Human universals: 6 remarkable things I think are true of nearly all adults

October 20, 2023

Some remarkable things I suspect are true of nearly all adults: 1) We each hold some beliefs that are almost totally non-responsive to evidence involving some combination of our identity (who we are), our group, the nature of reality (e.g., God), or the nature of what’s good. Examples: • Many have an unshakable belief that they are good even as they harm the world (or believe they’re insufficient even though they’re altruistic and productive) • Most have an unshakable belief that t...

Four forces that tend to promote or impede ethical behavior

December 9, 2022

In my view, there are "four forces" behind why humans avoid unethical behavior. I think understanding these forces can be useful when seeking to explain people's actions (especially when someone does something truly terrible). Ethical force 1: Emotion The vast majority of us experience empathy and compassion. We tend to feel happy when seeing others happy and feel bad when we see others suffering. These feelings guide our ethical behavior at an interpersonal level, causing proso...

Friction in Relationships from Misunderstanding the Mind

June 17, 2017

I've noticed that a significant amount of friction is created among friends and in romantic relationships due to inaccurate models of how the human mind works, and due to unrealistic expectations of the brain. Usually, these involve assuming that someone did something that you don't like on purpose when it would be more accurate to say they did the thing automatically (and they may need significant practice to change that automatic behavior). Of course, it's still up to that person (with yo...

Why do people not behave in their own self-interest?

March 19, 2017

Naively, one might assume that people do what it benefits them to do. In fact, that's an assumption commonly made in economics. Yet it's clear that our behavior is not always in our own self-interest. People frequently buy fake supplements, try drugs they know are highly addictive, eat things they know they'll later regret, drive away the people they love most, procrastinate on really important things, and so on. So why do we behave in these strange ways? Well, here's my list of reasons we ...

Break Your Downward Emotional Spiral

July 16, 2012

Your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can form a vicious feedback loop, sending you into a downward emotional spiral. You get a bad review from your boss, and start to feel upset. This negative emotion brings on thoughts about when you've made mistakes at your job, and you feel even worse. You now start imagining your boss firing you, and your mood sinks into despair. Let's dissect what's going on here. An event triggers an upsetting thought, and the thought causes negative emotion. With you...

Know Your Addictions

July 7, 2012

What are you unable to stop after you start? Do you: Tell yourself you'll eat just a few chips, then eat the whole bag? Watch funny YouTube videos "for a few minutes", and then notice that an hour has passed? Choose to have "one drink", and end up having five? Decide to play video games "for an hour" and then later discover you've been at it the entire night? Tell yourself you'll check your stock portfolio "just once more" today, and then check it three more times? Regardless of w...

Getting Yourself To Act How You Know You Should

February 20, 2012

Just because you know what you should do, doesn't mean that you're going to do it. You may know that it would be smart to lose weight, but aren't on a diet. You may be convinced that when you're feeling tired during the day you should do jumping jacks to boost your energy, but instead you lie down on the couch. You may know that using a formal decision making procedure is a good idea when you're trying to make important decisions, yet you've never bother to use one. So why don't we always do ...

Agencies Are Not Agents

August 5, 2011

People will often debate questions like "why did the U.S. invade Iraq?" One group claims it was due to a fear of nuclear weapons. Another group claims that the action was oil related. Yet another claims that George Bush had a vendetta against Saddam. But proposed answers like these often seem to assume something that isn't likely to be true: that there was a single reason why this action occurred. It is in fact not even clear that there was one predominant or overarching reason. The actions o...

Experts Are Expert But Not Necessarily In What You Think

August 3, 2011

What are top pure mathematicians experts in? How about top doctors? The easy answers would be "pure math" and "medicine", but these are a bit too vague to be satisfying (What is pure math? What is medicine?). They also don't capture all of what these experts excel at. To know what an expert of a particular type is truly expert at, we need to understand the system that creates that type of expert. What are these experts rewarded for doing or knowing? What actions make them more or less likely ...