• Badhart’s Law: if a large organization doesn’t measure anything, it’s unlikely to achieve anything

• The Zareto Principle: roughly 20% of effects come from just 0.001% of causes

• The Dunning–Kruger-Kruger-Dunning Effect: people with little knowledge about the Dunning-Kruger effect will confidently claim that it’s about how people with little skill believe they are more skilled than experts

• White Swan Theory: most real-world impact comes from the most commonly occurring instances, since they’re so numerous (e.g., most people’s perspective on whether swans are dickheads comes from their interactions with white swans, not black ones)

• Zuckerberg’s Number: technology enables us to break free from evolutionary constraints by barely having a social relationship with 5000 people

• Barkinson’s Law: regardless of how much time is allocated for a project, many people will start working on it at the last possible moment

• Schloccam’s Razor: Among competing explanations that all fit the facts, use the one that is most useful

• The Savile Effect: Attempts by powerful people to suppress information often succeed – it’s just that you only hear about the ones that fail

• The Autism Effect: when a trait’s apparent prevalence skyrockets due to broadening definitions and improved screening, somebody will inevitably blame its rise on really stupid shit like Tylenol or vaccines

• Stalin’s Razor: don’t attribute to stupidity what could be adequately explained by the person in charge being a dangerous, power-obsessed psycho

• Musk’s Law: those with tremendous success early in life become convinced that they are geniuses in other domains where they very much aren’t

• Daze’s Rule: people will be more impressed if you use fancy math to make a point than if you just say the same thing

• Dunderham’s Law: the fastest way to summon wrong answers online is to post the right one.

• Godberg’s Law: As people get increasingly angry at something happening in society, the probability that someone eventually tries to blame the Jews for it approaches one

• Dumbar’s Principle: famous number about humans inevitably have very stupid origin stories (e.g., ~150 stable social ties, 10000 steps for health, 8 glasses of water per day, a >2.9013 positive-to-negative ratio needed to flourish)

• The COVID Principle: people will often risk their lives before they risk standing apart from their tribe

• Diner Equilibrium: when nobody is actually happy with the outcome of a negotiation, but everyone is satisfied enough not to complain

• Multipolar party: when, despite nobody being in charge, humans miraculously self-assemble and cooperate to solve challenges, as often occurs at Burning Man

Just in case you didn’t catch on: these are parodies of “real” mental models 

This piece was first written on April 13, 2026, and first appeared on my website on April 30, 2026.

—
LITTLE-KNOWN SELF-IMPROVEMENT CONCEPTS

1) Musterbating: Albert Ellis’ term for rigid, self-imposed ideas that many people hold that “I/you/they absolutely must (or should) do X.” Rather than seeing these as preferences or nice-to-haves, they see them as absolutes, which fuels irrational belief and negative emotions.

2) Hormetic exposure – Exposures that are beneficial precisely because they are mild stresses (e.g., exercise, fasting, hot/cold therapy). By putting the body under stress, in some cases, you can trigger helpful adaptive over-compensation (hormesis).

3) Healthspan – The length of time you spend in good health, free from chronic disease and disability (not merely alive). For some who see themselves as wanting to increase their lifespan, their values might be more accurately captured by aiming to increase their healthspan.

4) Valuism – Okay, this is mine. A personal life philosophy with 2 parts:

(i) figure out what you intrinsically value

(ii) seek to use effective methods to create more of what you intrinsically value.

It’s a framework for living without requiring belief in absolute moral truth.

—
LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS RELATED TO CRITICAL THINKING

5) Paltering – Misleading an audience by selectively stating only true facts that nonetheless foster a false overall impression. Some of the most effective public manipulators mainly palter instead of lying.

6) Deepity – A term coined by Daniel Dennett (piggybacking off of its usage by an unspecified friend of his teenage daughter) to refer to statements that seem profound by exploiting ambiguity: they have one interpretation by which they are trivially or boringly true and another interpretation by which they are meaningless or false (but where it would seem profound if true). Our brains can accidentally mix these interpretations together, leading to the mistaken impression that the statement is both true and profound (e.g., “Love is just a word.”)

