A Conversation with Luigi Zingales “There is always the trade‑off between incentives and some form of insurance. If you eliminate every insurance, you have all incentives, then incentives are great but people are not particularly happy. You need to find the right trade‑off.”

Cassini Solstice Mission: Cassini Finds Global Ocean in Saturn’s Moon Enceladus “The mechanisms that might have prevented Enceladus’ ocean from freezing remain a mystery. Thomas and colleagues suggest a few ideas for future study that might help resolve the question, including the surprising possibility that tidal forces due to Saturn’s gravity could be generating much […]

Facebook, Smart Tech, and the End of Language “Lurking beneath the push toward these technologies is a relentless attack on language as unreliable and misleading. The boom in affective computing and wearables—and the various “smart” infrastructures that interface with these technologies—is driven by the promise of access “real” emotions and“real” desires, accompanied by ways of […]

Legendary investor Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s financial partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway) invokes a set of interdisciplinary “mental models” involving economics, business, psychology, ethics, and management to keep emotions out of his investments and avoid the common pitfalls of bad judgment. In a new book focused on lessons learned from Munger, Tren Griffin […]