Daniel Kahneman’s Final Exploration of Human Error
Letting us pick our own experts as a society leaves us listening to the loudest voice, not the most correct or beneficial.
Alex Morris • 3_TRENDS_Vol.12: Alex Morris: Assisted Socializing, Memory Management + Professional Amateurs
What happens in systems with noisy data and underdeveloped theory—like earthquake prediction and parts of economics and political science—is a two-step process. First, people start to mistake the noise for a signal. Second, this noise pollutes journals, blogs, and news accounts with false alarms, undermining good science and setting back our abilit
... See moreNate Silver • The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't
Another issue is that today’s rationalist writings suffer from the monoculture of intellectual sources, drawn from what I personally call Silicon Valley’s shadow canon: Seeing Like a State ; The Power Broker ; The Revolt of the Public ; Exit, Voice, and Loyalty ; Reasons and Persons ; Impro ; and more. (If curious about what this canon contains, ju... See more
Sheon Han • Rat Traps
When the Crowd Isn’t Wise (Published 2012)
nytimes.com
Surowiecki’s argument is that we need dissenting voices, people who challenge the conventional wisdom, resist the fashionable consensus, and disturb the intellectual peace. “Follow the person in front of you” is as dangerous to humans as it is to army ants.
Jonathan Sacks • Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Covenant & Conversation Book 8)
Democracy is inevitably messy, in part because the availability and affect heuristics that guide citizens’ beliefs and attitudes are inevitably biased, even if they generally point in the right direction. Psychology should inform the design of risk policies that combine the experts’ knowledge with the public’s emotions and intuitions.