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Availability Cascades Run The World

pmarca.substack.com · 1,239 words · saved by 4 readers

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” -- H.L. Mencken

The most important idea and paper I’ve encountered in the last 20 years is “availability cascades”. The paper is here: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&context=public_law_and_legal_theory ; the authors are Timur Kuran and Cass Sunstein. What’s an “availability cascade”? It’s a combination of: “Availability” — short for “availability heuristic or availability bias, a pervasive mental shortcut whereby the perceived likelihood of any given event is tied to the ease with which its occurrence can be brought to mind”. “Cascade” — short for “social cascades…

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