Alex Tabarrok drew attention a couple of weeks ago to this study: disagreement with the consensus on controversial topics corresponds with worse understanding of non-controversial knowledge, like that we breathe oxygen from plants or that electrons are smaller than atoms. The authors then correlate respondents’ scores on the objective

The global reductions in poverty over the last 50 years have been unprecedented, bordering on miraculous. But the rapid and easy gains in wellbeing might be behind us. Based on current trends, progress against extreme poverty will come to a halt. As we’ll see, the number of people in

In times of injustice, anger, or outrage, patience can both inform and fortify us. Booker states, “Practicing patience doesn’t mean that you push your anger aside, that you don’t acknowledge it…Bringing patience in to support your anger can feel like a sacred pause, a deep listening as

Something I’ve never really posted or blogged about ever before is the tech space, but if you looked at my RSS feeds you‘d see more tech news than anything else. It’s a long-running hobby. In the consumer tech space, it’s really hard to establish a

This is incredible.

Most of us valorize people who don’t like people. But it turns out cynicism is not a sign of wisdom, and more often it’s the opposite. In studies of over 200,000 individuals across thirty nations, cynics scored less well on tasks that measure cognitive ability, problem-solving,

Imagine being remembered both for DNA’s discovery and for being an intolerant, intolerable person.