Hello! Apologies again for the break in posting. Life admin, as ever, gets in the way, and moving house sure does produce a lot of it. (I haven’t just been sat outside a pub for the last week, I promise.)
This week’s article is the result of some noodling around on the question of intuition. Gut feel gets a bad rap, especially since the behavioural economics revolution of the 1960s. We spend a lot of time – quite rightly! – examining the various ways our intuitive decisions go wrong, tripping us up (and causing widespread societal problems, too). But is intuition all bad? Are there situations where it stacks up credibly against slower, more calculating decision-making – or where it’s even better?
This week’s article
Going with the gut
The behavioural economics revolution has been on a quest towards rationality, aiming to recognise our messy, inaccurate cognitive biases and replace them with something more solid. But by throwing out intuition and heuristics, we risk losing a great deal.
Click here to read the article »
This week’s three interesting links
Rethinking cider: a story of apple trees
Adam Wells writes beautifully on the subject of cider, and the romantic journeys that he takes as a cider writer and that the apples take on their way to becoming the final product:
“If cider does indeed have a soul, it is locked in the apples, in the trees, in the land and in the slow cycle of seasons that brings all three into the confluence of a unique expression. It is in the unrepeatable patterns of weather; the vicissitudes of fate that make every harvest different from the next, however subtly. It is in the gentle incline of an orchard’s bank that drains water that little more quickly, gives every row of trees that little more, little longer, exposure to sunlight. It is in the crusts of sand or clay or limestone that make each orchard geologically individual. It is in the trees that are forty years older than the trees of the same variety next door; in the small-gains increase in intensity of flavour that every passing year has cultivated. It is in the choice to plant one variety over another, not for reasons of yield or efficiency, but simply because the former variety tastes better; imparts greater qualities into its resultant drink. It is in the trimming back of the hazel thicket that casts shadows onto the apples. It is in the health of the soil, and the ways in which the orchardist chooses to maintain that soil’s condition. It is in the careful winter pruning that gives the trees a better chance of a better-tasting crop. It is in the deliberate selection of apples that are pristine and fully ripened and the rejection of those that are dirty or rotten or unripe. It is in the space between the trees, the airflow between the branches and the time between an apple’s falling and its being picked up. It is in the transfiguration of everything above and more into a liquid in our glass that offers all of the answers, if only we knew what the questions were.”
The Healing Power of JavaScript
Craig Mod writes beautifully on the healing power of programming computers, a sanctuary of knowable certainty in a world aflame:
“This work of line-by-line problem solving gets me out of bed some days. Do you know this feeling? The not-wanting-to-emerge-from-the-covers feeling? Every single morning of the last year may have been the most collectively experienced covers-craving in human history, where so many things in the world were off by a degree here or a degree there. But under those covers I begin to think – A ha! I know how to solve server problem x, or quirk y. I know how to fix that search code. And I’m able to emerge and become human, or part human, and enter into that line-by-line world, where there is very little judgement, just you and the mechanics of the systems, systems that become increasingly beautiful the more time you spend with them. For me, this stewardship is therapy.”
It’s a long time since my time has been mostly occupied by programming, but I still feel the same draw Mod does. Tinkering with this site, writing a little script, withdrawing temporarily from the messiness of the wider world and focusing for a moment on a tiny, knowable part of it – and in doing so achieving something, creating something, and generally pushing some kind of mental reset button. #
Centaur chess
I can’t believe I didn’t find this when I wrote about augmented creativity: Garry Kasparov coined the term “centaur chess” for a game of chess played by two humans, in which the humans ultimately decide which moves to make, but have access to the full power of a computer before doing so. In theory, it’s a form of chess that combines the creativity and empathy of human players with the raw computing power of the chess engine. #