According to evolutionary theory, emotions evolved because they were helpful for survival. Anxiety alerts us to potential danger and makes us wary. Anger motivates us to fight and shows our allies that we need help. Jealousy motivates us to keep our mates to ourselves to help maximize the number of our offspring that survive to child-bearing age. But the environment we live in today is obviously very different from the environment of our distant ancestors for whom these emotions were optimized. ...
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Author: Spencer
Do We Really Read Non-fiction to Learn?
When you ask people why they read non-fiction, they are likely to tell you that their primary motivation is to learn. But are people's behaviors really consistent with this being their motivation? Almost all of the information that we read is already forgotten days after having read it, and most of what remains is forgotten after months. Even those facts or ideas that are particularly interesting or useful to us are forgotten the significant majority of the time, or at least, only partially reme...
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Welcome!
Thanks for coming to my site! I'm Spencer, a mathematician and entrepreneur. This is where I write thoughts about decision-making, rationality, psychology, behavior change, education, philosophy, science, and other subjects that I enjoy thinking about. I especially love exploring topics like "How can we modify our expectations to be happier?", "Why do smart, knowledgable people disagree so often?", and "How can we become more rational decision makers?" This site has more than 60 of my essays. I ...
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