Pluralistic Ignorance: You’re Not Alone
Imagine you’re in a meeting with a lot of important people. The boss comes in, takes a seat, and starts talking “strategic market knowledge” this and “leveraging competitive …
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The Divine Comedy
Is Dante still relevant in our new world? As if to prove this point, the most recent season of Mad Men kicked off with John Ciardi’s 1954 translation of Inferno: Midway in our life’s journey, I …
How To Be Happy
If I were to ask you if you wanted to be happy, 100% of you would say yes. But how many us live our lives in a way that makes us happy? “The days are long, but the years are short. Time is …
The Scroll of the Scribes
King Solomon, thought by some to be the wisest man who ever lived, anticipated the economists concept of separating equilibria by about 3,000 years. In his most famous case, he proposed cutting a baby …
America’s Food Crisis: The Omnivore’s Dilemma
As a follow up to the Michael Pollan food as culture post (on his new book Cooked), a reader passed along a link to this video on Pollan’s 2006 classic The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History …
The Mind of a Con Man
Overnight, Diederik Stapel went from respected professor to the biggest con man in academic science. For more than a decade his biggest experiment was deceiving others. In the end, Stapel had …
Food As Culture
Food is so much more than a label. Food is cultural. As a culture, we’re cooking less and buying more prepared meals. Since the mid-sixties, the amount of time spent preparing meals has fallen …
James T. Mangan: 14 Ways to Acquire Knowledge
Brainpickings put me onto this timeless wisdom from famous eccentric James T. Mangan’s 1936 book You Can Do Anything! PRACTICE Consider the knowledge you already have — the things you really …
Opinions and Organizational Theory
When I think about the world in which we live and the organizations in which we work, I can’t help but think that few people have the intellectual honesty, time, and discipline required to hold a …
The Work Required to Have an Opinion
The real cost of an opinion isn’t having it—it’s doing the work required to earn it. This work is what most people avoid. I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I …
Haruki Murakami on Reading What Everyone Else is Reading
We’ve all been there. At the bookstore looking for a book to read. On one side of the store is the safe bet. The best-selling books that everyone else is reading. These are (generally) mediocre …
Nate Silver: Confidence Kills Predictions
Best known for accurate election predictions, statistician Nate Silver is also the author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t. Heather Bell, Managing Editor of …
“That’s as far as they go. They can’t take it any further. And why not? Because they won’t put in the effort”
A brilliant passage from Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood on talent. There just happen to be people like that. They’re blessed with this marvelous talent, but they can’t make the effort to …
The Munger Two Step
A simple and easy approach to decision making that prevents us from being manipulated. Understand the forces at play. Understand how your subconscious might be leading you astray. *** While most of us …
The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves
In his book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves, Dan Ariely attempts to answer the question: “is dishonesty largely restricted to a few bad apples or is …
The False Allure of Group Selection.
From Steven Pinker’s edge.org article The False Allure of Group Selection. Pinker argues that the more carefully you think about group selection, the less sense it makes, and the more poorly it …