It's fascinating how, with a slight adjustment to our focus and perspective, we can enjoy a positive moment more, which means more enjoyment in our lives at essentially no cost (other than the effort of learning and practice). In other words, we can derive more enjoyment from positive experiences without changing anything about our lives. While it’s of course also often beneficial to make actual changes to our lives, I think most people underestimate how much we can enhance our lives through su...
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Author: Spencer
Psychological Words That Don’t Mean What You Think
A lot of psychological terms don't mean what people think they mean (at least, not according to psychologists).
There's an increasing drift between how they get used colloquially in everyday language and the commonly accepted definitions among psychologists. There's a sense in which the lay usage is "wrong" (in that it doesn't match more scientific, precise, or technical usage), but of course, language has always been and always will be in flux. At the end of the day, a word does mean what p...
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Don’t Use The Baseline Value As One Of The Predictors When You’re Predicting A Change In The Same Variable
When you’re predicting how much a variable changes over time using a regression, do you tend to add the baseline value of that variable as a predictor to control for it? If you do, you can end up with completely misleading results.
For example, if you’re trying to predict change in anxiety in 2025 vs. last year (anxiety in 2025 minus anxiety in 2024), you’ll get misleading results if you enter anxiety in 2024 as one of the predictor variables. If this sounds counterintuitive to you, read on...
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Is Taking Every Supplement That Might Work A Good Idea For Health?
I believe that if you are healthy and have a healthy diet, then taking 30+ supplements per day (even if you spend a ton of time researching which ones to take) has a net negative expected value on your health.
The two fundamental issues are:
Issue 1: That every supplement has:
-a chance of harmful interactions with other drugs/supplements (and as you take more and more, the number of potential interactions grows quadratically - like supplements squared)
-a chance of contamination (e...
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People May Value Universal Happiness And Reduction Of Suffering More Than They Realize
I have a number of intrinsic values, but two of my most important intrinsic values are happiness and the lack of suffering for conscious beings. While these are fairly common intrinsic values, I suspect many people actually value them more than they realize. In other words, upon careful reflection, many people would realize that happiness and lack of suffering are stronger intrinsic values to them than they previously were aware of.
With that in mind, here are seven thoug...
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Psychology Terms You’re Probably Misusing
A lot of psychological terms don't mean what people think they mean (at least, not according to psychologists).
There's an increasing drift between how they get used colloquially in everyday language and the commonly accepted definitions among psychologists. There's a sense in which the lay usage is "wrong" (in that it doesn't match more scientific, precise, or technical usage), but of course, language has always been and always will be in flux. At the end of the day, a word does mean what p...
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Facts That Contradict Common Narratives About The United States
There are a ton of false narratives that circulate widely in and about the US. To help combat that, here's a list I've been compiling of facts that contradict common narratives related to the US that many people believe. In some cases, these facts contradict common beliefs that most Americans hold, whereas in other cases, they contradict beliefs held mainly just by some subgroups (e.g., subgroups on the far right or far left).
While I've spent a bunch of time fact-checking these, I'm very in...
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Categorizing The Causes Of Bad Things In The World
What causes bad things? It sounds like a huge question, but maybe it's not as big as it seems. Here's my updated/improved list of high-level causes of bad things in the world. Note that these are not mutually exclusive categories. I've also added some potential solutions for each cause.
I'd be interested to know: what is missing from my new list of causes of bad things and potential types of solutions? Thanks to those of you who commented on my prior version!
Causes of bad things in the w...
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If AI Replaces Human Labor Does That Have To Strip Human Lives Of Meaning?
A common worry is that technological development, and increasingly advanced AI in particular, will necessarily remove meaning from our lives. For instance, if humanity ends up in a situation of extreme material abundance, but at some point there is a lack of ability for most (or all) people to do work that's value-additive, will that lead to widespread depression and lack of meaning?
While I think there are very serious concerns that advancing technologies, and AI in particular, raise (such ...
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Common Misconceptions About Anger?
People often say things like the following about anger's relationship to other emotions - but are they B.S.? They say:
"Depression is anger turned inward."
"Anger is sadness's bodyguard."
"Anger is just a manifestation of sadness."
"There is an anger iceberg (anger on top, with sadness, fear, or shame beneath)."
"In men, sadness and depression show up as anger."
While there is debate about these ideas among people in the field, my opinion is that these statements are mislead...
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