Happy Monday!
Quick read
Less wrong than before
Daniel Kahneman was once reading a study that directly opposed one of his long-held beliefs.
After he was done reading it, he put the study down, smiled, and said, “That was wonderful. I was wrong.”
When asked why he was so happy to find out he was wrong he responded, “Because it means that now I am less wrong than I was before.”
Visual
Somewhere in Greenland—reader submission
Fact
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft passed Pluto in 2015 within one minute of what NASA originally predicted when they launched it in 2006. Three billion miles, 99.99998% accurate.
This day in history
68 years ago today, on May 17th 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. The historic decision, which brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl who had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.
Tune
Quote
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult." // Seneca
Something to ponder
Death is a part of life, not life’s antithesis.
Honorable Mentions
Words that aren’t quite the same
Personal update
I recently finished reading Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
I wasn’t sure when the day would come, but Factfulness has officially been dethroned as the most important book I’ve ever read (by a very worthy successor).
Humankind was incredibly well-written, thought-provoking, optimism-inducing, and intellectually humbling.
Doing my best Daniel Kahneman impression, I’m smiling knowing that I am now less wrong than I was before.
Until next week,