7) Epistemics – The norms, methods, and quality standards governing how beliefs are formed, updated, and justified. If you think that society is bad at figuring out what’s true, you may want people to work on improving their epistemics.

—
LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS FOR THINKING ABOUT THE WORLD

8 ) M.E.C.E. – A useful principle for structuring information by dividing it into categories that are mutually exclusive (there’s no overlap between categories) and collectively exhaustive (no items are left out; everything has a category).

9) Hyperstition – A term coined by Nick Land for a narrative or idea that becomes true (or shapes reality) precisely because people believe and propagate it. For instance, if people believe a company to be very valuable, that can make it become very valuable, or if people believe a handbag is very popular (even if at that time it isn’t actually), that can make it become very popular.

10) Superstimuli – something that is optimized by human ingenuity to stimulate our naturally evolved reward circuits more than they could be stimulated by things in our natural environment. For instance, junk food is a food superstimulus, or social media is a social superstimulus.

11) Bezel – Galbraith’s term for the illusory wealth created by fraud or embezzlement before it gets discovered. It’s the gap between the perceived and real asset value. The bezel makes the defrauder and defrauded both have a psychological perception of wealth.

12) Gamable – Able to be strategically manipulated or “gamed,” i.e., its rules allow actors to extract advantage without fulfilling the system’s intended purpose. One of the most important aspects of system design in high-stakes situations lacking trust is that systems should be ungamable. Otherwise, the system will be exploited or not achieve its intended purpose.

13) QALY – A quality-adjusted life year (related to healthspan but in the context of improving the lives of others): a way of quantifying the benefit of any intervention designed to help people live longer or improve their health that takes into account both the number of extra years of life produced AND the quality of those years of life. So, 1 QALY is one extra year of life lived in full health.

14) Longtermism – An ethical view that “positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.” Sometimes, it’s justified by arguing that the importance of actions may lie in their effects on the far future, given the vast potential number of future lives.

15) Familicide – Murder of one’s family (typically spouse/partner and children), often followed by suicide. Why bother having a word for this upsetting concept at all? Well, bizarrely, it’s statistically the most common form of mass murder (i.e., where three or more people are killed during one event).

16) Superorganism – A coordinated collective (e.g., an ant colony or tightly integrated human society) that functions as a single organism despite being composed of many organisms. Interestingly, even the human body is a superorganism since we’re composed of distinct living organisms.

17) Umwelt – An organism’s perceptual experience of the world or the slice of reality created by a particular creature’s unique sensory and cognitive apparatus. For instance, the Elephantnose Fish apparently gets a 3d sense of its surroundings by creating an electric field – their umwelt must be nearly unimaginably different than our own.

—
LITTLE-KNOWN EMOTION-RELATED CONCEPTS

18) Alonely – negative feelings caused by not getting enough time alone (the opposite of loneliness).

19) Ego-syntonic – Experienced as consistent with one’s self-image, values, and goals. For instance, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is usually ego-syntonic, meaning that insofar as they’re willing to accept their traits, narcissists usually don’t see them as problematic.

20) Mudita – Buddhist “sympathetic joy,” that is, genuine happiness at another’s good fortune, which can be viewed as the inverse of envy or schadenfreude.

21) Compersion – Empathic pleasure or happiness felt when a loved one experiences pleasure or happiness. This word usually crops up in polyamorous circles, indicating feeling happy at the fact that one of your partners is experiencing happiness with another romantic or sexual partner. Some see it as the near opposite of jealousy.

22) JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) – Positive satisfaction you get from deliberately skipping social or popular activities in favor of using time for something more personally valuable (such as time with loved ones). Some see it as the near opposite of FOMO (fear of missing out).

23) Alexithymia – A condition where you struggle to identify, describe, and/or differentiate your emotions. If you often can’t tell how you feel or usually can’t put your emotions into words, you may have Alexithymia.

