I had this idea to write a book that enumerates and explains all the concepts that I think the general population should know (and often see people not know). It would span all disciplines from finance (how interest rates work), chemistry (the difference between an acid and a base), psychology (selection bias and other kinds of fallacies), history (for example, the history of the conflict in the Middle East), etc.

I thought that with just a little bit of the basics that probably a significant fraction of the population doesn’t have, they will be able to avoid making bad decisions in life, avoid some of the conflicts that stem from ignorance, and maybe even communicate better.

Then I realized the futility of this endeavor — the people who will pick up such a book are most likely the people who already know these things. They are not the people who I need to reach out to — because in a twisted application of selection bias, if you read books with a goal to allow you to make better decisions and communicate better, you probably already know these basics.

There again, I may still write that book.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 08:03 and is filed under funny, human nature, reductions, retrospective, things everyone should do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.