In the 1700s, prior to copyright laws, piracy was a respectable business. “Take a book that is selling well, reprint it…then haul in the profit.” But pirating literature was also a risky enterprise; if it is printed and sold too late, it was unlikely that your pirated copies would sell well. Even so, it was a risk that businessmen like Frédéric-Samuel Ostervald were willing to take, especially when Voltaire himself encouraged piracy of his work. Read full article here
Education
Overcoming Bias
Kai Cheng’s professor had a brilliant scheme. In his first lecture, he promised that each lecture would feature a “Lie of the Day”. But why? It made his students more attentive and analytical, poring over every detail of his lecture and making sense of why things were true. It was such a powerful teaching method that his students digested his most technical lectures quite easily because they tried so hard to catch his lie. The kicker? There was no lie in that first lecture; he had lied about that too! Read full article here
Merv
August 17, 2022