24) Defusion – The skill of viewing thoughts as transient mental events rather than literal truths – such as by viewing them from an external perspective – which reduces their emotional power over us. For example, instead of just having a thought X and being “inside” it, you observe that “you’re having the thought that X” or even “I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that I’m having the thought that X.” You can ask yourself about a particular thought: are you “fused” with that thought (living inside of it, treating it as the truth) or defused from it?

25) Pronoid – A pervasive conviction that other people or the universe at large are conspiring for your benefit. It is the optimistic mirror-image of being paranoid: where a paranoid expects hidden threats, a pronoid expects hidden aid. Thanks to Andreea Alexuc for introducing me to this concept.

—
LITTLE-KNOWN CONCEPTS FOR THINKING ABOUT PEOPLE

26) Wamb – A term coined by John Nerst, which means the opposite of “nerd.” Things that are wamb tend to be socially mainstream, trendy, cool, and non-intellectual. Jock, prom king, football players in high school are often the epitome of wamb. We can also think about a wamb-to-nerd spectrum that people and things can be placed on.

27) D.A.R.V.O. – A tactic often used by abusers when they are accused of wrongdoing: (1) Deny wrongdoing, (2) Attack the accuser, and (3) Reverse Victim and Offender (so as to make the abuser appear to be the victim)
28) Mimophant – Someone who is simultaneously aggressive, forceful, or insensitive to other people’s feelings (charging forward like an elephant) yet hypersensitive to criticism or has their own feelings easily hurt (like a mimosa plant, which quickly retracts its leaves when touched).

29) Apophenia (Spectrum) – Apophenia is the cognitive bias of perceiving meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. I prefer, though, to adapt this concept to use it as a spectrum applied to people. I use it to indicate the extent to which you spot patterns and connections. Those who are high in apophenia find real patterns that others miss but also see more false patterns, whereas those who are low have fewer false patterns but may miss real patterns. There’s a fundamental trade-off related to pattern identification – some people have more false positives, whereas others have more false negatives. People with schizophrenia tend to be very high in apophenia.

30) Lightgassing – The opposite of gaslighting – when someone reinforces your false misconceptions about the world (e.g., “You’re right, your girlfriend [who broke up with you] is a terrible person and doesn’t deserve you.”) This is another one by me.

This piece was first written on July 8, 2025, and first appeared on my website on September 15, 2025.

1. Child education: those who aim to teach children “critical thinking,” – which often (but not always) means teaching the basic thinking, logic, and analysis skills that the majority of adults eventually acquire one way or another. I believe this is a valuable service (much like teaching reading, which is a valuable service even though most people will learn to read). I also think it usually sets the bar pretty low for what good thinking is, but the best of this work sets the bar higher. This work can also serve as a feeder into categories 3 and 4 if it fosters an interest in thinking well.

2. Dunking, which comes in two flavors:
   • 2a. Stupidity Dunking: those who fight unusually bad ways of thinking (that <1% of the population believe) – e.g., they argue against the beliefs of Flat Earthers or people who think Bill Gates created the COVID pandemic. Quite a lot of this work comes across as making fun of people with dumb beliefs or gawking at stupidity (without encouraging self-reflection on one’s own beliefs), and so I think it isn’t that valuable and may well be harmful. I believe the best of this work uses these extreme examples as case studies to teach genuine critical thinking skills, which can be genuinely valuable.
   • 2b. Out-group Dunking: those that point out dumb thinking engaged in by the opposing political group (but don’t critique similarly egregious errors from their side or even defend bad thinking and lack of nuance from their side). Like dunking on Flat Earthers, I think this is usually not useful and perhaps actively harmful – it gives the impression that you (the viewer) are smart and the other side is dumb. To improve critical thinking, it’s essential to focus on your own thinking weaknesses, not just make it about other people.

