Gradually Getting Closer to the Truth
You can use a big idea without a physics-like need for exact precision. The key to remember is moving closer to reality by updating. Consider this excerpt from Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner in …
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Daniel Kahneman on Human Gullibility
“The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than our own.” *** A simple article connecting two ideas from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking …
Lee Kuan Yew’s Rule
Lee Kuan Yew, the “Father of Modern Singapore”, who took a nation from “Third World to First” in his own lifetime, has a simple idea about using theory and philosophy. Here it …
Bias from Liking/Loving: Why We Comply With Those We Love
The decisions that we make are rarely impartial. Most of us already know that we prefer to take advice from people that we like. We also tend to more easily agree with opinions formed by people we …
A Parable of Contentment and Happiness
“Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his lot.” — Ben Zoma *** A short parable on contentment today, from Plutarch’s Life of Pyrrhus, one of a series of biographies by the great …
Robert Moses and the Oxygen of Pure Competence
Do you know anyone that’s really, really competent? Like really, ridiculously competent? They seem to have a work ethic that’s twice as powerful as yours, they get things done as asked, …
Mental Model: Bias from Conjunction Fallacy
The bias from conjunction fallacy is a common reasoning error in which we believe that two events happening in conjunction is more probable than one of those events happening alone. Here’s why this …
The Inner Scorecard: How Warren Buffett Mastered Life
“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.”— Warren Buffett …
Isaac Watts and the Improvement of the Mind
What did an 18th-century hymn writer have to contribute to the modern understanding of the world? As it turns out, a lot. Sometimes we forget how useful the old wisdom can be. *** One of the most …
Commitment and Consistency Bias
We have an instinctual desire to remain consistent with our prior actions and beliefs. This can lead us to behave in irrational ways. Here’s how the commitment and consistency fallacy can lead us to …
The Many Ways our Memory Fails Us (Part 3)
(Purchase a copy of the entire 3-part series in one sexy PDF for $3.99) *** In the first two parts of our series on memory, we covered four major “sins” committed by our memories: …
The Fundamental Attribution Error: Why Predicting Behavior is so Hard
The Fundamental Attribution Error refers to a logical fallacy: our belief that the way people behave in one area carries consistently over to the way they behave in other situations. We tend to assume …
20 Rules for a Knight: A Timeless Guide from 1483
“Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is …
The Many Ways Our Memory Fails Us (Part 2)
(Purchase a copy of the entire 3-part series in one sexy PDF for $3.99) *** In part one, we began a conversation about the trappings of the human memory, using Daniel Schacter’s excellent The …
Andy Grove and the Value of Facing Reality
“People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.” — Andy Grove *** What do you do when you wake up one day and realize that reality has changed, and …
Multiplicative Systems: Understanding The Power of Multiplying by Zero
We all learned in math class that anything times zero is zero. But if you stop thinking about the idea here, you don’t see all the practical applications that understanding multiplicative …