28th Selected Links

Happy weekend! And to my American friends: Happy Fourth of July weekend! Here are some links to things I've been reading that you might also enjoy:

1. 'On Becoming American', a 2005 The Atlantic article by Chris Hitchens.

2. Federalist No. 10, by James Madison. I never cease to be impressed by how intuitive the Founding Fathers were as psychologists. Here's one of the killer quotes from No. 10: "So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts."

3. 'Social categorization and intergroup behaviour', the classic 1971 paper by Henri Tajfel, M. G. Billig and R. P. Bundy.

4. On the Certainty of the Bayesian Fortune-Teller.

5. 'How Lin-Manuel Miranda taught liberals to love Alexander Hamilton', a Vox article by Matt Yglesias.

6. 'The piranha problem in social psychology / behavioral economics: The “take a pill” model of science eats itself', a blog post by the great Andrew Gelman.

7. 'The Myth of the Myth of the Lone Genius', a blog article by Roger's Bacon that makes a similar point to one I made in my podcast with Matt Ridley about the utility of the myth of the lone genius. Namely, even if innovation doesn't happen in isolation, we probably still want budding entrepreneurs to believe in the 'Great Man or Woman' view of the history of innovation.

Have a great weekend,

Joe