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UNDERTHINK

                                       April 24, 2011

There seems to be a trend in
current thinking among               There seem to be periodic
intellectuals to justify             waves like this...
anti-intellectualism.

There's practically an entire
genre of books like this... no                Rebecca Solnit's
one knows anything, so you should             "Hope in the Dark"
just *go for it*, trust your gut,
show up those damn eggheads for                 DARK_HOPE
daring to doubt your daring feats
of intuitive leaps...
                                    Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan"

                                    BLACK_SWAN

   There's that "Wisdom of Crowds"
   result, that purports to show that     Somewhat tempered by
   an average of guesses from the         recent results showing
   un-trained out performs an average     that even a small amount
   of experts.                            of social "contamination"
                                          produces a group-think
                                          effect, and queers the
                                          advantage of the "crowd".



   Similarly, Philip Tetlock argues that
   "Foxes" are better than "Hedgehogs" in
   their forecasts of the future, and he      (But doesn't that make him
   also has data to back up the point.        one of the Hedgehogs who we
                                              shouldn't trust to get
                                              anything right?)


                                         And perhaps, Daniel Kahneman,
                                         "Thinking, Fast and Slow"?

       Dreyfus and Kelly in                     KAHNEMAN
       "All Things Shining"
       *say* that they don't          David Brooks,
       want to be encourage           "The Social Animal"  ref
       the Confident Man, but
       how could they not?

       ALL_THINGS_SHINING


                     And there's that
                     Malcolm Gladwell book,
                     "Drink".  I mean, "Blink".



                                                   Stupid is the new smart.


                                                   UNINTENDED



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