While I’ve spent a bunch of time fact-checking these, I’m very interested in correcting any mistakes I may have inadvertently made. If you catch any mistakes, please let me know what I’m wrong about and what’s actually true.

Facts about the US that contradict commonly believed narratives:

1) Regarding political violence, the majority of Americans see it as…a big problem in society and as being “never justified” (liberals and conservatives agree on this), and the substantial majority view it as “always or usually unacceptable” to be happy about a public figure’s death.

2) The majority of murderers have…prior criminal history (e.g., arrests or convictions), and the substantial majority of homicides are committed by men under 45.

3) More than half of murder victims who were not murdered by a family member…also have prior criminal histories (though, of course, this doesn’t mean that they deserve to be murdered).

4) The majority of homicides are committed due to…personal arguments or are related to drug or gang activity, rather than random acts of violence.

5) School shootings kill…vastly fewer children annually than prosaic dangers like unsafe driving (though it’s a horrifying tragedy each time school shootings occur).

6) Mass murders (where 3 or more people are murdered at the same event) are most often…familicide, where a person kills their family, usually committing suicide afterward.

7) Regarding violence, since the 1990s, America has gotten…far less violent (while there was an uptick during the pandemic around 2020, it is still well below the 1990s peak).

8) Compared to alcohol, homicide leads to the death of…very few people (though it’s terrible whenever homicide occurs).

9) The majority of gun-related deaths are…suicides, not homicides.

10) In rural areas, the suicide rate (per million people) is…highest (urban areas actually have lower rates).

11) The vast majority of reported disappearances of children are…relatives taking a child (e.g., custody disputes) or runaways (rather than kidnappings).

12) Most rapes are carried out by…someone the victim already knows (though in about 1 in 5 cases, the perpetrator is a stranger).

13) Women experiencing sexual assault are not…at all uncommon (more than 20% of adult women have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives).

14) The most dangerous activity that is very common for people under 30 to engage in on a daily basis is…driving in cars.

15) Commercial airline crashes are…incredibly rare (despite the media attention), and commercial flights are far safer than driving per mile (whereas per hour they are closer to being on par).

16) For adults 25 to 35, the biggest killer is…accidental poisoning (which mostly consists of drug overdoses), not car accidents, and considering the whole adult population, opioid related deaths exceed deaths from motor vehicles.

17) Most personal bankruptcy is related to…sudden job loss or illness (which can simultaneously lead to large medical bills and loss of work).

18) The significant majority of federal taxes that the government collects come from…the top 20% of earners.

19) The percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax is…about 35% (though they still pay payroll taxes and sales taxes, and may pay property taxes and state taxes).

20) Regarding health insurance, the vast majority of Americans…are insured (about 90%), and while some people get extremely screwed by the system by being stuck with huge bills they can’t afford due to unavoidable medical challenges, most Americans say they are satisfied with their health insurance, even though they usually also say that the system overall is substantially flawed and needs significant reforms.

21) Most US federal government spending goes to…social security, health care (e.g., Medicaid/Medicare), military-related expenses (e.g., staff costs, veterans, vehicles), and interest payments on national debt (since interest rates have risen).

22) On average, legal immigrants commit crimes…at a lower rate than natural-born citizens.

23) Where immigration status is reliably recorded, undocumented immigrants have an incarceration rate…lower than that of U.S.-born residents.

24) It’s extremely rare that trans people…get murdered (of course, it’s a horrible tragedy when it does occur, and there are uncertainties around data collection); but current data indicates that suicide is a vastly more common life-threatening risk to trans people, and also, that trans people experience a substantially elevated risk of non-fatal violence compared to cis people.

25) Unarmed Black people who are stopped or engaged by the police have…an extremely low chance of being killed by those police (of course, it’s a horrendous tragedy when it does occur); however, Black people are substantially more likely than white people to be stopped by police without clear cause, and are far more likely than white people to be murdered by criminals.

26) Black Americans mostly want the level of police presence in their area…to stay unchanged (i.e., neither be decreased nor increased), with only about 1 in 5 wanting less policing, though most Black Americans do want other major changes to policing to be made.

27) Currently, much of the recycling that occurs…ends up being wasteful once you factor in all extra fuel burned in order to recycle those materials, the amount of “recycled material” that fails to actually be recycled, and alternative enviromental efforts goverment money spent on recyclying could have gone to instead; whether recycling is effective depends on the region as well as the type of material being recyled (e.g., aluminum is especially useful to recycle, whereas plastic recycling tends to be inefficient).

28) Our landfills are…mostly not close to running out of capacity (and when there are shortages, they are almost always local issues).

