Read the ‘CV of Failures’ written by successful people and dig deeper into their stories
Success is visible, and people flaunt their successes with gusto. Nobody wants to talk about their failures. It’s not because they lack humility; people are not just interested in listening to uninspiring tales of setbacks.
Success is the most popular and bestselling self-help genre. We have thousands of titles beginning “How to Succeed………”, but very few books screaming with headlines like, “How to Fail and Then Succeed” or “Six Lessons I Learned from My Failures”.
In 2016, Johannes Haushofer, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Princeton University, (now Assistant Professor of Economics, Stockholm University) took the academic world by storm by publishing…
Automation should complement the human agency and not replace it
As negative side effects of automation become more evident, the world is realising that for many kinds of work we don’t want to replace human beings, even if the work is a little dull, dirty or dangerous. In fact, that replacement can become counter-productive. (Gill Pratt, CEO of Toyota Research Institute)
This post is not about the intricacies of the Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology because I am a generalist with little technical knowledge. I only look at the philosophy of the AV technology, the folly of some of its underlying assumptions, and its impact on society and human autonomy.
“We…
Chesterton’s Fence is a metaphor for cautious change
Kindness is no longer a fringe subject
We take kindness for granted. What’s the big deal about kindness? We think we know what it is because we practice it daily in our lives.
Our complacency about kindness led to its marginalization in the world of scientific research. When development psychologist Robin Banerjee reviewed psychology journals, he could find only 35 papers on kindness throughout the eighties.
Kindness later caught the interest of researchers and the last decade saw about 1000 papers about it.
What we know about kindness are:
- Acting kindly makes us feel good.
- Acting kindly reduces stress and anxiety.
- Kindness is contagious.
- Even toddlers can…
Lexicographers must remove offensive explanations
Borrowing never makes the borrower rich because of the obligation to repay. The English language is an exception to the borrowers’ burden. Its prolific adoption of foreign words has enriched it.
English's borrowing spree has come with a cost. It has adopted chiefly the meaning of the borrowed words, along with the prejudices built into them.
Most of us have a dominant hand, which we use to perform significant tasks. The lefties are in the minority, about 10 % of the world’s population.
Handedness occurs because of the cross-indexing of the brain’s two hemispheres. …
Value for money makes everything transactional
What they do in the future cannot be…
Millions denied jobs they deserved
Humans have an incurable habit of biting more than they can chew. The law of unintended consequences has been our unfailing nemesis.
We thought automation would lead us to a utopia where humans can sit on the sidelines and watch the algorithms dance efficiently.
Automation of recruitments gained momentum in the late 90s. Now it’s become the preferred mode for most companies.
People thought algorithms would select the best candidates and help companies save money because they eliminated wrong hires and avoided the costly process of rehiring.
The cohabitation of the cults of efficiency and profit-maximization has tossed the human…
