Weekly Items of Interest (April 11 - April 17)

 

1. THE EVOLUTION OF TRUST

Why, even in peacetime, do friends become enemies? And why, even in wartime, do enemies become friends?

2. BETTER DECISIONS THROUGH DIVERSITY

Homogeneous groups, on the other hand, were more confident in their decisions, even though they were more often wrong in their conclusions.

3. THE MAILLARD REACTION: WHY FOOD TASTES SO GOOD

Fresh baked bread, roasted potatoes, seared steak, toasted marshmallows, chocolate, a fresh cup of coffee. What do these foods have in common?

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Maillard reaction products influence the organoleptic properties of food, i.e., the aspects of food that impact sensory experience – taste, sight, smell, and touch. They can also have an impact on nutritional value. 

4. COGNITIVE OVERLOAD

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth.

5. HARVARD STUDENTS ARE COVID SHEEP

For most Harvard undergrads, our lives during Covid aren’t that different from the way they have always been. To get into this university, we chose to detach ourselves from normal human experiences, neglecting our interests, hobbies, robust social lives—anything that couldn’t appear on a college application or be touted in an interview. Almost everything in life was subordinate to whatever was necessary to get into college. Once we arrived on campus, we certainly had more fun than we did in high school, but our tendency to conform hasn’t gone away, especially as we pursue our next goal, whether at Goldman Sachs or in graduate school. There is little difference between mask compliance and the grueling sports practices and marathon study sessions we did in high school. Covid restrictions are simply requirements we tolerate to attain the next credential.

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Our life’s mission has been to please those who can grant or withhold approval: parents, teachers, coaches, admissions officers and job interviewers. As a result, many of us don’t know what we believe or what matters to us.