Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
I think heuristics are underrated. We should discuss heuristics as a society way more than we do. We barely acknowledge heuristics, but if we look closely, they are at the heart of many of our decisions, beliefs, and assumptions. They save us a lot of work and help us move through the world pretty smoothly, … Continue reading Substitution Heuristics
We like to believe that having more information will make us more confident in our decisions and opinions. The opposite, however, may be true. I have written in the past about a jam study, where participants who selected jam from a sample of a few jams were more happy with their choice than participants who … Continue reading Narrative Confidence
In Letters From a Stoic, Seneca writes, "give over hoping that you can skim, by means of epitomes, the wisdom of distinguished men. Look into their wisdom as a whole; study it as a whole. They are working out a plan and weaving together, line upon line, a masterpiece, from which nothing can be taken … Continue reading Seneca on Quotes
"GM spends more on health care than steel, just as starbucks spends more on health care than coffee beans." Dave Chase writes in his book The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call. "For most companies, health care is the second largest expense after payroll. This puts you in the health care business." It is incredible to … Continue reading Steel, Coffee Beans, & Healthcare
"Deep work is not some nostalgic affectation of writers and early-twentieth-century Philosophers," writes Cal Newport in his book Deep Work. "It's instead a skill that has great value today." A tension that I think a lot of us face (I know its true for me) is that we are pulled in two different directions … Continue reading The First Value of Deep Work
I like to think deeply about public policy. I think there are very interesting structures and ideas that we could put in place which would help us to achieve better outcomes in our societies. The challenge, however, is that the outcomes we want to see are based on value judgement. As in, I think the … Continue reading Placing Blame Rather Than Working Toward a Solution
Politics is an interesting world. We all have strong opinions about how the world should operate, but in general, most of us don't have much deep knowledge about any particular issue. We might understand the arguments about charter schools, about abortions, or about taxes, but very few of us have really studied any of these … Continue reading Signaling Loyalty
In The Elephant in the Brain Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson write about the ways in which we act to signal something important about ourselves that we cannot outright express. We deceive ourselves to believe that we are not sending these signals, but we recognize them, pick up on their subtle nature, and know how … Continue reading Two Messages
A huge challenge for our world today is the way we get stuck in our own echo-chambers and fact bubbles. The world is a large and incredibly complex place. We never truly know that much about any one thing. We might be an expert in our field of study, we might be an expert in … Continue reading Remember Your Bubble
There is always something we can learn and something we can better understand. No matter how smart we think we are or how smart we feel, we can always adopt new perspectives, work to see things from new points of view, and begin to see the world in a more clear way. Challenging ourselves to … Continue reading Turn Off the Ego and Learn