Efficiency Illusion
Senseless bureaucracy is often said to belong to the public sector. The private sector, we are told, is driven by efficiency, and such grotesquely mismanaged bureaucracy appears there only rarely,…
The New Untouchables
A few days ago, it happened that a woman of about fifty—an astonishingly empathetic and highly effective phone representative—was proclaimed the corporate equivalent of the old socialist work champions. She…
Aging and Desire
It has been nearly ten years since a study first drew attention by showing that infidelity was more common among people in their sixties than among the young. The finding…
Decline and Promise
On Saturday I took part in a long discussion with Professor Hořejší, the longtime director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics. In a small group, we discussed a range of…
A forthcoming class conflict
Predictions about how many jobs artificial intelligence will eliminate have already become part of everyday life. Hardly a day passes without some new claim about who will no longer be…
Anatomy of Naivety
In his textbook on critical thinking, David Hunter argues that only such an approach can be called reasonable in which I can clearly describe how I arrived at a given…