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The Perilous Task of Forecasting
The Wall Street Journal: To get business right, finance chiefs need to be good forecasters. Yet research has shown that amateurs can actually be better than experts at predicting the future. Jason Zweig, The Wall Street Journal’s investing columnist, sat down with Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the co-author of “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” to explore why that is and what companies can learn from it. ... MR. TETLOCK: One reason is that experts sometimes know too much.
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The Eureka Factor
The Saturday Evening Post: This is how one of the pioneers in understanding the “aha! phenomenon” — those flashes of insight about a problem — carves out a creative, idea-inducing space for himself. On his 45-minute commute to and from his college office in Philadelphia, John Kounios picks the quiet car on the regional rail. No ringing cellphones. No chattering passengers. To further isolate himself, the affable professor of psychology at Drexel University puts on his noise-canceling Bose headphones, slaps on his sunglasses, and closes his eyes. No distractions, not even the rumble of the train nor the scenery streaking past the window. Read the whole story: The Saturday Evening Post
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There’s a Better Way to Manage Time Management
For many people, it feels as if we have more to do and less time to do it in than ever before: children need to be fed, bosses need you to stay late, and someone needs to get the car to the mechanic. Juggling all of our responsibilities can make it feel as though there just isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything. To wrangle our crunched calendars, we turn to “productivity hacks” and the newest time-saving apps, but new research suggests that maybe we would be better off spending some time managing our time management.
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The Power of Collective Memory
Scientific American: In China, people remember the period from roughly 1849 to 1949 as the “century of humiliation.” The time was turbulent, from the First Opium War (a defeat by the British) through many other defeats and unfavorable treaties in which Chinese people were dominated by the Japanese, French and English. Although the century was declared over in 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was established, the Chinese remember the sting of those times and still interpret modern events through them. For example, in 1999 during the NATO bombing of Belgrade as a part of the war in (former) Yugoslavia, U.S.
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The Murky Ethics of Driverless Cars
Pacific Standard: So you’re driving down a dark road late at night when suddenly a child comes darting out onto the pavement. Instinctively, you swerve, putting your own safety in jeopardy to spare her life. Very noble of you. But would you want your driverless vehicle to do the same? ... Rahwan and colleagues Jean-Francois Bonnefon and Azim Shariff describe six studies, all conducted online via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. In the first, the 182 participants “strongly agreed that it would be more moral for autonomous vehicles to sacrifice their own passengers when this sacrifice would save a greater number of lives overall.” Read the whole story: Pacific Standard
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What Is A Nudge?
NPR: Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode Nudge How can a simple adjustment - a nudge - change our behavior for the better? Professor Richard Thaler says his "nudge theory" can make it easier for people to save money, eat healthily and more. Read the whole story: NPR
