Walser on Curiosity

He was very annoyed, as all people are when they are caught on the secret pathways of stealthy curiosity. Jakob Von Gunten, Robert Walser  

Cortázar on Seduction and Power

Michel is something of a puritan at times, he believes that one should not seduce someone from a position of strength. “Blow Up,” Julio Cortázar

On Guilt and Work

The finding: People who are prone to guilt tend to work harder and perform better than people who are not guilt-prone, and are perceived to be more capable leaders. The research: Francis Flynn gave a standard psychological test, which measured the tendency to feel guilt, to about 150 workers in the finance department of a Fortune 500 firm and [...]

Cortázar on Being Present

Right now (what a word, now, what a dumb lie) “Blow Up,” Julio Cortázar

Hawthorne on Civilization

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

The Jevons Paradox

technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource Wikipedia: The Jevons paradox See also: the rebound effect See also: David Owen’s December 2010 New Yorker article “The Efficiency Dilemma”

Information Also Wants to be Expensive

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against [...]

Sondheim on Taste

Familiarity breeds content. Fresh Air, Stephen Sondheim

The Peter Principle

‘in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.’ ‘in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties’ and ‘work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.’ “The Peter Principle,” Laurence J. Peter

The Shirky Principle

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. Clay Shirky

John Baldessari on Ideas

50/50

All and all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus his contributions to the creative act. “The Creative Act,” Marcel Duchamp

Bell Telephone’s Institute of Humanistic Studies for Executives

[In 1952,] a number of Bell’s top executives, led by W. D. Gillen, then president of Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania, had begun to worry about the education of the managers rising through the company’s hierarchy. Gillen took the problem to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a trustee. Together with representatives of the university, [...]

Walser on Boredom

People who get bored are ones who always reckon that something amusing ought to come at them from outside. Boredom is where bad moods are, and where people want things. Jacob Von Gunten, Robert Walser

The Dostoevsky Effect

he never did anything to me, it’s true, but I once played a most shameless nasty trick on him, and the moment I did it, I immediately hated him for it The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky

The Benjamin Franklin Effect

I did not … aim at gaining his favour by paying any servile respect to him but, after some time, took this other method. Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he [...]

The Rate of Exploitation

the proportion of profits to wages Wikipedia: Rate of Exploitation

On Facts

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan [...]

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true. Wikipedia: Confirmation Bias

Negative Capability

when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason Letter of 21 December 1817, John Keats

Cognitive Dissonance

An uncomfortable feeling caused by holding contradictory ideassimultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational driveto reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. Wikipedia: Cognitive Dissonance

The Dunning–Kruger Effect

A cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. Wikipedia: Dunning–Kruger Effect

Anosognosia

A condition in which a person who suffers disability seems unaware of or denies the existence of his or her disability. This may include unawareness of quite dramatic impairments, such as blindness or paralysis. Wikipedia: Anosognosia

Categorical Imperative

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Wikipedia: Categorical Imperative