The human mind naturally overemphasizes the negative

Loss aversion refers to the fact that we feel stronger emotions about losing something than we do about gaining the same thing.

For example: If you found $20 on the ground, you'd be pretty happy. But if you had $20 in your wallet and lost it, you'd be really unhappy.

Losing something we already have is twice as much pain than gaining the same. This skewed feelings towards loss is known as loss aversion.

Expectations always dampen the feelings of happiness, always setting us up in advance for a dose of disappointment.

So thinking probabilistically takes some getting used to. We generally believe that something is true or false.

Our instinct for determinism may well have been an evolutionary innovation. To survive, we had to make snap judgments about the world and our response to it. However, the determ...