Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
Gates' Law: Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or, ...
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Author: Spencer
When Fallacies Aren’t Fallacies
Something rarely discussed that's important to recognize about "logical fallacies": in real-world situations, most of them are only SOMETIMES fallacies.
Here are a bunch of examples:
(1) Appeal to authority: some authorities ARE reliable. For example, ask a physicist about a well-established idea in physics, and you'll likely get the right answer.
(2) Bandwagon effect: lots of people believing something often is evidence for it being true. For example, lots of people saying they heard ...
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14 Signs A Study Is More Likely To Be Trustworthy
Science is incredible, but not all studies are reliable. In fact, they frequently aren't. So how can we tell when a study is trustworthy? Here are 14 signs to look for (for studies involving humans):
1) Large: a reasonably large number of study participants (20 per group is usually too small - the sample size should be large enough to give the study the power it needs to have a good chance of detecting an effect if the effect is indeed real)
2) Controlled: if the study is making claims to...
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Are Mathematical Truths Discovered Or Invented?
It’s long been debated whether mathematical truths are “discovered” or “invented”. The answer becomes clearer when you dig into what math actually is.
In my opinion, math is a language for describing patterns, relationships and rules. It’s just like any language except (1) it’s far more precise than normal language, and (2) unlike human languages, its domain is limited to only describing patterns and relationships and rules. In English, you can talk about birds AND equations related to bird ...
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Three Types of Nuanced Thinking
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...
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What Would Help Address Racial Inequality In The U.S.?
Here are some ideas that various groups and individuals have suggested. I don’t know which of them are likely to be the most helpful. What do you think?
Please let me know if you think of something I should add to this list.
Proposals people have made as potential means to try to improve the lives of Black Americans:
POLICE
reduce funding for police departments, or reduce the number of police officers
provide an alternative to calling the police (e.g., a hotline to...
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The Four States of Distress: how should you comfort a friend or loved one in need?
(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...
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Coronavirus Precautions
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...
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A Guide to Programming Yourself
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 ...
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Remaining Mysteries of the Universe
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?
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LIST OF DEEP MYSTERIES ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY
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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...
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