MINUTES of a MONDAY #87
#minutesofamonday
🎧 AUDIO VERSION 👇🏼
BRAIN FOOD > Game Theory
“McNamara was a statistician who believed what couldn’t be measured didn’t matter. He charted progress in the Vietnam war by body count, because it was simple to measure. It was his way of keeping score. But his focus on what could be easily measured led him to overlook what couldn’t: negative public opinion of the US Army both at home and in Vietnam, which deflated US morale while boosting enemy conscription. In the end, the US was forced to withdraw from the war, despite winning the battle of bodies, because it had lost the battle of hearts and minds.
Thus, the McNamara fallacy, as it came to be known, refers to our tendency to focus on the most quantifiable measures, even if doing so leads us from our actual goals. Put simply, we try to measure what we value, but end up valuing what we measure. And what we measure is rarely what we mean to value.”
Extract from Why Everything is Becoming a Game by
SOUL FOOD
“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
LOL
Andrew Schulz on a practical considertion if China was to invade Taiwan:
APPENDIX
“There is a popular notion that artists work from inspiration - that there is some strike or bolt or bubling up of creative mojo from who knows where... but I hope [my work] makes clear that waiting for inspiration to strike is a terrible, terrible plan. In fact, perhaps the single best piece of advice I can offer to anyone trying to do creative work is to ignore inspiration.”
Masson Currey (who spent half a decade cataloging the habits of famous thinkers and writers).
A.O.B.
That’s it for this week. I appreciate you checking in.
As always, I hope there was something in there for you to take into your week.
Mind how you go out there - Niall.