Here are four incredibly bad ideas (that are still commonly believed):

1) That people should be judged for, blamed for, or feel shame about the behavior of their ancestors.

Of course, if your ancestors did bad things, you should condemn those acts. And if you directly benefit from something bad your family member did, you should consider if you can make amends.

But, logically, people cannot be morally responsible for events that they were unable to affect.

This bad idea (that we are responsible for the behavior of our ancestors) is partly responsible for numerous cycles of violent conflict, as well as for unjust punishments and unhelpful guilt.

2) That small differences in group means are a good justification for jumping to conclusions about members.

This idea is partly responsible for a variety of forms of prejudice and harmful stereotyping.

Epistemically, a small mean difference provides only a sliver of evidence about individuals. Morally, it’s unjust to treat individuals as though only their group matters.

3) That there’s a simple explanation for all or most human behavior.

Variations on this idea have led to a great deal of confusion about human nature.

Human behavior is not all about sex, or self-interest, or happiness, or status, or individual survival, or even love.

Humans have a very diverse set of forces that influence behavior: emotions, culture, values, habits, instincts, heuristics, goals, etc.

4) That you need to follow a prescribed template in order to have a fulfilling life.

This idea has led to countless people being pressured into or trapped in lives that are bad for them.

Some people will be happiest as homemakers, others as professionals, and still others as adventurers, etc. Sometimes, the best life for a person will match the stereotype for their gender or group; other times, it will be the opposite, and at other times, it will seem completely out of left field.

Our boxes are much too small to force people’s lives into.

This piece was first written on July 5, 2024, and first appeared on my website on November 10, 2024.

This confuses the public and undermines trust in science and scientists.

Some interesting examples:

1) As COVID-19 spread early in the pandemic, epidemiologists confidently stated many true things about it that were scientifically measured (e.g., rate of spread). Some of them were also equally confidently stating things that were just speculation (e.g., its origin being natural).

2) String theorists told the public many true and interesting things about string theory (e.g., why they feel it’s exciting). Some also confidently claimed very uncertain stuff like:”Superstring theory successfully merges general relativity and quantum mechanics.”

Being charitable, perhaps this could be interpreted not as a claim about superstring theory providing a correct theory of physics but rather as a statement about what superstring theory is doing mathematically. Even if so, though, this is – at the very least – going to be very confusing to those who read it. The statement also makes superstring theory seem like it can claim great achievements that perhaps it can’t.

3) Biologists confidently tell the public many true things about how cells form, how evolution works, and so on. Some, unfortunately, have made overconfident claims about a subject that is extremely uncertain: how life formed on Earth. We have only highly speculative theories.

Let me be clear: most scientists don’t engage in what I’m describing above. But when people claim something has been scientifically PROVEN when it actually hasn’t, this tends to reduce trust in the scientific enterprise and causes people to doubt scientists.

My field (psychology) is squishy enough that (unlike physics/biology) little has truly been PROVEN beyond a doubt. At best, we can usually say that studies have found a relationship or that (based on our own interpretation of the evidence) we believe a certain thing.

This piece was first written on August 13 and first appeared on this site on August 23, 2023.

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:

1. “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 that you value.
2. “Opposites attract” -> birds of a feather flock together (in fact, only a few types of opposites actually attract).
3. “Don’t let fear stop you” -> don’t let fear stop you when you’re afraid of doing valuable things that aren’t actually risky, and in those cases, try to ignore your fear and act in spite of it even though it may feel extremely shitty to do so.
4. “Trust your emotions” -> your emotions signal useful information about your needs and your beliefs about the world, so it’s really important to learn to notice them and understand what they are telling you…but don’t assume your emotions accurately reflect reality either, since they sometimes are much stronger than reality warrants (e.g., excessive fear of something that’s totally safe), or are the result of pattern recognition gone haywire (e.g., you get a bad feeling about someone because they have irrelevant similarities to another person who hurt you), or are impacted by random factors (e.g., feeling anger that’s caused more by hunger than by what the anger is fixated on).
5. “Believe your intuition” -> believe your intuition in situations you’ve experienced many times before, where there was enough feedback on how well your predictions performed to allow your intuition to have become honed (e.g., when interpreting the behavior of people you know well in common social situations, but not when evaluating if a complex philosophical claim is likely to be true), as well as in cases where there is no time to think things through carefully (e.g., if a yelling person leaps out in front of you and your intuition tells you that you’re in danger).
6. “Love happens when you’re not looking for it” -> desperation tends to be unattractive and can lead to bad, rash romantic decision making, so be cautious if you’re feeling that way and consider working on those feelings before seeking a partner, but on the other hand, the more people you meet, the more likely you are to meet someone you hit it off with, and that’s true even if you feel desperate
7. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” -> absence often makes the heart grow fonder…at first…and then, “out of sight, out of mind,” because eventually you get used to life without that person and it gets easier to be away from them and move on.
8. “Everything that happens happens for the best” -> bad things happen frequently that are truly not good, but you can often learn useful things from bad experiences, and it’s really worthwhile to actively look for what those learnings are. Plus, it is often possible to think differently about bad things in such a way as to reduce the suffering that they cause, and it’s often extremely worthwhile to do so when you can without deceiving yourself (e.g., remembering all the other things you are grateful for, or noticing the beneficial silver linings that resulted from the bad thing).