"If we both agreed on everything, one of us isn’t necessary" + What I’m reading (and hearing)

Those who make decisions based only on experience make poor decisions, just as do those who rely only on book smarts. You need both. It’s a sliding scale. Slide too much one way and you won’t solve problems at the other end of the slider.

 

That’s why concepts like “consensus” and “compromise” are so important: They keep the slider more or less in the middle, where most problems get solved.

 

As my Grandma Cairns (née Bauer) used to say, “If we both agreed on everything, one of us isn’t necessary.”

(Of course, we often pretend to compromise by making a meaningless concession, or convincing the other side they got what they wanted. There is a whole business subculture devoted to negotiating skills, which pretend to encompass some measure of fairness but in reality only advance one side’s interest. I’m not making any judgment on the ethics of that; it’s just an observation. Business is partly about migrating one company’s revenue stream to another.)

[2013-08-06]

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What I’m reading (or listening to):

Davis A Young, Good News for Science: Why Scientific Minds Need God

Bart Ehrman: Did Jesus Really Exist?

John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality

Karen Armstrong, Islam - A Short History

Mike Aquilina, A Year With The Church Fathers - Patristic Wisdom for Daily Living

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