29) From a danger perspective, nuclear power is…extremely safe (especially when compared to many other sources of power, like coal), as well as very environmentally friendly (with almost no emissions and reliable solutions for storing the toxic waste produced); new reactor designs are dramatically safer than past ones, yet, nuclear power largely is stopped from being cost-effective due to excessive regulations that are extremely costly to comply with.

30) Almost all suffering that humans cause to domesticated land animals is due to…practices at large farms, such as tiny cages that animals spend almost their whole lives in, or being densely packed together in unpleasant conditions with little to no outdoor access and limited ability to engage in their natural behaviors.

31) Most individuals who experience homelessness are homeless for…less than 12 months, but most of the people you see living on city streets, who are typically the most visible homeless people, are experiencing longer-term homelessness.

32) The majority of people who experience chronic homelessness are either…experiencing a drug addiction or a significant mental health challenge, or both (though for some of these people, the addiction or mental health challenge occurred after homelessness began); a non-negligible percent (perhaps 20%, but estimates differ substantially) have neither challenge.

33) The primary causes of high housing prices are…factors that increase the costs of building new housing or that completely prevent it from being built (such as zoning, excessive regulations, lengthy approval processes, and local opposition), as well as, for popular places like New York City, net migration into those areas.

34) The majority of people in prison in the US at any given moment are there for…violent crimes, not non-violent drug-related crimes or victimless offenses – while the substantial majority of convictions are for non-violent crimes (since most crime is non-violent), violent crime typically carries much longer sentences.

35) Almost nobody who is charged with a crime goes to…trial (they mostly take plea bargains).

36) The significant majority of people who are charged with a serious crime and go to trial are…convicted.

37) Regarding the US federal minimum wage, very…few people actually get paid that amount (in part due to higher minimum wages that many states have, and in part due to naturally occurring labor market prices that are simply higher than the federal minimum).

This piece was first written on November 2, 2025, and first appeared on my website on November 17, 2025.

For instance, I just made up these stories that I’ve never heard of ever happening:

• a young child stealing their mother’s car

• a dog discovering buried treasure

And indeed, with a quick search I can confirm that these things seem to really have happened!

Though, of course, this won’t always be the case since the number of human events still pales in comparison to the number of concepts that can be mixed – for instance, I couldn’t find even one documented case of “a clown being killed by bees” (though I’m confident that at some point in history, someone was dressed in a clown suit when a bee stung them).

In any event, the preponderance of events on our planet means that something happening one single time tells us almost nothing. Having happened once is a very low bar.

And yet, to make a point in a way that people find compelling, it’s sometimes mandatory (or close to it) to give real-world examples that demonstrate the point.

This creates an awkward tension where a single real-world example often has almost no evidentiary value but has substantial persuasive power.

There are some special cases where an anecdote can provide meaningful evidence. For instance, when the anecdote is so well documented or reliable that you know it happened AND the outcome couldn’t reasonably have been caused by anything other than through the explanation the anecdote provides – such as a case study in a hospital where some experimental new treatment saves a patient with a previously incurable disease. Or when you yourself have tried something once (e.g., a self-help technique), and it seemed to work well, and that is sufficient justification for trying it again.

But in most cases, despite their usefulness in making a compelling point, anecdotes should be thought of as a way to imagine something more vividly and see more clearly specific ways it can manifest, not as evidence for something being true. They are important when explaining a concept, but usually not because they provide evidence of its validity.

This piece was first written on September 13, 2024, and first appeared on my website on October 11, 2024.

Healthy vs. Unhealthy Emotional Validation 

I would say that the main difference between the healthy validation of emotions and the unhealthy version is that the healthy version is based on genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in the other person’s experience, whereas the unhealthy version involves a willingness to sacrifice those things in an attempt to make the other person immediately feel good.

At a more detailed level, I think the healthy way to validate other people’s feelings involves expressing the following ideas (but ONLY when these ideas are true).

Healthy Emotional Validation

1) Care: I care about you.

2) Willingness: I’m totally okay with you feeling this emotion right now in front of me.

3) Acceptance: I don’t think badly of you for feeling what you’re feeling.

4) Interest: I am interested in learning more about what you are feeling and why you are feeling it.

5) Compassion: I have compassion and/or empathy for your suffering and want you not to suffer (unless you want to suffer right now, in which case I want you to suffer only insofar and in the ways that seem appropriate to you, such as the suffering that most people feel is right to feel after the loss of a loved one).

6) Understanding of facts: I understand the facts of what happened in this situation (and if I don’t, I’m going to ask open-ended questions in an effort to understand it).

7) Understanding of feelings: I understand why you’re feeling this way (and if I don’t, I’m going to make an effort to understand it).

