Snippets
Magnificent application of game theory by a contestant on a game show – Ben Goldacre, Apr 2012
Truly brilliant. The one contestant understood the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma and immediately slammed one door shut for the opponent. Great strategy. If you suspect your opponent may behave badly, even if they won’t and seem believable, simply take that role first and control the outcome in either your own favour or in mutual favour. If play nice, you are exposed more. So, lesson for nice people. Play mean to ensure a nice outcome all round. You’ll be hated initially, thanked later.
The Lost Steve Jobs tapes – Brent Schlender, The Fast Company, Apr 2012
“Incentive structures work,” [Steve Jobs] told me. “So you have to be very careful of what you incent people to do, because various incentive structures create all sorts of consequences that you can’t anticipate.”
Why I like Wikileaks (the benefits of transparency)- Stephen M. Walt, Oct 2010
Realist that I am, I believe that human beings are more likely to misbehave if they think they can shield what they are doing from public view… Democratic societies are more likely to adopt better policies when information is plentiful and when government officials cannot determine which facts are available to the public and which are not
The Office Matters – Fred Wilson, Sep 2010
Every time I visit Etsy, I am reminded how important the “vibe of the office” matters. You walk in the door and you are hit with the company culture right in the face. You feel warm, cozy, happy, and comfortable at Etsy. And that feeling lasts well beyond the first steps inside the office.
Microsoft’s Creative Destruction – NYTimes, Feb 2010
…our group of very clever graphics experts invented a way to display text on screen called ClearType. It worked by using the color dots of liquid crystal displays to make type much more readable on the screen. Although we built it to help sell e-books, it gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for every device with a screen. But it also annoyed other Microsoft groups that felt threatened by our success.
Engineers in the Windows group falsely claimed it made the display go haywire when certain colors were used. The head of Office products said it was fuzzy and gave him headaches. The vice president for pocket devices was blunter: he’d support ClearType and use it, but only if I transferred the program and the programmers to his control. …a decade passed before a fully operational version of ClearType finally made it into Windows.
How reputation affects knowledge sharing among colleagues – MIT Sloan Management Review, January 2010
Because critical information is often held privately by individuals, workers often can choose to share or withhold such information in their interactions with colleagues without fear of sanction. That leaves reputation as a key motivator in any decision to share or withhold information.
The Winchester Job Interview Theory – Scott Berkun, Jan 2010
As the theory goes, most of us make instinctive judgments on factors we don’t understand in the first five minutes, and spend the rest of the time, and the time discussing with other interviewers, back-filling logical reasons to support an intuitive response we’re largely in denial of.
The consequences of faking it – Mind Hacks, Nov 2009
The study involved asking people to wear real or fake designer sunglasses, when in reality they were all the genuine article. Interestingly, those wearing the supposedly fake shades behaved less honestly in subsequent tests and were more likely to suspect others of behaving unethically.
Leaders get the behaviour they display and tolerate – Bob Sutton, Nov 2009
I was at a gathering of HR managers and executives yesterday held at Pixar, and one of the participants made this observation at one point (title link above)… “tolerate” conveys the subtle notion that there are often many things that happen in the workplaces that bosses don’t try to discourage or stop because they have so much other stuff to do
See Randomness – Paul Graham essay, Apr 2006, rev’d Aug 2009
No one knows who said “never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence,” but it is a powerful idea. Its more general version is our answer to the Greeks: Don’t see purpose where there isn’t. If you have to choose between two theories, prefer the one that doesn’t center on you.
Beware Panic Panic – Robin Hanson, Overcoming Bias, Apr 2009
Peter Sandman says it is officials, not citizens, who needlessly panic:
Panic, in short, is rare. But official “panic panic” is common. That is, officials often imagine that the public is panicking or about to panic. And in order to allay panic, officials sometimes do exactly the wrong thing from a crisis communication perspective: They withhold information, they over-reassure, they express contempt for public fears, etc. Panic is quite rare. What’s quite common is denial.
(As demonstrated in New Orleans when people refused to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina hit)
Warping court memories with subtle suggestions – Mind Hacks, May 2008
some people were asked how fast the cars were travelling when they “smashed” into each other, others how fast when they “bumped” into each other, others how fast when they “contacted” with each other, and so on. (The answers ranged from 31.8 – 40.8 miles per hour)
What you can’t say – Paul Graham essay, Jan 2004
In every period [of history[, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise. Is our time any different?
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