8 BLAME

8   BLAME Blamestorming and the Moral of the Financial Crisis
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Persian Empire

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How can a video game trick me into thinking that it is a person? I went into a store and paid money for a disk, which I stuck into a box of bolts attached to a video screen.
Note:BIAS...DA VIDEOGIOCO....QUI SI RACCONTA LA STORIA DI COME SI FINISCE X INSULTARE UN VIDEOGIOCO

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Our brains are wired to look for agency everywhere.
Note:ERRORE DELL ATTRIBUZIONE...SE QUALCOSA FA QUALCOSA È XCHÈ VUOLE FARLA

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HOW WE SEE THE WORLD
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“What we thought was hard, things like playing chess, turned out to be easy, and what we thought was easy, things like recognizing faces or objects, which a child can do, that turned out to be much harder.”
Note:IL PROBLEMA IA

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Have you looked for hidden pictures in the wallpaper of your childhood bedroom, or faces in the clouds?
Note:OSSESSIONE BEN NOTA DI SCOVARE VOLTI

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That’s your pattern recognition software calling order out of chaos.
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What I described isn’t exactly what you saw, is it? You probably saw a white triangle
Note:GIOCHINO VISUALE...GUARDA LA FIGURA NEL LIBRO

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In our natural environment,
Note:CI SONO TRIANGOLI NON CUNEI.....ECCO SPIEGATO XCHÈ VEDI QUEL CHE VEDI

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“Coincidence avoidance”
Note:REGOLA DEL SISTEMA VISIVO

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If you show people an animated movie of one ball running into another and stopping, while the other ball rolls away, they will say that the first ball made the second one move.
Note:NOI VEDIAMO CAUSE VUNQUE

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Albert Michotte
Note:L ESPERTO

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People described balls on a screen as “hitting,” “chasing,” and “following”
Note:ESPERIMENTO REALE

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“We also seek out patterns in events,” says the scientist Bruce Hood in his recent book, SuperSense. “Our mind design forces us to see organization
Note:ALTRO BIAS CONNESSO CON QS

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when unexpected disasters do occur, our intuitions push us to see a person and a plan, rather than some complex impersonal force. We start looking, in short, for someone to blame.
Note:UNA FORMA MOLTOL PARTICOLARE DEL BIAS....ANTIDOTO LA PREGHIERA

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THE “TRUTH” BEHIND THE CALAMITY
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A few years back, I found myself embroiled in a long e-mail exchange with a 9/11 Truther.
Note:ESPERIENZA XSONALE

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government is neither evil nor competent enough to have orchestrated the biggest terrorist attack
Note:LA SEMPLICE VERITÀ

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“Okay, so it’s a controlled demolition,” says Asner.
Note:LA VERSIONE DI MOLTI TRUTHER

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Controlled demolitions cannot be engineered and rigged in a day. It takes months.
Note:IL PROBLEMA

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no one reported noticing a team of demolition experts doing any such thing.
Note:CONTRO LA TESI COMPLOTTISTA

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It wouldn’t have been that hard for the government to pull it off, came the response.
Note:FATTI FUORI I TESTIMONI...LA RISPOSTA SEMPRE PRONTA

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By now I was muttering to myself and kicking my desk as I typed. I replied that I didn’t understand why explosives would have caused the site to burn for months.
Note:LA DISCUSSIONE TI INFIAMMA

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His views were essentially unfalsifiable;
Note:MORALE

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Commercial airliners simply could not have generated either the force, or the heat, needed to bring those buildings down.
Note:ALTRO ARGOMENTO COMPLOTTISTA

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refueling tankers, or perhaps cruise missiles.
Note:ALTERNATIVE PROPOSTE

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distract your eye
Note:IL RUOLO DEGLI AEREI IN UN COMPLOTTOSMO ALTENATIVO

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high explosives, possibly placed there years before.
Note:LA CAUSA REALE

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“What’s so interesting is that the Truthers never do this: picking up the phone, talking to actual experts—they
Note:COSA NN FANNO MAI I PSEUDO-ESPERTI

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how the claims were assembled in the first place. They ranged from basic misunderstanding to seizing on early erroneous reporting.”
Note:ORIGINE DELLA TEORIA COMPLOTTISTA

