But, most of us (including me) do not realize that we are participating in an “undoing” mind game. I realized it only after reading The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis (W. W. Norton & Company, New York 2017). While the author focuses on the decades long relationship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the last part of the book discusses Kahneman’s fourth heuristic- the “simulation heuristic” which he developed after learning of the tragic death of his nephew who was killed in an air plane crash about a week before he was to be discharged from the Israeli Air Force. He found his mind wondering, “If only my nephew had been discharged a week earlier? Or, if only he had done something different moments before the crash?” If only…. (Id. at 298-300.) He realized the fantasy he was pursuing and that everyone does it. His new heuristic

…was all about the power of unrealized possibilities to contaminate people’s minds. As they moved through the world, people ran simulations of the future. What if…? They based their judgments and decisions in part on these imagined scenarios. (Id. at 300.)

In short, people “…created alternatives to reality by undoing reality. (Id. at 301.) He also discovered that the closer the “miss” (i.e., missing a flight by 5 minutes versus missing the flight by 30 minutes), the more upset people became even though both “misses” produced the same result- a flight departing without them! (Id. at 301-2.)

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