8) Legitimization of feelings: I think it is totally reasonable that this combination of your situation, your beliefs about this situation, your thoughts, and your past experiences causes you to feel this way right now (and if I don’t see how the combination of your situation, beliefs, etc., lead to your emotion, I’m going to make an effort to understand it).

While some of this is helpful to say aloud when a friend or loved one is upset, much of it will typically be expressed through body language, attention, attitude, presence, tone of voice, and so on. The main thing is that these ideas get expressed in a way that the other person receives them, whether that expression is verbal or non-verbal, explicit or implicit.

On the other hand, I think that it’s usually unhealthy to attempt to validate emotions when it’s done expressing the following ideas.

Unhealthy Emotional Validation 

1) Disingenuousness: you say things that you don’t really mean or believe, such as supporting their claims about what happened when you don’t believe those claims are true.

2) Emotional reasoning: you support the idea that whatever their emotional response is to the situation is a perfect guide to what actually occurred (e.g., if they feel angry at someone, that implies the other person must have done something objectively harmful, or if they feel they’ve lost someone they had a fight with, that means that person is gone forever).

3) Justification: you support or encourage harmful or self-destructive actions they took or are considering taking as a consequence of their negative feelings (e.g., normalizing them taking revenge on the person they are angry about or justifying why it is okay that they did so).

4) Absolving: you encourage the idea that they made no mistakes or behaved perfectly or that someone else is 100% to blame for the situation (unless, of course, you really believe this to be true). On this point, it is often the case that victims of crimes did nothing at all wrong, but this is much less commonly the case when it comes to, for instance, interpersonal conflict between romantic partners, which usually involves both parties having behaved imperfectly, though not necessarily to the same degree.

To recap, people often want emotional validation from their friends and loved ones when they are feeling upset. People are often confused, though, about what this means exactly. There are both healthy ways and unhealthy ways to do emotional validation. 

The healthy version is not always easy to do, but I think it is what we should aspire to when a friend or loved one wants emotional validation. 

To do the healthy version, aim to imbue your responses to their emotions with genuine compassion, caring, authenticity, honesty, and interest in their experiences. And avoid sacrificing those things just to make the other person feel good.

This piece was first written on October 1, 2023, and first appeared on this site on October 11, 2023.

Yet, there’s something extremely odd about wisdom: nobody agrees on what it means.

Here are six thought-provoking definitions of wisdom that l find it useful to reflect on:

1) Wisdom as self-consistency: 

Wisdom is an equilibrium where you find alignment between all combinations of your:

• values

• beliefs

• actions

Inspiration: Justin Shovelain and Elliot McKernon

2) Wisdom as causal control: 

Wisdom is the ability and propensity to consider complex sets of circumstances and then, through a deep understanding of causal mechanisms regarding oneself, humans, and the world, choose actions that will (on average) lead to beneficial outcomes.

Inspiration: Vervaeke/Ferraro

3) Wisdom = Knowledge x Goodness

If you know nothing, then you have no wisdom. On the other hand, if you use your knowledge purely to seek harm, you also lack any wisdom.

Wisdom is the combination of what you know and how good the ends are that you use that knowledge to pursue.

4) Wisdom as a virtue: 

Wisdom comes about through the accumulation of character strengths like:

• factual knowledge, self-knowledge, understanding

• first-hand experience, common sense

• compassion, altruism

• impartiality, non-attachment, objectivity, epistemic humility

• courage

5) Wisdom as search: 

Developing wisdom means pursuing the virtues and knowledge of the good, exploring the essential truths about life and the causes and effects of things, and practicing applying these insights to both theoretical and real-life situations.

6) Wisdom as perspective: 

Wisdom involves seeing a situation from multiple viewpoints and weighing the strengths and limitations of each one while incorporating knowledge of psychology, biases, ethics, and the nature of reality to make judgments that reliably produce flourishing.

This piece was first written on August 1, 2023, and first appeared on this site on August 9, 2023.

2) Set units: use the “format” feature to make percentages into actual percentages (ending in %), to make dollar figures into actual dollar figures (starting with $), and so on. This makes it easier to interpret figures at a glance.

3) Use formulas: anything that can be calculated using the “formulas” feature should be (don’t do calculations by hand). Using formulas means numbers are automatically updated if anything changes, reduces human error, and makes it possible to check how a calculation is done.

4) Distinguish inputs and outputs: use a different color for numbers that are automatically-calculated outputs than for those that are inputs (e.g., entered by hand). This makes it easy to see what can be varied (and what is calculated and should not be manually edited).

5) Bold totals and key figures: make totals and key figures stand out by using bold (or color coding) to draw the eye to the most important parts of the sheet.