3. Mass market: Those who combat common types of bad thinking – e.g., that because a particular two-year stretch was unusually cold, that means humans are not causing climate change, or that food not being “natural” means it’s very likely harmful to your health. This work often focuses on public education (often for an audience that has only a limited interest in learning to think well). It often teaches just the most basic concepts/building blocks related to logic, statistics, rhetorical fallacies, and cognitive biases – since these are concepts that many people aren’t that familiar with. I think this work is often quite valuable and hopefully helps serve as a feeder into the next category.

4. Advanced: Those who want to help people who already care about thinking well further improve their thinking – e.g., by discussing the strength of evidence on complex topics or the pros and cons of different policies in a nuanced way. This audience already knows many or most of the most basic concepts for thinking but could benefit from learning to apply these concepts more frequently and fluidly, as well as from learning more advanced concepts that build on the basic ones. This is the category I aim to be in with a lot of my writing. As you get more and more advanced, the market for this gets smaller and smaller, so usually, I try to position what I write in a way that it’s still accessible for the least advanced among the “advanced” audience while still hoping to say things that will interest the more advanced among this group. As such, I try to avoid jargon and avoid assuming knowledge of ideas beyond the very basics of good thinking. To contrast this with another approach, I see LessWrong as being more focused on appealing to the tip of the advanced group, which narrows the audience but can be very informative for that readership.

Other than the “dunking” category (which often has questionable value), I think all of these categories of education play an important role in the critical thinking ecosystem.

This piece was first written on January 24, 2025, and first appeared on my website on March 25, 2025.

We all sometimes say things that:

• don’t make much sense

• we realize we don’t agree with (after a moment of reflection)

• are based on misremembering facts

• sound different than what we meant

High stress situations tend to increase those effects. An interesting implication: anyone on TV, or who is otherwise recorded enough times, will be found making the mistakes mentioned above. So people can cherry pick examples to make just about any public figure look bad.

If you see claims about a public figure, and those claims are proven by showing a tiny isolated clip of the person seeming to say something, you’ll gain a more accurate perspective if you can find the full clip, and (ideally) other clips of the person discussing the same topic.

Here is an interesting example (that became a news story) that illustrates this effect: Short clip (the one that circulated) vs full context clip.

Postmortem explanation (notice the title of the video: Obama Stands by ‘Stupidity’ Comments).

This piece was first written on August 26, 2020, and first appeared on my website on June 8, 2026.

• 1+1=2 (true) vs., the Illuminati controls our planet (false)
• viruses (bad) vs. puppies (good)
• a fedora is a hat; a fedora is not a bat

But when it comes to important, complex topics (and especially ones that are political or emotional or that relate to our identity), dichotomizing often impairs our ability to figure out what’s what. It’s hard to be accurate when you’re thinking with just 1 bit of information. Hence the need for Nuanced Thinking.

There are at least three types of dichotomization that we easily fall into, and three types of Nuanced Thinking that you can use to combat them. I’ll describe each of them below.

—

Dichotomization 1: The Truth Binary

The Truth Binary is when we view a statement as simply true or false, correct or incorrect. But on complex topics, simple viewpoints are often partially true and partially false, or true some percent of time and false the rest of the time. Furthermore, our knowledge of truth is limited, so we should have degrees of confidence, rather than certainty. If we want to be right more often, we should have thoughts like “I’m 90% confident that…” and “I’m 60% confident that” rather than “I believe that…”

Examples of complex topics where people often fall into the Truth Binary:

• I believe/don’t believe that the government is incompetent
• I believe/don’t believe that harsh prison sentences for violent crime make society safer
• I believe/don’t believe that the people of the U.K. benefit by leaving the E.U.
• I believe/don’t believe that we should end the COVID-19 lockdowns as soon as possible
• I believe/don’t believe in the effectiveness of western medicine
• I believe/don’t believe that Trump will win the next election
• I believe/don’t believe that are going to see a decline in the power of America

The antidote to the Truth Binary is Probabilistic Thinking, where we consider our level of confidence in our beliefs, avoid having 100% confidence in anything, and consider in what situations a view will be true vs. in what other situations it could be false.

Probabilistic Thinking helps us be right more often.

