesaddleshoe. Lina and Desdemona hold hands,joined inamysteriousunion. 103 The curtainparts togaspsandscattered applause.A paintedflat showsasteamship,twohugesmokestacks, and a swath ofdeck andrailing.Agangwayextendsinto thestage's otherfocalpoint: a giantgraycauldronemblazonedwith thewords fordEnglish schoolmelting pot.AEuropeanfolk melodybeginstoplay. Suddenly a lonefigure appearsonthe gangway.DressedinaBalkan costumeofvest,ballooning trousers, and highleatherboots, theim- migrantcarrieshis possessionsbundledon astick.Helooksaround withapprehensionandthendescendsintothe meltingpot. "Whatpropaganda,"Zizmomurmurs inhis seat. Linashusheshim. NowSYRIAdescendsintothepot.ThenITALY. POLAND. NORWAY.PALESTINE.Andfinally:GREECE. "Look,it'sLefty!" Wearingembroideredpalikari vest,puffy-sleevedpoukamiso,and pleated foustanella skirt,mygrandfatherbestridesthegangway.He pausesamomenttolookoutattheaudience,butthebrightlights blindhim.Hecan'tseemygrandmotherlookingback,burstingwith hersecret.GERMANYtapshimontheback."Macht schnellEx- cuse me. Go fasdy." Inthe front row, HenryFordnodswithapproval, enjoying the show.Mrs.Fordtriestowhisperinhisear,buthe wavesheroff.His blueseagull's eyes dartfromface to face as theEnglish instructors ap- pearonstagenext.Theycarrylongspoons, whichtheyinsertintothe pot. Thelightsturnred andflickeras theinstructors stir.Steamrises over thestage. Insidethecauldron,menarepackedtogether, throwing off immi- grant costumes, puttingonsuits.Limbsare tanglingup,feetstep- ping on feet.Leftysays, "Pardon me,excuse me," feelingthoroughly American ashepullsonhisbluewool trousers andjacket.Inhis mouth: thirty- two teethbrushedinthe American manner.Hisunder- arms: liberally sprinkledwithAmerican deodorant. Andnowspoons aredescending fromabove,menarechurning around andaround .. . ...as two men, shortandtall,standinthe wings, holding a piece of paper . .. .. . and outin the audiencemy grandmotherhas astunnedlook on her face.. . .. . and the melting pot boilsover. Red lights brighten.Theor- 104 chestra launchesinto "YankeeDoodle."Onebyone,the Ford English School graduates risefromthecauldron.Dressed inblueandgray suits, they climbout, wavingAmerican flags,to thunderous ap- plause. The curtainhad barelycomedownbeforethemenfromtheSocio- logical Department approached. "Ipass thefinal exam,"mygrandfathertold them."Ninety-three percent!Andtoday Iopensavingsaccount." "That soundsfine,"thetallonesaid. "But unfortunately,it'stoolate,"saidtheshortone.Hetook a slip fromhis pocket,acolorwellknowninDetroit:pink. "We didsomecheckingonyourlandlord.Thisso-called Jimmy Zizmo.He'sgotapolicerecord." "Idon'tknow anything," mygrandfathersaid. "I'm sureisamis- take.He is aniceman.Workshard." "I'msorry,Mr.Stephanides.Butyoucan understand thatMr. Fordcan'thaveworkersmaintaining such associations.Youdon't need to come downtothe plantonMonday." Asmygrandfather struggledto absorbthisnews,theshortone leanedin."Ihope you learn a lessonfromthis.Mixingwiththe wrong crowdcansinkyou.Youseemlike a niceguy,Mr.Stepha- nides.You reallydo.Wewishyouthebestofluckinthefuture." Afewminutes later,Leftycameouttomeethiswife.Hewas sur- prisedwhen,in frontofeveryone, shehuggedhim,refusing to letgo. "Youliked the pageant?" "It'snot that." "Whatis it?" Desdemona lookedinto herhusband's eyes. ButitwasSourme- lina who explained itall. "YourwifeandI?"shesaidin plainEnglish. "We're both knocked up." 105

• From Middlesex (2002)

  andthe ragged billboards showingAmericanfaces with theskin peel- ing off, faceswithouteyes,orwithnomouth, orwith nothing but a nose. WhensherecognizedGratiot's diagonal swath,she stoodup and called out in a ringing voice:"Sonnamabiche!" Shehad no ideawhat thisEnglish wordmeant.Shehad heardSourmelina em- ployitwhenevershemissedherstop.As usual,itworked.The driver brakedthe streetcar andthepassengersmoved quicklyaside to let heroff.Theyseemedsurprisedwhen shesmiledand thanked them. OntheGratiotstreetcarshetoldtheconductor, "Please,Iwant HastingsStreet." "Hastings? You sure?" She showedhimtheaddressandsaiditlouder: "HastingsStreet? "Okay.I'llletyouknow." ThestreetcarmadeforGreektown.Desdemonachecked herre- flectioninthewindow andfixed herhat.Sinceherpregnanciesshe hadput onweight,thickenedinthewaist,butherskin andhairwere stillbeautifuland she was still an attractivewoman. Afterlooking at herself, she returnedherattentiontothepassingscenery. Whatelse wouldmygrandmotherhaveseenonthestreetsofDetroitin1932? She wouldhaveseenmeninfloppycapssellingapplesoncorners. Shewouldhaveseencigarrollerssteppingoutside windowless facto- riesforfreshair,theirfacesstained a permanent brownfrom tobacco dust.Shewouldhaveseenworkers handingoutpro-unionpam- phletswhilePinkertondetectivestailedthem.In alleyways,shemight have seenunion-busting goonsworkingoverthosesamepamphle- teers.Shewouldhaveseenpolicemen, on foot andhorseback, 60 per- centof whom were secretiy membersofthe whiteProtestantOrder ofthe BlackLegion,who hadtheirownmethods fordisposingof blacks,Communists,andCatholics."Butcome on, Cal,"Ihear my mother'svoice,"don't you haveanythingnice tosay?"Okay, all right.Detroitin 1932was knownas"TheCity ofTrees."Moretrees persquaremile herethanany othercityinthe country. To shop,you hadKern'sand Hudson's.On WoodwardAvenue theautomagnates had built the beautiful DetroitInstituteofArts, where, that very