If you were the top political adviser to a politician, how much sense would it make to say that the advice-recipient made the worst political mistake in modern history?
Tag: politics
More Reasons to Read About Religion
Studying religion teaches us a tremendous amount about human psychology: our eagerness to embrace doctrines that outsiders consider nonsense, our pretentious overconfidence and hyperbole, our willingness to oppress and even murder over objectively trivial issues.
I Haven’t Stopped Playing: How Childhood Play Can Make Your Work Life Better
All my play and all my imitation of my fictional heroes ironically prepared me for the sober reality of the working world. They taught me the value of being brave. They taught me how to put up with pain with a sense of humor and resilience. They showed me how to find creative solutions, tell stories, and inspire people.
Cognitive Bias #3 — Choice-Supportive
This may be my most egregious bias. I have a great deal of trouble reversing field after a choice of any kind. Reversals only take place after some sort of random collision with reality. We see evidence that I am not alone, scattered throughout my neck of the woods.
What’s Wrong with Ideology?
If you are guided by a doctrine, myth, belief, or whatever that doesn’t inform you that you have no right to archate, then anything is permissible as you strive toward your goal. You’ll end up eating babies and thinking nothing of it. Don’t be like that.
Principal-Agent Theory and Representative Government
As a rule, the candidates for election to public office make vague promises, hardly any of which are subject to straightforward monitoring or quantitative measurement. In general, it is impossible for principals in the electorate to identify precisely how their office-holding agents have succeeded or failed.
Everyone Misses This Lesson on Political Power From “Game of Thrones”
Getting a seat on the Iron Throne is a pretty raw deal, and even if you have it, you might now have it for long. So why do Game of Thrones‘s rulers spill so much blood to get there? Why not consolidate their own power elsewhere? And why does the question of who sits in leadership draw so many other people into the sinkhole of war?
Voting in Prison
It’s an irony to the point of obscenity that prison inmates of certain tax farms within the legal fiction known as the USA are permitted to vote in political elections.
Two Minutes Hate, At Least
The mindset is prevailing, I fear, that if a person isn’t actively part of the multitudes condemning, blasting and otherwise speaking negatively about something, then the person must be one of “them” or at least a sympathizer.
From “Come and Take It” to “Go and Make It”
What if we stopped attacking people for a cause and started attracting people to a cause? What if we became creators instead of mere critics and conquerors? Rather than waging war—either figuratively (in arguing) or literally — what if we channeled all of our passion and energy into disruptive acts of creation?