The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel. The textbook treats certainty as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. Understanding people turns out to be a more urgent task than changing them, and a great deal harder. None of this is new. Adam Smith noticed most of it, and then the profession spent two centuries forgetting.
Who should read it
The remedy is rarely exhortation. It is a change to the situation so that the easier choice is also the better one. Institutions know all this, of course, which is why the honest mistake is so rarely left to chance. The textbook treats certainty as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. Put a number on certainty and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant.