minute while Desdemonarodeto herjob interview,a Mexicanartist named DiegoRivera was workingonhisown new commission:a mural depicting the newmythologyofthe automobile industry.On 140 scaffolding hesat on a folding chair,sketchingthegreatwork:the four androgynous racesofhumankind ontheupperpanels, gazing down onthe RiverRougeassemblyline, whereautoworkersla- bored, their bodiesharmonized witheffort.Varioussmallerpanels showed the "germcell"ofaninfant wrappedin a plant bulb,the wonder anddread ofmedicine, theindigenous fruitsandgrainsof Michigan;andway overin onecornerHenry Fordhimself,gray- faced andtight- assed,goingover thebooks. The trolleypassedMcDougal, Jos. Campau,andChene, and then, with a littleshiver,itcrossedHastingsStreet. Atthatmoment everypassenger,allofwhomwerewhite,performed atalismanicges- ture.Menpatted wallets,women refastenedpurses.Thedriver pulled theleverthat closedthereardoor. Desdemona,noticingall this, lookedouttosee thatthestreetcarhad enteredtheBlackBottom ghetto. Therewasnoroadblock,nofence.Thestreetcar didn'tsomuch aspauseasitcrossedtheinvisiblebarrier, butat the same time in the lengthof a blocktheworld was different.The lightseemed to change,growing grayas itfilteredthroughlaundrylines. Thegloom offrontporches and apartmentswithoutelectricity seepedout into thestreets,andthethundercloudofpovertythathungoverthe neighborhood directedattentiondownwardtowardtheclarityoffor- lorn,shadowless objects:red brickscrumblingoff astoop,pilesof trashandham bones,used tires,crushedpinwheelsfromlast year's fair, someone's oldlostshoe. Thederelictquietlastedonly a moment before BlackBottom erupted from allitsalleys anddoorways. Look at allthechildren! So many!Suddenly children were runningalongside thestreetcar, wavingand shouting.Theyplayedchickenwithit, jumping infrontof the tracks.Others climbedontotheback. Desde- mona putahand to herthroat. Whydotheyhavesomany children? What's thematter withthese people?The mavro women shouldnursetheir babieslonger. Somebodyshould tellthem.Nowinthealleysshe sawmen washing themselvesat openfaucets. Half-dressedwomenjuttedout hips on second-storyporches. Desdemonalooked in awe andterror atall thefaces fillingthe windows,allthebodies filling thestreets, nearly a half million people squeezedinto twenty-fivesquareblocks. Ever since WorldWarI whenE.I.Weiss, managerofthePackard Motor Company, had brought,by hisown report,diefirst "loadof 141 niggers"tothecity,hereinBlack Bottomwas where the establish- menthadthought tokeepthem.All kindsof professions now crowdedintogether,foundry workers andlawyers, maids andcar- penters,doctorsand hoodlums, butmostpeople, thisbeing 1932, wereunemployed. Still, moreandmore werecomingevery year, everymonth,seeking jobsintheNorth.They sleptonevery couchin everyhouse.They builtshacksinthe yards.They campedonroofs. (This stateofaffairscouldn'tlast,of course. Overtheyears, Black Bottom,forallthewhites'attempts tocontain it—and becauseof theinexorable lawsofpovertyand racism—wouldslowly spread, streetbystreet,neighborhood byneighborhood, untilthe so-called ghettowould becometheentirecityitself,and bythe 1970s,inthe no-tax-base, white-flight,murder-capital Detroit oftheColeman Youngadministration, blackpeople could finally livewherever they wanted to.. .) Butnow, back in 1932, somethingodd washappening.The streetcar wasslowingdown.Inthe middleofBlackBottom, itwas stoppingand—unheardof .'—openingitsdoors.Passengers fidgeted. Theconductor tappedDesdemona ontheshoulder."Lady,this isit. Hastings." "HastingsStreet?"Shedidn'tbelievehim. Sheshowedhimthe addressagain.Hepointed outthedoor. "Silkfactory here?"she asked theconductor. "Notellingwhat'shere. Notmyneighborhood." And somygrandmothersteppedoffontoHastingsStreet.The streetcar pulledaway, as whitefaceslookedback at her, awoman thrown overboard.She startedwalking.Grippingherpurse,shehur- rieddown Hastingsasthoughsheknewwhereshewasgoing. She kepther eyesfixedstraightahead.Childrenjumpedropeon the side- walk.At athird-story windowamantoreupa pieceof paperand shouted, "From nowon,youcansendmymailto Paris, postman." Front porches werefulloflivingroom furniture,oldcouches and armchairs, peopleplayingcheckers,arguing, wavingfingers, and breakinginto laughter.Alwayslaughing,these mavros. Laughing, laughing,asthough everythingis funny. Whatisso funny, tell me? And whatis—ohmy God!—amandoinghisbusinessinthe street!Iwon'tlook. Shepassedtheyard ofajunkartist:theSeven WondersoftheWorld madeinbottlecaps. Anancientdrunkina colorfulsombreromoved 142

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  firm that provided financial advice and other services to very wealthy clients. I asked for some data to prepare my presentation and was granted a small treasure: a spreadsheet summarizing the investment outcomes of some twenty-five anonymous wealth advisers, for each of eight consecutive years. Each adviser’s score for each year was his (most of them were men) main determinant of his year-end bonus. It was a simple matter to rank the advisers by their performance in each year and to determine whether there were persistent differences in skill among them and whether the same advisers consistently achieved better returns for their clients year after year. To answer the question, I computed correlation coefficients between the rankings in each pair