Why LEGOs Are So Expensive — And So Popular
A lot of people wonder how LEGO, selling a now un-patented product, can command both massive market share and sell at twice the price of the nearest competitor: Megablocks. Rhett Allain, in his WIRED …
Warren Buffett
How Good Gamblers Think
From The Signal And The Noise: Successful gamblers – and successful forecasters of any kind – do not think of the future in terms of no-lose best, unimpeachable theories, and infinitely …
“The ability to inflict evil, or harm, on other people in huge numbers has grown exponentially.”
Unfortunately this is not a problem that we can wish away. In a opinion worth reading, philosopher Firmin DeBrabander writes: (in her book The Human Condition, philosopher Hannah Arendt) offers two …
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 …
Mental Model: Prisoners’ Dilemma
The prisoners’ dilemma is the best known strategy game in social science. The game shows why two entities might not cooperate even when it appears in their best (rational) interest to do so. …
Warren Buffett on Temperament
“Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people …
This is a World of Incentives
I thought Warren Buffett said a lot of interesting things in his recent interview with Charlie Rose. Here are some of the bits that stood out for me. Fairness: BUFFETT: …I also think fairness is …
An Introduction to the Mental Model of Redundancy (with examples)
“The reliability that matters is not the simple reliability of one component of a system, but the final reliability of the total control system.” — Garrett Hardin *** We learn from …
The decline of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock from Triple-A status
From Alice Schroeder’s new chapter: THE CRISIS: The decline of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock from Triple-A status in the updated (and condensed) version of The Snowball. As the financial …
Warren Buffett and the Power of Nontransitive Dice
In a terrific book by William Poundstone, Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System that Beat the Casinos and Wall Street, is the story of a 1968 dinner meeting …