Choosing your Choice Architect(ure)
“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” — Samuel Johnson *** In the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein they coin the terms ‘Choice …
Psychology
What Books Would You Recommend Someone Read to Improve their General Knowledge of the World?
Inspired by a reader’s question to me, I thought I’d ask our followers on Facebook and Twitter for an answer to the question: What books would you recommend someone read to improve their …
Daniel Kahneman on Human Gullibility
“The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than our own.” *** A simple article connecting two ideas from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking …
The Fundamental Attribution Error: Why Predicting Behavior is so Hard
The Fundamental Attribution Error refers to a logical fallacy: our belief that the way people behave in one area carries consistently over to the way they behave in other situations. We tend to assume …
Daniel Pink on Incentives and the Two Types of Motivation
There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Both are very different and lead to disparate outcomes. Here’s how to make the most of motivation, both for yourself and others. *** …
Don’t Let Your (Technology) Tools Use You
“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it …
Francis Bacon and the Four Idols of the Mind
Among the Enlightenment founders, his spirit is the one that most endures. It informs us across four centuries that wemust understand nature both around us and within ourselves, in order to set …
Learning From Your Mistakes … When You Win
“Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to …
Avoiding Falling Victim to The Narrative Fallacy
The narrative fallacy leads us to see events as stories, with logical chains of cause and effect. Stories help us make sense of the world. However, if we’re not aware of the narrative fallacy it can …
The Distorting Power of Incentives
“The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner.” — R. Dawkins *** Simply put, incentives matter a lot. …
Carol Dweck: When a Fixed Mindset is Better than a Growth Mindset
“Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.” — Chuck Close *** “So far, the best idea I’ve heard about building grit in kids is something called …
Too Busy to Pay Attention
Alan Lightman, the physicist who brought us The Accidental Universe, has also written several works of fiction, including Einstein’s Dreams, presented as dreams Einstein might have had while working …
Friedrich Nietzsche: On Love And Hate
“We must learn to love, learn to be kind, and this from earliest youth … Likewise, hatred must be learned and nurtured, if one wishes to become a proficient hater.” *** German …
Letting the World Do the Work for You
If you don’t see the world the way it is, you’ll think it works in a way that it doesn’t and make terrible mistakes. The key to getting what you want out of life is to identify how …
Maria Konnikova on How we Get Conned
There’s a scene in the classic Paul Newman film The Sting, where Johnny Hooker (played by a young Robert Redford) tries to get Henry Gondorf (played by Newman) to finally tell him when …
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, …