of years: year 1 with year 2, year 1 with year 3, and so on up through year 7 with year 8. That yielded 28 correlation coefficients, one for each pair of years. I knew the theory and was prepared to find weak evidence of persistence of skill. Still, I was surprised to find that the average of the 28 correlations was .01. In other words, zero. The consistent correlations that would indicate differences in skill were not to be found. The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill. No one in the firm seemed to be aware of the nature of the game that its stock pickers were playing. The advisers themselves felt they were competent professionals doing a serious job, and their superiors agreed. On the evening before the seminar, Richard Thaler and I had dinner with some of the top executives of the firm, the people who decide on the size of bonuses. We asked them to guess the year-to-year correlation in the rankings of individual advisers. They thought they knew what was coming and smiled as they said “not very high” or “performance certainly fluctuates.” It quickly became clear, however, that no one expected the average correlation to be zero. Our message to the executives was that, at least when it came to building portfolios, the firm was rewarding luck as if it were skill. This should have been shocking news to them, but it was not. There was no sign that they disbelieved us. How could they? After all, we had analyzed their own results, and they were sophisticated enough to see the implications, which we politely refrained from spelling out. We all went on calmly with our dinner, and I have no doubt that both our findings and their implications were quickly swept under the rug and that life in the firm went on just as before. The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the industry. Facts that challenge such basic assumptions—and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem—are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them. This is particularly true of statistical studies of performance, which provide base-rate information that people generally ignore when it clashes with their personal

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  As Maxx walked up to the podium, Lara leaned down to me and whispered, “He ees really hot.” “Thank you, Mr. Starnes.” Maxx smiled and nodded to the Eagle, then straightened his papers and placed them on the podium. Even I almost believed he was a professor of psychology. I wondered if maybe he was an actor supplementing his income. He read directly from the speech without looking up, but he read with the confident, airy tone of a slightly snooty academic. “I’m here today to talk with you about the fascinating subject of teenage sexuality. My research is in the field of sexual linguistics, specifically the way that young people discuss sex and related questions. So, for instance, I’m interested in why my saying the word arm might not make you laugh, but my saying the word vagina might.” And, indeed, there were some nervous twitters from the audience. “The way young people speak about one another’s bodies says a great deal about our society. In today’s world, boys are much more likely to objectify girls’ bodies than the other way around. Boys will say amongst themselves that so-and-so has a nice rack, while girls will more likely say that a boy is cute, a term that describes both physical and emotional characteristics. This has the effect of turning girls into mere objects, while boys are seen by girls as whole people—” And then Lara stood up, and in her delicate, innocent accent, cut Dr. William Morse off. “You’re so hot! I weesh you’d shut up and take off your clothes.” The students laughed, but all of the teachers turned around and looked at her, stunned silent. She sat down. “What’s your name, dear?” “Lara,” she said. “Now, Lara,” Maxx said, looking down at his paper to remember the line, “what we have here is a very interesting case study—a female objectifying me, a male. It’s so unusual that I can only assume you’re making an attempt at humor.” Lara stood up again and shouted, “I’m not keeding! Take off your clothes.” He nervously looked down at the paper, and then looked up at all of us, smiling. “Well, it is certainly important to subvert the patriarchal paradigm, and I suppose this is a way. All right, then,” he said, stepping to the left of the podium. And then he shouted, loud enough that Takumi could hear him upstairs, “This one’s for Alaska Young.” As the fast, pumping bass of Prince’s “Get Off” started from the loudspeakers, Dr. William Morse grabbed the leg of his pants with one hand and the lapel of his coat with the other, and the Velcro parted and his stage costume came apart, revealing Maxx with two x ’s, a stunningly muscular man with an eight-pack in his stomach and bulging pec muscles, and Maxx stood before us, smiling, wearing only briefs that were surely tighty, but not whitey—black leather.