Six fresh takes on wisdom to help you become wiser

August 1, 2023

Becoming wiser seems like one of the most important things we can aim for. Yet, there's something extremely odd about wisdom: nobody agrees on what it means. Here are six thought-provoking definitions of wisdom that l find it useful to reflect on: 1) Wisdom as self-consistency: Wisdom is an equilibrium where you find alignment between all combinations of your: • values • beliefs • actions Inspiration: Justin Shovelain and Elliot McKernon 2) Wisdom as cau...

How can we look at the same dataset and come to wildly different conclusions?

November 30, 2022

Recently, a study came out where 73 research teams independently analyzed the same data, all trying to test the same hypothesis. Seventy-one of the teams came up with numerical results across a total of 1,253 models. Across these 1,253 different ways of looking at the data, about 58% showed no effect, 17% showed a positive effect, and 25% showed a negative effect. But that's not even the oddest part. The oddest part is that despite a heroic attempt to do so, the study authors failed to...

Understand how other people think: a theory of worldviews

June 29, 2022

This piece was coauthored with Amber Dawn Ace. A libertarian, a socialist, an environmentalist, and a pro-development YIMBY watch an apartment complex being built. The libertarian is pleased - ‘the hand of the market at work!’ - whereas the socialist worries that the building is a harbinger of gentrification; the YIMBY sees progress, but the environmentalist is concerned about the building’s carbon footprint. They’re all seeing the same thing, but they understand it differently because they ...

What’s helpful and what’s unhelpful about postmodernism, critical theory, and their current intellectual offshoots?

March 29, 2021

More often than not, I find that postmodernist thought obscures rather than illuminates. But I also see useful elements in it. Here's my very un-postmodern attempt to "steel man" (i.e., find the value in) ideas related to postmodernism: 1. Narratives Serve Power - powerful groups do tend to have a substantial influence on narratives, beliefs, and what's "normal." Something "obvious" or "objective" or "a fact" may just (invisibly) be a part of the narrative you're immersed in and sub...

Reasons to Forgive

May 27, 2019

Written: March 27, 2019 | Released: August 30, 2021 In my experience, many obvious-seeming psychological concepts explode in complexity when you attempt to dissect them. For instance, trying to respond to a question about "why we forgive" made me realize there are a vast number of motivations for forgiveness. After someone wrongs you, you can forgive them based on:UNDERSTANDING • Empathy - you realize that you would have done the same thing that they did if you had the same choice to m...

How word choice subtly manipulates us

October 19, 2018

Images by Lisa "welshie.wonders" on Pexels (eye) and Piotr Łaskawski on Unsplash (letters)

It's remarkable the degree to which language can paint a picture of something being good or bad, or someone being trustworthy or unreliable, without actually making any factual claims. The more aware of this you become, the more you start seeing it all over the place. Language is often not neutral and objective even when it professes to be. We all know that language can have positive or negative connotations without actually claiming anything specific, but I think it's easy to underestimate how...

Ten Useful Reframings

November 1, 2017

1. I just made a huge mistake; what on earth is wrong with me? How the hell could I be so stupid? Reframe: I'll learn so much from this mistake that I'm never going to make one like it again. 2. This bag is too heavy, I have to walk way too far Reframe: Exercise is healthy, and people pay trainers to get them to lift heavy stuff or go on the treadmill, this is just exercise with the world as my trainer! 3. This train/bus/line is taking forever, what a pain! Reframe:...

Can mental disorders have benefits?

July 25, 2017

It's not often discussed, but I believe that pre-cursors to commonly-diagnosed mental disorders often come with some benefits (as well as "flip side" costs that are linked to those benefits). As these traits become more extreme in nature (e.g., sufficiently far in the direction of what would be considered a diagnosable clinical disorder), these "flip side" costs (as well as other costs not associated with any benefit) unfortunately, tend to rapidly outweigh any positive aspects. Here are som...