A Guide to Programming Yourself

February 8, 2020

Imagine you could program yourself like a simple robot, with rules like, "when situation X occurs, do Y." What rules would you choose to program yourself with to improve your life or the lives of those around you? Interestingly enough, we can program ourselves in this way, and it's not even that hard to do. As a simple example, you can program yourself so that when you FIRST ENTER YOUR KITCHEN IN THE MORNING, you always DRINK A TALL GLASS OF WATER. Or you can create a rule in your ...

Getting Yourself To Act How You Know You Should

February 20, 2012

Just because you know what you should do, doesn't mean that you're going to do it. You may know that it would be smart to lose weight, but aren't on a diet. You may be convinced that when you're feeling tired during the day you should do jumping jacks to boost your energy, but instead you lie down on the couch. You may know that using a formal decision making procedure is a good idea when you're trying to make important decisions, yet you've never bother to use one. So why don't we always do ...

Wanting While Not Wanting

December 18, 2011

Why do people who hate that they overeat keep overeating? Why do people who know that their girlfriends or boyfriends are bad for them keep taking these girlfriends and boyfriends back? Why do so many people who want to go to the gym never actually bother to do it? These circumstances can be explained, at least partially, in terms of desires changing and conflicting with each other. What we want when we consciously reflect on a situation sometimes differs from what we want when we are actuall...

Self-Skepticism

December 14, 2011

My talk "Self-Skepticism" at Skepticon 4 in Missouri. I discuss what led me to become skeptical of my decisions and beliefs, as well as what studies say about the reliability of our self-knowledge. Click here for the talk slides.

Do We Know Why We Act?

November 10, 2011

Looking back on our decisions, we generally feel as though we can explain them. Why did we hire that candidate instead of this one? Because he was clearly more qualified for the job. Why did we go on a date with that person and not the other one? Because he or she seemed nicer. Why did we sentence that criminal to a harsher sentence than this other one? Because she committed a more damaging crime. If we are making our decisions for rational, well thought out reasons, we should be able to explain...