This equation will change how you see the world January 31, 2020 at 05:34PM
Is rationality overrated? Sometimes, it’s better to be reasonable. “The study starts by distinguishing between two terms: there’s rationality, where you focus on maximizing the chance of getting what you want, and there’s reasonableness, where you strike a balance between what you want and social norms. Although we might sometimes use rational and reasonable interchangeably, […]
The vicious cycle of disrespect and cynicism “Moreover, cynical individuals tended to treat others with disrespect, which in turn predicted more disrespectful treatment by others. In short, experiencing disrespect gives rise to cynicism and cynicism elicits disrespect from others, thereby reinforcing the worldview that caused these negative reactions in the first place.”
Personality is not only about who but also where you are “As a result of these broader changes, markets might have also changed our perceptions of affordability. In WEIRD societies with more resources (remember that the R in WEIRD stands for rich) kids might feel that they can better afford strategies such as patience and […]
What is the problem with social media? “In the case of social media, I would like to bring your attention to four foundational problems. There are likely more, but each of these is real, deep, and as far as I can tell, not yet fully understood. In brief, these four are: Supernormal stimuli; Replacing strong […]
Chris Arnade on dignity and alienation in America’s working class | LIVE STREAM December 9, 2019 at 12:28PM
How to watch a football match like a professional coach “Therefore the coach needs to look at everywhere else than where the ball is. Because the players’ positioning and movements will determine what options the ball carrying player does have. When I watch football from this zoomed-out perspective I call this level 2 watching. […] […]
The horror of sameness “In Judeo-Christian eschatology, there are two versions of paradise. One comes from the prophet Isaiah: In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will […]
Moneyballing a Ballpark from Ken Arneson
The complete history of Lucy’s pulling the football away “Once we view Lucy and Charlie Brown’s autumnal tango in light of this poignant origin story—a cycle of pain and humiliation endured and transmitted—their annual football rite takes on a darker edge, and Lucy’s quips have the biting, sardonic twinge of someone who is not just […]
We learn more by trusting than by not trusting “When our trust is disappointed – when we trust someone we shouldn’t have – the costs are salient, and our reaction ranges from annoyance all the way to fury and despair. The benefit – what we’ve learnt from our mistake – is easy to overlook. By […]
What Teaching Ethics in Appalachia Taught Me About Bridging America’s Partisan Divide “Curious things start to happen to people when they listen generously. At the most superficial level, one hears things that he or she might not like. But one also hears the sincerity of people’s convictions, the authenticity of their experiences, and the nuance […]
Tolerance of outsiders is also a human instinct “Like many social animals, including several primate species, and also dolphins and elephants, we humans live in what are known as ‘fission-fusion’ societies – our allegiances are flexible; there is a fluidity in the size of groups into which we coalesce; and the boundaries between our groups […]
What is a Tech Company? “Note the centrality of software in all of these characteristics: Software creates ecosystems. Software has zero marginal costs. Software improves over time. Software offers infinite leverage. Software enables zero transaction costs. The question of whether companies are tech companies, then, depends on how much of their business is governed by […]
Maybe Your Zoloft Stopped Working Because A Liver Fluke Tried To Turn Your Nth-Great-Grandmother Into A Zombie “Throughout evolutionary history, parasites have been trying to manipulate host behavior and hosts have been trying to avoid manipulation, resulting in an eons-long arms race. The equilibrium is what we see today: parasite manipulation is common in insects, […]
The soccer stadium designed to be rebuilt every year “Instead of cratering their downtown for an underground parking garage and pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the ground in the form of flashy, quickly-outdated amenities, the Wanderers built their Grounds with a much more humble plan in mind. They started with simple shipping containers […]
Talk to Transformer “In February, OpenAI unveiled a language model called GPT-2 that generates coherent paragraphs of text one word at a time. For now OpenAI has decided only to release three smaller versions of it which aren’t as coherent but still produce interesting results. This site runs the largest released model, 774M, which is […]