Who is Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) really, and how could he have done what he did? – three theories and a lot of evidence

November 10, 2023

As you may know, Sam Bankman-Fried ("SBF") was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. He now faces the potential of more than 100 years in prison. I've been trying to figure out how someone who appears to believe deeply in the principles of effective altruism ("EA") could do what SBF did. It has been no surprise to me to see that the actions he was convicted of are nearly universally condemned by the EA community. Could it be that he did not actually believe in EA ideas despite p...

Some Signs of Harmful or Untrustworthy Relationships

November 3, 2023

Image generated by Clearer Thinking team using Adobe Express

Coauthored with the Clearer Thinking team and cross-posted from the Clearer Thinking blog. We recently conducted qualitative research by crowd-sourcing over 100 open-ended responses to the question: "What signs do you look for that help you identify people who are likely to be untrustworthy or who are likely to hurt you if they become your close friend or partner?" We thought the answers contained some insights that may help you to identify people with whom it would be risky ...

What is Lightgassing? A way we harm people by validating their false beliefs

October 1, 2023

Gaslighting, where someone causes another person to doubt their sanity or senses, can cause psychological damage. There's an opposite thing, though, that can also be damaging. As far as I know, it has no name. I call it "lightgassing" (or "light gassing"). Here, I explain how lightgassing works. Lightgassing is when one person agrees with or validates another person's false beliefs or misconceptions in order to be supportive. Unlike gaslighting, a tactic of jerks and abusers,...

Personality traits as continuous spectrums

January 7, 2023

Image by McZusatz - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phosphorus_spectrum_visible.png

Nearly all human traits lie on continuums. Even many multi-trait conditions can be viewed as having distinct traits that each lie at one end of a spectrum. There are a number of cases where we only have a word for one side of a psychological spectrum, and we lack a word for what you'd be like if you inverted all the most common traits of a condition. Here's an attempt to give names to these opposites: [Note: I've updated this post based on some feedback in the comments I received when I firs...

On Philosophical Disorders

July 18, 2020

I'd like to propose a new term: "philosophical disorder." It's when someone has a persistent belief that's both highly inaccurate and substantially harmful. Here are some examples: A false belief that you are unlovableBeing convinced that God punishes pre-marital with deathBelieving that "no usually means yes" in sexual encounters Whereas a psychological disorder consists of emotions, thoughts, and personality traits creating distress or impairment, many WITHOUT psychological challenge...