Julia Gillard as manager
A description of former Australian PM Julia Gillard’s parliamentary and office management style, by former staffer Nicholas Reece: Gillard is one of the best close-quarters politicians the Federal...
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The Way
A recurring theme here has been the complexity of most important real-world decision-making, contrary to the models used in much of economics and computer science. Some relevant posts are here, here,...
View ArticleBateson on rationality
Mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dream and the like, is necessarily pathogenic and destructive of life; and . . . its virulence springs specifically from the...
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Economic models as fables
Different knowledge disciplines mean different things by the verb “to understand”. For economists and physicists, a domain or a problem is not understood unless and until it is modeled, and often...
View ArticleJust do it, already, Mr Prez!
Norm Ornstein in The Atlantic on criticisms of Bam that he’s not as good at cajoling and arm-twisting as was LBJ, not as good at shooting-the-breeze as was Clinton, and not as good at hard-ball...
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Courage, honour, valour
For as long as I can remember, I have had to endure lectures from men in uniforms – policemen, soldiers, teachers, clerics – about courage and honour. I recall a particular egregious lecture from a...
View ArticleHigh Velocity Decision-Making
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on decision making, in his 2016 Annual Letter to shareholders: Day 2 companies make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and...
View ArticleGleichgewichtzustandwiederherstellungsmoeglichkeit
Gleichgewichtzustandwiederherstellungsmoeglichkeit (German, noun): The possibility of re-establishing a condition of equilibrium.
View Articlecod-Bourbakism
Economic historians Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah have published a new book on the role of information in post-war economics. The introductory chapter contains a nice, high-level summary of...
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