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Instead of being happy to learn that their government probably hadn’t orchestrated
Note:REAZIONE SORPRENDENTE...SI RESTA AFFEZIONATI ALLA PRIMA IMPRESSIONE

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I KNOW THERE’S A VILLAIN IN THERE SOMEWHERE
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According to this theory, easy money from the Federal Reserve, and massive government backing for the mortgage market, caused a credit boom that drove markets to unsustainable heights.
Note:LE DUE NARRAZIONI DELLA CRISI....QUELLA DI DESTRA

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Then there were the Moochers: people who took too much risk because they knew that if push came to shove, the government would bail them out.
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For starters, many of the banks that went bust did so in part because they had been “eating their own toxic waste”:
Note:QUALCHE PROBLEMA FATTUALE

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Spain, for example, has no Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac to lend
Note:ALTRO PROBLEMA FATTUALE

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And yet Spain’s housing bubble was even worse
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crazy free market ideologues persuaded Congress and the president to deregulate
Note:VERSIONE SINISTRORSA

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stealing from the poor and gullible by selling outrageously oversize mortgages to financial naïfs
Note:LA VOGLIA MATTA DI PIAZZARE MUTUI A TUTTI

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This narrative, like the conservative version, has its share of problems. For one thing, the financial naïfs weren’t all that naïve. “During the great housing bubble and bust, journalists spent a fair amount of time searching for the perfect mortgage victim,” writes David Leonhardt,
Note:PRIMO PROBLEMA FATTUALE

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Progressives have nominated a few regulations—notably, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed one of the last remnants of the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act, a ban on commercial banks owning investment banks. If the crisis had originated in hybrid firms like JPMorgan, which had both commercial banking and investment banking arms, this might be more convincing. But it didn’t. JPMorgan was fine—in
Note:BITTER FRUIT DI QUELLA MOSSA

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ALTRO PROBLEMA

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investment banks like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch—the
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Neither of these narratives is all wrong—there
Note:SIA CHIARO

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What’s even more striking is that at bottom, they are the same story: everything used to be great, then some greedy fool changed the rules and ruined everything.
Note:IL MCD...LA PRESENZA DEL CATTIVO

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Christopher Foote, Kristopher Gerardi, and Paul Willen of the Fed
Note:CHI HA CERCATO UNA SPIEGAZIONE DIFFERENTE

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The financial crisis happened for the stupidest reason imaginable—no one thought that housing prices would fall as much as they did.

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LA CAUSA REALE

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they didn’t believe it would happen.
Note:UNA NOTA ACCURATA DI LEHMAN DEL 2005

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price credit risk
Note:OPERAZIONE DIFFICILE DOVE SPESSO SI SBAGLIA

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Bankers were hardly the only people who thought they were geniuses who could turn guesses into gold. Entire academic careers were founded on what we used to call “the great moderation”: the idea that improved management of the money supply and the banking system by the Federal Reserve had essentially tamed the business cycle
Note:NN AVIDITÀ MA GNORANZA E ABUSO NELLA CONOSCENZA

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FINANCIAL GROUPIDITY
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they had no idea this was coming.
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guilty of insufficient imagination:
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people basically shrugged and said, “If it gets that bad, we’re all so completely screwed that there’s no point planning for it.”
Note:AVVITATI

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bad positive feedback loops:
Note:ERRORI CHE MONTANO

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Vernon Smith,
Note:CHI LI HA STUDIATI IN LABORATORIO

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Smith and his team were looking to see how prices emerged, but they found something unexpected: they got bubbles. Every time.
Note:REGOLA DELLA BOLLA...ESPERIMENTI CON LE MATRICOLE IN LABORATORIO

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Only when you run it a third time do people start recognizing what is happening, and stop blowing bubbles.
Note:REGOLA DEL TRE

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they underestimated the probability that the bubble would pop.
Note:RIPETIAMO LA SPIEGAZIONE DI FOOT

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they lost so much money in the crash.
Note:LA PROVA REGINA CHE L IGNORANZA SIA LA SPIEGA GIUSYA

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Fuld, the head of Lehman, is reported to have lost a billion dollars, and was forced to sell off his $25 million New York City apartment
Note:UN ESEMPIO

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Dick Fuld was forced out of the top slot at Lehman in a humiliating debacle, and has lost most of the wealth he gained over the course of his career in finance. That’s not fun, even if you’re still rich.
Note:ANCORA RICCO MA...

