rk conflict. Relationship conflict. Family conflict. Conflict is everywhere and I’ll be honest with you: I’m kinda tired of it. So what are we gonna do? Well, today we’re gonna get some help from what may seem like an unlikely source: Carl von Clausewitz. Yeah, the dead war guy. The 19th-century Prussian strategist who spent his time thinking about armies and violence, which sounds like it has nothing to do with you, a person whose most frequent combat scenarios involve…
2005, Philip Tetlock did a study, “Expert Political Judgment”, where he basically asked, “Hey, what if we tested whether all these Very Important Experts™ were any good at predicting the future?” Surprise: they weren’t. He collected over 28,000 forecasts made by 284 political analysts, economists, foreign policy bigwigs, and all the usual loud-talking necktie people. What Tetlock found (and I’m condensing 20 years of depressing data here) is that the average talking head was terrible at predicting real-world outcomes.…
love freedom. And so it is with a heavy heart and a full awareness that I am committing a kind of cultural treason that I report the following: Freedom is ruining everything. Not political freedom. Political freedom is wonderful. I am, and have always been, in favor of people being allowed to say what they think, go where they please, and make their own terrible decisions about diet, recreation, and spouse selection without interference from the government. What I'm…
ch workday we march into battle against the most fearsome foe imaginable: other people’s personalities. Every office contains exactly two types of people: People trying to do their jobs People bent on making #1 impossible. Most are low-level annoyances. There’s the Devout Scheduler who sets meetings the way Victorian doctors prescribed opium: generously, for every ailment, and with utter disregard for long-term consequences. We also have Beelzebub’s Barrister, that guy who always says, “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.” And then…
is real, folks. It’s a number that tells you how good someone is at puzzle-solving, logical reasoning, and making you feel inadequate at dinner parties. But here’s the rub: IQ isn’t everything. Greater education and intelligence don't necessarily lift you up; sometimes they just provide better tools for digging trenches. Check this out: “Intelligent and educated people are less likely to learn from their mistakes, for instance, or take advice from others. And when they do err, they are…
the theater of the mind, unwanted thoughts are the hecklers in the back row, throwing popcorn at the screen of your consciousness. Your brain, that squishy blob sitting in its dark skull-room is like those old jukeboxes in dive bars that play the same three songs on a loop. Except instead of "Don't Stop Believin'," it's "What if everyone's secretly laughing at you?" We’ve all had intrusive thoughts at one time or another: impostor syndrome, embarrassing memories, fears, anxieties,…
until very recently, most of our experiences with AI boiled down to shouting "ALEXA, STOP!" AI means “artificial intelligence”? More like “Awkwardly Inept”, if you ask me. But things have changed... Enter ChatGPT, strutting onto the scene like a rock star. Suddenly, AI wasn't just a voice in a box that occasionally understood your mumblings; it was like having a chat with someone who'd actually read a book. Or, you know, all of them. How well could a cold,…
rategy. It's treated with a reverence usually reserved for sacred relics or the last slice of pizza. I love reading corporate strategy because I’m a big fan of fiction. Typically, it’s a phrasebook of jargon that could make a dictionary weep. It says nothing, offends no one, has no clear actions, and makes no hard decisions. It’s all “blue sky” vision. Rarely are challenges mentioned or any insight provided. It’s all mission, values, and lots of vague goals. And when…
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