Author, Investor, Speaker, Mentor
One of the reasons it’s useful to engage with people who don’t agree with you is that it forces you to think much more rigorously. It’s easy to get away with sloppy thinking and careless arguments when you’re preaching to the choir. As long as what you say supports their beliefs, they won’t point out … Continue reading To sharpen your thinking, engage with those who disagree
Regardless of where people lie on the political spectrum (graph?), one thing I find remarkably unappealing is when people treat those who disagree with them with angry contempt. Since doing so doesn’t persuade or change minds, I fear that people behave that way because deep down they don’t believe in their own worth, and feel … Continue reading Be Civil
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” (The Dalai Lama) I recently read this longform New York Times piece on Amy Cuddy and the replication controversy in social science. The basic summary is that two big trends came together–the first was the rise of social science in popular culture (think Malcolm Gladwell and Dan … Continue reading Balancing Kindness and Rightness
Eric Barker advises asking the titular question as a way of assessing whether or not a company is in a state of denial: http://bit.ly/15RCfuP Yet denial isn’t the only reason I can think of for why post-meeting conversations might be more honest than the ones in the meeting. Here are a few other reasons I … Continue reading “Are the conversations after a meeting a lot more honest than the ones in a meeting?”
Thesis:The blogosphere is fundamentally changing the nature of public debate. In this new regime, the way to successfully shape the debate is with supported facts, rather than striking claims. Argument:In an interactive and Google-ized world, the old propagandist’s strategy of anchoring the debate with extreme claims and ad hominem attacks is more likely to rebound … Continue reading Is the Blogosphere Changing the Way We Debate? (The Obama-ization of Discourse)