There are certain roles in society that come with special training, powers, and responsibilities. For instance: doctors (can prescribe medicine), lawyers (client-attorney privilege), judges (can bindingly interpret law), etc. Here's my list of some weird but potentially really valuable roles in society that don't exist but maybe should: Role 1: Truth Teller They wear a special, very ...

Many of the biggest challenges that we face in society are due to one or both of these types of problems: (A) Collective Action Problems, where many individuals or groups are currently better off taking action X, even though they'd be better off in the long-term if everyone agreed not to take action X. Some of the big challenges with Collective Actions Problems are (i) gettin...

1. Vote 2. Double check claims before repeating them 3. Don't share articles unless we've read them (i.e., not just because we like a headline) 4. Take a breather before responding when we feel angry (in person and on social media) 5. Remember that groups are purposely trying to feed us appealing disinformation (that exploits our preconceptions and biases), intending to create chaos ...

H/T to Robert Paul Chase for the title. (For those who don't know, this is a reference to Fourier analysis.) Your happiness, like the level of the ocean, is caused by a superposition of waves of different frequencies. Each operates on a distinct scale - they sum up to determine your well-being at any given point in life. Each wave tends to oscillate around its mean or neutral point (except for...

What does it mean to believe? We often say things like "I believe..." and "they think that..." But what do we really mean by a "belief"? It's notoriously tricky to define. For starters, we sometimes think of beliefs in binaries (true vs. false) and other times in probabilities (a 90% chance of coming true). We sometimes would be willing to bet on our beliefs ("I'll bet you $100 that New ...

This is a cross-post from ClearerThinking.org from October 6, 2020. Thanks go to Hunter Muir for editing. The piece was updated on December 14, 2022, and was cross-posted on this website on February 3, 2024. Many of us might be feeling bad about life at the moment. One approach that may improve your mood is shifting your psychological "baseline" of what you view as normal to reflect the re...

A "deepity" (a term first used by Daniel Dennett) is an ambiguous statement with two meanings: 1. one is profound (but probably false or nonsense) 2. the other meaning is trivial or obvious (but true) These paired meanings can trick our brains into thinking that the idea is both profound and true: we experience the profoundness of one meaning while experiencing the truth of the other mea...

When trying new things, what we like (or benefit from) most is usually familiar to us, yet somehow also distinct. 1. Music: we prefer songs that are similar to others we like but that feel novel. If a song is too similar to what we know, then it's derivative or boring (like listening to the same music on loop), but if it's too novel, it is usually unappealing or dissonant. Music from other cul...

Written: September 17, 2020 | Released: August 20, 2021 The "Responsibility Mindset" is one of the most powerful perspectives I know of. It's the difference between: 1. "The ball wasn't on my side of the court, so I didn't go for it," and2. "Clearly, nobody else was going to be able to hit the ball in time, so I ran for it." 1. "This party is boring," and2. "Who wants to dance with me...