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Uncertainty Wednesday: Mueller Report Edition (Hindsight Bias)
Albert Wenger – Mar 27, 2019
In the last few Uncertainty Wednesdays, we have been looking at various fallacies arising from our lack of appreciation of uncertainty, such as imperfect correlation (narrative fallacy) and the baserate fallacy. Today we will look at hindsight bias, for which [...] Read more
World After Capital: Freedom to Create
Albert Wenger – Mar 25, 2019
NOTE: Today’s excerpt from my book World After Capital continues the chapter on psychological freedom. The next step in the Knowledge Loop after learning is creating. Here too we need to work on our freedom. Picasso once said: “we all [...] Read more
Progress through Positive Memes!
Albert Wenger – Mar 22, 2019
Last Friday I wrote about the power and danger of the meme of suppressed truth. In the post, I suggested that one form of countering negative memes is through positive ones. Since creating memes is definitely not my strength, please [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: When Small Numbers Matter (Aircraft Safety)
Albert Wenger – Mar 20, 2019
Last week’s Uncertainty Wednesday was titled “Fooled by Small Numbers” and discussed why drawing conclusions from small samples is dangerous. A reader asked how that relates to grounding the Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane after two crashes? Isn’t that also [...] Read more
World After Capital: Freedom to Learn
Albert Wenger – Mar 18, 2019
NOTE: Today’s excerpt from my book World After Capital continues the discussion of Psychological Freedom by examining how we can make ourselves free to learn. Young kids ask upwards of three hundred questions a day. [122] Humans are naturally curious, [...] Read more
The Power and Danger of the Meme of Suppressed Truth
Albert Wenger – Mar 15, 2019
At dinner last night a friend in his mid 50s asked, quite genuinely: so what exactly is a meme? Our teenage son laughed about this apparent ignorance but the confusion is well founded given that many people today use the [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Fooled by Small Numbers
Albert Wenger – Mar 13, 2019
The last couple of Uncertainty Wednesdays examined fallacies based on statistical phenomena such as imperfect correlation and the base rate. Another one of these has to do with small numbers. A famous example of this fallacy occurred when a study [...] Read more
World After Capital: Freedom from Wanting
Albert Wenger – Mar 12, 2019
NOTE: Today’s excerpt from World After Capital is the first subsection in the chapter on psychological freedom. It deals with freeing ourselves from wanting as a crucial part of exiting the Job Loop. With the extraordinary success of capitalism built [...] Read more
Free Solo (Movie Review)
Albert Wenger – Mar 8, 2019
Earlier this week I went to see Free Solo, which documents Alex Honnold’s ascent of El Capitan, with our son Michael. After being on the edge of our seats for most of the movie, we came away with sweaty hands [...] Read more