Confidence and Validity
Santa Fe Institute Board of Trustees Chair Michael Mauboussin interviewed Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. The wide-ranging conversation talks about disciplined intuition, causality, base rates, …
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The Difference Between Truth and Honesty: What Law School Teaches us About Insight, Logic, and Thinking
“We don’t see things as they are, but as we are.” — Anaïs Nin *** Matthew Frederick‘s series of 101 things I learned in {Business School, Law School, Architecture School, …
Religion and History: Will Durant on the Role of Religion and Morality
“Even the skeptical historian develops a humble respect for religion, since he sees it functioning, and seemingly indispensable, in every land and age.” *** Will and Ariel Durant have …
Culture Eats Strategy: Nucor’s Ken Iverson on Building a Different Kind of Company
The problem with most management, leadership, and business books is that many of them harp on the same self-evident points, overconfident in the usefulness of their prescriptions for would-be …
The Accidental Universe
* “Be not deceived,” Epictetus writes in The Discourses, “every animal is attached to nothing so much as to its own interest.” Few things are more in our nature than our …
Andy Benoit: Exploiting Unrecognized Simplicity
Most geniuses—especially those who lead others—prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities. Andy Benoit
Just Twenty-Five Pages a Day
I love bookshelves. I love the physical act of having the books on the shelves to be looked at, admired, and remembered. When I was younger, I really enjoyed the library, and I still do. But I learned …
The Best of Farnam Street 2015
As the year heads toward an end, what better way to reflect than to look back on the pieces that moved you. Find below the 15 most read and shared articles published on Farnam Street in 2015, spanning …
Gary Taubes on What Really Makes Us Fat
We’ve been told for decades that dietary fat makes us gain weight, yet research suggests refined carbohydrates are to blame. It’s time to turn the food pyramid upside down. Let’s examine the …
Farnam Street’s 2015 Annual Letter to Readers
To the readers of Farnam Street: Most public companies issue an annual letter. These letters offer an opportunity for the people entrusted to run the company to communicate with the people who own the …
Steven Pinker: What a Broad Education Should Entail
Harvard’s biologist/psychologist Steven Pinker is one of my favorites, even though I’m just starting to get into his work. What makes him great is not just his rational mind, but his …
Ten Commandments for Aspiring Superforecasters
The Knowledge Project interview with Philip Tetlock deconstructs our ability to make accurate predictions into specific components. He learned through his work on The Good Judgment Project. In …
E.O. Wilson on Becoming a Great Scientist
The biologist E.O. Wilson, now of Harvard University, made his first and largest splash by releasing his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which made the controversial claim (at the time) that …
Dan Ariely on How and Why We Cheat
We all like to think of ourselves as honest, but there are inevitably certain situations in which we’re more likely to cheat. There are many things that make us less honest, like feeling disconnected …
Mindfulness versus Concentration
From the excellent Mindfulness in Plain English: Concentration and mindfulness are distinctly different functions. They each have their role to play in meditation, and the relationship between them is …
Three Filters Needed to Think Through Problems
One of the best parts of Garrett Hardin‘s wonderful Filters Against Folly is when he explores the three filters that help us interpret reality. No matter how much we’d like it to, the …