6) Don’t repeat yourself: If you’re repeating a header more than once in a way that means the same thing each time (e.g., “Total Revenue” appears once in every column), or you find that have another form of repetition, you should restructure your tables to remove the repetition.

7) Use clear names: every column and row should have a name that makes it crystal clear what it actually means. Ambiguous names can lead to confusion and mistakes, especially if others have to read your spreadsheets or if you may return to a spreadsheet you made a long time ago.

8) Center-align column headers and numbers: spreadsheets look neater and are a bit easier to read when the column headers and numbers are aligned in the center of columns rather than using the default (left or right) alignment.

9) Order columns and rows based on importance: put the most important stuff first (to the left and to the top) so that it’s easier to see what’s important immediately.

10) Bonus tips:

• Freeze the header row so that sorting works better and so that it’s clearer what the header is. 
• For columns (or rows) where the bigger numbers are more important than smaller ones, use conditional formatting (with a 3-color scale for numbers that can be both positive and negative or a 2-color scale for ones that are all positive) to make the important numbers pop out.
• Give spreadsheets really clear names so that they are easy to search for (and so that anyone who sees them can quickly understand what each spreadsheet contains)

This piece was first written on May 5, 2023, and first appeared on this site on May 7, 2023.

It has been estimated that over 70% of adults in the world have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Consequently, the majority of friendships and relationships will involve at least one person who has experienced trauma.

This article investigates how one person’s trauma can “clash” with another person’s trauma to cause relationship breakdown and what you can do to resolve conflicts like this if you experience them yourself. You might find it helpful to read if you…

• have some trauma in your past that sometimes gets triggered by other people’s behavior;
• find that your friends or romantic partners sometimes suddenly hurt you for inexplicable reasons;
• struggle to understand other people’s hostile reactions to actions you take;
• want a new model that might help you understand conflict with people close to you.

Let’s look at some specific examples of what we mean by Clashing Trauma: 

1. Trauma from anger and abuse 

Bob is sensitive to teasing because of a physically and emotionally abusive ex that used to tease him incessantly. Anne lightly teases him in what she thinks is a playful way, and he blows up in anger. Anne is sensitive to anger due to trauma in her childhood. She stops replying to Bob’s messages, which makes Bob even angrier. 

2. Trauma from abandonment and unwanted sexual advances 

Bob is physically affectionate with his close friend Anne. It starts to freak Anne out – when male friends have acted this way in the past, they have usually tried to initiate a sexual relationship with her in a way that she found traumatic. To prevent this, Anne stops being warm to Bob. Bob, however, regards Anne as a dear and platonic friend. Because Bob had a traumatic experience of abandonment in the past, he finds Anne’s sudden coldness very upsetting. The fear of abandonment causes Bob to be more affectionate toward Anne as he tries harder to reconnect. This triggers Anne further, causing her to withdraw even more, leading to Bob feeling even more hurt and confused. 

3. Trauma from substance abuse 

Anne has a history of alcoholism that Bob doesn’t know about. Years ago, she resolved to stop drinking when she realized she was becoming like her parents, whose drinking would often lead to physical fights that she found distressing. Bob drinks around her and encourages her to drink, which makes her angry. Bob has protected himself from people’s anger in the past using humor, so he tries to downplay Anne’s reaction by joking around and making light of the situation. Anne finds herself even more triggered and upset by Bob’s behavior – she wants her anger to be taken seriously because alcoholism was a huge challenge in her past.

In all three examples above, one person’s reaction to their trauma being triggered in turn triggers the other person’s trauma response. Clashing Trauma is an example of a broader pattern of Clashing Reactions, where one person’s reaction to an action that upsets them triggers the other person to become upset or angry, which in turn intensifies the first person’s negative emotions, and so on. We’ve noticed that a surprisingly high proportion of fights between people who care a lot about each other fit this basic pattern. The cases of Clashing Reactions on which this essay is focused involve reactions that have their foundations in trauma, but be mindful that trauma doesn’t have to be at the root for similar patterns to occur.

What is trauma?

Trauma refers to enduring changes in your emotional reactions or self-protective behaviors that are the result of painful or frightening incidents in your past. Examples of trauma that people are usually familiar with include experiences with war, abuse, or sexual assault. For example:

• A soldier who was shot at in combat may find that loud noises that sound like gunshots cause her to panic, even in completely safe environments.
• A man who was sexually assaulted by someone with an English accent may feel anxious around people with those same accents.

But it is important to remember that trauma occurs on a spectrum; many people have emotional reactions to reminders of upsetting experiences in their past, even when those experiences were not life-threatening or severely upsetting. For instance:

• Someone who received bad news over the phone may experience a sense of dread and anxiety when they receive a call from an unknown number.
• Someone who was teased by a school teacher for stuttering during a class presentation may find that they get nervous when asked to speak in front of people.

