71–75 of 75 posts
If I can recommend anything in this area, it would be the book "Art of action" by Stephen Bungay. It examines in quite a lot of detail how the military has "solved" the problem of having to make decisions without perfect information, and how you can improve the structure of your decision-making process when you find you are getting bogged down in process and bureaucracy.
I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to see why some people ove…
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To add to this: - Look before you leap. - Measure twice, cut once. - Stay silent and have people think you're a fool, open your mouth and confirm it. I'm sure there are many more common idioms pointing towards the idea of "think before you act".
Where I'm from we have similar sayings: - Don't dive head first into water. - Measure nine times, cut once. And a random saying I just remembered: "Autumn has the eyes of a summer and the teeth of a wolf." Edit:formatting
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Where I'm from we have similar sayings: - Don't dive head first into water. - Measure nine times, cut once. And a random saying I just remembered: "Autumn has the eyes of a summer and the teeth of a wolf." Edit:formatting
Err. What does that last one mean?
- being late (acting in "autumn") ...looks/feels similar to
- being on time (seizing the moment at the right point, in "summer")
...but has a nasty bite?
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> I'm so astonished that we are so careful not to overthink, to the point we accept "you're overthinking it" as a valid excuse to disregard rare risks. Very good point. > But we don't have the same cultural concern against underthinking. I have never heard someone telling their employee or friend "you're underthinking this". Surely overthinking is bad, but when underthinking can be severely dangerous, it's easy to se…
In America, if there's no law against it you can do it. In France, if there's no law allowing it, you can't do it.
Article V of the French constitution:
> The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.
Given that the US constitution was greatly influenced by the French one, and given France's influence and substantial aid in helping to establish the USA as an independent country it's hard for me to imagine how anyone could believe this, unless they were completely unaware of both French and American history and culture.