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Guest Thinkers —

The Nature of Bravery

“The intuitive view is that the only thing that really determines whether an act is brave is whether you think the right path is the treacherous one, and take it anyway.”
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“The exalted status of the Medal of Honor serves as a curious test case for our collective intuitions about bravery. And it turns out the intuition above is a confused one. The view that the Medal is something you get by being a brave soldier, and that bravery is a state of mind, has led veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq war to wonder why they have won only seven Medals—one every year and a half, compared to one every few weeks in Vietnam and one every few days in the Second World War.”

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