Here's my list of difficult truths that are part of being human. We can: A. Lie to ourselves about them, B. Avoid thinking about them, or C. Try to accept the parts we can't change and change what we can. If you're in camps A or B, don't read this post! Here are Thirteen Difficult Truths: 1. Irrationality - we humans are not rational, despite the fact that most o...

1. How much dogs love us. There is no way we've been good enough boys/girls/humans to deserve this. 2. Popcorn. It's freakily amazing that corn kernels turn into this stuff. And as a bonus, it's delicious. 3. That humans, working together, eradicated the last wild strain of smallpox in the 1970s. This was a mind-blowingly huge win for our species. It had plagued us since ~3rd...

A. FOCUS 1. Attention: focus on every detail of the experience much more intently than normal. Ex: with each bite, notice as much as you can about the flavor and texture Ex: try to hear every distinct instrument in the music as it comes in and fades out 2. Savoring: try to extend and enhance enjoyable moments by using "metacognition" - become aware of how muc...

It's popular to read interviews and books with advice from highly successful people. But is their advice good advice? Perhaps it works for their situation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it generalizes to other circumstances. Maybe they are just overfitting to their personal life experience. Perhaps they are attributing too much of their success to the actions they happened to take rather than...

If you study depression and anxiety (in the U.S.), you find that they are correlated to a shockingly high degree (e.g., in one of my studies, when I correlated PHQ-9 depression scale scores with GAD-7 anxiety scale scores, I found that r = 0.82 ). Additionally, many studies have found that SSRIs (and other medications) help people with both depression and anxiety, as do cer...

When people learn just a little about game theory, decision theory, economics, or even evolutionary theory, they sometimes come away thinking that altruism is somehow “irrational” or that rational agents are selfish. Here are a number of reasons why altruism is often rational: I. People can value altruism for its own sake: 1. Intrinsic values: as a psychological fact, most humans int...

A surprisingly large number of unsettled questions in philosophy arise from the difficulty of meshing: A. our theoretical understanding of what things are "really" like (physics, atoms, etc.) with B. our direct, first-hand experiences as humans. Examples: (1) Ethics - most people experience a visceral feeling that some things are inherently and universally morally wrong (e.g.,...

We’ve all heard that you should take time to “process your emotions” and not “repress them.” But after a bad event occurs, what exactly does it MEAN to process your emotions? I think that, ideally, it involves a mix of these components: (1) Noticing: paying close attention to your negative thoughts instead of pushing them away or trying to ignore the bad feelings. What are the EXACT words...

The "reciprocation problem": a mathematical tragedy in relationships regarding how often people should ask each other to hang out The Setup Person X and person Y are friends (or lovers or close work colleagues or whatever). Person X and Person Y happen to both feel the same way about each other (i.e., equal amounts of interest, affection, lust, respect, etc.)Person X's ideal is to make plan...

Written: November 28, 2020 | Released: September 3, 2021 When we're given a request, there is generally a deeper intention underneath it. If we get curious for a moment and think/inquire about why the request is being made, we can often provide more value. Example 1: Relationship Romantic partner: I'd prefer it if you respond to my text messages faster. Normal answer:&nbs...