Improving your feed using the Law of Social Media Manifestation

November 7, 2023

Imagine you lived in a universe where whatever you give your attention to gets drawn to you. So, if you pay attention to cute dogs on the street, you'll soon be followed by cute dogs all the time. And if you pay attention to the angry guy muttering to himself, soon there will be angry mutterers all around you. This is similar to what new age spiritualism calls the Law of Attraction ("you attract into your life what you focus on"). This is not how the real universe works. But you know what ac...

Human universals: 6 remarkable things I think are true of nearly all adults

October 20, 2023

Some remarkable things I suspect are true of nearly all adults: 1) We each hold some beliefs that are almost totally non-responsive to evidence involving some combination of our identity (who we are), our group, the nature of reality (e.g., God), or the nature of what’s good. Examples: • Many have an unshakable belief that they are good even as they harm the world (or believe they’re insufficient even though they’re altruistic and productive) • Most have an unshakable belief that t...

How good is our sense of taste? Do we even know what we actually like?

September 23, 2018

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 were: 5 types of water 5 types of cold coffee 5 types of pinot noir red wines (of varying pric...