Tips for guessing what distribution a variable (or set of values) might have People often assume that the frequency with which a variable will take on different values (i.e., probability distribution) is likely to follow a bell curve (i.e., a normal distribution); this is often a mistake. Instead, consider these rules of thumb for deciding which probability distribution to use as a model in di...

A thought experiment about the pros and cons of describing your group identity in different ways: should the person in this example identify as being a member of the group or not? Suppose that the vast majority of people identify themselves as being either part of group Apple, Banana, or Cherry and that these groups are typically viewed as being mutually exclusive (e.g., few people say they ar...

People often want to know the extent to which a trait is genetic versus environmentally determined (e.g., "nature" versus "nurture"). This distinction is not nearly as clear cut as is usually assumed. Let's consider the obvious example of height in a population, a trait that's well known to be purely hereditary. Many causes of a population's height distribution are not hereditary. For example,...

The Poison-Cactus-Vampire-Ward Problem, an ethics and "fairness" thought experiment I wrote for you in which your moral intuitions are represented as a number between 0 and 100: Suppose there are two villages, "Parvitas" and "Amplus," which are a 5-minute walk apart. Once per month, when the full moon is out, all men, women, children, and wizards of the two villages must meet to conduct the va...

Becoming a great public speaker is hard! To make it easier, here is a list of tricks for giving better talks or lectures, organized by when to use each trick. CREATING YOUR CONTENT Brainstorm Before doing a ton of external research while developing your talk, first get down the parts of the talk that you can pull directly from your mind and memory to give yourself a much faster star...

Opposing parties in debates over commonly-raised questions often fail to focus their arguments on the same concept. These "ambiguous questions" are usually those that are fundamentally unresolvable until one disambiguation of the question is agreed upon. Until that disambiguation is reached, the debate often swirls in circles as different parties effectively argue about distinct topics, seemingly...

Here's my list of 23 high-impact ideas (for work, fun, health, etc.) that I've internalized over time: Health If you don't like exercise, instead of forcing or avoiding it, find ways to make it fun so that you actually want to do it (e.g., find a different type , such as a sport that engages you, or allow yourself to watch your favorite TV show or listen to your favorite podcast only while...

Here's my favorite philosophy of mind thought experiment that challenges pur view of personal identity or "self". It takes a while to explain but is quite a mind fuck, so bear with me. THE SETUP It feels, to nearly everyone, on a gut level, that I am 'me' and you are 'you', and consciousnesses are distinct from each other and easy to separate. Moreover, the vast majority of people acc...

It's not often discussed, but I believe that pre-cursors to commonly-diagnosed mental disorders often come with some benefits (as well as "flip side" costs that are linked to those benefits). As these traits become more extreme in nature (e.g., sufficiently far in the direction of what would be considered a diagnosable clinical disorder), these "flip side" costs (as well as other costs not associ...

I've been trying to better understand and resolve two seemingly contradictory (yet I think critically important) facts about human nature: (1) Human groups have pretty much always done unspeakably horrible things to other groups (e.g., think mass murder and numerous forms of oppression). And fairly often, while it is happening, this evil seems to be condoned, supported, or only passively oppos...