The Ostrich Paradox

How come humanity remains so vulnerable to crises? Indeed, our capacity to predict extreme weather occurrences, for example, has considerably improved over the past few years. Yet, the management of catastrophes such as Hurricane Ike in 2008 remains largely deficient. For a very clear reason, the authors explain to us: we are irremediably blinded by our cognitive biases—those of amnesia, inertia, simplification, etc. In the first part of the book, six of these biases are reviewed. They are linked to our mental mechanisms and it is impossible to completely eliminate them. However, it is possible to evaluate the extent to which they impair our vision of reality to better counter them. To do so, the authors propose in a second part a framework to audit our own biases, in order to improve our clairvoyance and our aptitudes for crisis management.