An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Traits

September 13, 2020

The rules of evolution are simple: (1) if a trait makes survival or breeding more likely, then that trait will tend to survive in the long term by being passed down the generations. (2) Gene mutation and gene mixing create new traits, which naturally vary in how much they promote survival. Yet, the consequences of these simple rules are profound. Various facets of the world are hard to understand without taking evolution into account. Since our brains and bodies (as well as the natural world...

Thinkers Who Say the World Is Insane

August 26, 2020

Some thinkers see that the world is far more insane than is acknowledged, and that our narratives about society, the future, or the self don’t make sense. They develop a theory to explain things. Here’s a list of some of those theories (as I interpret them), explained in extremely concise terms as best as I could manage: The List of Thinkers and Their Core Ideas: 1. Peter Singer We would ruin expensive shoes to save a drowning child we walked by, but not forgo expensive shoes to sav...

There Are More Types Of Feminism Than People Realize

July 16, 2020

There are many distinct views related to feminism that most people are aware of. Here, I’ve attempted to summarize all of the ones I’m aware of. There is some overlap between them, but they are meaningfully different, and some are mutually incompatible. As you read, it may be worth considering: which one (or combination of) these viewpoints is closest to your perspective. I also ran a survey to examine people’s level of agreement with these different views. Respondents were allowed to choos...

Three Types of Nuanced Thinking

June 15, 2020

image from: https://www.pikist.com/free-photo-vixok

I think that one of the most important skill sets for good thinking is “Nuanced Thinking,” which is what I call it when you approach a problem with open-mindedness while avoiding binary thinking traps (i.e., resisting dichotomies). Our brains, too often, are dichotomizing machines. We tend to simplify the world into true or false, good or bad, is or is not. This dichotomizing tendency works well when it comes to relatively simple topics like: • 1+1=2 (true) vs., the Illuminati controls our p...

The Four States of Distress: how should you comfort a friend or loved one in need?

June 1, 2020

(co-authored with Kat Woods) When a friend or loved one has something bad happen to them, what should you do to help them feel better? This question can be difficult to answer because it seems that at different times people want different things: empathy, problem-solving, optimism, distraction, and so on. See for instance this study where people give divergent answers about what they want from a friend after something bad happens. We propose that there are four general states that a perso...

Coronavirus Precautions

March 4, 2020

Image by: Christian C. Gruber / George Steinkellner

As you have likely heard, the Coronavirus (a.k.a. COVID-19) has continued to spread throughout the world. As of March 4, 2020, cases of the virus have been confirmed in 73 countries, including 16 U.S. states. China had a massive outbreak, which mostly seems to be under control, but the virus is spreading exponentially in many other countries. Nobody knows what is going to happen at this point, but it makes sense to be prepared in case things get bad. Here are a few import...

A Guide to Programming Yourself

February 8, 2020

Imagine you could program yourself like a simple robot, with rules like, "when situation X occurs, do Y." What rules would you choose to program yourself with to improve your life or the lives of those around you? Interestingly enough, we can program ourselves in this way, and it's not even that hard to do. As a simple example, you can program yourself so that when you FIRST ENTER YOUR KITCHEN IN THE MORNING, you always DRINK A TALL GLASS OF WATER. Or you can create a rule in your ...

Remaining Mysteries of the Universe

September 28, 2019

It's fascinating to me that, despite all of humanity's incredible progress over the last few thousand years, so many profound mysteries about the nature of reality remain. Below is my list of what I see as the deepest mysteries. What would you add to the list? — LIST OF DEEP MYSTERIES ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY — 1. THE UNIVERSE 1.1 Eternity - Will our universe last forever? If it won't, what will the end of the universe be like (e.g., a new big bang, a big crun...

What In The Hell Is Humor?

July 6, 2019

Comedy and laughter are remarkably tricky to explain. As evidence of this, I'll point to the fact that there are more than 13 different theories of humor (each described at the bottom of this post). If you examine them, I think you’ll agree that while each captures relevant aspects of humor, none satisfactorily describes humor in all its forms. Part of what makes comedy so hard to describe is that it has such variety. While the boundaries between different types of humor are fuzzy, I think y...

How Do You Increase The Productivity Of A Team You Are On Or That You Lead? A Simple Framework

July 3, 2019

We can think about "productivity" in terms of how much value a team creates (according to any particular measure of value) on average each month. With that definition in mind, there are many reasons a work team may have low productivity. To make a team more productive, I suggest first trying to pinpoint the predominant causes of inefficiency, since different failure points typically have different solutions. The key is to identify and then focus on just the 1-3 of these causes that seem to b...