Could You Be in One of These 8 Psychological Traps?

November 22, 2020

Rarely do we encounter physical traps in our lives; most of the uncomfortable situations that we get stuck in for a long time are Psychological Traps. These are often the product of unrealistic fears, dysfunctional social dynamics, or unhelpful beliefs. Below, we've summarized eight of the most common mental pits that can sidetrack your success and undermine your wellbeing. These Psychological Traps can limit our happiness for years unless we take action to combat them. We hope that highlightin...

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...

Many global challenges arise due to collective action problems or incentive misalignment

November 16, 2020

Many of the biggest challenges that we face in society are due to one or both of these types of problems: (A) Collective Action Problems, where many individuals or groups are currently better off taking action X, even though they'd be better off in the long-term if everyone agreed not to take action X. Some of the big challenges with Collective Actions Problems are (i) getting people or groups to agree to stop the behavior in the first place, and then (ii) creating a v...

Ten things we each personally can do to help democracy:

November 3, 2020

1. Vote 2. Double check claims before repeating them 3. Don't share articles unless we've read them (i.e., not just because we like a headline) 4. Take a breather before responding when we feel angry (in person and on social media) 5. Remember that groups are purposely trying to feed us appealing disinformation (that exploits our preconceptions and biases), intending to create chaos 6. Read multiple news sources with differing perspectives 7. Go to the unedited video/text (whe...

The Fourier transform of happiness

October 17, 2020

Photo by Enrapture Captivating Media on Unsplash

H/T to Robert Paul Chase for the title. (For those who don't know, this is a reference to Fourier analysis.) Your happiness, like the level of the ocean, is caused by a superposition of waves of different frequencies. Each operates on a distinct scale - they sum up to determine your well-being at any given point in life. Each wave tends to oscillate around its mean or neutral point (except for the slowest waves, which take your whole life to unfold). One useful way to think about becoming ha...

How resetting your psychological baseline can make your life better

October 6, 2020

This is a cross-post from ClearerThinking.org from October 6, 2020. Thanks go to Hunter Muir for editing. The piece was updated on December 14, 2022, and was cross-posted on this website on February 3, 2024. Many of us might be feeling bad about life at the moment. One approach that may improve your mood is shifting your psychological "baseline" of what you view as normal to reflect the reality you're currently living in. This blog examines how to accept the state of things as they curre...

Deepities and deepifuls

September 18, 2020

Image by Fallon Michael on Unsplash. (I'll leave you to decide if this is a deepity or a deepiful.)

A "deepity" (a term first used by Daniel Dennett) is an ambiguous statement with two meanings: 1. one is profound (but probably false or nonsense) 2. the other meaning is trivial or obvious (but true) These paired meanings can trick our brains into thinking that the idea is both profound and true: we experience the profoundness of one meaning while experiencing the truth of the other meaning. These are phrases that exploit the odd nature of our minds. Some examples are (arguably...

The Power of “Familiar Yet Different”

September 18, 2020

When trying new things, what we like (or benefit from) most is usually familiar to us, yet somehow also distinct. 1. Music: we prefer songs that are similar to others we like but that feel novel. If a song is too similar to what we know, then it's derivative or boring (like listening to the same music on loop), but if it's too novel, it is usually unappealing or dissonant. Music from other cultures can be hard for us to appreciate until we've listened to enough of it. 2. Learning: we lear...

The three big strategies I see for combating climate change

September 14, 2020

Change my mind: I currently think that there are only three big potential strategies for effectively preventing substantial human-caused climate change in the next 40 years. Climate Strategy 1: Government Collaboration If we collaborated, China, the U.S., India, and Europe could engage in substantial climate emission regulation (e.g., by taxing carbon, using cap-and-trade systems, setting deadlines by which certain industries must be carbon neutral, building cleaner power generation f...

Ten pros and cons of starting a startup

September 3, 2020

Should you become an entrepreneur? Here's the honest truth (as I see it). 1. Autonomy Pro: you're the boss and decide what to do. Con: you HAVE to always decide what to do. There will be a huge array of options at any given moment, and you'll never know for sure which to work on. You can seek advice, but ultimately YOU are the one who must decide. 2. Lifestyle Pro: since you're the boss, you'll have flexibility in your hours. Cons: you'll inevitably be working a lot of...