Review: The Affluent Society

The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Galbraith's assessment of the 1950's economic scene, the populace's choices, and the then current reasons for the post-war boom, are particularly relevant to our choices today: Affluenza, the decaying environment, decreases in social services, worker rights, materialism, etc.

I disdain economic dogma, the economic beliefs that are so commonly bandied about, and seemingly plausible, but generally unproven and with little merit. Economics abounds with such things, and Galbraith's insights then are wholly relevant now, both as a critique of the current administration's policies, and as a guidepost for a better future.

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Review - The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies

The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott E. Page My rating: 4 of 5 stars Generally, I found the book most engaging for understanding perception, heuristics and decision making, although this did not seem to be the primary premise of the book. As for the writing, it was a bit long-winded, using analogies to make points, even though the concepts themselves are readily accessible without elucidation. As to its purported focus, it provides academic, empirical, and statistical support for diversity, not necessarily racial or ethnic, with the premise being that diversity of viewpoint within groups is powerful, so much so that it trumps individual excellence. View all my reviews

A Response to Twilight of the Polymaths (NY Times)

Since you are aware of the fox and hedgehog dichotomy, you might be aware of Tetlock’s book and long-term study showing how foxes best hedgehogs in political prediction, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Although depth in specialties has its merits, I can see how that depth also leads to a kind of blindness, a ‘man with a hammer’ problem, while polymaths, or people with broad awareness can sometimes pull together diverse facts to form insights that are not bound by one’s expertise. Along the same lines, many insights in technology don’t come so much from depth, but by ‘cross-pollination’ of ideas, of taking the basic concepts of one specialty and applying them to a peripherally-related one.

For Trump, ‘a War Every Day,’ Waged Increasingly Alone - Responses

#1 @Jim Cricket - I think there might have been a more direct or apropos moral to the story, at least as it relates to Trump, in that he goes around blaming everyone else, fires them, until his term ends - the bottom of the bowl - and there is only one person left, and everyone realizes that there is only one person to blame, Trump himself. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/us/politics/trump-two-years.html?comments#permid=29862349:29864948 #2 Some people have seen a method to the madness of Trump, but he has always been a blithering, destructive idiot, and artless, heartless, and ignorant man. The only real question is how can we stop him? Minor mention, many, myself included, have thought impeachment might be problematic, Trump replaced by Pence, but considering all the harm Trump has caused, Pence would never really be quite so bad. Bad, but not nearly so.

Foxes and Hedgehogs

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