The Filibuster and the Consequences of Elections “Over time, the country will be better off if the parties can put their ideas into practice and be judged accordingly. As it is, neither side gets a fair shot, the voters never quite get what they voted for, and everybody complains about how politicians never keep their […]
Kutuzovs of the Left and the Right “But the party of the right is going to be more concerned with the interests of groups that are winning (or have won in the past), whether fairly or unfairly, and the party of the left is more concerned with the interests of groups that are losing (or […]
Tolstoyan Conservatism ‘Kutusov would be terrible on Fox News and MSNBC, because he says, “It’s not as simple as you think it is,” and nobody wants to hear that. It seems to me that in a political environment characterized by ideology, people make three characteristic mistakes: 1. They mistake politics for religion; 2. They mistake […]
Es Muss Sein “…statesmanship is more like surfing than like sailing. A ship is making for a particular port, chosen by the captain, and the prevailing winds determine how swiftly he will get there, and by what route. A surfer, on the other hand, rides the waves to shore, and the waves will determine his […]
Libertarians and Group Norms “It poses a problem for libertarian thinking, because the maintenance of trust-building institutions that undergird free markets may depend on enforcement of group norms. Enforcement of group norms in turn may depend on irrational attachment to group identity. And one of the elements of group identity to which humans may be […]
Liberal Women Wish for More Sex. Why? “More liberal women therefore want to have more sex because they feel the lack of sufficient transcendence in life.”
Father And Infant Interactions Affect Behavior Later On “Children whose fathers showed more positive engagement before three months of age tended to not have as many behavioral problems when they turn one-year-old.”
5 secrets to “clicking” with other people: | Barking Up The Wrong Tree “Allowing yourself to be vulnerable helps the other person to trust you, precisely because you are putting yourself at emotional, psychological, or physical risk.”
Bezos’s Insistence on Full Narrative Prose Ben Casnocha, Ben Casnocha
Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories and Good News vs. Bad News “So we don’t know whether this thing was really Hamlet’s father or if it was good news or bad news. And neither does Hamlet.”
Bezos’s Insistence on Full Narrative Prose Ben Casnocha, Ben Casnocha
Bezos’s Insistence on Full Narrative Prose Ben Casnocha, Ben Casnocha
Human Nature: We Are Good, After All “This suggests that cooperation is the intuitive response only for those who routinely engage in interactions where this behavior is rewarded—that human ‘goodness’ may result from the acquisition of a regularly rewarded trait.”
The Distress of the Privileged “It seems so unfair. He doesn’t want anybody to be unhappy. He just wants dinner.”
Europe doesn’t need a culture of failure, we need a culture of success “But the biggest problem in Europe as I see it – it’s bad when you fail, but it’s even worse when you succeed.” There was some laughter in the room here. “We have no culture of applauding success.”
Are benefit costs increasingly driving the cyclicality of employment? Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
Reasoning Is Sharper in a Foreign Language “Cognitive biases are rooted in emotional reactions, and thinking in a foreign language helps us disconnect from these emotions and make decisions in a more economically rational way.”
Growing food in the desert “using the sun to desalinate seawater for irrigation and to heat and cool greenhouses as required, and thence cheaply grow high-quality, pesticide-free vegetables year-round in commercial quantities.”
Clarity and Freedom | Brian Bailey “In my experience, it’s how the best people lead and how most of us want to be led; clarity as to the goal and freedom in how to achieve it.”
On Being a Junior Developer | Matt Sencenbaugh’s Blog “the list I wish someone had written for me as a developer starting out in the tech industry”