It will come as no surprise that I am an ardent fan of David Brooks and just about anything he writes. I try to repeat what he writes as often as possible to sound smart, hoping that other people have not also read his column.
He has a smart-sounding-enablement article in the New Yorker this week. It is worth a read if you have twenty minutes to spare. An easy to read story (as only the New Yorker can deliver), it surveys a lot of cognitive science research that has been going on over our lifetimes. Though, keep your should-be-skeptical-of-liberal-narrative-journalism guard up, he does make a few leaps.
A few of my favorite lines:
- People generally overestimate how distinct their own lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them a series of miracles. The coincidences gave their relationship an aura of destiny.
- According to research by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, and others, the daily activities most closely associated with happiness are social—having sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with friends.
- Human beings are overconfidence machines. People in the computer industry gave answers they thought had a ninety-five per cent chance of being right; in fact, eighty per cent of them were wrong. Ninety-nine per cent of the respondents overestimated their success.
Don't worry if you don't have time to read it. I'll be sure to tell you all about it the next time I see you and try to pass it off as my own.
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