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  “Just wait.”Mama switched on the blinker in her dark green Thunderbird and turned off the highway onto a long circular drive. We glided past crepe myrtle trees in hot-pink bloom and an acre of the greenest front lawn I had ever seen. She stopped the car in front of a yellow two-story house shaded by giant oaks and turned off the engine. This was the kind of house that girls with long shiny hair and braces disappeared into every afternoon, girls with “Homecoming Queen” stamped on their future. I hung over the back of the front seat and shook a rattle in the general direction of my new sister. Mama insisted on putting baby Carol’s carrier in the front passenger seat, “in case of emergency.” That way, if she had to put on the brakes, she could throw her right arm out and save her.I craned my neck to see around the house to the garage apartment or trailer in back. “Where is it?”My mother glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s what?”“Our house.”She opened the door and paused before getting out of the car. “This is our house.” She walked around to the passenger’s side and lifted Carol out of the carrier saying, “Hi there, hi there,” in that sticky voice people use with babies. Gary and I were right behind her. He looked up at the trees, then turned to face the house, spreading his arms out as if to encompass the view. “We’re going to live here ?”“This is it, and your room is at the very top. It’s a converted attic.”He ran up the steps to the long porch and threw himself into one of the three white rockers that seemed to be waiting for us. Mama shifted the baby to one shoulder and asked me to grab the diaper bag.“And Donna, close your mouth. You’ll catch flies.”We unlocked the front door and stepped into something called a foyer with a hanging light and a wall-mounted gold mirror with a table underneath. We huddled in the doorway looking into a white-carpeted living room with nine-foot ceilings and furniture that was decidedly not early American. A dark blue low-slung couch stretched along a wall punctuated by three tall windows. Cream-colored floor-length drapes framed the windows and were pulled back by wide black ribbons at either end. The black fabric shades were a revelation; who knew they came in anything other than white plastic? Outside each window, just below the midway point where the shades stopped, hung a yellow-andblack garden spider. A little jewel of color located at the central point of each of the three large webs. Even the spiders are color-coordinated. Islands of glass-topped tables floated through the room. Gary and I took off our shoes and slid our feet through the white shag carpeting. We ran our fingers over everything, including the empty built-in bookshelves. We passed without speaking through the wide arched opening into the dining room.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Patty, another waitress at the Madison diner where Reese worked, brought Sebastian in. The place was a kitschy Midwest diner, a necessary stop during campaign seasons, where presidential aspirants ate real middle-American pie for photo ops. In a presidential off-season, Sebastian stood out among the diner’s clientele. He wore a nutria fur coat and a sweatband, which, it still being a warm day in September, was perhaps the only thing he could have worn louder and more gauche than his own beauty. Between the outfit and the accent, Reese could not figure out whether he was gay. The first thing he said to her was “Your pants are stupid,” which settled that he was an asshole, but could have gone either way on the gay question. Under the short waitress apron in which she kept a notepad, she had on a pair of tight jeans dyed a faux snakeskin pattern that she thought created a curve-enhancing optical effect. “Your hair is stupid,” she shot back without thinking, then floundered, “...mullet-head.” “What’s a mullet?” he asked. “What’s on your head.” “Hmm.” He turned to Patty, and pulled a low-budget digital game with an LCD screen from the giant pocket on the jacket. “Come on, let’s keep playing.” He pronounced both the P and the L distinctly, so you could hear the puff of the puh and the light flick of his tongue against the back of his upper teeth in Jay. (A year or so later, working as a waitress in Manhattan, Reese discovered the contours of her own Wisconsin accent after repeatedly asking patrons if they'd like orange jews.) To Reese’s dismay, Sebastian came back to the diner the next day, without Patty, and sat at one of Reese’s tables. “What’s the best sweet?” he asked Reese. “T don’t know. Maybe key lime pie,” she suggested. He ordered two key lime pie slices, and when she set down the two plates before him, he pushed one across the table and commanded, “Eat with me.” “Tm working,” she said. “There’s almost no one in here,” he replied. “And I am trying to apologize.” Her pants were not stupid, he explained, they were beautiful, and some girls were so beautiful that they made him angry and she was one of these girls, and yesterday he was baked out of his mind, so he directed his anger at her pants. “Sometimes,” he confessed, “I pass by a girl, and she is so beautiful, I just shout ‘fuck.’ ” She was so surprised she sat down with him. “Oh! Well, that explains why people have been shouting ‘fuck’ at me. I figured it was for something else.” “Because you used to be a boy, yeah?” Immediately she stood back up, her own “fuck” ready on her tongue. “T like that,” he said mildly, as though he hadn’t noticed how she sprang to her feet. “My first was someone like you. Older though. I was fifteen, she was twenty-seven.” “That’s illegal.”

