There is a useful 2023 book by Morgan Housel titled Same as Ever: A guide to what never changes. Google Books has a preview through page 18 and pages 21 to 25.
The first page about its contents is titled 23 Little Stories about Things That Never Change, and those stories and their starting pages are:
Introduction
The Little Laws of Life. 1
Hanging by a Thread
If you know where we’ve been you realize we have no idea where we’re going. 5
Risk Is What You Don’t See
We are very good at predicting the future, except for the surprises – which tend to be all that matters. 16
Expectations and Reality
The first rule of happiness is low expectations. 25
Wild Minds
People who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you won’t like. 36
Wild Numbers
People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty. 44
Best Story Wins
Stories are always more powerful than statistics. 56
Does Not Compute
The world is driven by forces that cannot be measured. 67
Calm Plants the Seeds of Crazy
Crazy doesn’t mean broken. Crazy is normal; beyond the point of crazy is normal. 78
Too Much, Too Soon, Too Fast
A good idea on steroids quickly becomes a terrible idea. 88
When the Magic Happens
Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t. 96
Overnight Tragedies and Long-Term Miracles
Good news comes from compounding, which always takes time, but bad news comes from a loss in confidence or a catastrophic error that can occur in a blink of an eye. 109
Tiny and Magnificent
When little things compound into extraordinary things. 115
Elation and Despair
Progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist. 122
Casualties of Perfection
There is a huge advantage to being a little imperfect. 129
It’s Supposed to Be Hard
Everything worth pursuing comes with a little pain. The trick is not minding that it hurts. 136
Keep Running
Most competitive advantages eventually die. 144
The Wonders of the Future
It always feels like we’re falling behind, and it’s easy to discount the potential of new technology. 152
Harder Than It Looks and Not as Fun as It Seems
‘The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.’ 159
Incentives: The Most Powerful Force in the World
When the incentives are crazy, the behavior is crazy. People can be led to justify and defend nearly anything. 164
Now You Get It
Nothing is more persuasive than what you’ve experienced firsthand. 171
Time Horizons
Saying ‘I’m in it for the long run’ is a bit like standing at the base of Mount Everest, pointing to the top, and saying, ‘That’s where I’m heading.’ Well, that’s nice. Now comes the test. 178
Trying Too Hard
There are no points awarded for difficulty. 184
Wounds Heal, Scars Last
What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the world like you do if I experienced what you have? 192
Chapter 6, Best Story Wins, says on page 56:
“The best story wins.
Not the best idea, or the right idea, or the most rational idea. Just whoever tells a story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads is the one who tends to be rewarded.
Great ideas explained poorly can go nowhere, while old or wrong ideas told compellingly can ignite a revolution. Morgan Freeman can narrate a grocery list and bring people to tears, while an inarticulate scientist might cure a disease and go unnoticed.
There is too much information in the world for everyone to calmly sift through the data, looking for the most rational, most correct answer. People are busy and emotional, and a good story is always more powerful and persuasive than ice-cold statistics.
If you have the right answer, you may or may not get ahead.
If you have the wrong answer, but you’re a good storyteller, you’ll probably get ahead (for a while).
If you have the right answer, and you’re a good storyteller, you’ll almost certainly
get ahead.
That’s always been true, always will be true, and it shows up in so many areas of history.
[and on page 63]…When a topic is complex, stories are like leverage.
Leverage squeezes the full potential out of something with less effort. Stories leverage ideas in the same way that debt leverages assets.
Trying to explain something like physics is hard if you’re deadlifting facts and formulas. But if you can explain things like how fire works with a story about balls rolling down hills and running into one another – that’s what physicist Richard Feynman, an astonishing storyteller, used to do – you can explain something complex in seconds, without much effort.
Stories do more than persuade others. They can help you just as much. Part of what made Albert Einstein so talented was his imagination and ability to distill complexity into a simple scene in his head. When he was sixteen he started imagining what it would be like to ride on a beam of light, holding onto the sides like a flying carpet and thinking through how it would travel and bend. Soon after, he imagined what your body would feel like if you were in an enclosed elevator riding through space. He contemplated gravity by imagining bowling balls and billiard balls competing for space on a trampoline surface. He could process a textbook of information with the effort of a daydream.
Ken Burns once said, ‘The common stories are one plus one equals two. We get it, they make sense. But good stories are about one plus one equals three.’ That’s leverage.”
An 1856 painting by Vincenzo Cabianca of a Napoleonic Legionnaire was cropped from Wikimedia Commons.
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