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Justin Ross's avatar

People's judgments can even be influenced by what books they've read lately. It sounds crazy, but I've noticed this in myself and I doubt I'm alone.

If you have just finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird, you're probably likely to be forgiving. If you've just finished Lord of the Flies, you're probably likely to see people as ruthless and be less empathetic/gentle/forgiving. "It's a dog eat dog world."

Reminds me of something I've also noticed about axioms and old adages: they often conflict with each other. They're never true in any absolute sense. All adages are relative - they're designed to keep you away from extremes and rigidity. For instance "shoot first, ask questions later" and "only fools rush in" are both perfectly true and useful, but only some of the time.

Life is hard. Making good decisions is hard.

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Arnold Kling's avatar

In my own review of *Noise* I concluded, "I think that the strongest conclusion that one can draw from KSS is that computers will continue to take over for humans in more fields. The project of reducing noise amounts to asking humans to behave more like machines. For that purpose, computers have the edge." https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2021/klinghumans.html

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