Tag Archives: wisdom

How Dangerous is being Wise?

  • Wisdom – the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight. ~ Dictionary.com
  • Insight -an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing, esp. through intuitive understanding ~ Dictionary.com

If I create a tool that gives us practice at exhibiting wisdom how dangerous could this be?

  • Dan Ariely in the following talk exposed the possible danger of using our intuition. I found this talk very interesting and his work on cheating 4 and a half minutes in caused me to tweak some practical aspects of my design for Kahatika.
  • It is well worth watching in it’s entirety but if you are running short of time he tells of his personal pain due to intuition in his opening statements and sums up on the danger of using intuition 14 minutes into the talk.
  • Exercising Wisdom

    I have found much to my dismay that if I stop exercising my muscles I get weaker and less capable of doing the physical things I used to do.

    The opportunity to do physical exercise outside of the time I spend swapping my time for money is getting greater and greater. There are no end of things being invented to make physical exercise more convenient, exciting and fun. With participation undoubtedly they would make me stronger, yet I am less physically fit than I have ever been.

    In days gone by I worked on Farms, building, mowing lawns doing all manner of physical activity. I was fit, happy and healthy. I now work in an office in front of a computer getting fatter and less healthy.

    My switch from physical work to more sedentary work shows me the value and need of practicing the physical.

    I’ve been wondering if the same principle applies to Wisdom.

    Are the systems we implement in business and society taking away the necessity to practice wisdom and thereby making us less wise?

    Barry Schwartz gives a TED talk where he gives examples of systems creating barriers to the practice of Wisdom.

    Perhaps we need to be designing systems which promote the practice of wisdom. With practice, perhaps we can turn the tide on what is seemingly a collective loss in this area.
    Along side our fight against obesity, should we be fighting against this loss? If so, what are the new set of tools to help us with this fight. Kahatika?

    Update: Barry has released a little more on the subject. Still no definitive answer to how to ensure more practical wisdom. He does touch on changing the system though.
    This is what Kahatika does.