Human Systems and Behavior

The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance 1 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 1: The Scarcity Mindset's Paradoxical Power 2 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 2: The Bandwidth Tax: Scarcity Makes You 'Dumber' 3 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 3: The Scarcity Trap: Borrowing from Tomorrow 4 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 4: The Necessity of Waste: Why Slack Saves You 5 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 5: The Attention Famine in the Content Feast ← Series Home 2x More Likely Low-income shoppers think about trade-offs before buying—becoming experts in value ...

The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance 1 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 1: The Scarcity Mindset's Paradoxical Power 2 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 2: The Bandwidth Tax: Scarcity Makes You 'Dumber' 3 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 3: The Scarcity Trap: Borrowing from Tomorrow 4 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 4: The Necessity of Waste: Why Slack Saves You 5 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 5: The Attention Famine in the Content Feast ← Series Home Payday Loans High-interest loans seem attractive under scarcity—costs fall outside tunnel vision ...

The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance 1 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 1: The Scarcity Mindset's Paradoxical Power 2 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 2: The Bandwidth Tax: Scarcity Makes You 'Dumber' 3 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 3: The Scarcity Trap: Borrowing from Tomorrow 4 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 4: The Necessity of Waste: Why Slack Saves You 5 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 5: The Attention Famine in the Content Feast ← Series Home 13-14 IQ Points Cognitive decline from scarcity—equivalent to losing a night's sleep ...

The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance 1 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 1: The Scarcity Mindset's Paradoxical Power 2 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 2: The Bandwidth Tax: Scarcity Makes You 'Dumber' 3 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 3: The Scarcity Trap: Borrowing from Tomorrow 4 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 4: The Necessity of Waste: Why Slack Saves You 5 The Psychology of Scarcity & Abundance - Part 5: The Attention Famine in the Content Feast ← Series Home Focus Dividend Scarcity creates powerful attention and efficiency—tighter deadlines boost productivity ...

The Mind of the Maker: Psychology of Engineering Failure 1 The Illusion of Invulnerability: How the Titanic's Designers Dismissed the Iceberg Threat 2 The Certainty Trap: Challenger and the Deadly Cost of Overconfidence 3 The Bureaucracy of Denial: Chernobyl and the System That Couldn't Say Stop 4 The Sunk Cost Bridge: Tacoma Narrows and the Engineering Gambler's Fallacy 5 The Automation Paradox: How Boeing's MCAS System Exploited Pilot Trust ← Series Home The System Was Meant to Help. It Lied About What It Was Doing. Between October 2018 and March 2019, two Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashed within five months of each other. Lion Air Flight 610 crashed near Jakarta on October 29, 2018, killing 189 people. Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, killing 157 people. The technical cause was identical in both cases: a system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) repeatedly pushed the nose of the aircraft downward, and the pilots couldn’t stop it. ...

The Mind of the Maker: Psychology of Engineering Failure 1 The Illusion of Invulnerability: How the Titanic's Designers Dismissed the Iceberg Threat 2 The Certainty Trap: Challenger and the Deadly Cost of Overconfidence 3 The Bureaucracy of Denial: Chernobyl and the System That Couldn't Say Stop 4 The Sunk Cost Bridge: Tacoma Narrows and the Engineering Gambler's Fallacy 5 The Automation Paradox: How Boeing's MCAS System Exploited Pilot Trust ← Series Home The Bridge Wobbled. They Saw It. They Fixed It Wrong. On July 1, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened in Washington state. It was an engineering marvel: a suspension bridge spanning 2,800 feet with the longest center span in the world at that time. The design was revolutionary—the deck was thinner and more flexible than previous bridges, giving it a distinctive, almost delicate appearance. Traffic was modest at first but growing. ...

The Mind of the Maker: Psychology of Engineering Failure 1 The Illusion of Invulnerability: How the Titanic's Designers Dismissed the Iceberg Threat 2 The Certainty Trap: Challenger and the Deadly Cost of Overconfidence 3 The Bureaucracy of Denial: Chernobyl and the System That Couldn't Say Stop 4 The Sunk Cost Bridge: Tacoma Narrows and the Engineering Gambler's Fallacy 5 The Automation Paradox: How Boeing's MCAS System Exploited Pilot Trust ← Series Home The Test That Nobody Could Stop On April 26, 1986, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station exploded, releasing 400 times more radioactive material than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The immediate death toll was 31. The long-term casualties—cancer, thyroid disease, genetic damage—have never been fully counted, though estimates exceed 4,000 deaths. The exclusion zone encompasses 2,600 square kilometers of permanently contaminated land. ...

The Mind of the Maker: Psychology of Engineering Failure 1 The Illusion of Invulnerability: How the Titanic's Designers Dismissed the Iceberg Threat 2 The Certainty Trap: Challenger and the Deadly Cost of Overconfidence 3 The Bureaucracy of Denial: Chernobyl and the System That Couldn't Say Stop 4 The Sunk Cost Bridge: Tacoma Narrows and the Engineering Gambler's Fallacy 5 The Automation Paradox: How Boeing's MCAS System Exploited Pilot Trust ← Series Home The Data Was in the Room. It Just Didn’t Speak. On the morning of January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger lifted off from Kennedy Space Center with 7 crew members aboard. 73 seconds later, the vehicle disintegrated in the sky, killing everyone on board. The technical cause was well understood within minutes: an O-ring seal in the right solid rocket booster had failed in the cold temperatures, allowing hot gases to escape and erode the external tank. ...

The Mind of the Maker: Psychology of Engineering Failure 1 The Illusion of Invulnerability: How the Titanic's Designers Dismissed the Iceberg Threat 2 The Certainty Trap: Challenger and the Deadly Cost of Overconfidence 3 The Bureaucracy of Denial: Chernobyl and the System That Couldn't Say Stop 4 The Sunk Cost Bridge: Tacoma Narrows and the Engineering Gambler's Fallacy 5 The Automation Paradox: How Boeing's MCAS System Exploited Pilot Trust ← Series Home The Blueprint Was Flawless. The Failure Was Psychological. On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic departed Southampton carrying 2,224 passengers and crew. Within five days, the ship would sink in the North Atlantic, killing 1,503 people. The tragedy wasn’t caused by incompetent design. Quite the opposite. The Titanic was built by Harland and Wolff, the world’s premier shipbuilder, at a cost equivalent to $200 million today. Its watertight compartments, double bottom, and advanced steam engines represented the cutting edge of 1912 engineering. The ship’s designers were the best available. The technology was state-of-the-art. Yet these advantages became fatal liabilities because they triggered a psychological mechanism so powerful it rendered obvious risks invisible: the expert blind spot combined with systematic normalization of deviance. ...

The Endowment Effect of Digital Ownership: 5 Surprising Truths About Why We Overvalue What We Own Introduction: The Invisible Force Behind Your Possessions Have you ever tried to sell a used car, a piece of furniture, or even an old smartphone, only to feel that every offer you receive is offensively low? Or maybe you’ve felt an irrational attachment to a digital item in a video game that has no real-world value. This feeling isn’t just about sentimentality; it’s the result of a powerful cognitive bias called the “endowment effect”—an invisible force that convinces us our stuff is special, just because it’s ours. ...