The Decade's Counterintuitive Ideas

In case you haven't noticed, I like ideas you have to think twice about (there are too many examples to link, so just click on random post under Subscribe and you have a pretty good chance of coming across one). New York magazine recently collected a list of ideas from the last 10 years that may blow your mind, here are the highlights:

1. Amateurs are better than experts.
2. Boys are the biggest victims of sex discrimination.
3. Hard work is more important than intelligence for success.
4. Breast-feeding's benefits are more correlation and causation.
5. Car seats are less safe than just a seatbelt.
6. Global cultural homogenization is good.
7. Drug dealers don’t make more money than the working poor
8. Gay marriage is good for Conservatism.
9. New Orleans shouldn't be rebuilt.
10. Obesity is not an epidemic, but America's obsession with it is.

This is just the top 10, the rest are worth looking into as well. As usual, this was shown to me by the internet's great hunter-gatherer, Tyler Cowen.