Tony Hsieh, liberals, and libertarians prefer buying experiences to materialism – A Review of Delivering Happiness
I recently finished Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness, which is partially a business book, detailing his remarkable story where he has won (selling Link Exchange to Microsoft in his 20s for $265 million) and lost (selling almost everything to turn Zappos around) fortunes. Zappos, an online shoe seller, has gone on to become the model [...]
On Hyperpartisanship, Hypermoralism, and the Supernormal Stimuli of Modern Politics
Today’s lead story from Politico, The Age of Rage, probably summarizes a lot of what people think is wrong with politics. Rather than make good policy, politicians and media are more concerned with scoring points for their political ideology (hyperpartisanship). However, as the Politico article points out, their actions are largely driven by the general [...]
Intrinsic, not Extrinsic Motivation Leads to Greater Reward – 2 Theories
Presented in the context of bringing together consilience from outside of psychology, a friend of mine sent me the below TED video, by Simon Sinek, which I believe has a lot in common with what much of psychology is discovering, specifically that intrinsic gut-level motivations are much more powerful than extrinsic rational motivations. In some ways, much [...]
Appreciating American Libertarians – Insight from Ted Conover’s Book, Rolling Nowhere
I just finished Ted Conover’s book, Rolling Nowhere, which I definitely recommend to anyone interested in understanding the human condition. In fact, I’d recommend any/all of Conover’s books, where he assumes roles as diverse as a prison guard, illegal immigrant, and in this book, a train jumping hobo. Personally, psychology is always more convincing when [...]
Psychological Causes of Violence in Sports Riots
Recently, the Los Angeles Lakers won game 7 against the Boston Celtics and there were riots in the streets of los angeles. Below is a video of some of the scene.
This scene is not unique to Los Angeles. In fact, riots appear to occur with regularity when sports teams win. There were riots in Boston [...]
Can open government data inform voters in the 2010 election?
Unfortunately, I think the answer is no. For the last week, I’ve been attempting to update a ‘candidate calculator’ website that I helped create for the 2008 presidential election, votehelp.org. Candidate calculators are a term for quizzes or surveys which ask you questions about issues (sometimes weighted by issue importance) and then match you with [...]
The Definition of Moral Hazard and A Review of The Big Short
Wikipedia defines a moral hazard as “when a party insulated from risk behaves differently than it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk.” By this definition, the financial crisis is a classic tale of moral hazard. I recently stayed up til 3am finishing Michael Lewis’ book, The Big Short, which explains the [...]