Category: ideas

Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” movie suggests that the only thing holding back regular-looking women is their belief that looking regular holds them back at all. That attitude puts the onus on individual women to improve their self-esteem instead of criticizing societal beauty standards writ large. The reality is that expectations for female appearances have never been higher. It’s just become taboo to admit that.

Without ever intending it, experienced leaders often allow what they know to limit what they can imagine going forward; their knowledge can actually get in the way of innovation. Which is why, to summon the spirit of Proust, it’s so important for leaders to see their company and industry with fresh eyes — which means looking at their work in new ways. Art, it turns out, can be an important tool to change how leaders see their work.

“The history of each branch of science can be divided into three phases. The first phase is exploration, to see what nature is doing. The second phase is precise observation and measurement, to describe nature accurately. The third phase is explanation, to build theories that enable us to understand nature. Physics reached the second phase with Kepler, the third phase with Newton. Complexity science as West defines it, including economics and sociology, remained in the first phase until about the year 2000, when the era of big data began.”

U.S. college students just aren’t good at essays, says one prof, and that’s because no one takes those students seriously, not even themselves. “A decade teaching young writers has taught me a great deal. First, we need to value more the complete and complex lives of young people: where they come from, how they express themselves. They have already lived lives worthy of our attention and appreciation. Second, we need to encourage young people to take seriously those lives they’ve lived.”

There’s a reason this might be happening: “More often than not, the passcodes that appear in my Google Authenticator app seem tailored to reduce the cognitive burden of storing them in my working memory, the short-term storage bin our brains use to stash information for a few precious seconds before forgetting it forever.”

Here’s why: “Literary recognition would transform every other young black boy writing rhymes. It would stick two fingers up at the notion that the only way young black boys can get respect is on the streets. Contrary to popular belief, young black boys spend more time writing poetry than they do stabbing and shooting each other. For real. They have transformed the English language with an unparalleled lyrical dexterity. But we refuse to acknowledge that.”

In our new era of Enlightenment, we need Romanticism again. In his speech ‘Politics and Conscience’ (1984), the Czech dissident Václav Havel, discussing factories and smokestacks on the horizon, explained just why: ‘People thought they could explain and conquer nature – yet … they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it.’ Havel was not against industry, he was just for labour relations and protection of the environment. The issues persist.

One philosophy professor, Chen Bo of Peking University, conducted a survey along with Susan Haack of the University of Miami, at the behest of a Chinese publisher seeking important philosophical works for translation.