Vindication

And here I genuinely thought I was mailing in that last blog post.

I just wrote it a day early!

Genuinely not caring about pressure is perhaps what gives kids the upper hand in poker play:

But really, we don’t know what making $400,000 or losing $800,000 means, because we don’t have families or whatever. This blind spot gives us the freedom to always make the right move, regardless of the amount at stake, because our judgment isn’t clouded by any possible ramifications.”

That’s from the NYT.

And here’s Tyler Cowen on professionals vs amateurs. It’s hard to excerpt his short post:

Amateurism is splendid when amateurs actually can make contributions.  A lot of the Industrial Revolution was driven by the inventions of so-called amateurs.

In fields where risk is high and barriers to entry are relatively low, amateurs will dominate.

Here’s an awesome bit on politicians:

Policymakers need more of a sheer willingness to do the right thing, even if it means sacrificing reelection [depends also on knowing what the right thing is -DW].  Selection mechanisms, however, do not much favor that bravery.  For a sane, well-adjusted person, the job is neither fun nor well-paying, so the job attracts people who love being in office and thus who fail to do the right thing.

Suitability for any given job is, at best, evaluated on messy proxies for future performance. For many jobs, selection criteria have a zero (or even negative!) correlation to expected performance.

Often it is silly to fume about poor performance without evaluating the selection process.

Maybe you’re getting exactly what you asked for?