Timothy Snyder is a well know historian of World War II and Eastern Europe. He is best known for his Bloodlands. More recently, his On Tyranny proved to be widely popular. On Tyranny was written for a wider audience and provided a demand for his analysis of recent democratic backsliding experienced by the US under…
I just finished reading The Whole-Brain Child, a book that offers 12 strategies for new (and old) parents. The motto of the book is to help parents not just survive but also thrive. It is obviously important to enjoy being a parent; our kids after all will move out some day, which means that we…
Cardinal is the second highest office in the Catholic Church, second only to the pope himself. Generally speaking, cardinals have two main tasks in addition to being regular bishops – every cardinal is a bishop but not every bishop is a cardinal – they the pope and then advise him. At any given time there…
What criteria should be used to evaluate decisions? This is probably one of the most consequential and counterintuitive points raised by Daniel Kahneman in his excellent Thinking, Fast and Slow. We are basically faced with a choice of judging decisions based on the outcomes they produce, or alternatively, we can evaluate the process that leads…
In a recent interview, Metropolitan of Krakow Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski raised many fundamental issues. For some time now, the Polish media has been using imprecise concepts that in turn hinder the correct assessment of the political situation in the county. First, PiS (the ruling Law and Justice party) tends to be identified with the Catholic…
Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan is an excellent read about unpredictability, risk, forecasting, and falsification. A black swan is an event with three distinct characteristics: 1) it is unexpected, 2) its impact is profound, and 3) we explain its occurrence too readily (and incorrectly) by invoking hindsight bias. Examples of black swans include 9/11 attacks,…
Before the World Cup in Russia, Poland was ranked #8 by FIFA international standings and was one of the favorites to advance deep into the tournament. Other teams in Group H were ranked much lower: Columbia #16, Senegal #27, and Japan #61. Poland, however, lost its first two games, and thus effectively ended its participation…