Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

What do you Think About Machines that Think?

Saying that something is “cutting-edge” is shortcut to implying it represents the most advanced position in a field. The edge, away from the center, is where experiments take place new ideas take form. Using conversation as a technology, Edge.org was founded to invite the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. Each year is marked by a question. For 2015, the question is What do you think about machines that think? Daniel C. Dennet, Philosopher; Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Co-Director, Center for... Read more →

How to Age Gracefully: Stay Weird

After 11 years, CBC Radio's WireTap comes to a close. In his farewell message#, show creator Jonathan Goldstein says: A while ago, we did a radio story that seemed to have stuck with people. We decided to invite listeners down to the CBC and make it into a video. It's all about growing up and how that process never ends. How to Age Gracefully from Andrew Norton on Vimeo Everything changes, some things end to make room for new things: If you're lucky in life you might get to work with people who make you better than you are... Read more →

In Real Life there are Always More than Two Doors

Reality is complex, it rarely offers two choices. We are often called to make decisions with not much to go on. Because our formative years are the most filled with challenges and choices that will impact our future selves as we are in the process of discovering or deciding who we are, it's important we learn to approach questions from multiple sides. Rebecca Stead's new book, Goodbye Stranger -- a novel about friendship, family, love, and the challenges facing middle school youth today -- deals specifically with those challenges through the perspectives of the people who live them. In an... Read more →

How to Get Lucky: 13 Techniques for Discovering and Taking Advantage of Life's Good Breaks

“The quality of a decision cannot be based solely on its outcome,” says Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Fooled by Randomness: uncertainty and luck play a larger role in our outcomes than we think a correlation between two types of events does not imply causation most of us have a poor understanding of statistics and the rare random event small differences in performance and ability can cause very large differences in the rewards or difficulties we obtain in life in general we are very irrational beings and are not very good at understanding the probabilities of everyday events rationally What if... Read more →

Lying is a Cooperative Act: How Good Leaders Learn the Truth

“A lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance,” says Pamela Meyer. “Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.” We are not always willing participants. Master forger and con man Henry Oberlander who was active in the 1930s understood human psychology well. “Everyone is willing to give something for whatever it is they desire the most,” he said. This became famous as “Henry's Rule,” and gives us a view into why deception is so profitable. Research reveals the complexity of lying. Meyer says: On a given day, studies show that you may be lied to... Read more →

Why Two Thirds of Projects Fail: a New Philosophical Lens

Most of us what to have an impact. Whether we think of it as legacy, making a dent in the universe, changing the world, or making things better, we want our lives to matter. How do we go about identifying the best opportunities to make an impact? Since we do expend considerable energy in our job, one ready answer, or perhaps a better question is -- how to we work in such a way that makes an impact? We also know that the reason why simple rules produce better decisions is they are “shortcut strategies that save time and effort... Read more →

Why Simple Rules Produce Better Decisions

“Chains of habits are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” [Warren Buffet] As our world has become more complex, so have our attempts to manage it by trying to predict ahead of time every possible scenario. Little by little, we have gotten into the habit of upping the ante on complexity with more complexity. The habit is felt more strongly inside organizations where regulations and procedures can keep building on top of each other unchecked to unmanageable proportions. The tax code is a good example of this. Instead of trying to cover all... Read more →

John Wooden: The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding

Winning and succeeding are not the same thing. Coach John Wooden talks about his beliefs and the philosophy that shaped his life. He says: “Peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you're capable. I believe that's true. If you make the effort to do the best of which you're capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that's success, and I don't think others can judge that; it's like character and reputation -- Your reputation is what you're perceived to be; your character is... Read more →

Ogilvy on Enjoying our Work

“Cosimo de Medici persuaded Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine sculptor, to enter his service by writing him a letter which concluded, 'Come, I will choke you with gold.'” A quote opening the chapter on jobs in advertising and how to get them in David Ogilvy's classic book On Advertising. The image above is an ad David Ogilvy wrote for Guinness as head of his own agency at 39. To specific and factual descriptions are a very personal, direct, and natural style of storytelling. Each oyster image has its caption and Ogilvy provides rich descriptions formatting them as mini-sagas. Take the Cape... Read more →

The Art of Asking

Can you do me a favor? If we were less relentlessly independent -- a characteristic that the current western culture and environment encourages -- we would find the question less intimidating. With a few exceptions -- for example in a quid pro quo context, or with a family member or friend -- we also hesitate or actively resist asking. We want others “to see us once beautiful and brave,” as poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote. But he preceded it with “perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting,” which means it is how we respond... Read more →