On Improving Communication

“The mistake is to think that communications will solve the problems of communication, that better wiring will eliminate the ghosts.”
—John Durham Peters

“The mistake is to think that communications will solve the problems of communication, that better wiring will eliminate the ghosts.”
—John Durham Peters
First a quick apology – this post is a bit outside of my normal range of topics. But I thought I would share it with you anyway. This is a picture from the University of Chicago Magazine, showing spending on federal contracts by week of the year. That tall bar on the very right –…
In recent posts, I’ve presented several interesting pictures of how arbitrary thresholds influence behavior. I showed how airplane pilots speed up flights to make on-time arrivals, but don’t speed up late flights that won’t make it on time. I’ve shown that the price of used cars changes when the mileage on the odometer passes arbitrary round…
Followers of this blog, and I mean both of you, know by now that I am a fan of getting the word out about good writing. Here’s a nice example from the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It is from the cover article, titled “We Will Never Run Out Of Oil.” The whole article…
I have conducted a number of studies on a phenomenon sometimes referred to as emotional adaptation. The basic idea behind this phenomenon is that people often respond with strong emotions to significant changes in their circumstances, but these emotions tend to diminish over time. Moreover, people often fail to anticipate this change in emotions, a failure…
Albert Rees was a University of Chicago trained economist who wrote some of the most influential works in the field of labor economics. Despite his Chicago training – Chicago being the epicenter of the idea that humans are guided largely by rational choice – he was well aware of something crucial missing from economic theory:…
I have done some research on political partisanship, as well as some writing. I think political dysfunction in this country threatens our future. So it was nice to read this opening paragraph, in a relatively recent and wonderfully written article in Time magazine: Here’s a rainy-season parable about cooperation in American politics: In July 2012,…