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 …
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The Two Sides of Seneca and A Lesson on Human Fallibility
If you can withhold moral judgment, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero is a great historical account of making decisions in complex situations. Here is one way to describe the career …
Biases and Blunders
You would be hard pressed to come across a reading list on behavioral economics that doesn’t mention Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. …
Knowledge Makes Everything Simpler
Operating a screw is pretty simple as John Maeda points out in The Laws of Simplicity: Just mate the grooves atop the screw’s head to the appropriate tip-slotted or Phillips-of a screwdriver. …
Richard Feynman on Refusing an Honorary Degree, Being Driven, and Understanding his Circle of Competence
Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track is a wonderful collection of letters written to and from the physicist and professor Richard Feynman—champion of understanding, explainer, an …
Peter Thiel on the End of Hubris and the Lessons from the Internet Bubble of the Late 90s
The best interview question — what important truth do very few people agree with you on?— is tough to answer. Just think about it for a second. In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel argues that it …
Three Fundamental Activities of Mindfulness
Mindfulness is at one and the same time both bare attention itself and the function of reminding us to pay bare attention if we have ceased to do so. According to the excellent, Mindfulness in Plain …
The Effect of Scale in Social Science, or Why Utopia Doesn’t Work
Things change as they scale, often drastically. This is true for living creatures and it’s especially true for social systems. Here’s how the dynamics of social groups change as the numbers do and why …
The Best Non-Fiction Books of 2015: The Year of the Biography
One of my favorite sources of reading material is Tyler Cowen. He’s consistently finding exceptional things that I’ve never heard of. His 2015 non-fiction list is no exception. If he had …
The 10 Qualities of Creative Leaders
David Ogilvy was an advertising legend and perhaps the original “Mad Man.” The Unpublished David Ogilvy offers a remarkably candid glimpse of the private man behind the public image. Ogilvy was fond …
Albert Bandura on Acquiring Self-Efficacy and Personal Agency
Psychologist Albert Bandura is famous for his social learning theory which is really more of a model than a theory. He stresses the importance of observational learning. Who you spend time with …
Rendez-Vous with Art: The Pleasures and Pitfalls of Art
Philippe de Montebello was the longest-serving Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1977-2008). Martin Gayford was an acclaimed art critic. Their book, Rendez-Vous with Art, is …
Cargo Cult Science: Richard Feynman On Believing What Isn’t True
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) has long been one of my favorites — for both his wisdom and heart. Reproduced below you can find the entirety of his 1974 commencement address at Caltech entitled Cargo …
The 2015 Farnam Street Members Book List
Today’s book list is based on recommendations by Farnam Street Members on Slack over the last few months. If you’re not familiar with it, our community on Slack is a discussion area for members, and …
How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas
Analogies are a means of drawing a parallel between two different things which we often use to convey complex ideas and to communicate effectively. We often use analogies to aid our reasoning. In this …
The Single Best Interview Question You Can Ask
In Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future there is a great section on the single best interview question you can ask someone. When Peter Thiel …