Economics Professor https://loopvids.s3.amazonaws.com/Mar28_Post.mp4 Once there was an economics professor. And on the first day of the semester, he would always do the same experiment. He would hand out free T-shirts to all the students. But he made sure that not very many would fit. He would give smalls to big people, […]
Balloon Animal Disaster
Lost History Humans have been the same, anatomically, physiologically, intellectually and linguistically for about 200,000 years. But we only have written historical records going back about five or six thousand years or so. This means that over 95% of human history is something we know absolutely nothing about. 95% of our ancient […]
Data Transfer Brain
Hard Drive Shopping I went to a local pc shop recently. I wanted to buy an external hard drive. It’s amazing how much they’ve improved over the years. You can transfer a few gigs in seconds, and store several terabytes of data for less than a hundred bucks. On the other hand, thought, […]
Origins Of Wealth
Gangsters To Bankers The Medici family started out in the Middle Ages in Florence as a gangster family. A couple of them were hanged for their misdeeds. Within a couple of generations later they had become the most powerful banking families in Europe. One of the best prototypical rags to riches story of wealth […]
Human Motivations
Best Teacher Ever One of the most impressive professors I had in college was somebody that I completely didn’t expect to be impressive. He was a very old guy, he taught philosophy 101. When I started college, I took a bunch of classes in my major and took a bunch of classes that were general […]
How To Start A Cult
How To Be The Chosen One If you want to start your own cult, it’s not that different from baking a cake. Meaning if you get all the right ingredients together and mix them up together in the right way, you’ll get a cake. If you do the same, you’ll get a cult. Of course, […]
Supply and Demand
Secrets Of The Global Brain These two words, supply and demand, seem very simple. They are known and supposedly understood by virtually anybody. They are ubiquitous, and if you know the words, but are a bit sketchy on the concepts, then you will fully understand them by the end of this post. Despite their simplicity, […]
Tragedy Of The Commons
Why Are The Freeways So Crowded? This is a simple idea from economics that has far reaching ramifications. You’ll find it among roommates, farmers and even in the ocean. It’s called the “tragedy” of the commons because that’s how it always ends. Opposite of how everybody thinks it will end. Set Up Imagine you’ve […]
How To Embrace And Simultaneously Overcome Your Nature
Once there were these birds, cats, and dogs. To put it mildly, they weren’t very friendly. The dogs would mess with the cats, the cats would eat the birds, and the birds were always living in fear. Then one day, a bird had an idea. He went down and asked to speak with the head […]
Harness Human Selfishness For Effective Persuasion
Some of the best ideas and methods for effectively persuading people have been around for ages. Take the famous Dale Carnegie idea, that everybody’s favorite radio station is WII-FM, or “what’s in it for me.” Naturally, this idea has been around long before radio, Carnegie’s take is just an updated version of it. This idea, […]