Trauma is the result of a mechanism your brain uses to protect you. This mechanism is often helpful – by sensitizing you to patterns that are similar to ones where you were hurt or frightened in the past, your brain tries to protect you from getting hurt again. Unfortunately, this protective mechanism sometimes goes too far, leading to reactions that can seriously impact people’s welfare (at which point we call it “trauma”).

The soldier, who is now in essentially no danger of getting shot, may have recurring panic attacks that reduce her quality of life and avoid places she used to love just because there are loud noises there. Trauma can manifest in relationships, too; many people are hurt by those close to them (unintentionally or not), and this can make us extra vigilant about avoiding similar painful experiences in the future.

What is going on when people’s trauma clashes?

Here is what we think is going on in situations where friendships or relationships break down due to Clashing Trauma:

1. Anne takes an action that seems normal and reasonable to her. Anne doesn’t know it, but her close friend (or partner) Bob is sensitive to this kind of action due to trauma in his past. Consequently, Bob experiences intense negative emotions as a result of her action.

2. Bob instinctively tries to protect himself from this negative emotion using whatever approaches seemed to help him during past traumatic events (e.g., by avoiding Anne, yelling at her, getting very distraught, or trying to control her behavior). But he doesn’t explain clearly to Anne what is happening. Anne is caught off guard by Bob’s reaction—she doesn’t understand why he’s behaving this way. Even worse, due to trauma in her own past, she gets triggered by Bob’s reaction and starts experiencing intense negative emotions of her own.

3. Anne now acts instinctively to try to protect herself from the way that Bob is making her feel (e.g., by lashing back out at him, avoiding him, shutting down, or trying to control him). This reaction results in Bob feeling even more upset, causing him to intensify his self-protective behavior.

You can now see how Clashing Trauma works:

• From Bob’s perspective, Anne suddenly did something that triggered his trauma, and when he tried to protect himself, she doubled down and hurt him more.
• From Anne’s perspective, Bob suddenly started acting in a strange and hurtful manner, and when she acted to protect herself, he hurt her even further.
• From the outside view, it’s clear that neither person intended to hurt the other, yet both feel hurt, and the relationship suffers.

Incidentally, if you think that you might be Anne or Bob, you’re not alone. When we shared a draft of this article, one friend of the author reached out asking if Anne represented them, and another reached out asking if they were Bob. But the post wasn’t actually about either of them! We are trying to describe a general pattern that we’ve observed many times. Or, put another way: if you think you are Anne or Bob, then this post may well apply to you, but it’s also about lots of other people as well.

How can you prevent Clashing Trauma?

Strategy 1: Prevention

The best way to prevent this pattern of conflict is to discuss in advance with trusted friends and romantic partners what triggers you each have, how to avoid these triggers, and what the best actions to take are if you trigger each other by accident.

For instance, Bob could have told Anne in advance that he can feel very attacked when someone is critical of him and that he tends to lash out in anger as a defense mechanism. Then Bob and Anne can work together to plan how Anne can give Bob feedback in ways that won’t trigger him.

Strategy 2: Interception

Barring Prevention, upon being triggered the first time, Bob would ideally wait until he’s calm and then tell Anne (without blaming her) that her action triggered negative emotions for him, explaining what the trigger was and how to avoid it. (See our post on non-violent communication for advice on how to communicate this kind of thing without making the other person feel bad.)

Then, Anne, caring about Bob, would ideally apologize for inadvertently hurting him and commit to trying to avoid those triggering actions in the future. But behaviors can take time to alter—Anne should set realistic expectations about how quickly she can make that change.

Interception is hard, but appreciating the negative consequences of unresolved Clashing Trauma might help motivate you to implement this strategy.

Strategy 3: Repair

If it’s too late for Interception, try Repair: once Anne is hurt by Bob’s response to her behavior, Anne could wait until she feels calm and then initiate a conversation with Bob.

During the conversation, she could explain how Bob’s behavior seemed (to her) to suddenly and mysteriously change and how this had hurt her, while expressing interest in hearing Bob’s experience of the situation. She would try to genuinely understand Bob’s experience (non-violent communication could also be a helpful way to employ this strategy).

Bob could then explain what he experienced in the situation and what made him react that way towards Anne. They could each commit to new behaviors to reduce the chance they trigger each other in the future.

