The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Title: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Writer: Nassim Nicholas Taleb Year of publication: 2007 Review: In this book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb attacks simplistic prediction-making prevalent in science, financial markets and everyday life by introducing the concept of black swans. Black swans are unpredictable events with severe consequences which we tend to
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How Ayaan is a black sheep in both social justice warriors’ and traditional Islamists’ eyes
On Tuesday 13th of October, the Room for Discussion Podcast welcomed Ayaan Hirsi Ali: a feminist, activist, author, scholar and former Dutch politician. This interviewee was born in Somalia but immigrated to the Netherlands in 1992 at the age of 23 in order to escape an arranged marriage. After receiving refugee status, she fought her
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As the panic wanes, many are becoming critical of the strict restrictions governments imposed this spring to slow the spread of coronavirus. It has become clear that lockdowns are not a feasible solution to save lives in the long term: drastically reduced economic and other activity also kills. From mental health damage resulting from isolation
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Title: Doughnut Economics Writer: Kate Raworth Year of publication: 2017 Review: In this book, Oxford economist Kate Raworth introduces an economic model that revisits the mainstream economic thinking and accounts for planetary and societal boundaries of development. The author argues that limitless economic growth is unsustainable and that policymakers’ priorities should be altered in the
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Social media has been overwhelmed with photos of beautiful animals appearing at scenes usually known as crowded by humans. From dolphins swimming around the canals in Venice to drunken elephants in China enjoying nature finally left to them, these photos have been enthusiastically shared online. Just to turn out that most are fake. This has
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The COVID-19 virus is putting pressure on even the most liberal governments to restrict freedoms guaranteed to their citizens. From closing the European Union borders to imposing local lockdowns, the world as we know it has altered significantly. Wherever you are at the moment, it is most likely your home. But what if there is
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Millions of tons of plastic became dislocated when China closed its borders to the imports of developed countries’ waste in 2018. As the country had been storing the imported plastic waste on its land for decades, global waste management was severely turned around with this ban. Two-thirds of global plastic waste that used to be
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Work hard, play hard – you hear it all the time. You know that if you want to achieve something great, you will need to spend numerous hours focusing on achieving that goal. But how hard is hard enough? When are you allowed to “play hard” without feeling guilty? Depends on where you ask. East
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On the 7th of May, the Room for Discussion hosted an interview with Mark van Baal, the founder of Follow This. Follow This is a group of responsible shareholders in oil and gas companies who push for action against climate change. They choose to fight against the anthropogenic climate change by putting on the companies’
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Microfinance in the form of microcredits was born in the 1970s. The original idea of its founder and Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus was to provide the poor in less developed countries with an opportunity to take small loans of, for instance, $20. This money is given to people who lack access to conventional banks
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