Value Process Before Results
More insight from The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance: The issue is fundamental to the pursuit of excellence in all fields. If a young basketball player is taught that winning …
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Charlie Munger: Bad Morals Drive Out The Good
Charlie Munger on applying Gresham’s Law to lending. The idiotic ideas are all from the social science department and I would put economics in the social sciences department although it has some …
Jeff Bezos on Why People that Are Often Right Change Their Minds Often
Jeff Bezos recently stopped by the office of 37 Signals. After talking product strategy he answered some questions. In his answer to one question he shared some thoughts on people who were …
What Is Critical Thinking?
Based on our dysfunctional national dialogue, Hamilton College Professor Paul Gary Wyckoff articulates the critical thinking skills he wants his students to learn. 1. The ability to think empirically, …
Imitation Without Understanding Does Not Work
Don’t imitate large firms, just because they are large. Large, prestigious, and successful firms are chosen not only on the assumption that following them will produce better results but also as …
Freeman Dyson on The Difference Between Science and Philsophy
Freeman Dyson, writing in The NY Review of Books: On quantum physics The essence of quantum physics is unpredictability. At every instant, the objects in our physical environment—the atoms in our …
What Competition in Nature Should Teach Us about Markets
“Though the free-market faithful have long preached that competition creates efficiency, as if it were a law of nature, nature itself teaches a different lesson.” No tree can afford to not …
Richard Feynman — Take the World From Another Point of View
In this clip from a documentary film shot in Yorkshire in 1973, physicist and philosopher Richard Feynman (1918-1988) talks with Fred Hoyle, an accomplished astronomer from the United Kingdom. Feynman …
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Why Sites Like Gawker Manipulate You
“A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on. …” — The Long Goodbye, …
The Human Mind has a Shut-Off Device
Once you’ve formed a belief, adding exceptions and justifications becomes easier than updating it. Ryan Holiday writes about this in Trust Me, I’m Lying: Once the mind has accepted a …
Whoever tells the best story wins
From Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us: Historical explanations, in other words, are neither causal explanations nor even really descriptions—at least not in the sense that we imagine …
None of us really likes honesty
None of us really likes honesty. We prefer deception —but only when it is unabashedly flattering or artfully camouflaged. Groups seem to need to believe that they are superior to others and that they …
Josh Waitzkin on Mastering the Fundamentals
Some excerpts from Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance. The best way to launch into the learning process is by breaking down what you are learning into …
The Red Queen Effect: Avoid Running Faster to Stay in the Same Place
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, was not only an author but a keen observer of human nature. His most famous works are Alice’s Adventures in …
The Limits of Crowd Wisdom
Jaron Lanier in You Are Not A Gadget commenting on the limits of crowd wisdom: There are certain types of answers that ought not be provided by an individual. When a government bureaucrat sets a …
Why Bad Things Happen to Good Decisions
Good decisions don’t always have a good outcome, just as bad decisions don’t always have bad outcomes. Sometimes bad outcomes happen to good decisions. And sometimes good things happen to …