Predicting the Future with Bayes’ Theorem
In episode #37 of The Knowledge Project, we talked with professional poker player Annie Duke about thinking in probabilities, something good poker players do all the time. At the poker table or in …
In episode #37 of The Knowledge Project, we talked with professional poker player Annie Duke about thinking in probabilities, something good poker players do all the time. At the poker table or in …
Math has long been the language of science, engineering, and finance, but can math help you feel calm on a turbulent flight? Get a date? Make better decisions? Here are some heroic ways math shows up …
“We shall never have more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is.” *** Despite having been published in 1910, Arnold Bennett’s book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day remains …
One of the most beneficial skills you can learn in life is how to consistently put yourself in a good position. The person who finds themselves in a strong position can take advantage of circumstances …
Thought experiments are a classic tool used by many great thinkers. They enable us to explore impossible situations and predict their implications and outcomes. Mastering thought experiments can help …
One of the best ways to learn is a good conversation. While there are many advantages to a good conversation, perhaps the best is that you can benefit from the lessons that other people have already …
When we look at a representation of reality, we can choose to either see it as descriptive, meaning it tells us what the world is currently like, or as prescriptive, meaning it tells us how the world …
Survivorship bias refers to the idea that we get a false representation of reality when we base our understanding only on the experiences of those who live to tell their story. Taking a look at how we …
The late Harold Bloom, literary critic and professor, may well have been one of the most prolific readers of all time. Given that, Bloom was uniquely well positioned to answer the question of why we …
We’d all like life to be simpler. But we also don’t want to sacrifice our options and capabilities. Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity, a rule from design, explains why we can’t have both. …
When hiring a team, we tend to favor the geniuses who hatch innovative ideas, but overlook the butterflies, the crucial ones who share and implement them. Here’s why it’s important to be both smart …
Our desire to fit in with others means we don’t always say what we think. We only express opinions that seem safe. Here’s how the spiral of silence works and how we can discover what people really …
While runaway cars and vengeful stitched-together humans may be the stuff of science fiction, technology really can take revenge on us. Seeing technology as part of a complex system can help us avoid …
The growing influence of algorithms on our lives means we owe it to ourselves to better understand what they are and how they work. Understanding how the data we use to inform algorithms influences …
Directing a film involves getting an enormous group of people to work together on turning the image inside your head into a reality. In this 1970 interview, director Jean Renoir dispenses time-tested …
The act of looking at something changes it – an effect that holds true for people, animals, even atoms. Here’s how the observer effect distorts our world and how we can get a more accurate picture. …