I'm not a person who has idols, but Daniel Kahneman came about as close as it gets for me. It is not an exaggeration to say that he revolutionized our understanding of the mind. Among many other concepts, Kahneman and his collaborators came up with the ideas of: Anchoring (where an irrelevant number can influence our judgments) Prospect theory (a theory of how we make judgments when the...

Here are some of the most useful simple methods I've adopted for improving my connection with others (though I still have room for improvement): 1) When you like someone, greet them warmly, demonstrating with your face and body language that you like them. 2) Try your best to channel "interested attention" in conversations - where you give the other person your total focus while paying ...

I'm an extreme (>99th percentile) non-credentialist. Does that mean if I find out someone has a nutrition Ph.D., then I don't think they know more about nutrition than most random people? Of course not. Credentials are evidence of what someone knows (e.g., having a nutrition Ph.D. is evidence that you have nutrition knowledge). But part of what makes me an extreme non-credentialist is that ...

Many people think that if you have one really weird (presumed false) belief that society would label “crazy,” then that implies you’re an idiot, or bad, or crazy yourself. Think “QAnon,” “the moon landing was faked,” or “all GMO foods are dangerous.” But I think approximately everyone has at least one of those beliefs; it’s just not that obvious because many of these strange beliefs are idiosy...

Gossip has a very bad reputation. The word "gossip" itself (and its synonyms, like "idle talk," tittle-tattle," "hearsay," "blather," and "rumor-mongering") have negative connotations. And this bad reputation is not totally unreasonable, as gossip is sometimes very harmful. But, on some occasions, it's actually a very good and useful thing that people gossip. For instance, if someone in a comm...

Cross-posted on the Clearer Thinking blog. Travis Manuel helped to edit and improve this post.  People like to think of things as "good" or "bad," such as: Trans fats are bad for you, and broccoli is good for you. Lethargy is bad, but exercise is good. Being cowardly is bad, and having courage is good. A problem with putting something in the "good" bucket of your mind, thoug...

Here's a misery-filled dynamic that I believe commonly plays out regarding small observed differences between groups: (1) Two groups have a small (but meaningful) difference in their average value of some trait, with heavily overlapping distributions. (2) Some people ("Oversimplifiers") observe this difference (in their everyday life or media reports) and turn this small average difference ...

Gödel's incomplete theorems are famously profound, strange, and interesting pieces of math. But it's hard to understand them, and especially hard to understand why they are true. I've never been quite satisfied with the explanations I've seen for the general public, so I wanted to take a crack at explaining what these theorems say and give a flavor of why they hold. See what you think: Inc...