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  attention of economists. The introductory paragraph of Grether and Plott’s article was unusually dramatic for a scholarly paper, and their intent was clear: “A body of data and theory has been developing within psychology which should be of interest to economists. Taken at face value the data are simply inconsistent with preference theory and have broad implications about research priorities within economics.... This paper reports the results of a series of experiments designed to discredit the psychologists’ works as applied to economics.” Grether and Plott listed thirteen theories that could explain the original findings and reported carefully designed experiments that tested these theories. One of their hypotheses, which—needless to say—psychologists found patronizing, was that the results were due to the experiment being carried out by psychologists! Eventually, only one hypothesis was left standing: the psychologists were right. Grether and Plott acknowledged that this hypothesis is the least satisfactory from the point of view of standard preference theory, because “it allows individual choice to depend on the context in which the choices are made”—a clear violation of the coherence doctrine. You might think that this surprising outcome would cause much anguished soul-searching among economists, as a basic assumption of their theory had been successfully challenged. But this is not the way things work in social science, including both psychology and economics. Theoretical beliefs are robust, and it takes much more than one embarrassing finding for established theories to be seriously questioned. In fact, Grether and Plott’s admirably forthright report had little direct effect on the convictions of economists, probably including Grether and Plott. It contributed, however, to a greater willingness of the community of economists to take psychological research seriously and thereby greatly advanced the conversation across the boundaries of the disciplines. Categories “How tall is John?” If John is 5' tall, your answer will depend on his age; he is very tall if he is 6 years old, very short if he is 16. Your System 1 automatically retrieves the relevant norm, and the meaning of the scale of tallness is adjusted automatically. You are also able to match intensities across categories and answer the question, “How expensive is a restaurant meal that matches John’s height?” Your answer will depend on John’s age: a much less expensive meal if he is 16 than if he is 6. But now look at this:

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  longer as prominent as it was, and the idea of a feminist “movement” sounds quaint, a testimonial to the change in the status of women over the last thirty years. Even in the Facebook era, however, it is still easy to guess the almost perfect consensus of judgments: Linda is a very good fit for an active feminist, a fairly good fit for someone who works in a bookstore and takes yoga classes— and a very poor fit for a bank teller or an insurance salesperson. Now focus on the critical items in the list: Does Linda look more like a bank teller, or more like a bank teller who is active in the feminist movement? Everyone agrees that Linda fits the idea of a “feminist bank teller” better than she fits the stereotype of bank tellers. The stereotypical bank teller is not a feminist activist, and adding that detail to the description makes for a more coherent story. The twist comes in the judgments of likelihood, because there is a logical relation between the two scenarios. Think in terms of Venn diagrams. The set of feminist bank tellers is wholly included in the set of bank tellers, as every feminist bank teller is a bank teller. Therefore the probability that Linda is a feminist bank teller must be lower than the probability of her being a bank teller. When you specify a possible event in greater detail you can only lower its probability. The problem therefore sets up a conflict between the intuition of representativeness and the logic of probability. Our initial experiment was between-subjects. Each participant saw a set of seven outcomes that included only one of the critical items (“bank teller” or “feminist bank teller”). Some ranked the outcomes by resemblance, others by likelihood. As in the case of Tom W, the average rankings by resemblance and by likelihood were identical; “feminist bank teller” ranked higher than “bank teller” in both. Then we took the experiment further, using a within-subject design. We made up the questionnaire as you saw it, with “bank teller” in the sixth position in the list and “feminist bank teller” as the last item. We were convinced that subjects would notice the relation between the two outcomes, and that their rankings would be consistent with logic. Indeed, we were so certain of this that we did not think it worthwhile to conduct a special experiment. My assistant was running another experiment in the lab, and she asked the subjects to complete the new Linda questionnaire while signing out, just before they got paid. About ten questionnaires had accumulated in a tray on my assistant’s desk before I casually glanced at them and found that all the subjects had ranked “feminist bank teller” as more probable than “bank teller.” I was so surprised that I still retain a “flashbulb memory” of the gray color of the metal desk and of where everyone was when I made that discovery. I quickly called Amos in great

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  decisions concerning the winner of the NBA playoffs. In particular, he asked them to estimate the probability that each of the eight participating teams would win the playoff; the victory of each team in turn was the focal event. You can surely guess what happened, but the magnitude of the effect that Fox observed may surprise you. Imagine a fan who has been asked to estimate the chances that the Chicago Bulls will win the tournament. The focal event is well defined, but its alternative—one of the other seven teams winning—is diffuse and less evocative. The fan’s memory and imagination, operating in confirmatory mode, are trying to construct a victory for the Bulls. When the same person is next asked to assess the chances of the Lakers, the same selective activation will work in favor of that team. The eight best professional basketball teams in the United States are all very good, and it is possible to imagine even a relatively weak team among them emerging as champion. The result: the probability judgments generated successively for the eight teams added up to 240%! This pattern is absurd, of course, because the sum of the chances of the eight events must add up to 100%. The absurdity disappeared when the same judges were asked whether the winner would be from the Eastern or the Western conference. The focal event and its alternative were equally specific in that question and the judgments of their probabilities added up to 100%. To assess decision weights, Fox also invited the basketball fans to bet on the tournament result. They assigned a cash