Recent Links

Links as threatened. 

 Venn Diagrams get messy quickly. The purpose is to visually represent the relationships clearly. After four it doesn't look very clear and doesn't help much, however accurate it might be.  Of course, there may be those who still find them useful at higher numbers, and good on 'em.

Low Elite Fertility contributed to Roman instability You can't have a hereditary monarchy if the monarchs don't have children

 The Outliers by Joseph Heath.  Progress comes from both our sociability and our unsociability in tension. 

 Kant went on to claim, somewhat provocatively, that the tension between these two aspects of our nature is responsible for the progress that can be observed in human society. Without the “unsociable” aspect of our nature, we would sink too easily into complacency and stasis, but without the “sociable” aspect we would be unable to realize any of the benefits that come from the occasional disruptive insight.

 Ex-climate-activist Lucy Biggers goes back and watches "An Inconvenient Truth."

Fouling when up three.  This is an example of people not understanding that successive reasonable probabilities quickly become unreasonable.  A 7-in-10 chance is good, but if it is combined with a second 7-in-10 chance it drops to 50-50 (0.7 x 0.7 = 0.49), and a third one brings you down to about a 1-in-3 chance. (0.343) Tiago Splitter gets it.