Minimizing Distractions

David Epstein, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of ​The Sports Gene​ and ​Range​, has a new book out called ​Inside the Box​. As with all of Epstein’s books, I really enjoyed it. He’s one of the best storytellers currently working in idea writing. There was one chapter in particular, however, that captured my attention as being uniquely well-suited to the themes we discuss here. It focused on the ideas of a somewhat eccentric physicist-turned-management guru named Eliyahu Goldratt, who in the 1980s popularized a framework for understanding industrial productivity that he dubbed the “theory of constraints.” Here’s how a non-profit established to promote Gol…

If you’ve been following technology news recently, you’ve probably noticed a sudden increase in references to a 19th-century economics theory called the ​Jevons Paradox​, which is named for the neoclassical economist William Stanley Jevons, and captures the observation that increasing the efficiency of a resource can lead to greater consumption. Jevons first articulated this idea in an 1865 book, pithily titled, ​The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines​. He argued that building more efficient steam engines – ones that required less fuel to generate the same power – would not solve the problem o…

“Something is up in academic research,” ​write​ the members of an AI Task Force convened by the journal Organization Science. As they go on to elaborate: “If you are an editor or reviewer at a journal these days, you probably already know this. The manuscripts are arriving in greater volume, with a particular feel that is hard to pin down. On the surface, the papers look the same as ever, but the writing feels weightless in a way that rarely describes academic writing…you find yourself scratching your head at the meaning the words are trying to convey.” The culprit? The task force crunched the numbers and produced a clear answer. Starting in 2023, after ChatGPT be…

The second chapter of Genesis poetically describes the beginning of the human story. “The Lord formed Adam from the dust of the earth,” it reads. “He blew into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.” There are different ways to translate the Hebrew term rendered here as “living being.” Onkelos, a Roman nobleman turned Torah scholar, interpreted it to mean “speaking spirit” (in Aramaic: ruach memalela). As Rabbi Shai Held elaborates in the second volume of ​The Heart of the Torah​, Onkelos’s translation implies that “speech is constitutive of what it means to be a human – a core part of our humanity is our ability to communicate with words.” …