The Poison-Cactus-Vampire-Ward Problem

August 6, 2017

The Poison-Cactus-Vampire-Ward Problem, an ethics and "fairness" thought experiment I wrote for you in which your moral intuitions are represented as a number between 0 and 100: Suppose there are two villages, "Parvitas" and "Amplus," which are a 5-minute walk apart. Once per month, when the full moon is out, all men, women, children, and wizards of the two villages must meet to conduct the vampire ward ritual. The ritual requires all people from BOTH villages to be chanting at the same time...

Problem-Solving Techniques That Work For All Types of Challenges

June 7, 2017

photo by Jorge Láscar (https://www.flickr.com/photos/jlascar/4475570857)

A lot of people don't realize that there are general purpose problem solving techniques that cut across domains. They can help you deal with thorny challenges in work, your personal life, startups, or even if you're trying to prove a new theorem in math. Below are the 26 general purpose problem solving techniques that I like best, along with a one-word name I picked for each, and hypothetical examples to illustrate what sort of strategy I'm referring to. Consider opening up this list when...

Careful Analysis vs. Automatic Processing

August 12, 2011

Thinking very carefully about problems can be an extremely powerful way to answer questions or make predictions. But there are some problems for which our non-conscious processing systems produce superior results. Our non-conscious systems primarily work using pattern recognition. Through a combination of genetic pre-programming and repeated exposure, your brain learns to label instances of things in the world as "dangerous" or "not dangerous", "food" or "not food", "person" or "not person", ...

You Know That Worst Problem In Your Life? Go Fix It!

August 10, 2011

Sometimes it is obvious to us what our biggest problem is. We can pinpoint one thing in our life that is by far our biggest source of unhappiness or stress, and we know that if we were to correct it, our life would be substantially improved. When this happens, it makes self-improvement easier in a certain sense, since it provides us with an obvious route to improving life. If you have twenty problems, all of which produce roughly equal reductions in your happiness, it can feel overwhelming just ...