Douglas Blair on the backlash against the green movement

It’s clear that moves by world governments to prostrate themselves on the altar of environmentalism are neither effective nor popular with their citizens. They might make Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg happy, but you’d think the country’s leaders would prefer one unhappy Swedish youth to a mob of angry citizens.

~ Douglas Blair, "Sri Lanka Collapses and Dutch Farmers Revolt. Blame ‘Green’ Policies.," The Daily Signal, July 15, 2022

Kevin Duffy on the Left vs. Right

The left and right are competing views on how to gain political power and run the apparatus of government, with plenty of overlap.

~ Kevin Duffy

Rolf Dobelli quotes Charlie Munger on the "man with the hammer tendency"

"If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails," said Mark Twain - a quote that sums up the déformation professionnelle perfectly.  Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, named the effect the "man with the hammer tendency" after Twain: "But that's a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world.  So you've got to have multiple models.  And the models have to come from multiple disciplines - because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department."

~ Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly, "Those Wielding Hammers See Only Nails," pp. 275-276

Rolf Dobelli on déformation professionnelle

Here are a few examples of déformation professionnelle: Surgeons want to solve almost every medical problem with a scalpel, even if their patients could be treated with less invasive methods.  Armies think of military solutions first.  Engineers, structural.  Trend gurus see trends in everything (incidentally, this is one of the most idiotic ways to view the world).  In short: If you ask people the crux of a particular problem, they usually link it to their own expertise.

~ Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly, p. 276

Rolf Dobelli on the limits of expertise and value of expanding our circle of competence

If you take your problem to an expert, don't expect the overall best solution. Expect an approach than can be solved with the expert's tool kit.  The brain is not a central computer.  Rather, it is a Swiss Army knife with many specialized tools.  Unfortunately, our "pocketknives" are incomplete.  Given our life experiences and our professional expertise, we must try to add two or three additional tools to our repertoire - mental models that are far afield from our areas of expertise.  For example, over the past few years, I have begun to take a biological view of the world and have won a new understanding of complex systems.  Locate your shortcomings and find suitable knowledge and methodologies to balance them.  It takes about a year to internalize the most important ideas of a new field, and it's worth it: Your pocketknife will be bigger and more versatile, and your thoughts sharper.

~ Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly, p. 277

The Economist: "Brazil takes off"

China may be leading the world economy out of recession but Brazil is also on a roll.  It did not avoid the downturn, but was among the last in and the first out.  Its economy is growing again at an annualised rate of 5%.  It should pick up more speed over the next few years as big new deep-sea oilfields come on stream, and as Asian countries still hunger for food and minerals from Brazil's vast and bountiful land.  Forecasts vary, but sometime in the decade after 2014—rather sooner than Goldman Sachs envisaged— Brazil is likely to become the world's fifth-largest economy, overtaking Britain and France.  By 2025 São Paulo will be its fifth-wealthiest city, according to PwC, a consultancy.

~ "Brazil takes off: Now the risk for Latin America’s big success story is hubris," The Economist, November 12, 2009

Warren Buffett on forecasting

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

~ Warren Buffett