Subscribe
Categories
Archives
Topics
action anxiety argument behavior belief bias change choice cognitive bias debate decision depression desire disagreement distortion emotion error fallacy fear goals habit happiness information intelligence irrationality justification knowledge learning logic motivation planning pleasure prediction probability rationality reaction reasoning relationships reward self-help self improvement simulation strategy truth wrong-
Recent Posts
- Break Your Downward Emotional Spiral
- Know Your Addictions
- Seek Criticism
- Accepting Your Error Rate
- Planned Resolutions: meeting goals, rather than just making them
- How Journalism Distorts Reality
- Don’t Always Desire Your Desires
- Getting Yourself To Act How You Know You Should
- Making Really Hard Decisions
- How Can We Learn From Our Mistakes?
- The Seven Causes of Disagreement
- Wanting While Not Wanting
- Self-Skepticism
- Do We Know Why We Act?
- How Great We Are
- Testing Too Many Hypotheses
- Your Beliefs as a Temple
- Surprised? Update your model.
- Deconstructing Accomplishment
- Human Symbiogenesis
- If That Didn’t Solve Your Problems, Try Something Else
- Finding Our False Beliefs
- (Almost) Everything is Uncertain
- Finding Good Relationships Faster
- Predicting Using the Past
- Eschew Obscure Words
- Viewing Your Time As Money
- Your Law Firm Does Not Have Your Incentives
- Adapting Your Expectations for Friendship
- Careful Analysis vs. Automatic Processing
- Keeping Ideas at a Distance Using Probability
- You Know That Worst Problem In Your Life? Go Fix It!
- Demystifying the Magic Of Attraction
- Fighting Against Your Counterproductive Inclinations
- Reimagining What You Think You Want
- Agencies Are Not Agents
- Planning Your Life Based on Your Ideal Ordinary Week
- Truth Discernment Can be a Super Power
- Experts Are Expert But Not Necessarily In What You Think
- Changing Your Life Using Habits
- The Interplay Between Your Reason and Emotions
- What’s So Special About Your Own Beliefs?
- Some Things Are Only In Your Simulation
- Still Living with the Emotions of our Ancestors
- Do We Really Read Non-fiction to Learn?
- Novel Ways of Carving Up Knowledge
Tag Archives: probability
Testing Too Many Hypotheses
For each dataset, there is a limit to what we can use that dataset to test. Using the standard p-value based methods of science, the more hypotheses we check against the data, the more likely it will be that some … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged experiments, hypotheses, hypothesis test, p-values, probability, science, statistics, test
6 Comments
Surprised? Update your model.
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 … Continue reading
(Almost) Everything is Uncertain
If you try to enumerate all of the things that you know with absolute, 100% certainty, you will find that the list is very small. You know that “something” exists. If you have mental experiences, then you know that “you” … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged chaos, expert, forecasting, prediction, probability, system, uncertainty
2 Comments
Finding Good Relationships Faster
For those who are interested in finding someone to date, a little probabilistic thinking can help a lot. To see how, let’s take a moment to analyze the situation. Every time that you meet a new person, there is some chance … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged attraction, compatibility, dating, probability, relationships, romance
2 Comments
Predicting Using the Past
When we try to predict how long a task will take, we are in danger of falling prey to the planning fallacy. This is the natural human tendency to underestimate how long your own projects will take and the costs involved. … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged cognitive bias, estimate, forecasting, planning, prediction, probability, projects
Leave a comment
Keeping Ideas at a Distance Using Probability
We often talk about ideas by using phrases like “I believe X.” But what do we mean when we say that we “believe” in an idea? Do we mean that we have 100% confidence that the idea is true? Let’s … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged belief, bet, gamble, prediction, probability, right, surprise, truth, wrong
5 Comments
Truth Discernment Can be a Super Power
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 … Continue reading
Posted in Articles
Tagged bias, cognitive bias, fallacies, intelligence, iq, logic, probability, rationality, thinking, truth
4 Comments
