In efforts to encourage understanding and openness on Inauguration Day, we wrote a pair of simple, short essays. One is designed to capture the views of the majority of Clinton supporters, the other, the views of the majority of Trump supporters. We had 80 supporters from each group read the corresponding essay and rate whether they agreed or disagreed with each sentence, and whether they agreed ...

What recommendations related to diet, nutrition and health seem to be universally agreed on by experts of nearly all stripes and schools of thought? Given the incredibly high levels of disagreement in these areas, and the poor quality of studies, it often seems like we know almost nothing. Below is my attempt (via a combination of brainstorming and crowdsourcing) to list what there does s...

Does warm water sometimes freeze faster than cold water when placed in the same conditions? "Absolutely no way," I said, a mere minute after I heard the claim. "People sometimes claim that NASA faked the moon landing too," I thought to myself. I pointed out why this claim is impossible. As warm water cools it must eventually reach the same temperature that the cool water started at. From that poi...

You have control over yourself for the next eight seconds. Maybe even the next three minutes. Right now you can choose to go to the gym right now. Right now you can choose to start something difficult (but valuable) that you've been putting off for a long time. But right now you can't choose to go to the gym tomorrow. You definitely can't choose to quit your job a year from now. Because tomorrow i...

Those who grow up in the U.S. are often surprised to find out that in many European countries almost no men are circumcised. In the U.S., where the majority of men have had the procedure performed on them, it is pretty common to hear people say that foreskin is unclean, ugly, or even unhealthy. On the other hand, Europeans tend to find the idea of circumcision bizarre. "Why would you cut off a hea...

If you live in a building with doormen or doorwomen in New York City (Manhattan, Brooklyn, etc.), you are probably confused right now about how much you are expected to tip them for the holiday season. Nobody I've spoken to seems to really be confident in their answer to this and articles give conflicting advice on what a reasonable bonus is. That's why I made this little program to help solve the...

Would you be satisfied believing merely what it's trendy to believe? If so, you can adopt the beliefs of the people of your country, city, and friend group. But if you want to reliably have truer beliefs, you're going to have to use different methods than most people do. Selecting which "epistemic methods" to rely on may be one of the most important decisions you make. Your epistemic methods ma...