Rival and non-rival goods

Our tendency to believe that the worst possible thing that can happen is the worst possible thing we know has happened — the name given by Nicolas Taleb in his book Antifragile. So, should we plan to stress test an investment portfolio, for example, we might test it against how it fared in the worst market crash. Or stress test a building for the biggest known earthquake, or a nuclear reactor for the biggest known tsunami. And yet, when each of these events happened, they were bigger than what had come before, and the same could happen again.

Lucretius was a Roman philosopher who wrote that:

The fool believes that the tallest mountain in the world will be equal to the tallest one he has observed.

Also known as The Lucretius underestimation.

See other sketchplanations on cognitive biases.

The Lucretius problem

…when senses interact, in sometimes surprising ways. Some fun examples:

Coffee tastes better when you don’t have a loud coffee machine near you, and it also tastes more intense and less sweet if the mug is white.

In the atmosphere of a pressurised cabin when flying, with decreased humidity and air pressure and significant background noise, things taste less sweet or salty.

If you can’t hear the crunch of, say a Pringles potato chip, then it tastes less fresh.

You might enjoy Nicola Twilley’s super New Yorker article, The Illusion of Taste, which has more of the science and plenty more examples.

Crossmodal perception