Reading Time: < 1 minI recently finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “The Bomber Mafia“, about how aerial bombing shaped World War Two, and a few quotes stuck out to me — somewhat unrelated to the book itself. I shared last month how I was surprised to see people double-down on false truths on social media, but these insights […]
Empathy
Shifting ideas versus flip-flopping
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve said for nearly a decade that changing your mind on a topic can be a great thing. This can be little things like the type of phone you prefer, or bigger things like the governmental policies that you support. Locking yourself in and refusing to be open to new ideas is a dangerous place […]
Everyone in the restaurant has a story
Reading Time: < 1 minWhen you’re at a coffee shop or a restaurant, it’s easy to think of the others in there as simply “extras” in your story — nameless people filling the background of your life. That may be true from your view, but it’s valuable to remember that they all have full lives and stories too. This […]
Naive Realism
Reading Time: 2 minWhen listening to a recent episode of the excellent Hidden Brain podcast (this one was titled “Useful Delusions”), host Shankar Vedantam brought up the concept of “naive realism”. The basic idea is our tendency to believe that we see the world around us objectively, so if anyone disagrees with us they must be biased or […]
Brandolini’s Law
Reading Time: 2 minThis is something we’ve all seen before, but I never knew what it was called. When someone posts false or misleading information online, the effort to refute it is generally an order of magnitude larger than to produce it. Coined in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, it’s known as Brandolini’s Law, sometimes known as the “bullshit […]
The Barnum Effect
Reading Time: 2 minI find the “Barnum Effect” to be a fascinating concept. It’s the idea that you can publish a description of someone that seems very precise and descriptive, but it is really vague enough that it applies to most everyone. Some examples might be: You have a great need for other people to like and admire […]
How the hierarchy of attention affects deep work
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve talked about the hierarchy of attention on here a variety of times. When communicating with people, different types of communication imply different types of urgency, with a phone call meaning “I need your attention right this moment“. That’s not always ideal. We all have times during the day when we’re really focused in on […]
Seeing both sides of the aisle
Reading Time: 2 minBefore the 2020 US Presidential election, I asked my friends on Facebook to tell me three good reasons why someone would want to vote for each candidate. Most people could quickly come up with reasons why someone should vote for “their” person, but struggled with their opponent. Some thought through it and gave solid answers, […]
Some quick thoughts on Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste”
Reading Time: < 1 minI just finished Isabel Wilkerson’s excellent “Caste“, and thought I’d share a few quick thoughts. I was going to write up a more comprehensive post about it, but decided not to — you just need to read the book for yourself. It’s amazing and heartbreaking, and should be required reading for almost every person. It […]
Why social media moderation is so hard to fix
Reading Time: 2 minIt’s easy to point fingers at social media moderators for doing a poor job, or for being unhappy with a decision from a “fact checker”, but things aren’t as easy as they seem, for two big reasons. It’s a brutal job First, being a social media moderator is an awful job. While we see things […]