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Better Angels
This post was originally an email sent to theBetter Questions Email List [http://betterquestionsemail.com/].For more like it,please sign up – it’s free. [http://betterquestionsemail.com/] This post is about the election, but it is NOT about politics. I would really, really appreciate it if you would give
Rhinoceros
——- Where is it written? ——- I recently came face to face with irrationality. I was attacked online… Called terrible things… Directly threatened. Why? I pointed out an inaccuracy. My crime was naively wandering into the world of online conspiracies, believing I could set things right with “better information.” Here’
Normalbaum
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Is This Legible? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You breathe in. Your hand rests on the door handle. Your first day. I can do this, you think. You push the door open and stride into the room. You make your way to your desk, shoulders back, conscious of your posture, your smile, keeping
All Woods Must Fail
O! Wanderers in the shadowed land Despair not! For though dark they stand, All woods there be must end at last, And see the open sun go past: The setting sun, the rising sun, The day’s end, or the day begun. For east or west all woods must fail.
One In a Million
— What’s Worse Than Death? — Right here, at the beginning of our penultimate COVID-19 email… I’d like to take a moment to mourn. It’s very possible you haven’t taken a moment to let it all settle in. What we’ve lost. For us, it was Dolly, the
Monty Hall
—— Should I switch, or stay? —– Let’s begin our review all the way back at the beginning, with our very first email about risk… Bad Priors. [https://nolessthan.acemlna.com/lt.php?notrack=1¬rack=1&s=bad97c655476f96a390a72c05a742011&i=34A39A2A148] Everyone comes to situations of risk with
All In Our Heads
— What’s left to do but go to the beach? — As we come into the home stretch of our latest series of emails.. (Dealing with risk, uncertainty, and how to think about the Coronavirus pandemic)… You may have noticed that I’ve been avoiding something. I’ve been completely mute
Missionaries
This post was originally an email sent to theBetter Questions Email List [http://betterquestionsemail.com/].For more like it,please sign up – it’s free. [http://betterquestionsemail.com/] —– How do we create Common Knowledge? —– We start this week with a riddle. It’s a famous one, so no Googling…give
False Positive
This post was originally an email sent to theBetter Questions Email List [http://betterquestionsemail.com/].For more like it,please sign up – it’s free. [http://betterquestionsemail.com/] —- How scared should I be? —- For the past few weeks we’ve been discussing risk and uncertainty. Riskis a situation
No Basis
——– On what basis? ——– Over the past few weeks we’ve built a system for understanding how we make decisions. First, we needed to understand that people come to problems with differentpriors – good and bad. Then, we needed to understand the importance of consulting thebase rate. Last week, we added a
