The role of error in innovation
The British economist William Stanley Jevons in 1874: It would be an error to suppose that the great discoverer seizes at once upon the truth, or has any unerring method of divining it. In all …
Evolution
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 …
The evolutionary roots of human behaviour
Anthony Gottlieb writing in the New Yorker: Indeed, the guilty secret of psychology and of behavioral economics is that their experiments and surveys are conducted almost entirely with people from …
“When we encounter pain, we are at an important juncture in our decision-making process.”
It is a fundamental law of nature that to evolve one has to push one’s limits, which is painful, in order to gain strength—whether it’s in the form of lifting weights, facing problems head-on, or in …
David Quammen on Why Big Populations Survive and Small Ones Go Extinct
“Big populations don’t go extinct. Small populations do. It’s not a surprising finding but it is a significant one.” *** Why do small populations go extinct? While the answer …
Born, and Evolved, to Run
Daniel Lieberman, author of The Evolution of the Human Head, sat down with the NYT for an interesting conversation. Some years ago, I was doing an experiment where I put pigs on treadmills. The goal …
Why is it so Hard to Kill a Cockroach with your Shoe?
The Cockroach Papers by Richard Schwied is an interesting book if you are looking to learn more about biology or evolution. Cockroaches are built for survival no matter what the world throws at them. …
Is Everything Obvious Once You Know The Answer?
We often think we can rely on common sense. But in a complex world, common sense is not always sufficient. *** Duncan Watts new book Everything is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer explores the limit …
Hindsight Bias: Why You’re Not As Smart As You Think You Are
Hindsight bias occurs when we look backward in time and see events are more predictable than they were at the time a decision was made. This bias, also known as the “knew-it-all-along …