[T]hese prisoners live in poor neighborhoods with terrible schools and scant opportunities. And they’re highly policed. So the chance that an ex-convict returning to that neighborhood will have another brush with the law is no doubt larger than that of a tax fraudster who is released into a leafy suburb.[…]
#766 Transparency matters
Opaque and invisible models are the rule, and clear ones very much the exception. We’re modeled as shoppers and couch potatoes, as patients and loan applicants, and very little of this do we see—even in applications we happily sign up for. Even when such models behave themselves, opacity can lead[…]
#765 Man cannot live by milk alone
Harlow smelled a rat. He raised infant rhesus monkeys without mothers. Instead, he gave them a choice of two types of artificial “surrogate” mothers. One pseudo-mother had a monkey head constructed of wood and a wire-mesh tube resembling a torso. In the middle of the torso was a bottle of[…]
#764 What makes the remembering self happy
“What makes the experiencing self happy and what makes the remembering self happy are different things.” – Daniel Kahneman From “Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow, Deep Learning, and AI | Artificial Intelligence Podcast” by Lex Fridman
#763 Keep it small. Keep it simple. Let it happen.
Emergence is one of the founding principles of agility, and is the closest one to pure magic. Emergent properties aren’t designed or built in, they simply happen as a dynamic result of the rest of the system. “Emergence” comes from middle 17th century Latin in the sense of an “unforeseen[…]
#762 The stories they hear
If you want to change people’s behavior, you have to change the stories they hear and the ones they tell From “Four Seconds: All the Time You Need to Replace Counter-Productive Habits with Ones That Really Work” by Peter Bregman
#761 A story to be told
Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action. [..] Your tactics can make a difference, but your strategy—your commitment to a way of being and a story to be told and a promise to be made—can change everything. If you want to[…]
#760 Choices about what’s important
To create a model, then, we make choices about what’s important enough to include, simplifying the world into a toy version that can be easily understood and from which we can infer important facts and actions. [..] A model’s blind spots reflect the judgments and priorities of its creators. [..][…]
#759 Not planned
Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person—hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre—into an outstanding performer. From “Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics)” by[…]
#758 Time to start insisting on a long, viable path
Time to get off the social media merry-go-round that goes faster and faster but never gets anywhere. Time to stop hustling and interrupting. Time to stop spamming and pretending you’re welcome. Time to stop making average stuff for average people while hoping you can charge more than a commodity price.[…]