The Cactus Crossing Conundrum

August 6, 2017

The Cactus Crossing Conundrum is 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, "Smallville" and "Largeford," which are a 5-minute walk apart. There are 100 people in Smallville and 200 people in Largeford - so Largeford has twice as many people in it. According to their ancient traditions, ALL of the people in the two villages must meet once per month in one of t...

Three Problems, Three Solutions, and the First Step

June 27, 2017

If there was a technique that might improve your life in just 5 minutes, would you use it? If so, why not give this one a try? Step 1: Write down a list of the three most significant problems in your life right now Example: The three biggest problems are - (1) I don't feel rested when I wake up (2) I worry too much (3) I need to make a difficult decision at work Step 2: Choose the problem from Step 1 that you think it would be easiest to make improvements in, gi...