Human beings crave progress. That craving distorts what we work on. Vital pursuits with less tangible progress are frequently sidelined for trivialities we can check off a to-do list. Think of the last time you updated your computer. Just having the progress bar made the wait more bearable. The inching left to right may have […]

Recently, I embarked on a research project exploring the topics of learning by doing, apprenticeship and transfer. I’ve just finished a big reading binge of a few dozen books loosely related to this topic. Since I’m fully aware that at most 1% of the material I read will make it into any future writing, I […]

I recently came across an essay by Tanner Greer about the rise and decline of public intellectuals. Many appear as geniuses for a time, before later becoming a punch line. Why does this happen? Greer starts with an obvious explanation—genius peaks. As we age, our raw talents decline and we can no longer sustain brilliance. […]

I recently came across the following Nature article, “People systematically overlook subtractive changes.” From the abstract: “Here we show that people systematically default to searching for additive transformations, and consequently overlook subtractive transformations. Across eight experiments, participants were less likely to identify advantageous subtractive changes … Defaulting to searches for additive changes may be one […]