Replica Theory

October 27, 2021

Replica Theory is a tiny model I use that makes a lot of accurate predictions about society: When people are in a situation where they're as rewarded for doing an easier, fake version of something as they are for doing the real, valuable version, you'll usually find that most of the activity is fake. There are two types of "fake" activity in the way I'm using the word: (1) Activity that doesn't achieve anything useful at all. Example: a treatment that claims to cure a disease bu...

Ways to develop new hypotheses about human psychology

November 16, 2017

How would you go about building improved models of human psychology so that you can better help people? It might seem nearly impossible at first, but data about psychology is all around us, and there are numerous approaches you could take to discover new insights. Here are 24 different methods you could use to better understand the way humans work. In each case, I use "trying to figure out new things about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)" as an example. What techniques am I leaving out...

Agencies Are Not Agents

August 5, 2011

People will often debate questions like "why did the U.S. invade Iraq?" One group claims it was due to a fear of nuclear weapons. Another group claims that the action was oil related. Yet another claims that George Bush had a vendetta against Saddam. But proposed answers like these often seem to assume something that isn't likely to be true: that there was a single reason why this action occurred. It is in fact not even clear that there was one predominant or overarching reason. The actions o...