Probabilistic Thinking involves asking ourselves questions like:

• What do I think the percentage chance is that this viewpoint is correct?
• How often do I expect that this viewpoint correct, and how often would I expect it to be wrong?
• Would I be really surprised if it turned out I was mistaken on this issue, or only a bit surprised?
• Would I bet a meaningful amount of money that this view is correct, only a little or none at all?

—

Dichotomization 2: The Goodness Binary

The Goodness Binary is when we view things as either good or bad, positive or negative, moral or immoral, when in fact, on complex, hotly debated topics, most often there is a mix of good and bad (even if, all things considered, one side really is better).

Examples of complex topics where people often fall into the Goodness Binary:

• The U.S. Democratic (or Republican) Party is good/bad
• Anyone who voted for X is fundamentally good/bad
• Nuclear power is good/bad
• Capitalism is good/bad
• Socialism is good/bad
• China is good/bad
• The United States is good/bad
• Technological progress is good/bad
• Antidepressants are good/bad to take if you’re depressed
• Religion is good/bad
• That public figure I love/hate is good/bad
• That book is good/bad

The antidote to the Goodness Binary is Grey Thinking, where we accept that good things usually have some bad elements, and that bad things usually have some good elements, and that many things lie somewhere in the middle.

Grey Thinking makes us more effective at improving things (because it allows us to better consider necessary tradeoffs), and it helps us avoid accidentally harming the world through misguided good intentions.

Grey Thinking involves asking our questions like:
• What are the pros and cons of this?
• Who benefits from this, and who is harmed?
• What value does this thing I dislike create, even if this sort of value is not the kind of value I most care about?

—

Dichotomization 3: The Identification Binary

The Identification Binary is when we view things as either a member of a class or not a member of that class, when in fact, almost every categorization admits edge cases that lie between categories, or fails to categorize some cases.

Examples of complex topics where people often fall into the Identification Binary:

• You’re on our side, or you’re against our side
• You’re male, or you’re female
• That’s a cult, or it’s not
• She’s right-wing, or she’s not
• He’s a criminal, or he’s not
• You’re gay, or you’re straight
• He’s a terrorist or he’s not
• She’s racist, or she’s not
• They’re an American, or they’re not

The antidote to the The Identification Binary is Multi-factor Thinking, where we consider the degree to which something has different factors.

Multi-factor Thinking helps us see people and things as they really are, rather than oversimplifying them or misjudging their characteristics.

Multi-factor Thinking involves asking our questions like:

• In what ways is this case similar or different from these categories?
• Is that example better thought of as lying between two (or three) categories, rather than as being right in the middle of one category?
• If I ignore labels for a second, what traits does this case have?

—

So with all of that in mind, I would urge you to use Nuanced Thinking to better figure out what’s what.

More specifically:

• if you want to figure out what’s true in the world, avoid the Truth Binary on important, complex issues, and use Probabilistic Thinking instead. Ask yourself how sure you are, and how often this thing is true, and avoid 100% certainty.
• If you want to improve the world (and not accidentally cause harm), avoid the Goodness Binary, and use Grey Thinking instead. Ask yourself what the pros and cons are, considering both what’s good and bad about each thing.
• If you want to see people and things as they really are, rather than oversimplifying or misjudging, avoid the Identification Binary, and use Multi-factor thinking instead. Ask what ways this thing is similar or different to a category, and how it might blend multiple categories, and consider what traits it has irrespective of categories.

To add some extra nuance to this post: Nuanced Thinking of course shouldn’t be used all the time. For simple things, binaries can be good enough. And some things aren’t important enough to spend the time getting nuanced. Finally, there are times when you just need to get along with your group, rather than trying to see shades of grey/probability/factors in everything.

But when a topic is important and complex, and you care about having accurate beliefs, Nuanced Thinking will help.

Nuanced Thinking also helps with decision-making more broadly, producing what I call “Nuanced Decision-Making.” This is where you select an objective, and then you apply Nuanced Thinking in order to choose the option that appears to be best, on average, according to that objective.