Rivals without a cause?

Jan K. Woike and Sebastian Hafenbrädl on how 'Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives', in the Journal of Behavioural decision Making

Abstract

"Whether people compete or cooperate with each other has consequences for their own performance and that of organizations. To explain why people compete or cooperate, previous research has focused on two main factors: situational outcome structures and personality types. Here, we propose that—above and beyond these two factors—situational cues, such as the format in which people receive feedback, strongly affect whether they act competitively, cooperatively, or individualistically. Results of a laboratory experiment support our theorizing: After receiving ranking feedback, both students and experienced managers treated group situations with cooperative outcome structures as competitive and were in consequence willing to forgo guaranteed financial gains to pursue a—financially irrelevant—better rank. Conversely, in dilemma situations, feedback based on the joint group outcome led to more cooperation than ranking feedback. Our study contributes to research on competition, cooperation, interdependence theory, forced ranking, and the design of information environments."

(via The Economist)

#labor

The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?

The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, Oxford Martin School (via The Economist)

"Abstract
"We examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation. To assess this, we begin by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 detailed occupations, using a Gaussian process classifier. Based on these estimates, we examine expected impacts of future computerisation on US labour market outcomes, with the primary objective of analysing the number of jobs at risk and the relationship between an occupation’s probability of computerisation, wages and educational attainment. According to our estimates, about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk. We further provide evidence that wages and educational attainment exhibit a strong negative relationship with an occupation’s probability of computerisation."

#labor

From the Office of Franz Kafka

Daniel K. Swire at Contingencies Online.

#happiness #labor

Uncle Morty, The Booky; Everybody, insists Mortimer J. Adler, should go back to reading

Charlotte Curtis at The New York Times

The 1-hour workday

Jeffrey J. McDonnell at Science,

"First thing in the morning is when I'm at my mental best, and when I'm still most in control of my time, so I now use the first hour of my day to write."

Immanuel Kant and his Man-Servant Lampe

On Thomas de Quincey's 1827 essay, The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, at Justin Erik Halldór Smith

(via M. Z Dwyer at The Great Conversation)

Kwame Somburu, Perennial Socialist Candidate, Dies at 81

Sam Roberts' obituary at The New York Times includes that,

"Mr. [Kwame] Somburu evolved from a high school dropout named Paul Boutelle, who sold the Great Books of the Western World series door to door and voted for the straight Republican ticket in 1956, into a public school teacher who adopted the name of a Kenyan tribe and embraced a Trotskyite scientific socialism forged in anti-imperialism and class-conscious black nationalism."

Later mention is made of Mr. Somburu's July 10, 1968 appearance on an episode of Firing Line discussing "The Socialist Workers' Party and American Politics".

A Capitalist Manifesto?

John Chamberain reviewed The Capitalist Manifesto by Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler at The Freeman.

From the Center: Adler on leisure; Hanson on higher education

Recent communications with members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on work and leisure
• Victor Davis Hanson on the state of universities

Here at the weblog, added The New Rambler and The Just Third Way to the sidebar Books and Ideas Blogroll.

From the Center: Adler on labor, Giraldi on literature, new Fellows

Recent communications to members of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas included:

• Mortimer Adler on labor as one of the Great Ideas
• William Giraldi on the love of literature

Here at the weblog, we've moved the just-updated list of the Center's Fellows from the sidebar to a tabbed page, and added Symposium Great Books Institute to the sidebar blogroll.

The saving grace of backyard wilderness

For some, reading is an escape, or part of one, as for Bob Kornegay in the Albany Herald.

"I have often dreamed of a Thoreau-like existence, a Walden Pond lifestyle where my contact with civilization depends solely on the great books on a shelf in some deep-woods cabin; away from what some foolishly call the 'real world.'"

Great books as weighty tomes

Summer Reading! illustrated in the book review section of the The New York Times