Why humans are obsessed with the longest bridges, the biggest buildings and other ways to blow billions

But why this pervasive failure to predict these overruns, despite their seeming inevitability? The answer lies in the very things that make us human, what Flyvbjerg calls the “four sublimes”: the excitement of engineers and technologists building the newest or largest item of its kind; the rapture politicians receive from building monumental works that increase their public profile; the delight of businesses and trade unions generating money and jobs; and the aesthetic pleasure generated by iconically large design.

→ Quartz