We tend to assume that bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. When we encounter someone who has suffered a terrible fate through no fault of their own, it can shatter this comfortable illusion — and rather than update our beliefs, we often unconsciously blame the victim instead.
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Any fundamental analysis of Tesla requires holding dozens of contradictory concepts in the mind at the same time. Perhaps that's why hardly anyone still bothers. Their forecasts are pretty much guaranteed to be wrong: And, since there's no evidence that earnings matter, what exactly is the point of forecasts?
FT Alphaville
We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. And what we are is largely what we have consented to become, through the daily, unremarked choices that accumulate into a character — and finally a fate.
Anaïs Nin — Seduction of the Minotaur
As journalists, it can feel like the incentives of our tribe are almost always to ask: what's bad about this? But it is a particularly hollow and timid kind of journalism that finds itself unable to also ask: what could go right?
Casey Newton