The Psychology of Why 94 Deaths from Terrorism are Scarier than 301,797 Deaths from Guns

Risk perception used to be based on an analytical equation: you multiply the probability of an event by the potential damage of its outcome. But Paul Slovic, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, understood the powerful role of emotions in decision-making and altered that equation, noting that many things affect how we perceive risk:

  • do you trust the person you are dealing

… [ Read more ]

Author: Jenny Anderson
Source: Quartz (January 31, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Fear, Psychology | Behavior, Risk

What Do We Know?

The secret to happiness in almost any relationship is knowing what not to say.

[…]‌

The pool of knowledge is limited; it’s the pool of ignorance, speculation and misunderstanding that is infinite.

[…]‌

But one thing that happens when we acquire too much “knowledge” is that, like Othello, we sometimes fail to distinguish it from what can never be known, which may not be untrue. Another is that we’re … [ Read more ]

Author: Pico Iyer
Source: The New York Times (December 31, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Wisdom

Four Ways to Find Meaning in Life

According to Emily Esfahani Smith, happiness arises from a deep sense of contentment rather than the incessant and unyielding grasping for pleasure. This contentment can be derived by seeking, cultivating, and maintaining the four pillars of meaning,

  1. Belonging. Only through focusing on others do we build the pillar of belonging for both ourselves and for them. If we want to find meaning in our own

… [ Read more ]

Author: Derek Beres
Source: Big Think (January 23, 2018)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Happiness, Meaning, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

The Internal Invasion

It took a lot to get us here. […] I’d rely on the old sociological distinction between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. All across the world, we have masses of voters who live in a world of gemeinschaft: where relationships are personal, organic and fused by particular affections. These people define their loyalty to community, faith and nation in personal, in-the-gut sort of ways.

But we have a … [ Read more ]

Author: David Brooks
Source: The New York Times (January 20, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

It’s All Cass Sunstein’s Default

Why is a donut shop pushing bananas? Perhaps profit margins are higher on the overpriced fruit. Or maybe the shop is attempting to proclaim its good corporate citizenship by providing an uncharacteristically nutritious snack. How you feel about this — whether you’re grateful to have been prompted to make a healthier choice or irritated that even a donut shop feels the need to try to … [ Read more ]

Authors: Cass Sunstein, Sally Helgesen
Source: strategy+business (Autumn2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

Common Purpose: Realigning Business, Economies, and Society

Today’s economic and political upheavals reflect an ongoing misalignment between business and economies (on the one hand) and acceptable societal outcomes (on the other). There is still time to adjust, if we are willing to reexamine some long-held assumptions.

Authors: Blair Sheppard, Colm Kelly
Source: strategy+business (Autumn2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, History, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

President Barack Obama’s Farewell Speech

So that’s what we mean when we say America is exceptional. Not that our nation has been flawless from the start, but that we have shown the capacity to change, and make life better for those who follow.

Yes, our progress has been uneven. The work of democracy has always been hard, contentious and sometimes bloody. For every two steps forward, it often feels we take … [ Read more ]

Authors: Barack Obama, Darlene Superville, Josh Lederman
Source: PBS NewsHour (January 10, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, People, Politics & Public Policy

Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote For Trump

In short, it appears as though educational levels are the critical factor in predicting shifts in the vote between 2012 and 2016. You can come to that conclusion with a relatively simple analysis, like the one I’ve conducted above, or by using fancier methods. In a regression analysis at the county level, for instance, lower-income counties were no more likely to shift to Trump once … [ Read more ]

Author: Nate Silver
Source: FiveThirtyEight (November 22, 2016)
Subjects: Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

The Lines That Divide America

Lines can bring fairness and order to what might otherwise be a free-for-all. There’s even a science, called queuing theory, that examines the optimal ways to make lines move equitably and efficiently. But they don’t always work that way; sometimes, they can operate to institutionalize unfairness and inequality. That’s why Arlie Russell Hochschild uses lines as a metaphor for the challenges facing contemporary American society … [ Read more ]

Author: Nitin Nohria
Source: The Atlantic (December 2, 2017)
Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

Trump Articles – 2017

I, like the rest of the world, was shocked when Trump won the election. I had been reading many articles during the long election cycle, but never made note of those. After his victory, I started to think that, while it is impossible to know what will transpire in the future, it seemed like a good bet that his presidency will be a period of … [ Read more ]

Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Trump

Prisons Run by C.E.O.s? Privatization Under Trump Could Carry a Heavy Price

“There’s a magical thinking among business executives that something about the profit motive makes everything run better,” noted Raymond Fisman, a professor of economics at Boston University. […] A serious body of economics, not to mention reams of evidence from decades of privatizations around the world, suggests this belief is false.

[…]‌

Of course, the government can also do a horrible job of running things. And private … [ Read more ]

Author: Eduardo Porter
Source: The New York Times (January 10, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Economics | Economy, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

History Tells Us What May Happen Next with Brexit & Trump

We humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another.

[…]‌

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard … [ Read more ]

Author: Tobias Stone
Source: Medium (July 23, 2016)
Subjects: Excerpts, Health & Medicine, International, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy

U.S. Tax Reform Articles

The U.S. recently passed the first major tax policy change in years. Over the past months I have been reading and noting articles on the issue and saving the ones I think have something useful to say on the topic, whether I agree or disagree. Here is a list of those articles, by source.

Subjects: Economics | Economy, Politics & Public Policy

The Madness of King Donald

It’s now a commonplace that Trump and his underlings tell whoppers. Fact-checkers have never had it so good. But all politicians lie. Bill Clinton could barely go a day without some shading or parsing of the truth. Richard Nixon was famously tricky. But all the traditional political fibbers nonetheless paid some deference to the truth — even as they were dodging it. They acknowledged a … [ Read more ]

Author: Andrew Sullivan
Source: New York Magazine (February 10, 2017)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

You Probably Know to Ask Yourself, “What Do I Want?” Here’s a Way Better Question

If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything.

A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to … [ Read more ]

Author: Mark Manson
Subject: Personal Improvement