equivalent to each bet (a cash amount that was just as attractive as placing the bet). Winning the bet would earn a payoff of $160. The sum of the cash equivalents for the eight individual teams was $287. An average participant who took all eight bets would be guaranteed a loss of $127! The participants surely knew that there were eight teams in the tournament and that the average payoff for betting on all of them could not exceed $160, but they overweighted nonetheless. The fans not only overestimated the probability of the events they focused on—they were also much too willing to bet on them. These findings shed new light on the planning fallacy and other manifestations of optimism. The successful execution of a plan is specific and easy to imagine when one tries to forecast the outcome of a project. In contrast, the alternative of failure is diffuse, because there are innumerable ways for things to go wrong. Entrepreneurs and the investors who evaluate their prospects are prone both to overestimate their chances and to overweight their estimates. Vivid Outcomes As we have seen, prospect theory differs from utility theory in the relationship it

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  very feasible. Like us, they did not know the odds they were facing. There are many ways for any plan to fail, and although most of them are too improbable to be anticipated, the likelihood that something will go wrong in a big project is high. The second question I asked Seymour directed his attention away from us and toward a class of similar cases. Seymour estimated the base rate of success in that reference class: 40% failure and seven to ten years for completion. His informal survey was surely not up to scientific standards of evidence, but it provided a reasonable basis for a baseline prediction: the prediction you make about a case if you know nothing except the category to which it belongs. As we saw earlier, the baseline prediction should be the anchor for further adjustments. If you are asked to guess the height of a woman about whom you know only that she lives in New York City, your baseline prediction is your best guess of the average height of women in the city. If you are now given case-specific information, for example that the woman’s son is the starting center of his high school basketball team, you will adjust your estimate away from the mean in the appropriate direction. Seymour’s comparison of our team to others suggested that the forecast of our outcome was slightly worse than the baseline prediction, which was already grim. The spectacular accuracy of the outside-view forecast in our problem was surely a fluke and should not count as evidence for the validity of the outside view. The argument for the outside view should be made on general grounds: if the reference class is properly chosen, the outside view will give an indication of where the ballpark is, and it may suggest, as it did in our case, that the inside- view forecasts are not even close to it. For a psychologist, the discrepancy between Seymour’s two judgments is striking. He had in his head all the knowledge required to estimate the statistics of an appropriate reference class, but he reached his initial estimate without ever using that knowledge. Seymour’s forecast from his inside view was not an adjustment from the baseline prediction, which had not come to his mind. It was based on the particular circumstances of our efforts. Like the participants in the Tom W experiment, Seymour knew the relevant base rate but did not think of applying it. Unlike Seymour, the rest of us did not have access to the outside view and could not have produced a reasonable baseline prediction. It is noteworthy, however, that we did not feel we needed information about other teams to make our guesses. My request for the outside view surprised all of us, including me! This is a common pattern: people who have information about an individual case rarely feel the need to know the statistics of the class to which the case belongs.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  they had expected, but he had long flowing hair and wore a green velvet same desire. Still others suit and cravat, as well as knee breeches and silk stockings. Many in the au- joined them, till at last all dience were put off; as they looked up at him from their seats, the combi- the filings began to discuss the matter, and more and nation of his large size and pretty attire were rather repulsive. Some people more their vague desire openly laughed, others could not hide their unease. They expected to hate grew into an impulse. the man. Then he began to speak. "Why not go today?" said one of them; but others The subject was the "English Renaissance," the "art for art's sake" were of opinion that it movement in late-nineteenth-century England. Wilde's voice proved hyp- would be better to wait notic; he spoke in a kind of meter, mannered and artificial, and few really until tomorrow. understood what he was saying, but the speech was so witty, and it flowed. Meanwhile, without their having noticed it, they had His appearance was certainly strange, but overall, no New Yorker had ever been involuntarily moving seen or heard such an intriguing man, and the lecture was a huge success. nearer to the magnet, Even the newspapers warmed up to it. In Boston a few weeks later, some which lay there quite still, apparently taking no heed sixty Harvard boys had prepared an ambush: they would make fun of this of them. And so they went effeminate poet by dressing in knee breeches, carrying flowers, and ap- on discussing, all the time 190 • The Art of Seduction insensibly drawing nearer plauding far too loudly at his entrance. Wilde was not the least bit flustered. to their neighbor; and the The audience laughed hysterically at his improvised comments, and when more they talked, the more the boys heckled him he kept his dignity, betraying no anger at all. Once they felt the impulse growing stronger, till the again, the contrast between his manner and his physical appearance made more impatient ones him seem rather extraordinary. Many were deeply impressed, and Wilde declared that they would go was well on his way to becoming a sensation. that day, whatever the rest did. Some were heard to The short lecture tour turned into a cross-country affair. In San Fran-say that it was their duty cisco, this visiting lecturer on art and aesthetics proved able to drink every-to visit the magnet, and one under the table and play poker, which made him the hit of the season. they ought to have gone On his way back from the West Coast, Wilde was to make stops in Colo-long ago. And, while they

