Latest thinking

The value trinity

Comment

09 Apr 2010

Matthew Taylor’s third annual lecture as chief executive of the RSA was titled Left Brain, Right Brain. While the left and right alluded to political viewpoints and the focus was on public policymaking, the title would have worked if referring to business decision-making, a discipline which is overly left-brain oriented and heavily focused on analysis.

RSA Animate - Drive

Comment

08 Apr 2010

Daniel Pink provides concrete examples of how intrinsic motivation functions both at home and in the workplace. View a video of Dan Pink's talk at the RSA that inspired this animation. Download a transcript of this video (pdf).

Empathic enlightenment

Blog

16 Mar 2010

Matthew Taylor

One of the privileges of my job is that I get regularly to chair lectures. Over time you start to notice patterns, albeit pretty obvious ones. Technology related events tend to attract younger people while lectures with more of a focus on manufacturing or business are a bit older. Ministers and shadow ministers are more likely to attract senior people from public and third sector organisations.

An enlightened view of altruism

Comment

15 Mar 2010

Fireman dashes into burning house to rescue small child. But why? What is the impulse to risk all for the sake of another, the phenomenon Auguste Comte named "altruism"? The watching crowd may applaud such selfless bravery, but not so the man with a clipboard who has "Health and Safety" inscribed on the back of his orange fluorescent jacket. John 15:13 is no part of his creed - "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." In any strictly utilitarian or consequentialist philosophy, altruism makes no sense. If we don't step in and stop it, who knows who may sue?

The 'don't trust the boss' gene?

Blog

11 Mar 2010

Matthew Taylor

Another in my series ‘pop evolutionary psychology for scientific imbeciles’. Or as someone put it to me the other day ’the charming thing about your blog, Matthew, is that while other people use theirs to display their knowledge, you use yours to parade your ignorance’.

Eureka!

Blog

04 Mar 2010

Matthew Taylor

As many current and former colleagues will confirm, it is a dangerous business presenting me with emerging research findings. Always eager to discover something newsworthy, and better at big concepts than methodological detail, I am prone to seize on tentative findings and turn them into a massive breakthrough in human understanding. 

Is free will just an illusion?

Comment

03 Mar 2010

Daily life is full of choices: when to get up, what to have for breakfast, whether to walk or take the bus, which item to tackle on the ‘to do’ list. It can, at times, seem overwhelming to be constantly required to choose between competing options. On top of this there may be a worry about whether we made the right decisions. But what if all this agonising and reflection was in vain, and the choices had already been made for us? What if our sense of deciding on a given outcome was entirely illusory? Such is the advertised finding of a famous set of experiments carried out in 1983 by neuroscientist, Benjamin Libet.<!--more-->

Citizenship politics - part 3

Blog

23 Feb 2010

Matthew Taylor

I fear readers will approach the final instalment of my three-parter on citizenship politics with all the enthusiasm of a vegan starting work placement in a steak pie factory. I had my doubts as to both the intellectual and entertainment value of these posts and as the comments have dried up (not that I’m not enormously grateful for those who have posted) my worst fears have been confirmed. Tomorrow I will gather up the pieces of my shattered self esteem and return to more palatable fare; some jokes about dogs perhaps?

Citizenship politics - part 2

Blog

22 Feb 2010

Matthew Taylor

I am grateful for the constructive comments on my citizenship politics post, although I fear I’m a long way still from getting the idea more widely discussed. Today and tomorrow I want to explore the idea a bit more, including confronting its most obvious problems.