Overconfidently Into the Abyss

Why do intelligent, capable people become spectacularly certain of things that are wrong?

Overconfidently Into the Abyss is a field guide to the point where confidence stops being useful and starts becoming dangerous.

Across seven cities and seven forms of overconfidence, Julius Herfel follows people who had genuine reasons to trust themselves - and then carried that confidence somewhere it no longer belonged. John McAfee hides from police beneath a cardboard box. Gwyneth Paltrow turns intuition into wellness science. Kanye West treats artistic success as universal expertise. Adam Neumann tries to reinvent capitalism. Yanis Varoufakis enters a negotiation convinced the logic will win. Porsche attempts one of the most audacious corporate takeovers in European history. And Liz Truss discovers what happens when conviction meets the bond market.

Along the way, the book explores confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, overestimation, overprecision, overplacement, the illusion of control and moral overconfidence - and why none of them are problems reserved for fools.

Part psychology, part business history, part political and cultural absurdity, Overconfidently Into the Abyss is ultimately about something more uncomfortable: the same mental machinery is present in all of us.

The question is not whether you will sometimes be wrong. It is how certain you will be when you are.