Understanding trauma

Each of the Prevention, Interception, and Repair strategies involve Anne or Bob explaining their triggers (and/or the trauma that underlies them) to each other. These strategies will therefore be harder to implement if you don’t understand your own trauma or what can trigger it. One way to build an understanding of your trauma and triggers is to discuss it with a trained therapist or trusted friend (or partner). Conveniently, this is a great segue into setting up Prevention strategies with a trusted friend or partner so that you can avoid triggering each other!

Did you find this model of relationship breakdown helpful?

The next time you feel suddenly and unexpectedly hurt by a close friend or romantic partner, it may be worth asking yourself – could this be an instance of Clashing Trauma? Or, more generally, could it be a case of Clashing Reactions? In either case, consider the strategies of (1) Prevention, (2) Interception, and (3) Repair. A lot of great friendships and romantic relationships end for preventable reasons. We hope you can use these strategies to stay close to the people that you love.

This essay was first written on April 17, 2022, was turned into an article on Clearer Thinking (coauthored with Holly Muir) on May 5, 2022, and first appeared on this site on May 6, 2022.

Can a chosen definition be “wrong”? No. If you choose a definition, then you can define a sound or series of characters to mean whatever you want them to mean. For instance, if you wanted, you could declare that whenever you say “phloop,” you mean one of those little paper umbrellas that are sometimes found in Piña coladas. That would be weird, but it wouldn’t be “wrong.” But we suggest that there are at least seven ways a definition can be “lousy.” 

By understanding what makes a good definition and what makes a lousy one, you can better formulate your ideas, and you can better spot mistakes in other people’s arguments. For instance, you might be in a situation where you’re trying to define the essence of an idea you came up with or characterize the unique career role that you’ve designed for yourself. Alternatively, you might be struggling to understand a definition that someone else is using, and you want to diagnose why exactly you’re finding it confusing. The words we use are crucial to the success of the interactions we have, and it is very handy to be able to pinpoint when a particular word is making a conversation more confusing than it needs to be. So, here are the things that we think make for lousy definitions! 

1. Miscommunication

If you decide the word “dog” refers to cats, people are going to be very confused.

Similarly, if you’re talking to someone who uses the word “racism” to mean X (say, “an explicitly held and endorsed belief that some racial groups are inferior to others”), and you use it to mean Y (say, “any form of negative generalization or attitude to a racial group, whether it’s implicit or explicit”), your conversation is probably not going to go as well as you would like until you identify that difference in usage. For these reasons, good definitions shouldn’t reuse terms that people are already familiar with or have multiple meanings associated with them. A good way to avoid the latter is to clarify upfront what you mean when you’re using a particular definition if the other person might not know what you mean when using that word.

2. Irrelevance

If you define a “dooooog” to be a dog with more than five legs, you’re not going to find it to be useful for much of anything. Dogs like that probably do exist, but they are not something almost anyone ever needs to refer to. We want our definitions to aim toward the things we are likely to want to reference.

For instance, someone bothered to define the word “Rasceta” to mean the crease commonly found going across a person’s wrist. Presumably, there is some subculture where that is a useful word, but very few people will ever need to know that definition. 

3. Unnaturalness

If you define “dogephant” to include all dogs smaller than 10 pounds AND all elephants more than 8000 pounds, you have not “carved reality at the joints.” Because of mixing things that aren’t clearly alike, using this definition makes communicating more muddled than it needs to be.

Another instance of this phenomenon is our use of the word “selfish.” Sometimes people define the word “selfish” in such a way that it includes both “stealing money from someone” and “sacrificing your own life to save the life of ten others because you feel such a strong emotion of compassion for those people;” it’s about doing things that make you feel “good.” An alternate reading of “selfish” might be much more negative: it’s about taking actions which benefit you at the cost of other peoples’ wellbeing.

4. Opinionatedness

If you define “dogmor” to be “those dog-loving morons who somehow are convinced that dogs are better than cats,” then the definition imports both a debatable opinion and an emotional slant into its meaning, causing usage of this word to be infected with either or both of these things.

For example, the word “sissy” not only suggests that someone — usually a boy or man — embodies feminine qualities but carries with it a negative, insulting connotation. If your aim is to make certain people feel bad, then this might be a good strategy to take, though you might be being a jerk, and that approach doesn’t make for clear, unbiased communication.

5. Ambiguity

If by “dogdog” you mean anything that a dog can like, then your word is (1) hard to use and (2) hard to think about; dogs like a large range of things, and individual dogs also have distinct preferences!

The word “problematic” (when used without clarification) is another (problematic) example of a definition: the problem being referred to could be of many different types and could range from quite objective to just the idiosyncratic, subjective opinion of the writer.

