The Reciprocation Problem

December 18, 2020

The "reciprocation problem": a mathematical tragedy in relationships regarding how often people should ask each other to hang out The Setup Person X and person Y are friends (or lovers or close work colleagues or whatever). Person X and Person Y happen to both feel the same way about each other (i.e., equal amounts of interest, affection, lust, respect, etc.)Person X's ideal is to make plans with person Y every two weeks, whereas person Y (who has a lower amount of free time, or less need...

Principles of Prioritization

September 16, 2020

By: Spencer Greenberg and Uri Bram For a new project, how do you decide WHAT to do WHEN? We propose that there are two main types of projects: 'Jigsaw Puzzles' and 'Quests'. Let's explore each type and how to best prioritize the tasks that they involve. Type 1: Jigsaw Puzzles A 'Jigsaw Puzzle' has a finite scope; you know what the steps are, more or less. Each piece of the puzzle has to be included in the project, so the question is just what order to do them in. A good example of ...

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...

Robust Good

September 11, 2020

People often underestimate how brittle attempts to improve the world are. Altruism, at a large scale, often hinges on a chain of assumptions/requirements, such as: A & B & C & D & E One broken link in the chain means it looks like you're doing good but you're not really doing it. For example, to help the world by delivering medicine, the chain might look like this: The medicine reliably cures the disease & the side effects are not worse than being...

Five Powerful Learning Techniques Most People Have Never Tried

September 6, 2020

Obscure yet very powerful methods of learning that many people have never tried Here are five uncommon but highly effective learning techniques: 1. Intuition Flooding To understand something well on a gut level, spend hours looking closely at a huge number of examples, until your intuition forms a predictive model. I do this fairly often but don’t think I’ve heard it discussed! Example: Look carefully at 100 user interfaces. 2. Expert Observation Ask an expert if you can wa...

Everyone Misspeaks, So Watch Out For Cherry Picking

August 26, 2020

Obvious but often forgotten: everyone misspeaks sometimes. We all sometimes say things that: don’t make much sense we realize we don’t agree with (after a moment of reflection) are based on misremembering facts sound different than what we meant High stress situations tend to increase those effects. An interesting implication: anyone on TV, or who is otherwise recorded enough times, will be found making the mistakes mentioned above. So people can cherry pick examples t...

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...

Low-Hanging Fruit Policies That Don’t Get Implemented

August 23, 2020

Some policies seem like low-hanging fruit to benefit the US and its people, yet don’t get implemented. Why? It’s probably a combination of: • political wars that pull things back and forth instead of moving forward • voter confusion • voters prioritizing other topics • collective action problems • they’re blocked by the few who are made worse off by them • they are bad ideas, I’m wrong about them, or people’s values around them differ too much Regardless of the reason, here...

10 Structures of Problems

August 20, 2020

The Original 10 1. Smashed WatchThere are so many issues at once that fixing one has no benefit unless you fix others too. 2. Leaky PipeFixing one problem causes the others to intensify. If you plug up one leak in a pipe leaking in multiple places, that increases the water pressure causing the other spots to leak more. 3. Shark LaserA proposed solution is not aiming at a meaningfully important problem, so it doesn’t matter how well you get it to work or how much you enhance it. 4. O...

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...