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  You don’t want to scatter everything.” Mama stood over me, folding the bags in half one by one, running her fingers over the crease in each one, like she did the sheets when we folded laundry. She stacked the bags on my dresser and sat on the edge of my bed. She picked up a dime and held it between her thumb and pointer finger, turning it so the edge was toward me.“You want to look for edges that are silver like this. We’ll keep those.” She threw the dime into a bucket on the floor, sifted through the pile of money again, and pulled out a second dime. “The ones that have this coppery edge? We’ll give those back to Brother Terrell.”The mindlessness of sorting the coins appealed to me. Mama brought peanut-butter sandwiches and milk and set them beside my bed, and we ate and sorted together. Over time we filled six to eight large trash cans with silver. We stored the trash cans in the old house that stood beside our trailer, next to the room where we stored hay and feed for the livestock. We padlocked the front and back doors of the house. The arrangement worked fine until my mother hired someone to feed the cows and horses. Maybe the guy was looking for feed and stumbled upon the coins or maybe he just took a peek one day. Either way, the next time Mama checked the trash cans, they were only three-quarters full. She balked at calling the sheriff. She said she felt bad for the man who worked for us, that he was poor and black and had a bunch of kids. She did not say that she was reluctant to explain to the sheriff why she kept so much money squirreled away in trash cans. Eventually she did press charges and the man went to jail for three months. We drove to his house each week while he was in jail and gave his wife a check for the same amount of money he had made working for us. It was the least we could do after putting temptation right in front of the man, Mama said. She bought a new lock for the doors, but she didn’t move the money.Not long after our move, my mother called Gary and me into the living room and made a somewhat breathless announcement. “I’ve got something to tell you both. Y’all sit there on the couch.” She smoothed the full skirt of her shirtwaisted dress, sat between us, and took our hands. It was Mama’s version of a June Cleaver moment. All I could think was, Uh-oh, here we go . She looked at Gary, then at me, and ran her tongue over her lips. “I know this move has been hard on you, leaving your friends and all. But something good has come from it. From now on, you can call Brother Terrell ‘Daddy.’ ”Gary broke into cheers.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese pauses a moment, then accedes. She'll tell him the truth. Why not? So here it is sketched as quickly as she can: her cowboy, what she knows about his wife, how he’s the same as all the other guys, hiding her away in hole-in-the-wall restaurants, walking a few feet in front of her in public unless she protests, at which point he protests—unconvincingly—that he is ashamed of the affair, not that she is trans. All the shit that Ames already knew because Ames had lived it, both vicariously and on his own. “What about the HIV?” Ames asks. “What?” The question takes Reese aback. “What about it, who cares? I’m on PrEP and he’s undetectable.” “Katrina is freaking out about it. She’s close with Diana. Apparently she feels like she was the one who picked up the pieces when this guy—what’s his name, Garrett or something?— seroconverted. She spent a lot of time up in Diana’s relationship. Katrina was going through her divorce, and Diana went back and forth with her a lot about leaving her own husband. He seroconverted with a trans girl, you know.” “Yeah, I know. Again, so what?” Reese feels a surprising pang at the news that Diana considered a divorce. Then she reminds herself that, even if divorced, her cowboy would never have gotten over himself to be out with a trans woman. “So what,” Ames says, “is that Katrina has spent a lot of time hearing about that couple’s anguish from Diana’s point of view. About some trans girl who ruined her friend’s life. And then when they decided to have a baby, Katrina learned about what it means to wash sperm. About IVF treatments. And then, here’s you, a trans girl he’s cheating with again. Katrina is not taking it well.” “Is she having an AIDS panic or something?” Ames pauses. “Yeah. She wouldn’t call it that. But that’s what it is.” Reese snorts. “How retro.” “That’s what I told her. She was so starry-eyed these past few weeks. This whole idea that what she’d needed her whole life was queerness. And now she’s having the most basic freak-out. Talking how you put yourself and her and the baby at risk.” “At risk of what?” “HIV I guess?” “Can you talk her down?” “T tried. She told me to leave.”

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Kathy pats her hand with sympathy and says cryptically, “That wasn't your fault, you know, but the difference is that Katrina has a choice.” At this, at the hint of old gossip, of some past brush with queerness, Reese perks up and looks at the Empress of Dry Cleaning with new interest. She tries to imagine what kind of queerness the Empress could have gotten into. Look at her, she’s so fresh and pert —there is no stink of deviance to her at all. Maybe she’s the kind to go for some butch player and get her heart broken. Katrina leans forward toward the Empress. “I know, I know, I was a little worried how you'd take it, but like, this is different, everyone knows what’s happening.” “Tm sorry,” the Empress says. “I’m trying to be open-minded. Maybe I’m, like, triggered, or something.” She gives a wan smile. “Oh god, ’'m making this about me. No, that’s not okay.” The Empress remains the only woman present with whom Reese has not managed to establish rapport, the only one who looks at her with suspicion. And everyone else regards the Empress with some expression of concern or sympathy. Reese can’t quite figure out a way to ask what happened, and so makes a mental note to ask Katrina about the Empress’s history with queerness when the two of them are alone. A half hour or so later, Reese tries to make a show of paying the check, but to her relief, the women deny her this gallantry—each tossing a shiny credit card onto the check. “No,” says Kathy, with the social grace that Reese is growing to appreciate from her. “It sounds like yow’re going to be a mother too, so we ought to be celebrating you as well. No way you're going to pay.” Reese is grateful for this too; there has been little talk thus far of Reese’s own impending motherhood. As expected, her motherhood is already an afterthought to Katrina’s—though she tries to accept that these are Katrina’s friends, and so naturally, they would pay attention to Katrina. As the women rise from the table, Reese glances at the door. She stifles a gasp and reaches out to hold Katrina by the arm. “Wait,” she whispers, turning her body so only Katrina can hear. “Wait with me a second.” Katrina frowns. “Are you okay?’ Reese jabs her chin toward the door in a rough gesture. “That’s him,” Reese says. “That’s my cowboy— No! Don’t look. Help me decide what to do. Should I say hi? I haven’t ever run into him in public before. What is proper affair protocol?” But Katrina looks at the handful of people lingering over where the cakes shine beneath the glass counter. “Who?” “The tall guy in the brown jacket. The handsome one with the stubble.” Katrina swallows. “Not the guy, like, between the glass dessert counter and the door?”