6. Inefficiency 

If you define “doglegs” to be anything with the legs of a dog, and “dogface” to be anything with the face of a dog, etc., then you can talk about walking your dog by saying, “I just got back from walking a creature with doglegs, dogface, dogfur, dogheart, …” But this is a ridiculously inefficient way to talk about your dog! Some definitions make communication substantially more efficient since they compress lots of information you commonly want to express into a small package.

Consider a different instance of this: it is possible to talk about calculus without having a word that means “the derivative” (e.g., by always referring to “limits of functions”), but this is going to be a painful and inefficient way to think and communicate. The word derivative makes ideas in calculus much easier to talk about. 

7. Lack of precision

If you define “floofster” to be any animal with fur, then you will not be communicating very precisely when you say, “I pet my floofster this morning.” You may be saying something true (and rather adorable), but someone will not know if you were petting a dog, a cat, or something more exotic like a lizard wearing a fur coat! Ideally, we want our definitions to focus on just those items or concepts we are trying to communicate.

Similarly, if you say to your friend, “I’m feeling bad,” the ambiguity of the word “bad” makes it harder for them to understand what you’re going through. If you say, “I have a headache,” then it will be easier for your friend to help you. Even better, if true, would be to say, “I have a migraine.” 

So, no chosen definition can be “wrong,” but plenty of definitions are “lousy.” To prevent lousy definitions, you should choose definitions that:

(1) allow clear communication, 

(2) refer specifically to the things of interest, 

(3) carve reality at the joints, 

(4) don’t sneak in debatable opinions/slants, 

(5) are relatively unambiguous, 

(6) express more information in fewer words, and 

(7) allow us to be more exact and specific with our words. 

We hope you found this helpful!

This piece first appeared on the Clearer Thinking blog on March 2, 2021, and was published on this site on December 16, 2022.

When we’re given a request, there is generally a deeper intention underneath it. If we get curious for a moment and think/inquire about why the request is being made, we can often provide more value.

Example 1: Relationship

Romantic partner: I’d prefer it if you respond to my text messages faster.

Normal answer: sure, I’ll try to do that from now on.

Seeking the root: sure, I’ll try to do that from now on. Just so I can understand better, though: are you asking that because it’s more convenient to get a faster response, or is there another reason that you prefer that I respond more quickly?

Example 2: Restaurant

Customer: could you put soy milk in my coffee?

Normal answer: sorry, we don’t have soy milk.

Seeking the root: sorry, we don’t have soy milk. If you’d prefer not to have dairy milk, we do have oat milk. Would you like that?

Example 3: Startup

User: it would be great if you could add this feature to your product.

Normal answer: thanks for the feedback; we’ve noted your feature request.

Seeking the root: we’d love to know why is it that you would value having that feature? What problem would it solve for you?

Example 4: Office

Boss: please get me XYZ by Tuesday.

Normal answer: no problem.

Seeking the root: no problem. So that I can do the task as well as possible, it would be helpful to know what you will be using XYZ for.

Example 5: Data science

Product manager: we need you to calculate this statistic.

Normal answer: sure, I’ll take care of that.

Seeking the root: sure, I’ll take care of that. But could you tell me a bit more about what problem you’re trying to solve with it? There may be other analyses I could do that would also help.

A caveat: beware of doing what YOU think someone wants, rather than what they ask for. [H/T Romeo Stevens.] The goal of seeking the root is not to override someone’s request but rather to better understand it.

So when you get a request, and you want to add value, get curious, and try “seeking the root.” Too often, we take requests literally and narrowly without understand the deeper intention behind them. This prevents us from fulfilling them as well as we are able.

This idea was inspired by the writing of @RayDalio, who talks about related concepts.

This also relates to the “XY” problem [H/T Arun Bharatula].

In my experience, many obvious-seeming psychological concepts explode in complexity when you attempt to dissect them. For instance, trying to respond to a question about “why we forgive” made me realize there are a vast number of motivations for forgiveness.

After someone wrongs you, you can forgive them based on:

UNDERSTANDING

• Empathy – you realize that you would have done the same thing that they did if you had the same choice to make. Consider: someone who harmed you only a little in order to gain something they value tremendously.
• Humility – you realize that you have made mistakes of equal or greater magnitude to this other person’s mistake, and that making mistakes of that magnitude do not tarnish a person irrevocably, just as you are not tarnished irrevocably by yours. Consider: someone harming you in a way that you once harmed someone else.
• Pity – you see how the bad actions were the consequence of weakness or misery or prior hardship. Consider: someone who has been rejected their whole life who lashes out in a harmful way at the first hint of rejection.
• Compassion – you realize it’s hard to be human, and that we almost all are fighting hard battles of one kind or another, and that the person who wronged you is probably no exception. Consider: someone struggling a great deal with the recent death of a loved one who does something harmful to you during that time.
• Redirection – you realize that while this person’s action harmed you, it actually had nothing to do with you. Consider: a person who deeply insulted your way of life, but who did so only because they have been greatly harmed by something related to that way of life.

