Teens Need a Psychological Moratorium

She remembered psychologist Erik Erickson's exhortation about teenagers: they need a "psychosocial moratorium," he wrote, an environment and a stretch of time in which they can explore different aspects of their personality and try on a series of identities without fear of consequence. In a way, that was what school was supposed to offer, but it didn't always do so with much success. She realized that this was exactly what virtual worlds offered all the time, to anyone with a computer and an ...

 Hedgehogs Do Worse the More Information They Have

Academic experts like the ones that Tetlock studied can suffer from the same problem. In fact, a little knowledge may be a dangerous thing in the hands of a hedgehog with a Ph.D. One of Tetlock’s more remarkable findings is that, while foxes tend to get better at forecasting with experience, the opposite is true of hedgehogs: their performance tends to worsen as they pick up additional credentials. Tetlock believes the more facts hedgehogs have at their command, the more opportunities they ...