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how often do you see it advanced in an op-ed, or pushed by a talking head on television news?
Note:LA TEORIA DELL IGNORANZA NN È COOL

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THE AGENCY DETECTION MACHINE
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Bruce Hood,
Note:STUDIOSO DEL CERVELLO INFANTILE

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There are no random events
Note:CARATTERISTICHE DEL CERVELLO INFANTILE...1

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Things are caused by intention.

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Complexity cannot happen spontaneously
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“agency-detection device.”
Note:IL NOME DEL MECANISMO CHE SI ATTIVA

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One night not long ago, I spent five minutes trying to sneak up on my coat rack. I was alone in the house, and from the top of my stairs, the coat rack looked terrifyingly like a burglar surveying the booty.
Note:SAPETE CSA MI È CAPITATO IERI?

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It is probably not very dangerous to mistake a rock for a saber-toothed tiger, but it is very dangerous indeed to mistake a tiger for a rock.
Note:L ANTENATO

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Walter Olson calls “blamestorming.”
Note:LO STUDIOSO CHE BATTEZZA

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Why do we need to do this?
Note:TROVARE UN CAPRO

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the number of people who think that by suggesting it, I am doing something reprehensible.
Note:CHI PROPONE LA CASUALITÀ È COMPLICE

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we tend to see culprits rather than complexity.
Note:RIBADIAMO

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look for intention instead of randomness,

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causation instead of chaos.
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If nature abhors a vacuum, human reason abhors a coincidence.
Note:MOTTO

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parents with autistic children became convinced that the vaccines their children had been given were causing it. The age at which autism is usually diagnosed is also the age at which kids in most Western countries are going through a heavy vaccination schedule.
Note:ALTRO ESEMPIO

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we also tend to favor small, concrete stories over large ones. “Vaccines cause autism” has a lot more resonance than “some unspecified combination of environmental pollutants, infectious agents, and/or genetics is causing autism.”
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no one wants to be at the mercy of the universe.
Note:VOGLIA DI CONTROLLO

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a universe where bad things sometimes happen
Note:L ALTERNATIVA AL CATTIVO

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THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL
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TO CROSS STREET PUSH BUTTON
Note:ILLUSIONE CHE TRANQUILLIZZA

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Longtime New Yorkers sort of suspected that they didn’t do anything. And still, they pushed. Dinner parties were riven by debates worthy of the Reformation over those buttons
Note:IL PULSANTE DEI SEMAFORI

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people who had been pushing those buttons for decades swore that the light turned after.
Note:HIHIHI

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the buttons had been disconnected decades before.
Note:LA CONFERMA DEL NYT

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continued toward the button
Note:MA LA GENTE...

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“Just in case,”
Note:LA GIUSTIFICA

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Ellen Langer has dubbed the illusion of control:
Note:IL BHATTESIMO

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less stress if they believe
Note:BENEFICI

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low-ranking civil servants are much more likely to die
Note:I SUBORDINATI CREPANO PRIMA...NN CONTROLLANO

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how much control you had over your workday,
Note:VARIABILE CHIAVE.... L IMPREVISTO TI AMMAZZA

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Finding someone to blame
Note:CI FA BENE MA NN RISOLVE

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SCAPEGOATS AND THE RUSH TO JUDGMENT
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DNA testing
Note:LA SCOPERTA DI MOLTI ERRORI GIUDIZIARI

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stranger rapes, the assault or murder
Note:PIÙ UN CRIMINE È ORROBILE PIÙ CRESCONO LE POSSIBILITÀ DI ERRORE

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lot of pressure to find the perpetrator.
Note:CAUSA PROB DEGLI ERRORI

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Once they’re focused, they stop “looking for suspects”
Note:QUEL CHE SUCCEDE ALL INVTIGATORE

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extraordinarily prone to confirmation bias.
Note:TIPICO

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Why do hard-line law-and-order prosecutors fight so hard against groups like the Innocence Project? The project does DNA testing at its own expense; it costs the taxpayer nothing. And many times they end up affirming the prosecution’s case.
Note:UNA GUERRA INSPIEGABILE

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“It’s staggering how organized they think the world is,”
COME VEDE I CATTIVI IL COMPLOTTISTA