1. Occamism: the simpler a moral theory is, the more likely it is to be true. Hence (a priori), the most probable two moral theories are that (a) everything is permissible or that (b) nothing is. 2. Majoritarianism: an action is morally right if and only if the majority of conscious beings capable of understanding that action and its consequences think it's right. 3. R...

As far as I can tell, there are some policies that could be implemented in the U.S. that would very likely improve society according to both the values of the left and the right. So why don't these policies get implemented? If I'm right, these represent massive wasted opportunities. I think there are a number of possible reasons why even good, bipartisan policies don't get put into p...

Here's my list of difficult truths that are part of being human. We can: A. Lie to ourselves about them, B. Avoid thinking about them, or C. Try to accept the parts we can't change and change what we can. If you're in camps A or B, don't read this post! Here are Thirteen Difficult Truths: 1. Irrationality - we humans are not rational, despite the fact that most o...

1. How much dogs love us. There is no way we've been good enough boys/girls/humans to deserve this. 2. Popcorn. It's freakily amazing that corn kernels turn into this stuff. And as a bonus, it's delicious. 3. That humans, working together, eradicated the last wild strain of smallpox in the 1970s. This was a mind-blowingly huge win for our species. It had plagued us since ~3rd...

A. FOCUS 1. Attention: focus on every detail of the experience much more intently than normal. Ex: with each bite, notice as much as you can about the flavor and texture Ex: try to hear every distinct instrument in the music as it comes in and fades out 2. Savoring: try to extend and enhance enjoyable moments by using "metacognition" - become aware of how muc...

It's popular to read interviews and books with advice from highly successful people. But is their advice good advice? Perhaps it works for their situation, but that doesn't necessarily mean it generalizes to other circumstances. Maybe they are just overfitting to their personal life experience. Perhaps they are attributing too much of their success to the actions they happened to take rather than...

If you study depression and anxiety (in the U.S.), you find that they are correlated to a shockingly high degree (e.g., in one of my studies, when I correlated PHQ-9 depression scale scores with GAD-7 anxiety scale scores, I found that r = 0.82 ). Additionally, many studies have found that SSRIs (and other medications) help people with both depression and anxiety, as do cer...

When people learn just a little about game theory, decision theory, economics, or even evolutionary theory, they sometimes come away thinking that altruism is somehow “irrational” or that rational agents are selfish. Here are a number of reasons why altruism is often rational: I. People can value altruism for its own sake: 1. Intrinsic values: as a psychological fact, most humans int...

A surprisingly large number of unsettled questions in philosophy arise from the difficulty of meshing: A. our theoretical understanding of what things are "really" like (physics, atoms, etc.) with B. our direct, first-hand experiences as humans. Examples: (1) Ethics - most people experience a visceral feeling that some things are inherently and universally morally wrong (e.g.,...

We’ve all heard that you should take time to “process your emotions” and not “repress them.” But after a bad event occurs, what exactly does it MEAN to process your emotions? I think that, ideally, it involves a mix of these components: (1) Noticing: paying close attention to your negative thoughts instead of pushing them away or trying to ignore the bad feelings. What are the EXACT words...