In these blogs, now and then I write about fallacies. I think that this is important since the way we think has a big impact on the way we behave; on our private behaviour and our public behaviour. Therefore, it is better to avoid mistakes. As for public behaviour, one can think of political decisions and juridical verdicts, for instance. Especially, mistakes in juridical decisions can have dramatic consequences; for example, that an innocent suspect is sentenced to long prison terms, if not to the death penalty. Political decisions can lead to war or peace, so the reasoning that leads to su ..read more

Paved paths, roads and streets, and often unpaved ones as well, lead us where we want to go, from A to B. Some came into existence long ago, sometimes even in prehistory, and later they have become official roads. Other roads are new. Whatever their origin is, roads are ways for directing people. In modern society, they are the trails we are supposed to follow. As Michel de Certeau tells us (p.98): “[A] spatial order organizes an ensemble of possibilities … and interdictions” and roads are part of such a social order. If we leave them, maybe we come on private ground, or we violate some law ..read more

Random quoteIt.is a curious thing that the public always hates its benefactors Ronald Ross(1857-1932 ..read more

Do you have to be an ethnologist to have an eye for the subtleties of daily life and for the subtle and small impact that social change has on daily life and on the way we live? It was the French ethnologist Marc Augé, for instance, who wrote that the names of metro stations in Paris reflect the time that these stations were built. I know that there is a Floppy Disk Road in a nearby Dutch town, and also in this case the name gives an indication about when the road was built. Floppy disks were magnetic disks for storing computer data and programs. They were developed in the 1960s and the prod ..read more

Random quoteWar is sweet to those who haven’t experienced it. Pindaros (c. 518 BC – c. 438 BC ..read more

Kahneman is known for his contributions to psychology and especially to economic psychology. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics for them. However, his work has a wider application. For example, it can be useful for the study of war and peace, as the article “Why Hawks Win” shows, which he has written with Jonathan Reshon. The authors argue that hawks usually get the upper hand over doves, when political decisions must be taken, although often wrongly. In this blog, I’ll follow Kahneman’s and Reshon’s article. Hawks are people who “tend to favour coercive action, are more willing to use ..read more

Random quoteThe opposite of tolerance is not intolerance but fanaticism. Kees Schuyt (1943 ..read more

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive Two weeks ago, the Israelian-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman died. He was one of the most well-known psychologists of this time. He is especially known for his contributions to the theory of rationality. His studies had a deep impact on the development of the field of economic psychology, and therefore he was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Economics. To his mind, he should have shared it with his friend Amos Tversky, but Tversky had already died, when Kahneman received the Nobel Prize. Though some see him as the father of Economic Psychology, h ..read more

Random quote“Pallid” statistical information is routinely discarded when it is incompatible with one’s personal impressions of a case. In the competition with the inside view, the outside view doesn’t stand a chance. Daniel Kahneman (1934-2024 ..read more

Photo taken at Amstel Railway Station, Amsterdam I think that many of us don’t realize how much we owe to others in what we have done and achieved, including to many we don’t know and whose work we do not build on and do not continue. I realized it again, when I was reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics, especially Book II.1, in which he says: “The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but everyone says something true about ..read more