PERSPECTIVE

• Ignorance – you realize the other party didn’t know what they were doing when they took the harmful action. Consider: a pet knocking over your grandmother’s antique vase.
• “Id”- since you realize it was the carnal part of the other person’s mind that caused them to do the thing (e.g., they were acting at that moment out of fear, or anger, or without their “System 2” mind being engaged, etc.) and that they wouldn’t have carried out the action if they had thought about it in a cool and collected state. Consider: someone insulting you because they were infuriated over something that had happened a few minutes before that’s unrelated to you.
• Unpredictability – you realize that while the person intended to take action, they did not foresee the negative consequences that resulted. Consider: someone throwing a pebble absentmindedly, which, through a bizarre series of very unlikely coincidences, causes a car accident.
• Mistakes – the person didn’t intend to take the harmful action at all. Consider: someone accidentally trips and, in doing so, knocks you into a pool.

SELF-INTEREST

• Relief – your anger is harming you, and forgiveness makes you feel better or leads to better consequences for you. Consider: forgiving a criminal that once robbed you because obsessing about getting revenge has made your life significantly worse.
• Identity – you don’t want to be the sort of person that holds a grudge, or because you think better of yourself if you forgive. Consider: the good feeling that results from being the “better and bigger person” and letting the wrongdoing go without retaliation.
• Social reward – others look positively on us for forgiving. Consider: a father who tells his son that he would be very proud of him if he could genuinely forgive his brother.

JUSTICE

• Punishment – the person has received a proportional punishment that fit the crime, and, in receiving it, has been absolved. Consider: someone who stole something from you but who has now undergone what you feel has been a fair punishment for that action.
• Restitution – the other person has undone the harm by the actions they took afterward. Consider: someone who damages a chair in your home and then goes out and buys an identical replacement chair for you.
• Compensation – the other person has done something good for you that you feel makes up for the harm. Consider: someone who, through negligence, causes you embarrassment in front of your colleagues at work, but then, to make amends, takes you to an expensive broadway play you’ve wanted to see and buys you a thoughtful present.
• Regret – the other person is genuinely remorseful of their action and truly wishes they had not done it. Consider: someone expressing deep regret while they give you a heartfelt apology for the harm they caused.

PHILOSOPHY

• Free will – you view the person as a product of their environment and genetics, and as much as you may not like their actions, and as much as you may choose to avoid them in the future or even warn others about them, you do not fundamentally believe in free will. Consider: someone who grew up in a highly traumatic environment and developed their current bad behavior as a coping mechanism for that terrible environment, and you view their behavior therefore as a deterministic consequence of this person’s history.
• Morality – you think it is morally “right” to forgive and “wrong” to hold a grudge. Consider: the teaching in the Bible that we should “turn the other cheek.”
• Change – the person has improved themselves since they made a mistake and are legitimately no longer someone who would make that mistake again. Consider: someone who has credibly adopted a new life philosophy and set of behaviors since they harmed you, and you can tell they wouldn’t harm you in that way today.
• Hard choices – you realize that if the person hadn’t harmed you in the way they did, something of even greater value in the world would have been lost. Consider: someone who is in the difficult position of choosing between harming just you and causing greater harm to many strangers, and they chose to harm you as the best of two bad options.

While psychological concepts (like forgiveness) do seem to explode in complexity upon analysis, which may create the feeling of being even more confused at first, this sort of analysis, in my experience, does tend to lead to a better understanding of the topic eventually. For instance, as complex as it is, forgiveness seems to mostly come down to considerations of (A) understanding, (B) perspective, (C) self-interest, (D) justice and (E) philosophy, depending on the situation and the person doing the forgiving, which is certainly not something I was aware of before I spent an hour or two thinking about it.

And perhaps, if you are having trouble forgiving, you can find a reason in the list above to forgive.

After adjustments based on the feedback we received, we published the two essays below, with at least 50% of the corresponding group agreeing to each sentence (see color coding) and high levels of overall agreement to the whole essays (see the bottom of the infographic – 84% overall agreement for the Clinton Essay, 94% for the Trump essay, though the subjects were not from a nationally representative sample).

Our thinking was that trying to simulate the perspective of both sides is one of the best ways to check your understanding. And that understanding both sides is useful for many reasons (epistemic, altruistic, strategic), even if you won’t ever support or agree with them.

If you’re interested in learning more, this Fast Company article discusses our motivation and approach:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3066609/try-this-exercise-in-radical-empathy-to-minimize-conflict