Blog

Category: Decision Making

  • Value Others When You Are Powerful

    Today’s blog looks back to a classic text in ancient history which is also used in international relations. The message often taken is a brutal one, that the powerless must submit. Another way of looking at is more positive; that you should value others when you are powerful. When Athens Was Powerful Thucydides was an…

  • Better But Sadly Not Perfect

    Can we become more sustainable as we grow the economy? This hope of ‘green growth’ is appealing but to some it seems too good to be true. As I’m relatively optimistic about our chances of doing better socially and environmentally while also growing the economy it is helpful to read more downbeat views. A paper…

  • The Problem Of Moral Licensing

    If we do one thing that we think is good, does that make us more likely to do a bad thing next time? The logic being that we have earned moral credit in the bank, so we don’t need to be as good next time to retain our self concept as a decent person. There…

  • Waiting For The End Of The World

    I’m not a fan of doomsday cults. It always seems so arrogant to think that of all the people who have been born, and will be born, you will happen to have secured a seat at doomsday. It seems unlikely. Remember, the guy running the cult in your hometown isn’t going to usher in the…

  • Applying The Genetic Fallacy To The Carbon Footprint

    I have just finished Hannah Ritchie’s Clearing the Air. More on that later — spoiler, it is a great book. As such, I was interested to see what a review that appeared in The Guardian newspaper had to say about it. The writer overall liked the book, which makes sense. But he didn’t stop there.…

  • Explaining The Economy

    Kyla Scanlon has a book explaining the economy. There are some nice parts, and some things I wasn’t too sure about. (At least one graph seemed really odd as did a couple of comments but, being a popular book, the references were a bit too limited to check properly). Mostly she does a good job…

  • Using Rationality To Combat Nonsense

    Steven Pinker is a well-known academic and public intellectual in the US. I appreciate much of Pinker’s writing. He seems relatively optimistic about what we have achieved and can achieve. He is a big promoter of rationality and using rationality to combat nonsense. You might think that was what all academics are doing, but that…

  • Lower Cost Is Not Always Better

    One of the big challenges for sustainable business is that sometimes it costs more. Although higher costs driven by sustainable decision-making is not always the case, if you are providing higher quality, paying your workers or suppliers more, or reducing pollution from your products then sometimes this costs more. While it is beneficial to ensure…

  • Intuition Can Be Good Or Bad

    Gerd Gigerenzer has made some important contributions to the study of decision-making. As someone who has been educated in the US system (at least for my PhD) I find it interesting that he largely rejects that approach. He, often correctly, makes the point that a lot of tests of decision-making set those being tested up…

  • Ambition To Improve The World

    Rutger Bregman’s book, Moral Ambition tells us to aim higher. Why not have an ambition to improve the world? People have achieved amazing things in the past and there is no reason why we can’t make stunning progress again. Ambition Isn’t Bad In making the world better it helps to have ambition. That ambition needs…

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