Written: November 3, 2018 | Released: July 23, 2021 Here are eight common and slick-sounding claims that I think are misleading, along with a very clunky alternative for each that I think is truer and more useful: "You'll regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did" -> don't try to minimize the amount of regret you'll have - try to maximize the total amount of the things...

It's remarkable the degree to which language can paint a picture of something being good or bad, or someone being trustworthy or unreliable, without actually making any factual claims. The more aware of this you become, the more you start seeing it all over the place. Language is often not neutral and objective even when it professes to be. We all know that language can have positive or negative ...

There are a LOT of ways to make inferences. Many more, I think, than is generally realized. And they all have their weaknesses. You can make inferences using… (1) Deduction: As a consequence of the definition of X and Y, if X then Y. X applies to this case. Therefore Y. “Plato is a man, and all men are mortal; therefore Plato is mortal.” “For any number that is an integer, t...

Here is a simple technique I really like using that I think can help us (a) better understand ourselves and (b) have more say over how we react in response to our emotions. I call it the "Inner Why" technique. How to do it:When you notice a sudden change in your emotional state (e.g., you start becoming anxious, sad, frustrated, or angry), immediately give yourself the best quick explanation y...

Written: September 30, 2018 | Released: August 13, 2021 I think one of the big choices to be made in life (once basic needs are well met) is whether to try to optimize more for a life of stability or for a life of acceleration. There is a tension between these two types of lives because they imply making different decisions in many realms. From what I can tell, the significant majority of p...

I recently conducted an in-person mini-experiment on whether we can tell different beverages apart - and how much we like them (with co-organizer Hannah Vazquez). Different stations were set up, each containing small (<1oz) tasting cups of a single type of beverage (with 5-6 distinct beverages of that type, labeled A, B, C, etc. so that nobody could tell which was which). The stations wer...

Written: August 7, 2018 | Released: July 30, 2021 Do you struggle to remember people's names after you meet them? Do you have a penchant for weird tricks? If you answered "yes" to those questions, you're a great candidate to use my three-part weird trick to remember people's names. I call it the "Tocayo Technique." I find it very effective, though unfortunately, I still don't have a habit o...

What would a fine art museum be like, if it were optimized relentlessly for what you care about? Within the limits of my ability to model my own preferences, I think my ideal fine art museum would be what I'm going to call "The Museum of Questioned Quality." I suspect lots of people would find this museum concept distasteful, to say the least. So before describing what the museum is, I'll expl...

My new favorite conversational technique that I'd like to get better at, which I call "Boiling the Conversation": Slowly and imperceptibly raise the unusualness or bizarreness level of the conversation so that you end up talking about something fascinating, fun, taboo, or deeply personal that people would almost never normally discuss (and that normally would be quite weird to just bring up), but...

Written: May 26, 2018 | Released: June 11, 2021 In my view, fundamental incentive misalignment affects many parts of society. Companies:  There are many ways to make money that are net harmful to the world (e.g., see here for 13 ways). Non-profits:  (1) The people that sponsor the work of a non-profit organization aren’t the ones that benefit from it. (2) D...