Is altruism rational?

December 27, 2020

When people learn just a little about game theory, decision theory, economics, or even evolutionary theory, they sometimes come away thinking that altruism is somehow “irrational” or that rational agents are selfish. Here are a number of reasons why altruism is often rational: I. People can value altruism for its own sake: 1. Intrinsic values: as a psychological fact, most humans intrinsically value at least some things as ends (not merely as means to other ends) that are not about...

How Ideology Eats Itself

August 7, 2020

A quick primer on how to be a genuinely good person who harms the world: 1: Start to think that one ideology you like - which contains genuine benefits, truths, and positive moral elements - might be the only valid perspective. 2: Surround yourself with believers until you're convinced that your view is common and normal. 3: Ignore your own doubts so that you can fit in better. Join in on chastising (and eventually ostracizing) insiders who doubt too much. Punish slightly more hars...

Three Types of Nuanced Thinking

June 15, 2020

image from: https://www.pikist.com/free-photo-vixok

I think that one of the most important skill sets for good thinking is “Nuanced Thinking”: resisting binary dichotomies on important, complex topics. Our brains, too often, are dichotomizing machines. We tend to simplify the world into true or false, good or bad, is or is not. This dichotomizing tendency works well when it comes to relatively simple topics like: • 1+1=2 (true) vs., the Illuminati controls our planet (false)• viruses (bad) vs. puppies (good)• a fedora is a hat; a fedora is no...

The many ways to make inferences

October 7, 2018

There are a LOT of ways to make inferences. Many more, I think, than is generally realized. And they all have their weaknesses. You can make inferences using… (1) Deduction: As a consequence of the definition of X and Y, if X then Y. X applies to this case. Therefore Y. “Plato is a man, and all men are mortal; therefore Plato is mortal.” “For any number that is an integer, there exists another integer greater than that number. 1,000,000 is an integer. So there exists an in...

Maybe you can justifiably believe you can change the world with the right conditions

May 5, 2018

Written: May 5, 2018 | Released: June 25, 2021 Can you justifiably believe that you may be able to really change the world? There's a certain seeming absurdity in believing you can change the world. And by "change the world," I don't mean playing a small (though still meaningful) cumulative role in bringing about change as part of a group of many thousands of people, each contributing incrementally. I mean, causing a large and important positive change to occur (and not merely by dumb lu...

Self-Skepticism

December 14, 2011

My talk "Self-Skepticism" at Skepticon 4 in Missouri. I discuss what led me to become skeptical of my decisions and beliefs, as well as what studies say about the reliability of our self-knowledge. Click here for the talk slides.

Finding Our False Beliefs

September 7, 2011

By definition, we believe that each of our beliefs is true. And yet, simultaneously, we must admit that some of our beliefs must be wrong. We can't possibly have gotten absolutely everything right. This becomes especially obvious when we consider the huge number of beliefs we have, the complexity of the world we live in, and the number of people who disagree with us. The trouble though is that we don't know which of our many beliefs are wrong. If we knew that, we should have stopped believing th...

Truth Discernment Can be a Super Power

August 3, 2011

When we think of super powers, we usually consider things like invisibility, super strength and the ability to fly. Technology is bringing us closer to the realization of these dreams (for examples see invisibility, strength, flying). But there is a super power that has existed for much longer, which we might call "truth discernment". This is the ability to figure out what is likely to be true in hard, important, real world problems. There are difficult questions like the blue eyes logic puzz...

The Interplay Between Your Reason and Emotions

July 31, 2011

It can sometimes be useful to think of yourself as consisting of multiple systems. You have an emotional system that constantly processes your sensory input and thoughts, and produces emotions like fear, anger, happiness and contempt based on this input. You also have a reasoning system, which is what you use when you are reasoning, planning, analyzing and consciously predicting. But the operations of these two systems are not independent. In fact, they each have the power to alter the operation...

What’s So Special About Your Own Beliefs?

July 30, 2011

Suppose that Tom and Sally have a disagreement over a factual question (as opposed to one of values or preferences). She claims that the argument he is making has errors or is unconvincing, but Tom feels the same way about her argument. They debate the question for an hour, but afterwords are still each adamantly convinced that his or her own reasoning is sound while the other person's is flawed. In this instance, is each person really more justified believing in his or her own belief than he or...