I find myself in an untenable situation. I have plenty to write about but I am finding that the choices I am making right now, in the splendor of summer, give me limited time and energy to write. I’ve decided to take a short hiatus. Over the last seven months my writing has been …
Read more “Looking Forward – Looking Back”
There are moments in life when you hear something that absolutely blows you away. I experienced such a moment on July 1st at Chautauqua Institution in Western New York. It wasn’t just the words I heard that touched me so. It was the words within the context, and the relative embrace of the words exhibited …
Read more “Surprise at Chautauqua”
In psychology there are some pretty famous studies that have penetrated popular culture. Many folks are at least familiar with Skinner’s rat box, Pavlov’s salivating dogs, Milgram’s obedience studies, Bandura’s Bobo Dolls, and Harlow’s rhesus monkeys reared by wire frame terry cloth mothers. In recent history, perhaps the most well known study pertains to inattentional …
Read more “The Illusion of Attention”
Imagine yourself walking down a familiar street approaching a stranger who is obviously lost, staring hopelessly at a map. As you saunter by you provide eye contact and a look of willingness to help. He asks you for directions. As you begin to offer your advice, you are interrupted by a construction crew carrying a …
Read more “So You Think Your Memory is Bad? Well, it’s actually worse than you thought.”
Last week I discussed Philip Tetlock’s work that revealed the utter meaninglessness of punditry in The Illusion of Punditry. It is important to note that although professional pundits, on average, were less accurate than random chance, a few outliers actually performed well above average. Tetlock closely examined the variables associated with the distribution of accuracy …
Read more “Are You a Hedgehog or a Fox?”