Here is a simple technique I really like using that I think can help us (a) better understand ourselves and (b) have more say over how we react in response to our emotions. I call it the "Inner Why" technique. How to do it:When you notice a sudden change in your emotional state (e.g., you start becoming anxious, sad, frustrated, or angry), immediately give yourself the best quick explanation y...

Written: September 30, 2018 | Released: August 13, 2021 I think one of the big choices to be made in life (once basic needs are well met) is whether to try to optimize more for a life of stability or for a life of acceleration. There is a tension between these two types of lives because they imply making different decisions in many realms. From what I can tell, the significant majority of p...

I recently conducted an in-person mini-experiment on whether we can tell different beverages apart - and how much we like them (with co-organizer Hannah Vazquez). Different stations were set up, each containing small (<1oz) tasting cups of a single type of beverage (with 5-6 distinct beverages of that type, labeled A, B, C, etc. so that nobody could tell which was which). The stations wer...

Written: August 7, 2018 | Released: July 30, 2021 Do you struggle to remember people's names after you meet them? Do you have a penchant for weird tricks? If you answered "yes" to those questions, you're a great candidate to use my three-part weird trick to remember people's names. I call it the "Tocayo Technique." I find it very effective, though unfortunately, I still don't have a habit o...

What would a fine art museum be like, if it were optimized relentlessly for what you care about? Within the limits of my ability to model my own preferences, I think my ideal fine art museum would be what I'm going to call "The Museum of Questioned Quality." I suspect lots of people would find this museum concept distasteful, to say the least. So before describing what the museum is, I'll expl...

My new favorite conversational technique that I'd like to get better at, which I call "Boiling the Conversation": Slowly and imperceptibly raise the unusualness or bizarreness level of the conversation so that you end up talking about something fascinating, fun, taboo, or deeply personal that people would almost never normally discuss (and that normally would be quite weird to just bring up), but...

Written: May 26, 2018 | Released: June 11, 2021 In my view, fundamental incentive misalignment affects many parts of society. Companies:  There are many ways to make money that are net harmful to the world (e.g., see here for 13 ways). Non-profits:  (1) The people that sponsor the work of a non-profit organization aren’t the ones that benefit from it. (2) D...

Written: May 5, 2018 | Released: June 25, 2021 Can you justifiably believe that you may be able to really change the world? There's a certain seeming absurdity in believing you can change the world. And by "change the world," I don't mean playing a small (though still meaningful) cumulative role in bringing about change as part of a group of many thousands of people, each contributing incr...

Written: April 27, 2018 | Released: June 27, 2021 It seems easy to underestimate the extent to which one "cognitive load" might sap your capacity for others. This underestimation could be having detrimental effects you aren't aware of. For instance, if you are trying to have a deep and important conversation in a noisy and distracting environment, it may seem that it's merely hard to hear. ...

Think of something you value that:A. multiple other people you know are capable of achieving, but thatB. you assume you would not be capable of achieving, even thoughC. you have never actually tried to do this thing well before. Now suppose, for a moment, that you have no choice but to do the thing. That is, everything you care about in the world will be destroyed if you do not achieve it in X...