http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
via TED Blog: Lets raise kids to be entrepreneurs: Cameron Herold on TED.com.
The game of life
Below is a presentation by Jesse Schell at DICE 2010 “Design Outside the Box” Conference explaining what’s next in gaming. Interesting points throughout. Great food for thought.
Helping poor countries
Can richer countries, or even groups of wealthy people create charter cities in 3rd world countries? Basically “adopt” a 3rd world city?
Rich nations use well-functioning systems of courts, police and jails, developed over centuries, to solve such problems. Two people can make a commitment. If they don’t follow through, the courts will punish them. But many developing countries are still working their way down the same arduous path. Their leaders can fight corruption and establish independent courts and better rules over property rights, but such moves often require unpopular measures to coerce and cajole populations, making internal reforms excruciatingly slow. Subsequent leaders may undo any commitments they make. A faster route would seem to be for a developed country to impose new rules by force, as they did in the colonial period. There is evidence that some former colonies are more successful today because of rules established during their occupations. Yet any economic benefits usually took a long time to show up, and rarely compensated for years of condescension and the violent opposition it provoked. Today, violent civil conflicts have led some countries to again consider military humanitarian intervention, but this can only be justified in extreme circumstances. My point was that there is a middle ground between slow internal reforms and risky attempts at recolonialisation: the charter city.
There are large swathes of uninhabited land on the coast of sub-Saharan Africa that are too dry for agriculture. But a city can develop in even the driest locations, supported if necessary by desalinated and recycled water. And the new zone created need not be ruled directly from the developed partner country—residents of the charter city can administer the rules specified by their partner as long as the developed country retains the final say. This is what happens today in Mauritius, where the British Privy Council is still the court of final appeal in a judicial system staffed by Mauritians. Different cities could start with charters that differ in many ways. The common element would be that all residents would be there by choice—a Gallup survey found that 700m people around the world would be willing to move permanently to another country that offers safety and economic opportunity.
The brain on power
It appears that the old axiom is true – power corrupts. And, the more deserving the powerful person feels to be in their position – the more deserving they feel to live by different rules than everyone else.
They argue, therefore, that people with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want. This sense of entitlement is crucial to understanding why people misbehave in high office. In its absence, abuses will be less likely. The word “privilege” translates as “private law”. If Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky are right, the sense which some powerful people seem to have that different rules apply to them is not just a convenient smoke screen. They genuinely believe it.
via The psychology of power: Absolutely | The Economist.
This is a great article. I have an additional theory that people have a balance of good/ bad that their brains try to balance. In other words, when someone does something good (or, they they personally feel is good) – then they feel like they deserve to get away with extra benefits at someone else’s expense. For example, I think that a crooked politician often feels like they deserve extra benefits and power (even if it costs a lot of money, is immoral, or wasteful) if they feel like they passed some legislation that that “helped” a lot of people. In their minds, having an affair or a personal boondoggle benefitting them is not really bad because they passed a budget-busting multi-million dollar spending package that helped a million people. Our legislators at some point stop looking at themselves as representatives and start looking at themselves as valiant leaders who bend a few rules, but make lives better for their constituents. In their minds they deserve to be above the rules because on balance they created so much good in the world – and on balance – they are impacting the wold to the positive (in their minds).
Narcissism, charm, and popularity
Narcissists appear to be more charming and popular at first meeting them. Some research into proof of this bias – and possible reasons why…
On the basis of a realistic behavioral approach, the authors showed that narcissists are popular at zero acquaintance and aimed to explain why this is the case. In Study 1, a group of psychology freshmen (N = 73) judged each other on the basis of brief self-introductions using a large round-robin design (2,628 dyads). Three main findings were revealed:
First, narcissism leads to popularity at first sight.
Second, the aspects of narcissism that are most maladaptive in the long run (exploitativeness/entitlement) proved to be most attractive at zero acquaintance.
Third, an examination of observable verbal and nonverbal behaviors as well as aspects of physical appearance provided an explanation for why narcissists are more popular at first sight.
Results were confirmed using judgments of uninvolved perceivers under 3 different conditions for which the amount of available information was varied systematically: (a) full information (video and sound, Study 2), (b) nonverbal information only (video only, Study 3), or (c) physical information only (still photograph of clothing, Study 4). These findings have important implications for understanding the inter- and intrapersonal dynamics of narcissism.
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) from Journal of Personality and Social Psychology – Vol 97, Iss 5 by Back, Mitja D.; Schmukle, Stefan C.; Egloff, Boris
via Are narcissists more charming?: – Barking up the wrong tree.
Global inequality dramatically decreasing
Income is becoming more distributed around the world. A comparison on 1970 to 2006 shows vast improvements in income distribution. According to this report – the income distribution trend is great. (Note, this income not wealth, which may be a different matter – but income is a start.)
I would guess this would be caused by more countries becoming more free. In a free country, I would think that we would see a bell curve in income distribution. This is because intelligence is distributed “normally”- and I would expect other characteristics like interests, passion, and work ethic to be characteristics that are probably normally distributed as well. And, in a society that is free – income would probably more closely match these characteristics than in a more centrally planned economy.
The Ghost City of Ordos
The bizarre world of centralized planning.
The death of languages
linguists estimate that we may lose as much as 90% of the world’s 6,800 languages in the next century — an average of one human language per week.
The cost of the American dream
In economics, we called this a period of “dis-saving”.
The link to the original big picture is below.
Link: income-to-debt.png (PNG Image, 1467×1670 pixels) – Scaled (26%)
What separates extraordinary and average people?
Malcolm Gladwell  has come out with some interesting concepts. And, he has a new book out called Outliers
willmurphy.wordpress.com 
