Arnold Kling's.................................

........................................recurring daydream: 

By undertaking a wholesale re-org, you can change the default status of a unit from “keep doing what you did last year” to “justify your continued existence.”

Say it isn't so...................

 

Bad news: the universe is largely indifferent to your lucky socks.

-Eric Barker, from this post on "smart luck"

simple................................

 It's so simple: you spend less than you earn. Invest shrewdly. Avoid toxic people and toxic activities. Try to keep learning all your life. And do a lot of deferred gratification. If you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. And if you don't, you'll need a lot of luck. And you don't want to need a lot of luck. You want to go into a game where you're very likely to win without having any unusual luck.

-Charlie Munger, as quoted here

On leaving room for error and humility....

 The line between “inspiringly bold” and “foolishly reckless” can be a millimeter thick and only visible with hindsight. But it’s easy to view the process that led to successful outcomes as something to emulate, and the process that led to failures as something to avoid.

-Morgan Housel, from here

embrace..................

 Ask anyone you admire: Their lucky breaks happened on a detour from their main goal.  So embrace detours.  Life is not a straight line for anyone.

-Kevin Kelly

"Checkism".........................

 Noah Smith opines that progressives need to embrace progress:  here

This “clear consensus” exists only within an echo chamber. 

Next book up...................

      Why is it so important to have a high-quality decision process?

      Because there are only two things that determine how your life turns out:  luck and the quality of your decisions.  You have control over only one of these two things.

      Luck, by definition, is out of your control.  Where and when you were born, whether your boss comes into work in a bad mood, which admissions officer happens to see your college application—these are all things that are out of your hands.

      What you do have some control over, what you can improve, is the quality of your decisions.  And when you make better-quality decisions, you increase the chances that good things will happen to you.

-Annie Duke, from the Introduction to How to Decide:  Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

Respect......................

 Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/compassion when they go wrong.  Because it's never as good or as bad as it looks.  The world is big and complex.  Luck and risk are both real and hard to identify.  Do so when judging yourself and others.  Respect the power of luck and risk and you'll have a better chance of focusing on the things you can actually control.  You'll also have a better chance of finding the right role models.

-Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money:  Timeless Lessons On Wealth, Greed, And Happiness

Seth.................................

.......................................................................on luck.

. . . luck over time is a symptom of productive contributions. 

Might as well cancel that reconciliation....

If we want to reconcile the public to democracy, the elites will have to embrace the limits to human knowledge, and learn to speak with humility.  They will not tempt the public by promising them all the kingdoms of the world.  They will not speak as if the normal state of humanity is utopia, so that any fall from perfection must be blamed on selfish and corrupt forces – their opponents.  They will have the integrity to speak the truth as they see it, and they will have the courage to say “I was wrong” when necessary.

-the very smart Martin Gurri, from this Q & A

Wishing her..................

.................................all the best of luck in this venture:

Julia Rohrer wants to create a radical new culture for social scientists. A personality psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Rohrer is trying to get her peers to publicly, willingly admit it when they are wrong.

-Brian Resnick, as he opens this essay on "Intellectual Humility" 

thanks

As experiments go................

...............................this one will be very interesting to watch.

Change...............................

Reading this book made me realize that democratized information poses a dilemma for modern society.  If the public loses patience and respect for government, the result would be disintegration.  If elites choose to dig in, they are likely to resort to repression.

To avoid these extreme outcomes, both elites and the public will have to change.  Elites will have to cede authority and permit more local variation and experimentation.  The public will have to be more tolerant.  Imperfections and bad outcomes should not be taken as proof of conspiracy or evil intent.  We should pay less heed to those who can only pour out condemnation and blame.  We should show greater appreciation for those who make constructive attempts to experiment and fix.

-Arnold Kling, from his Foreword to  Gurri's The Revolt Of The Public

Good luck with this...................

" . . . advance the goals of “deliberative democracy” by incentivizing people to be flexible belief updaters whose views converge in response to facts, thus depolarizing unnecessarily polarized debates."

-as culled from here

More on risk, luck and decisions...................

....................at this post from Morgan Housel.  A wee excerpt:


If risk is what happens when you make good decisions but end up with a bad outcome, luck is what happens when you make bad or mediocre decisions but end up with a great outcome. They both happen because the world is too complex to allow 100% of your actions dictate 100% of your outcomes. They are mirrored cousins, driven by the same thing: You are one person in a 7 billion player game, and the accidental impact of other people’s actions can be more consequential than your own.


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not binding upon you..............

               To Luck

In the cards and at the bend in the road 
we never saw you 
in the womb and in the crossfire 
in the numbers 
whatever you had your hand in 
which was everything 
we were told never to put 
our faith in you 
to bow to you humbly after all 
because in the end there was nothing 
else we could do 
but not to believe in you 
still we might coax you with pebbles 
kept warm in the hand 
or coins or the relics 
of vanished animals 
observances rituals 
not binding upon you 
who make no promises 
we might do such things only 
not to neglect you 
and risk your disfavor 
oh you who are never the same 
who are secret as the day when it comes 
you whom we explain 
as often as we can 
without understanding 

-W. S. Merwin

Miloize him..............................

This foolishness is best understood as an unreasoning panic attack. The liberal media hate Trump more than they have hated any American politician in a generation, and they do not understand his supporters or the sources of his appeal. They are frantically picking up every available stick to beat him, in the hopes that something, somehow, will Miloize him.

-Walter Russell Mead, as excerpted from this post suggesting that Trump's actions make him Russia's worst nightmare and that the MSM is getting it all horribly wrong (again).

Okay....................................

Which means..............................

Good luck with that plan...............................

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