Anecdotes Aren’t Data

However truthful anecdotes are, they do not represent statistical evidence

An anecdote is a short, informal account about something. Anecdotal evidence is a collection of anecdotes. A defining feature of anecdotes is that they consist of real incidents experienced…

Weaponized Sensitivity

The political left has adopted censorship and conformity that used to be the exclusive identity of the political right

Some liberals have adopted the term progressive, leading to infighting regarding what the differences and different versions of the two might…

Post Truth

The reality is there are usually two opinions but only one truth

The rise of the false equivalency arrived when “fair and balanced” news came to be seen as the world of two truths. The reality, however, is there are usually two opinions but only one truth. Facts, data and…

Agnotology

The critical difference between unintelligence and contrived ignorance is that intelligent individuals can be misled by the latter

To begin this pragmatic journey, I will quote a fairly well-known observation that offers the simplicity and wisdom of a zen koan: The greatest test of…

The Peter Principle

In a hierarchy, employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence

Books about business are big business themselves, with a seemingly endless supply of new titles each year joining the thousands that already exist…or used to. The fate of most books about business…

Lost In Conspiracy

There are strong psychological and cultural indicators that predict greater susceptibility toward accepting conspiracies

Being a lifelong pragmatist, it isn’t surprising that I consider conspiracy theories implausible, improbable, impossible. Belief in conspiracies can…

Zero-Sum People

Those who see everything in terms of “winners means there also have to be losers” assume — without knowing they’re doing so — a zero-sum reality

In game or economic theory, a mathematical representation demonstrates that the gain or loss of one participant is inversely…

Tolerance Is Inevitable, Eventually

What we are really seeing are desperate attempts by those who ultimately will be unable to stop the cultural and societal changes they loathe

The process of the evolution of human progress and thus of culture and society is not linear. It…

The Establishment Isn’t The Problem

Too many voters are too ignorant in too many ways

I know it’s a broad generalization, but many millennials are proof that not knowing history creates the illusion of new and different. All the excitement that they exhibit at supporting an…

Fifty Million Frenchmen

Many of us thought we were living in a progressive society that was eventually going to leave behind racism and misogyny

A hit song in 1927, “Fifty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong” compared the free attitudes in 1920s Paris with censorship and prohibition in…