What an Eighth Grader Taught Me About Status ^19.3%

Quillette - By Robert Lynch - 7/6/2026, 11:33 AM

Anecdotal 18.2% - Appeal to Authority 11.6% - Recency Bias 11.4%

I brought a 510-million-year-old trilobite I’d split out of Cambrian shale four hours north of Las Vegas to show a class of eighth graders. I passed it around the room and explained what it was: an ancient arthropod called Bristolia, from the same branch of the tree of life as every insect and crab alive today, that lived in a warm... more