Recently I had dinner with my friend Linda Kaplan Thaler, the advertising executive who invented the AFLAC duck. Linda told me a story about her son, Michael, who is a highly skilled chess player. When he was six years old, he was competing in the finals of a national chess championship, and his opponent made the winning move, but he didn’t hit his clock, which was required for the move to count. Michael looked at his opponent, and said, “You didn’t hit your clock.” The opponent hit the clock, and Michael lost the match. Afterward, Linda said, “Michael, if you hadn’t told him to hit the clock,
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