The Evidence is In

And when was the last time human beings collectively made some big, important choices on the basis of clear and compelling evidence?

Plenty (most?) people who have a heart attack can’t or won’t make the lifestyle adjustments required to reduce their risk going forward.

We’ve seen that video is nearly as good as in person for many applications (and there’s no jet lag). We’ve seen the planet take an unmistakable deep breath, and how quickly nature can noticeably rebound when given some space and time to recover. We’ve seen (again) that over-leverage and illiquidity can really, really hurt when the (inevitable, unpredictable) crisis comes.

We could wait for Rational Man, or Economic Man, or even just Powerful Man, to act on the evidence, but that’s like asking the entire planet to stop smoking.

Or, we could get a little more mindful about what the evidence might mean for us, and consider how to adjust our life- and workstyles accordingly.

And we might want to focus on making it cool. After all, smoking didn’t plummet because of the evidence, but because some people, persuaded by the evidence, worked really hard to make it uncool and inconvenient.