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  the incidence of cancer to be much higher (or much lower) than it is in the larger population. The deeper truth is that there is nothing to explain. The incidence of cancer is not truly lower or higher than normal in a county with a small population, it just appears to be so in a particular year because of an accident of sampling. If we repeat the analysis next year, we will observe the same general pattern of extreme results in the small samples, but the counties where cancer was common last year will not necessarily have a high incidence this year. If this is the case, the differences between dense and rural counties do not really count as facts: they are what scientists call artifacts, observations that are produced entirely by some aspect of the method of research—in this case, by differences in sample size. The story I have told may have surprised you, but it was not a revelation. You have long known that the results of large samples deserve more trust than smaller samples, and even people who are innocent of statistical knowledge have heard about this law of large numbers. But “knowing” is not a yes-no affair and you may find that the following statements apply to you: The feature “sparsely populated” did not immediately stand out as relevant when you read the epidemiological story. You were at least mildly surprised by the size of the difference between samples of 4 and samples of 7. Even now, you must exert some mental effort to see that the following two statements mean exactly the same thing: Large samples are more precise than small samples. Small samples yield extreme results more often than large samples do. The first statement has a clear ring of truth, but until the second version makes intuitive sense, you have not truly understood the first. The bottom line: yes, you did know that the results of large samples are more precise, but you may now realize that you did not know it very well. You are not alone. The first study that Amos and I did together showed that even sophisticated researchers have poor intuitions and a wobbly understanding of sampling effects. The Law of Small Numbers My collaboration with Amos in the early 1970s began with a discussion of the claim that people who have had no training in statistics are good “intuitive

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  count the number of passes made by the white team, ignoring the black players. This task is difficult and completely absorbing. Halfway through the video, a woman wearing a gorilla suit appears, crosses the court, thumps her chest, and moves on. The gorilla is in view for 9 seconds. Many thousands of people have seen the video, and about half of them do not notice anything unusual. It is the counting task—and especially the instruction to ignore one of the teams—that causes the blindness. No one who watches the video without that task would miss the gorilla. Seeing and orienting are automatic functions of System 1, but they depend on the allocation of some attention to the relevant stimulus. The authors note that the most remarkable observation of their study is that people find its results very surprising. Indeed, the viewers who fail to see the gorilla are initially sure that it was not there—they cannot imagine missing such a striking event. The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness. Plot Synopsis The interaction of the two systems is a recurrent theme of the book, and a brief synopsis of the plot is in order. In the story I will tell, Systems 1 and 2 are both active whenever we are awake. System 1 runs automatically and System 2 is normally in a comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged. System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or no modification. You generally believe your impressions and act on your desires, and that is fine—usually. When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing that may solve the problem of the moment. System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer, as probably happened to you when you encountered the multiplication problem 17 × 24. You can also feel a surge of conscious attention whenever you are surprised. System 2 is activated when an event is detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains. In that world, lamps do not jump, cats do not bark, and gorillas do not cross basketball courts. The gorilla experiment demonstrates that some attention is needed for the surprising stimulus to be detected. Surprise then activates and orients your attention: you will stare, and you will search your memory for a story that makes sense of the surprising event. System 2 is also credited with the continuous monitoring of

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  tention but not their obsession; they will soon move on to the next striking his precision of speech. The image. To deepen their interest, you must hint at a complexity that cannot first sight of him affected be grasped in a week or two. You are an elusive mystery, an irresistible lure, people in various ways. promising great pleasure if only it can be possessed. Once they begin to Some could hardly restrain their laughter, others felt fantasize about you, they are on the brink of the slippery slope of seduc- hostile, a few were afflicted tion, and will not be able to stop themselves from sliding down. with the "creeps" many were conscious of being uneasy, but except for a small minority who could Artificial and Natural never recover from the first sensation of distaste and so kept out of his way, both The big Broadway hit of 1881 was Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta Pa- sexes found him irresistible, tience, a satire on the bohemian world of aesthetes and dandies that had and to the young men of become so fashionable in London. To cash in on this vogue, the operetta's his time, says W. B. Yeats, he was like a triumphant promoters decided to invite one of England's most infamous aesthetes to and audacious figure from America for a lecture tour: Oscar Wilde. Only twenty-seven at the time, another age. Wilde was more famous for his public persona than for his small body of —HESKETH PEARSON, OSCAR work. The American promoters were confident that their public would be WILDE: HIS LIFE AND WIT fascinated by this man, whom they imagined as always walking around with a flower in his hand, but they did not expect it to last; he would do a few lectures, then the novelty would wear off, and they would ship him home. Once upon a time there The money was good and Wilde accepted. On his arrival in New York, a was a magnet, and in its customs man asked him whether he had anything to declare: "I have noth- close neighborhood lived some steel filings. One day ing to declare," he replied, "except my genius." two or three little filings felt The invitations poured in—New York society was curious to meet this a sudden desire to go and oddity. Women found Wilde enchanting, but the newspapers were less visit the magnet, and they kind; The New York Times called him an "aesthetic sham." Then, a week af- began to talk of what a pleasant thing it would be ter his arrival, he gave his first lecture. The hall was packed; more than a to do. Other filings nearby thousand people came, many of them just to see what he looked like. They overheard their were not disappointed. Wilde did not carry a flower, and was taller than conversation, and they, too, became infected with the