An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Traits

September 13, 2020

The rules of evolution are simple: (1) if a trait makes survival or breeding more likely, then that trait will tend to survive in the long term by being passed down the generations. (2) Gene mutation and gene mixing create new traits, which naturally vary in how much they promote survival. Yet, the consequences of these simple rules are profound. Various facets of the world are hard to understand without taking evolution into account. Since our brains and bodies (as well as the natural world...

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 Four States of Distress: how should you comfort a friend or loved one in need?

June 1, 2020

(co-authored with Kat Woods) When a friend or loved one has something bad happen to them, what should you do to help them feel better? This question can be difficult to answer because it seems that at different times people want different things: empathy, problem-solving, optimism, distraction, and so on. See for instance this study where people give divergent answers about what they want from a friend after something bad happens. We propose that there are four general states that a perso...

Coronavirus Precautions

March 4, 2020

Image by: Christian C. Gruber / George Steinkellner

As you have likely heard, the Coronavirus (a.k.a. COVID-19) has continued to spread throughout the world. As of March 4, 2020, cases of the virus have been confirmed in 73 countries, including 16 U.S. states. China had a massive outbreak, which mostly seems to be under control, but the virus is spreading exponentially in many other countries. Nobody knows what is going to happen at this point, but it makes sense to be prepared in case things get bad. Here are a few import...

A Guide to Programming Yourself

February 8, 2020

Imagine you could program yourself like a simple robot, with rules like, "when situation X occurs, do Y." What rules would you choose to program yourself with to improve your life or the lives of those around you? Interestingly enough, we can program ourselves in this way, and it's not even that hard to do. As a simple example, you can program yourself so that when you FIRST ENTER YOUR KITCHEN IN THE MORNING, you always DRINK A TALL GLASS OF WATER. Or you can create a rule in your ...

Remaining Mysteries of the Universe

September 28, 2019

It's fascinating to me that, despite all of humanity's incredible progress over the last few thousand years, so many profound mysteries about the nature of reality remain. Below is my list of what I see as the deepest mysteries. What would you add to the list? — LIST OF DEEP MYSTERIES ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY — 1. THE UNIVERSE 1.1 Eternity - Will our universe last forever? If it won't, what will the end of the universe be like (e.g., a new big bang, a big crun...

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...

Conversation Etiquette – How Much to Talk

May 17, 2019

thoughtful young ethnic women having conversation at table at home

Have you noticed that people often talk more (or less) than their share in one-on-one conversations? What percent of the time should you talk when you are one-on-one with a close friend, acquaintance, or stranger? I ran a study to investigate that question using our Positly.com platform (n=143 participants in the US). See an image summarizing the results here: You might think that introverts would want the other person to talk more of the time, and extroverts would prefer to talk more, b...

The FIRE Framework: deciding when to trust your gut

April 7, 2019

Here’s a link to a recording of me giving a talk about this topic in 2019. The idea that you should "just trust your gut" - that is, make many life decisions solely based on intuition (as opposed to based on reflection) - is obviously very popular. But I think that there are pretty much only four types of situations where we're best off relying on intuition alone: when a decision is Fast, Irrelevant, Repetitious, or Evolutionary (FIRE for short). Case 1: Fast decisionsThere is no cho...

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...