Do we all have strange beliefs?

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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 idiosyncratic, and people often hide them from each other and sometimes even from themselves (by avoiding ...
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Philosophical questions that arise when we compare reality to our subjective experience of it

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A surprisingly large number of unsettled questions in philosophy arise from the difficulty of meshing: A. our theoretical understanding of what things are "really" like (physics, atoms, etc.) with B. our direct, first-hand experiences as humans. Examples: (1) Ethics - most people experience a visceral feeling that some things are inherently and universally morally wrong (e.g., murdering children). Yet it's unclear what, in the universe of atoms (or in physics), could make (o...
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Describing Your Group Identity

A thought experiment about the pros and cons of describing your group identity in different ways: should the person in this example identify as being a member of the group or not? Suppose that the vast majority of people identify themselves as being either part of group Apple, Banana, or Cherry and that these groups are typically viewed as being mutually exclusive (e.g., few people say they are "Apple-Bananas"). Furthermore, suppose that on the issues where Apples, Bananas, and Cherries all ...
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Convincing Your Future Self

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 if you don't feel like it, you're not going to go to the gym, regardless of what the you of today dec...
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