In today’s information age, in many companies and on many teams, the objective is no longer error prevention and replicability. , On the contrary, it’s creativity, speed, and keenness. , In the industrial era, the goal was to minimize variation. , But in creative companies today, maximizing variation is more essential. , In these situations, the biggest risk isn’t making a mistake or losing consistency; it’s failing to attract top talent, to invent new products, or to change direction quickly when the environment shifts. , Consistency and repeatability are more likely to suppress fresh thinking than to bring your company profit. , A lot of little mistakes, while sometimes painful, help the organization learn quickly and are a critical part of the innovation cycle. , In these situations, rules and process are no longer the best answer. , A symphony isn’t what you’re going for. Leave the conductor and the sheet music behind. Build a jazz band instead.

Any new or threatening situation may require us to make decisions and this requires information. , So important is communication during a disaster that normal social barriers are often lowered. , We will talk to strangers in a way we would never consider normally. , Even relatively low grade disruption of our life such as a fire drill or a very late train seems to give us the permission to break normal etiquette and talk to strangers. , The more important an event to a particular public, the more detailed and urgent the requirement for news becomes. , Without an authoritative source of facts, whether that is a newspaper or trusted broadcast station, rumours often run riot. , Rumours start because people believe their group to be in danger and so, although the rumour is unproven, feel they should pass it on. , For example, if a worker heard that their employer’s business was doing badly and people were going to be made redundant, they would pass that information on to colleagues.

People seem to recognize that the arts are cultural activities that draw on (or react against) certain cultural traditions, certain shared understanding, and certain values and ideas that are characteristic of the time and place in which the art is created. , In the case of science, however, opinions differ. Some scientists, like the great biologist J. B. S. Haldane, see science in a similar light — as a historical activity that occurs in a particular time and place, and that needs to be understood within that context. , Others, however, see science as a purely “objective” pursuit, uninfluenced by the cultural viewpoint and values of those who create it. , In describing this view of science, philosopher Hugh Lacey speaks of the belief that there is an underlying order of the world which is simply there to be discovered — the world of pure “fact” stripped of any link with value. , The aim of science according to this view is to represent this world of pure “fact”, independently of any relationship it might bear contingently to human practices and experiences.

Mental development consists of individuals increasingly mastering social codes and signals themselves, which they can master only in social situations with the support of more competent individuals, typically adults. , In this sense, mental development consists of internalizing social patterns and gradually becoming a responsible actor among other responsible actors. , In Denmark, the age of criminal responsibility is 15 years, which means that we then say that people have developed sufficient mental maturity to be accountable for their actions at this point. , And at the age of 18 people are given the right to vote and are thereby formally included in the basic democratic process. , I do not know whether these age boundaries are optimal, but it is clear that mental development takes place at different rates for different individuals, and depends especially on the social and family environment they have been given. , Therefore, having formal limits for responsibility from a specific age that apply to everyone is a somewhat questionable practice., But the question, of course, is whether it can be done any differently.

One well-known shift took place when the accepted view — that the Earth was the center of the universe — changed to one where we understood that we are only inhabitants on one planet ①orbiting the Sun. , With each person who grasped the solar system view, ②it became easier for the next person to do so. , So it is with the notion that the world revolves around the human economy. , This is slowly being replaced by the view that the economy is a part of the larger system of material flows that connect all living things. , When this perspective shifts into place, it will be obvious that our economic well-being requires that we account for, and ③respond to, factors of ecological health. , Unfortunately we do not have a century or two to make the change. , By clarifying the nature of the old and new perspectives, and by identifying actions ⑤on which we might cooperate to move the process along, we can help accelerate the shift

The first human beings probably evolved in tropical regions where survival was possible without clothing., It is likely that they had very dark skin because light skin would have given ①little protection against the burning rays of the sun. , There is a debate about whether these people spread into other parts of the world or, instead, whether people developed independently in various parts of the world. , Whichever the case, it is believed that in time they became ②capable of spreading out from Africa, eventually to most of the world. , This was probably because their ③physical characteristics changed. , For instance, early hominids probably did not walk upright, but when they developed that ability, they could travel more efficiently. , More important, perhaps, was their ④development of tool making. , With tools, they could hunt other animals, so they could consume more protein and fat than their low-energy vegetarian diet would have provided. , Not only their bodies but also their brains would have been changed with more energy. , The brain needs lots of energy to grow. As their diet expanded, hominids could physically and intellectually expand their territory.

