I first learned the concept of probabilistic thinking versus linear thinking from Jim O’Shaughnessy. The majority of us are linear thinkers. If you’re already a probabilistic thinker, then don’t bother reading the rest of this post. If not, read on. …

The Law of Triviality, also referred to as “Bikeshedding”, was first identified by C. Northcote Parkinson in 1957. …

The Paypal mafia went off to start some amazing companies to include Yelp, Yammer, Palantir, SpaceX, Tesla, and YouTube among them. Jason Portnoy suspects it could be there was a lot of latent talent in these individuals that was identified by the people who hired them. Jason was employee number…

Taoism is an ancient East Asian philosophy that emphasizes living with the natural order of the universe. It is the road, or path, that cannot be grasped as a concept. It must be experienced intuitively as we live our daily lives. Taoism’s primary body of work is the Tao Te…

Our tendency to perceive other people’s behavior as a reflection of their personality, rather than attribute those behaviors to situational or environmental conditions, is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error. For example, the man who cut us off in traffic did so because he is rude, not because he may…

Looking to spot trends? Try reading the physical newspaper again. There’s a certain serendipity to reading the physical newspaper; your eyes flow differently. You’re seeing how the news was meant to be laid out, and you’ll often notice something you had no intention of reading. According to Spencer Jakab in…

At first it’s a trickle, then a deluge. After being valued at over $5B last year, the Crypto financial services firm BlockFI is reportedly in the process of closing a down round valuing it at just $1B. …

The idea is simple, most people believe you get what you deserve. What comes around, goes around. Karma will settle the score eventually. This naïve view of the world was coined the “Just World Hypothesis” by psychologist Alan Lerner circa 1980. The ‘just world’ cognitive bias enables believers to adapt…