Ten Useful Reframings

November 1, 2017

1. I just made a huge mistake; what on earth is wrong with me? How the hell could I be so stupid? Reframe: I'll learn so much from this mistake that I'm never going to make one like it again. 2. This bag is too heavy, I have to walk way too far Reframe: Exercise is healthy, and people pay trainers to get them to lift heavy stuff or go on the treadmill, this is just exercise with the world as my trainer! 3. This train/bus/line is taking forever, what a pain! Reframe:...

Who perpetrates sexual harassment and sexual assault, and who are the victims?

October 22, 2017

This piece was first written in 2017, and first appeared on my website on April 30, 2026. This essay is the second in a series examining sexual harassment and assault. The first essay can be read here, which also includes more information about the study participants. Sexual harassment and assault occur far too often. In this post, I explore what the predictors are of being a perpetrator and being a victim. In particular, I use linear regression to predict whether each person is a ...

13 Ways Some Companies Make Money While Causing Harm

October 17, 2017

I’ve often heard it said that if people buy the product a company or startup is selling, then the company must be creating value in the world. After all, why would someone buy a product if it were not creating value? It would be really nice if this were a valid argument (since then more units sold means more societal benefit). Unfortunately, it’s not. I like entrepreneurship a great deal and think on net it has added huge amounts of benefit to the world. In fact, I'm an entrepreneur myself. But...

A Simple Trick for Eating Healthier

October 8, 2017

I believe healthy eating is hard because it's often in tension with the three other things we typically care about when eating: taste, price, and convenience. When we're choosing what to eat, healthy food may not be the tasty, cheap, or convenient option. How can we prevent this tension between healthiness and the other factors we care about? Another reason healthy eating is hard is that we are normally forced to choose whether to make the healthy choice (or not) over and over again eac...

Tips for Productive Disagreements

October 6, 2017

Typically when two people disagree, neither makes significant progress in convincing the other, and little or nothing is learned on either side. It's tough to make real-life disagreements productive, but here are my favorite techniques for making it easier to do so. These help more if you are significantly motivated to use the disagreement to deepen mutual understanding of the issue. I'm assuming here that you have control over your own behavior, but not over the other persons, because th...

Strategies for Improving Motion Sickness in Vehicles

October 5, 2017

In case you or a loved one get severe motion sickness in cars, boats, planes, trains, etc., here is a fairly comprehensive list of tricks that you might find helpful: If possible, choose to be the driver rather than the passenger.DO NOT use your phone or read in the vehicle.Always roll down the window when it's feasible, in order to get air blowing in your face (cool air is best). If rolling down a window isn't feasible, then swivel air vents to blow air into your face if possible.Carry ging...

The Impact of Indirect Punishments

October 4, 2017

I think it’s important to be aware of what we punish other people for. Including, and perhaps especially, barely detectable punishments that we give (which we may ourselves only be dimly aware of), and punishments that we give to people in our life, such as friends, family members, romantic partners, and work colleagues. Since punishment reduces certain behaviors, it’s important to consider whether we actually want to reduce the behavior we’re punishing. It’s critical that we not punish beha...

How to Have a Better Experience on Facebook

September 30, 2017

Are you addicted to FB? Wish you used it less than you do? Feeling less happy, or less connected to your actual life? Finding that likes are way more important to you than you wish they were? Notice yourself tempted to scroll even though you are hanging out with a friend or loved one? Here are some steps that you may find useful to reduce the negative aspects of FB: Step 1: Turn off notifications on your phone. Seriously. This ideally means both vibrations/pings and the badge that sho...

Time(line) of your Life!

September 30, 2017

An exercise I've found to be useful is creating a timeline of my life (I've embedded the link to the template I use below). I organized the data using a spreadsheet, with one row for each month that I've been alive. I created columns to indicate when I reached major life milestones, experienced major losses, began important relationships, finished books that had a big impact on me, etc. I update it a few times per year and try to include the best and worst things that have ever happened to ...

Coming to Terms with Mortality

September 27, 2017

Here is a list of ideas that helped me have less fear of my own mortality. I hope that you find some of them useful if you're afraid of dying.You've been dead before: you already know what it's like to be dead (i.e., it feels like nothing, it's a total lack of any experiences). You were dead from the moment of the Big Bang (assuming that's when time started) until some time after your conception. If any of the human religions turn out to be correct, then you may even have a chance of continuing...