When we get an unfavorable outcome, in some ways the last thing we want to hear is that the process was fair. , As outraging as the combination of an unfavorable outcome and an unfair process is, this combination also brings with it a consolation prize: the possibility of attributing the bad outcome to something other than ourselves. , We may reassure ourselves by believing that our bad outcome had little to do with us and everything to do with the unfair process. , If the process is fair, however, we cannot nearly as easily externalize the outcome; we got what we got “fair and square.” , When the process is fair we believe that our outcome is deserved, which is another way of saying that there must have been something about ourselves (what we did or who we are) that caused the outcome.

The well-known American ethnologist Alfred Louis Kroeber made a rich and in-depth study of women’s evening dress in the West, stretching back about three centuries and using reproductions of engravings. , Having adjusted the dimensions of these plates due to their diverse origins, he was able to analyse the constant elements in fashion features and to come up with a study that was neither intuitive nor approximate, but precise, mathematical and statistical. , He reduced women’s clothing to a certain number of features: length and size of the skirt, size and depth of the neckline, height of the waistline. He demonstrated unambiguously that fashion is ________________________ which is not located at the level of annual variations but on the scale of history. , For practically 300 years, women’s dress was subject to a very precise periodic cycle: forms reach the furthest point in their variations every fifty years. , If, at any one moment, skirts are at their longest, fifty years later they will be at their shortest; thus skirts become long again fifty years after being short and a hundred years after being long.

Over the last few centuries, humanity’s collective prosperity has skyrocketed, as technological progress has made us far wealthier than ever before. , To share out those riches, almost all societies have settled upon the market mechanism, rewarding people in various ways for the work that they do and the things that they own. , But rising inequality, itself often driven by technology, has started to put that mechanism under strain. , Today, markets already provide immense rewards to some people but leave many others with very little. , And now, technological unemployment threatens to become a more radical version of the same story, taking place in the particular market we rely upon the most: the labor market. , As that market begins to break down, more and more people will be in danger of not receiving a share of society’s prosperity at all.

It’s often said that those who can’t do, teach. It would be more accurate to say that those who can do, can’t teach the basics. , A great deal of expert knowledge is implicit, not explicit. , The further you progress toward mastery, the less conscious awareness you often have of the fundamentals. , Experiments show that skilled golfers and wine aficionados have a hard time describing their putting and tasting techniques — even asking them to explain their approaches is enough to interfere with their performance, so they often stay on autopilot. , When I first saw an elite diver do four and a half somersaults, I asked how he managed to spin so fast. , His answer: “Just go up in a ball.” Experts often have an intuitive understanding of a route, but they struggle to clearly express all the steps to take. Their brain dump is partially filled with garbage.

A computational algorithm that takes input data and generates some output from it doesn’t really embody any notion of meaning. , Certainly, such a computation does not generally have as its purpose its own survival and well-being., (B) It does not, in general, assign value to the inputs. ., Compare, for example, a computer algorithm with the waggle dance of the honeybee, by which means a foraging bee conveys to others in the hive information about the source of food (such as nectar) it has located. (, C) The “dance” — a series of stylized movements on the comb — shows the bees how far away the food is and in which direction. But this input does not simply program other bees to go out and look for it. , Rather, they evaluate this information, comparing it with their own knowledge of the surroundings. (A, ) Some bees might not bother to make the journey, considering it not worthwhile. The input, such as it is, is processed in the light of the organism’s own internal states and history; there is nothing prescriptive about its effects