I'm fascinated by the need for people, especially adults, to convince themselves they understand things which they really don't. Kids seem quite comfortable in a world of confusing/not well understood things, but adults are different.

There are a great many complex things -- fisheries/ecosystems, most economics problems, the human body, etc, where we have LOTS of information, but IMHO are far far short of actual understanding... In fact it may be impossible for us *to* understand completely -- the systems are so complex.

So instead we sort of adopt a massively simplified model and think that we've got it. Freakonomics is essentially a book which points out specific pieces of data which are "surprising" because they contradict these simplified models.