You will often hear people spout the virtues of critical thinking. Ironically, they can often be the people who are least likely to exhibit it themselves in certain situations. The reason is the Primacy Effect, or when you become biased toward the first explanation you hear about a topic and only then display critical thinking of information...
Read MoreUnderstanding what motivates you is one of the most important things you can do to improve your sense of purpose in life. When you have a driving force, you will continue forward no matter what it takes. But how do you know what motivates you? There are a few ways to determine this, but let’s start with what motivation is and what things can...
Read MoreThey call it “The Hard Problem” of consciousness; it is commonly described as, “What is it like to be a bat?” Effectively, how can you break down consciousness into a definable set of components so that you can both understand consciousness and identify life forms that have it. They test the problem with various thought experiments, such as if...
Read MoreThere is a major equivocation/conflation of the words “value” and “worth” going on, and wherever there is a confusion around meaning with regards to life, you know I’ll be here covering it. Let me give you some background on what is going on: millennia ago, humans were not too much more civilized than animals, and so we did have very much a...
Read MoreWhat are you supposed to do with your life? It’s a big question that’s become more common more recently since we live in a modern world of relative luxury where want has trumped need to a certain extent. Historically, it was to do whatever was required of you to survive: hunt, forage, construct shelters, etc. Recently, however, with both freedom...
Read MoreYou read a lot about “blaming the victim” in modern times, usually when someone tells another person how to change their behavior to get a different result. The most famous one (because people seem to scream it all the time) is, “I shouldn’t have to dress more modestly; men shouldn’t rape!” But, to take a less controversial one, Office Space has...
Read MoreEveryone thinks they just want to live the easy life: being waited on hand and foot, eating junk food and playing video games all day, or living a life without work. People say they want that—no matter how much evidence you provide to the contrary: people who hit the lottery are often miserable or lose it all; animals sit around all day and eat...
Read MoreI was watching a homemade recording of Troy Polamalu’s interception in the 2008-2009 AFC Championship game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens from the stands and had one of those existential moments where you realize that millions of people are watching that play and having extreme emotional reactions to it. Staring at it...
Read MoreDo you know people in your life who are only around when times are good and are nowhere to be found when time get hard? What is going on here, and what should you do to handle these situations? This is a tough post because I speak extensively about human behavior and yet, due to being at the top of the autism spectrum (i.e., trouble with eye...
Read MoreOne of the most popular existential questions in recent years is, “Do we live in the Matrix?”—of course, this is referring to the 1999 movie of the same name. As it ages, of course, people replace it with the more generic, “Do we live in a simulation?” The question is about whether anything that we do here in our universe is real and matters....
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