Howdy! Welcome to this week's digest. This is a very special "Scattered Showers" edition, because we touch a lot of different areas.


Source: Giphy
This week's topics include decision-making heuristics, the benefits of nature, difficulties with scientific consensus, the concept of relational equality, and re-visiting classic movies. Enjoy!

• TWEET STORM - Some heuristics to make decisions by Shane Parrish
• ARTICLE - National Geographic: This Is Your Brain on Nature by Florence Williams
• ARTICLE - Scientific American: Why the Most Important Idea in Behavioral Decision-Making Is a Fallacy by David Gal
• ARTICLE - Aeon: The respect deficit by Richard Reeves
• MOVIE - Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino

• 8. Look for win-win decisions. If someone absolutely has to lose, you’re likely not thinking hard enough or you need to make structural/environmental changes.
   
• 10. The rule of 5. Think about what the decision looks like 5 days, 5 weeks, 5 months, 5 years, 5 decades.
   
• 12. Avoid things the best version of yourself will regret.
   
• 15. If you’re outside your circle of competence and still have to make a decision, ask experts HOW they would make the same decision not WHAT they would decide.
   
• 16. Lean into (not away from) what’s making you uncomfortable.
   
• 20. Too much information increases confidence not accuracy.
   
• 23. Some warnings signs that increase the likelihood of stupidity are (environment, the pace of change, rushing, physically tired, hyper-focus, authority, consensus-seeking behavior).

• The three-day effect is a kind of cleaning of the mental windshield that occurs when we’ve been immersed in nature long enough... “On the third day my senses recalibrate—I smell things and hear things I didn’t before."... [David] Strayer’s hypothesis is that being in nature allows the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s command center, to dial down and rest, like an overused muscle.
   
• What he and other researchers suspect is that nature works primarily by lowering stress... Measurements of stress hormones, respiration, heart rate, and sweating suggest that short doses of nature—or even pictures of the natural world—can calm people down and sharpen their performance.
   
• A 40- to 50-minute walk seems to be enough for physiological changes and mood changes and probably for attention,” says Kalevi Korpela, a professor of psychology at the University of Tampere. He has helped design a half dozen “power trails” that encourage walking, mindfulness, and reflection. Signs on them say things like, “Squat down and touch a plant.”
   
• “Imagine a therapy that had no known side effects, was readily available, and could improve your cognitive functioning at zero cost,” the researchers wrote in their paper. It exists, they continued, and it’s called “interacting with nature.”

• If what I am claiming is true, why has belief in loss aversion persisted so strongly? An idealized view of science is that theories are accepted or rejected based solely on empirical evidence. In fact, science is not simply an objective search for truth, but also a social process, in which proponents of a theory must convince other scientists, through logic and argumentation, of how evidence should be interpreted. However, this process advantages incumbent theories over challengers for a number of reasons, including confirmation bias, social proof, ideological complacency, and the vested interests of scientists whose reputations and even sense of self are tied to existing theories.
   
• In the case of loss aversion, contradictory evidence has tended to be dismissed, ignored or explained away, while ambiguous evidence has tended to be interpreted in line with loss aversion.
   
• In sum, our critical review of loss aversion highlights that, even in contemporary times, wrong ideas can persist for a long time despite contrary evidence, and therefore, that there is a need to critically assess accepted beliefs and to be wary of institutional consensus in science and otherwise.

• ...there is a much deeper kind of inequality, caused not by a lack of resources, but by a lack of respect. You might be much richer or poorer than I am. But if we treat each other with mutual respect, we are, relationally speaking, equal.
   
• Self-respect and mutual respect are tightly intertwined. If others do not respect me, it is hard to respect myself; and vice versa.
   
• While the three variants of equality – basic, material and relational – are distinct, they often reinforce each other. Relational equality is usually a necessary precursor, for example, to laws ensuring equal rights.
   
• But redistribution can also undermine relational equality, by inducing dependency or encouraging paternalistic attitudes towards the poor. This risk can be heightened not only by the fact of state support, but by the way it is provided. A policy might lessen income poverty but increase stigma or alienation... Policies designed to lessen resource inequality have to be designed and implemented in ways that are sensitive to their potential impact on respect, and therefore on relational equality.
   
• Life in a meritocracy is psychologically comfortable for those who possess whatever particular kind of merit is valued. But it is hard for those who do not... when everyone can, at least in theory, be a CEO or a president or rich, your failure to do so must be your own fault... The loss of self-respect among some of meritocracy’s losers is accompanied and amplified by a loss of respect between classes – the winners and losers – too. Those who are economically productive and successful often do not see a broken labour market, which, after all, continues to work for them. They see broken people, making bad choices, who are less worthy of respect. Or they might simply be unable to imagine themselves in their shoes. The economic gap becomes an empathy gap, which becomes a respect gap.

• That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.
   
• There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you." Now... I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, that meant your ass. You'd be dead right now. I never gave much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. See, now I'm thinking: maybe it means you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here... he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could mean you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. And I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
   
• The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.

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