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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
Uncertainty Wednesday: The Base Rate Fallacy and Why Hiring is Hard
Albert Wenger – Mar 6, 2019
Last Uncertainty Wednesday considered how imperfect correlation is related to the narrative fallacy which in turn underlies observations such as the extravagant headquarters effect. Today I will examine why hiring is so ridiculously hard and even organizations which are very [...] Read more
World After Capital: Psychological Freedom (Intro)
Albert Wenger – Mar 4, 2019
NOTE: This is part of a series of excerpts from my book World After Capital. Today’s post introduces the concept of psychological freedom, which is crucial for living in a world that is information super saturated. Imagine you live in [...] Read more
EU Going Bonkers on Copyright
Albert Wenger – Mar 1, 2019
I know that with everything going on here in the US it is hard to find the time to even think about other parts of the world, but the EU is currently losing its mind when it comes to copyright. [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Imperfect Correlation and the Narrative Fallacy
Albert Wenger – Feb 27, 2019
Last Uncertainty Wednesday I wrote about how regression to the mean at least partially explains the “curse” of building extravagant headquarters (which often signals an impending downturn in the performance of a company). Whenever we come up with a detailed [...] Read more
More Yang for Your Buck!
Albert Wenger – Feb 25, 2019
NOTE: I will resume posting excerpts from my book World After Capital next Monday. The field for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary has over a dozen declared candidates, including widely known names such as Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, [...] Read more