Oversimplifiers vs. Difference Deniers: a dynamic regarding group differences that leads to rage and confusion

December 17, 2023

Here's a misery-filled dynamic that I believe commonly plays out regarding small observed differences between groups: (1) Two groups have a small (but meaningful) difference in their average value of some trait, with heavily overlapping distributions. (2) Some people ("Oversimplifiers") observe this difference (in their everyday life or media reports) and turn this small average difference into a (sometimes very harmful) oversimplification: "A's are like this, B's are like that." (3) O...

Eight ways you can validate someone’s emotions in a healthy way (and four strategies to avoid)

October 1, 2023

A lot of times, when people are upset, they want their friends and loved ones to "validate their feelings." I think there is a lot of confusion about what it really means to "validate feelings," and I also believe there are both healthy and unhealthy forms of doing this validation. Healthy vs. Unhealthy Emotional Validation I would say that the main difference between the healthy validation of emotions and the unhealthy version is that the healthy version is based on genuine c...

Awkwardly Embracing Awkwardness

September 25, 2022

All else being equal, it's good to avoid creating awkwardness. But too much awkwardness-avoidance can be harmful. Lately, I've been trying to accept a bit more awkwardness (rather than reflexively avoiding it) in cases where I think doing so can produce value. Here are four areas where I'm leaning more into awkwardness: 1. When asked for feedback on a project (and I think it will fail), I'm usually tempted to focus on what I like about it. I've now become more likely ...

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...

Weird but potentially valuable new roles we could have in our society

November 18, 2020

There are certain roles in society that come with special training, powers, and responsibilities. For instance: doctors (can prescribe medicine), lawyers (client-attorney privilege), judges (can bindingly interpret law), etc. Here's my list of some weird but potentially really valuable roles in society that don't exist but maybe should: Role 1: Truth Teller They wear a special, very noticeable hat. When wearing it, they are not permitted to say anything they know to be untrue (they...

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 “seven realms of truth” framework

March 25, 2019

Here’s a framework I use to think more clearly about complex debates and philosophical questions about whether something is “true,” “exists,” and is “real” (e.g., “is this painting art?”, “is everything subjective?” and “is morality real?”). I find that thinking in terms of this framework can make it easier to figure out what’s being claimed and to clarify what I myself believe. The framework divides things that are sometimes claimed to be “true,” or that we might say “exist,” into seven dif...

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.

Surprised? Update your model.

September 24, 2011

In order to make predictions, your brain must have a model of reality. This model is necessarily much simpler than reality itself. To see why, imagine that you are about to drop a baseball from waist height. Your brain can't possibly know enough about the atoms composing that baseball and the air around it to simulate what will happen at the atomic level. And even if your brain did have accurate knowledge about the atoms, using information at such a fine a level of detail would be extremely comp...

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...