Karlgaard and Hagal on Zero-Sum Thinking

John Hagal blogs on a Forbes article by Rich Karlgaard on zero-sum thinking. Karlgaard calls it the world's worst disease, and Hagel agrees, and just adds a few more examples of the problems it causes.

I was interested this because, as I have mentioned earlier, I think that our brains often employ a heuristic of conceptualising things as zero-sums, which also often happens to be problematic.

Karlgaard explains how politicians, economists, journalists, environmentalists and others are captives to false zero-sum thinking. Hagal adds that it's a serious problem with business leaders.

Their consideration of zero-sums is limited to cases involving the conceptualisation of power (social, political) and resources.

Sadly, I thought the Forbes article was bit shallow. To me it seemed the talk about zero-sums was used, towards the end of the article, as a cheap way to push the authors beliefs, without providing any adequate justification for them.