How much should you actually tip doormen in New York City for the holidays?

December 23, 2013

If you live in a building with doormen or doorwomen in New York City (Manhattan, Brooklyn, etc.), you are probably confused right now about how much you are expected to tip them for the holiday season. Nobody I've spoken to seems to really be confident in their answer to this and articles give conflicting advice on what a reasonable bonus is. That's why I made this little program to help solve the...

When should you seek criticism?

December 11, 2013

A while ago I wrote a post about the incredible value of seeking criticism. Today, someone asked me how we should decide when to seek criticism. Or, as he put it, when should we expect other people to have a better understanding of us than we ourselves do? Here are some rules of thumb. It’s generally a good idea to seek criticism from others when: You care about having an accurate understan...

Contradictory Insight

November 7, 2013

I was recently having a conversation with Geoff A. and Jana G. about how to systematically generate surprising ideas. I then sat down and created this program with them based on our discussion. Take a minute to try it, and generate some insight that you've never considered before! Click here to run Contradictory Insight!

Which Risks of Dying Are Worth Taking?

October 16, 2013

First, click here to figure out your chance of dying tomorrow. Is it worth taking a 1 in 100,000 chance of dying , in order to experience the novel thrill of sky diving? Is a 1 in 500,000 chance of death worth it to go bungee jumping? It's hard to know whether these risks are reasonable, because numbers like 100,000 or 500,000 feel so abstract to us. To think more clearly about these numbers, ...

Do Your Methods Reliably Lead You to the Truth?

October 8, 2013

Would you be satisfied believing merely what it's trendy to believe? If so, you can adopt the beliefs of the people of your country, city, and friend group. But if you want to reliably have truer beliefs, you're going to have to use different methods than most people do. Selecting which "epistemic methods" to rely on may be one of the most important decisions you make. Your epistemic methods ma...

Why We Overvalue What We No Longer Have: The Psychology of Loss

October 3, 2013

We over value the things we have, overreact when we can't have something anymore, and resist change. In other words, we hate loss. But because loss is frequent and inevitable, our hatred of it guarantees that we suffer. Let's take a look at the psychological mechanisms that make us act this way. The Endowment Effect Suppose that Nathan and Mae are two students at the same school. It is randomly...

How Can We Explain Tiny Startups Crushing Huge Tech Companies?

September 24, 2013

Suppose that mega-corp, a large corporation, has hundreds of employees, hundreds of thousands of customers, tens of millions of dollars of cash, a recognized brand, and an experienced CEO. Tiny-upstart, on the other hand, is just two twenty-five year olds with an idea, no funding, no users and no business experience. If mega-corp and tiny-upstart are in the same line of business, then by any r...

Make a Plan to Improve Your Life

September 20, 2013

Have you considered creating a plan to improve your life? If not, how about doing it right now? Or if you don't want to make one for yourself, you can use this one. A friend asked me to help him make a plan to become happier. He is already pretty happy, but thought he could be more so. What you see below is the general life improvement plan we came up with, which should apply to most people (pl...

Break Your Downward Emotional Spiral

July 16, 2012

Your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors can form a vicious feedback loop, sending you into a downward emotional spiral. You get a bad review from your boss, and start to feel upset. This negative emotion brings on thoughts about when you've made mistakes at your job, and you feel even worse. You now start imagining your boss firing you, and your mood sinks into despair. Let's dissect what's goin...

Know Your Addictions

July 7, 2012

What are you unable to stop after you start? Do you: Tell yourself you'll eat just a few chips, then eat the whole bag? Watch funny YouTube videos "for a few minutes", and then notice that an hour has passed? Choose to have "one drink", and end up having five? Decide to play video games "for an hour" and then later discover you've been at it the entire night? Tell yourself you'll check...