Climate Change and Vaccine Denial - Why Scientific Consensus Isn't Helping and How to Fix It


The phrase “scientific consensus” has become like a beating drum, said over and over. These two issues represent “crazy” on both sides of the aisle. Why do so many people refuse to believe what 99% of scientists agree on, or what 99% of medical professionals agree on? Here is why that pesky 1% is putting up so much a fight…

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What It Means to Be Stupid.

What It Means to Be Stupid.

Ignorance is a temporary condition, but real stupidity takes a commitment. Stupid people have chosen to be stupid, they live with a set of attitudes and habits which keep them in their own personal and perpetual hells. Let’s talk about some of what stupid is, by what stupid does.

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Why Opinions Ruin Everything, and How to Stop Them


Anatomy of a Problem





Anatomy of an Opinion





The Three Architects





Powerful Problem Solving

If understanding is a thousand dollar bill, then insight is a hundred, perspective is a five’r, and opinion is a penny. We need different perspectives to gain insight, we gather insight until we have understanding. Opinions are both intellectually and emotionally distracting.  The more we learn to eliminate opinions, the more effectively we work together.


P.S. This is also why political pundits are pretty much just a blight on our society.

My Favorite Interview Question


There is a lot of practical advice out there for conducting interviews effectively. Mostly, this is based around the fact that many of the questions that really help you get to know a person are illegal to ask in a job interviews. I recently heard a claim that the best question to ask is: What single project would you consider the most significant accomplishment in your career so far? Meh, it’s ok.I think I have one even better: How do you build a fort?

This has become my favorite question to ask in an interview. You would be amazed at how much you learn about a person when they respond. Often the first response is, “Can you be more specific?” or “What kind of fort?” Nope, you don’t get anything else, you just have to answer the question, “How do you build a fort?”

In a given interview series, I got the following answers:

“Well, I guess you would want to find an open area where you can build a moat. Then you would want to put a plan together, taking local materials into account, to get everyone on the same page. Then you assign tasks and start building it.”

“Out of wood?”

“I am a big fan of turrets. You gotta have turrets and towers on every corner.”

“I guess it depends on what era of history you are fighting in.”

“You start by taking inventory of all the cushions in the house. Sofa cushions are the best. From there, tall chairs and bed sheets pull it together.”

The last one there is the one I hired. Just think about everything those answers tell you about a person’s ability to problem solve, use their imagination, be open, what they see as important, and what kind of culture they come from. Just make sure you stick to the question, no clarification, no context, just “How do you build a fort?”

When finding people for your company, especially if you have a strong internal culture, finding people who “fit” or “get it” are important. Asking what their best project was tells you they are capable, asking “How do you build a fort?” tells you if you will enjoy working with them.

Wisdom vs. Rules - Changing our hardwired helplessness


The Harvard Business Review did a massive study on tens of thousands of businesses to find out what “common rules” they could find among all those who succeeded. What did they find? Well, rule #3 was “There are no other rules.” I won’t spoil rules #1 and #2. This is, of course, disappointing to many readers who were hoping to find some rules for success. In order to offer some relief here is one more rule: Stop making rules! Instead, try wisdom.

Black and white thinking is ingrained into us from the moment we step into pre-school. We learn there is a right way to do something, and everything else is wrong. In real-life, there is a wrong way to do something (hint: it’s the one that gets you killed), and everything else is up for grabs. I hear you, “How can we make decisions without rules?” Easy, instead of thinking you need to find rules, why not look for wisdom instead?

You want to know the deep dark truth about why we are addicted to rules? We hate responsibility. Rules mean we get breath a sigh of relief and free ourselves from accountability and, hopefully, consequences. Humanity deals with the universe by saying “I will play by the rules, and you take care of me, in return.” We do this to such an extreme perspective that we choose our leaders according to those who are willing to help us make up rules to follow.

Wisdom and understanding are different from rules, they don’t tell us what to do, they just help us make our own judgements. Throwing away the knowledge and experience of the past is foolish, but clinging to it as some kind of sanctimonious liturgy is also just as asinine. We need to take the education and experience passed down to us as rules, and convert it to wisdom. This means we listen to the voices of the past, but do not constrain ourselves to them.

It is a hard habit to break. Even those who adventure out into the unknown and learn new things tend to come back down from the mountain with a new set of commandments. We don’t stop to think that we just broke the rules, why would we then make new rules? Instead we need to start sharing our knowledge with each other, and our children, with a little more humility. “Here is what I have learned, take it and grow it.” This should be our process, not “Here is what I have learned, follow it.”

Being countercultural by nature, I started my life pretty much rejecting every rule given to me. While this enabled to me to learn a lot, it also caused me a lot of pain. But when faced with the choice, “follow the rules, or keep going” I always kept going. I wish someone had told me, “listen the rules as advice, hear the wisdom, then decide for yourself.” That would have save me a lot of pain, and I still would have been free to adventure and explore.

The dangerous part of rules is that they imply, “this is it, there is no world beyond.” This assumption is nearly impossible for the young to swallow, meaning they rebel until they wear out. When we wear out, we become part of the choir telling others, “follow the rules.” The impossible conflict between rules and exploration is wisdom, and we need cultural shift to move forward.