Best of Koenfucius 2024
Which of the 51 essays I published during the year just gone attracted the most readers?
1. The power of the complement
on a tactic to calculate probabilities that has two remarkable additional uses.
Bonus #1
1bis. One bias to rule them all?
(Unlike all the other posts, which were published also on Medium and Wordpress, this one was only published here on Substack, and ended up being the most read essay here.)
Maybe we don't need dozens of biases to explain our behaviour, and just a single bias and six beliefs might be enough…
2. Is right and wrong a matter of facts?
Can we genuinely make moral decisions purely based on facts and logic, or are personal preferences and subjectivity inevitably part of our moral compass...?
3. Voting as decision making
Exploring how casting our ballot is a remarkable showcase of how we make decisions in general.
4. A good argument
On how a capacity for reasoning, evolved primarily to persuade others, can certainly also be used to acquire new knowledge and insights if we so wish.
5. A strange yardstick
On how money is often, incorrectly, seen as an objective measure (like kilos or metres) of value, simply because it can be expressed as a number.
6. An uncompromising compromise
On how a signal of a strong moral backbone can become a one of dogmatic intransigence.
7. Insane choices
On why, when others do something we don't comprehend, it is not they who have a comprehension problem.
8. Don't confuse the facts with the truth
On why we should not mistake our interpretation of what we observe with the objective, unequivocal truth.
9. Rationality is bullshit-part 1
On how the notion of rationality is so hard to nail down that we might as well give up.
10. The asymmetry of importance
On how, if someone is important to us, we are not necessarily equally important to them.
I’m having a little trouble accessing the last article “Asymmetry of importance”. The link goes to a private page.
Thank you very much.