Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

The stock market has an insidious effect on C.E.O.s' moods, because of its impact not just on their companies but on their own bank accounts.

Congressional Republicans themselves have vehemently defended the idea that preexisting conditions should not be used to deny people insurance.

I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.

In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.

In conditions of uncertainty, humans, like other animals, herd together for protection.