Evolutionary social scientist, co-creator of @cah, co-host of Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast), blogs about bullshit at everythingisbullshit.blog
Los Angeles, CA
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It’s kind of weird that we care so much about what we might regret on our “deathbed.” The moments before death are a minuscule fraction of life—and a fraction where we’re not very lucid. Why do we care so much about what our future, dying self thinks of us?
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I believe in the scariest conspiracy theory of all: the human mind has conspired to make us think there are shadowy cabals of hyper-competent agents controlling everything, when in reality most people are incompetent, chaos reigns supreme, and nobody is in control, including us.
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If we judge a theory by the ratio of how little it assumes (parsimony) to how much it explains (explanatory power), then Darwin’s theory of evolution is the greatest theory in history. It assumes very little and explains the natural world, including our minds. Happy Darwin Day.
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Lots of stuff humans do is confusing. We bravely defy social norms so that people will praise us, we show humility to look superior, and we try to get credit for not caring about getting credit. Huh? In my new preprint, I try to explain all this: psyarxiv.com/avh9t (1/14)
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Anyone have a good theory for why toddlers have such specific, arbitrary preferences, and why they get so upset when these arbitrary preferences are thwarted?
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RIP Daniel Dennett. He was the best kind of philosopher—empirically-minded, skeptical of “intuition pumps,” and eminently readable. His idea of Darwinism as a “universal acid,” a substance that eats through everything, has been deeply influential on me. amazon.com/DARWINS-DANGEROUS…
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There is no legit evolutionary psychology podcast. My friend @DavePietrasz and I thought this was a dire situation, so we set out to fix it. I’m excited to announce the start of Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast). I wrote a little something about it on my blog. (Link below).
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Lots of people saying this tweet is obvious. It’s not. It challenges a core assumption, common in academia, that moral convictions are a force for good. And it should trouble us. How are we supposed to know when our own moral convictions are leading us astray?
"A growing body of research suggests that violent extremists actually believe their harmful actions are morally righteous. That is, they believe their violent means serve some virtuous end." spsp.org/news/character-and-…
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I don’t think you have to be that smart to gain big insights into the human condition. You just have to take evolution and game theory seriously and recognize that humans are animals. When you choose that starting point, there are tons of low-hanging fruit to be plucked.
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"A growing body of research suggests that violent extremists actually believe their harmful actions are morally righteous. That is, they believe their violent means serve some virtuous end." spsp.org/news/character-and-…
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What is an "ideology"? Is it a worldview? A value system? A set of moral principles? In my forthcoming paper, with @haselton and David Sears, we argue it's none of these things. An ideology is a way of rallying support for our allies. psyarxiv.com/scmhe (1/9)
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Interesting concept, “lightgassing”(the opposite of gaslighting), in which we validate a person’s false beliefs. I think this is one of the main reasons bullshitters don’t get penalized and bullshit is so prevalent: we believe each other’s BS to show support.
Gaslighting, where someone causes another person to doubt their feelings and senses, can cause psychological damage.
There's an opposite thing, though, that can also be damaging. As far as I know, it has no name. I call it Lightgassing.
Here's how it lightgassing works:
🧵
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For those of you who suspect Republicans are being hypocritical about free speech and kneeling during the national anthem, I have empirical data that they are. This is from a poll of 800 Republicans we did back in December. See more at thepulseofthenation.com/#pol…
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Nobody wants to be happy. Nobody wants to avoid suffering. The things we want are in the world—not in our heads. A thread. (1/22)
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Anybody have a good theory of what “charisma” is and why it’s so powerful? Seems really puzzling to me—almost like a Jedi mind trick.
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Really proud of this month's #pulseofthenation. We looked at double standards among Republicans and found some pretty amazing examples (we'll be looking at Democrats next month). thepulseofthenation.com/#pol…
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This tribute to the late John Tooby, one of my intellectual heroes, written by another one of my intellectual heroes, @sapinker, brought tears to my eyes. Well worth a read. nautil.us/psychology-lost-a-…
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Important study: when we’re all on the same team, we punish freeriders and promote cooperation. But when there are different factions, we punish our rivals more than our allies, undermining cooperation and making us all worse off. nature.com/articles/s41598-0…
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Psychologists: if you want to complain about how our field lacks a theoretical paradigm, try looking for one in evolution—the thing that actually made the human psyche. Seems like a good place to start, no? At least give that a try before throwing up your hands in despair.
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One thing evolutionary psychologists have overlooked is the motivation to leave behind a legacy. One’s status and power influences the status and power of one’s kin, so one’s reputation at death has huge fitness implications. I’m not aware of anyone who’s done research on this.
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So we’ve got strong evidence that morality fuels censorship, blocks compassion, foments hatred, intensifies tribalism, thwarts compromise, and serves as a justification for nearly all forms of violence. Are we the baddies? everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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New paper shows that censorship of science is motivated by moral concerns. Censors are trying to help us. How nice of them. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.23…
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Education is about opening our minds to diverse viewpoints and expanding our horizons.
% of Americans who say they are worried about losing their job if their political views became known
High school or less: 25 percent
College degree: 34 percent
Postgraduate degree: 44 percent
cato.org/survey-reports/poll…
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Add this to the huge pile of evidence that humans on the left and right side of the political spectrum have the same human nature, which should be surprising to no one, but is apparently surprising to some people.
Leftists and conservatives are both prone to conspiracy theories; they just prefer different ones.
>0 = more common among conservatives
<0 = more common among lefties
0 = equally common on both sides
stevestewartwilliams.com/p/w…
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Here, Scott Alexander gives us better insights into racism, nationalism, and ideology than what you’ll find in the top academic journals. Highly recommended. astralcodexten.com/p/lifeboa…
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30 USEFUL CONCEPTS ABOUT BULLSHIT 🧵
Warning: extreme levels of cynicism
Whether it’s politics, the media, the workplace, or our own backyards, we’re surrounded by bullshit. Here are 30 concepts to help you understand it.
Thread:
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"If natural selection—our only ally against entropy—is indifferent to the long-term wellbeing of humanity, then our prospects are grim." everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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Human mating is complicated, and studying it has neither made me more optimistic nor pessimistic. It is what it is. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the best lessons on mating don’t come from the evo psych of mating, but from the evo psych of cooperation. Romantic relationships are a kind of cooperative relationship, and the same lessons—not defecting in prisoners dilemmas, reciprocating, coordinating on focal points, dividing resources fairly, bargaining for better treatment, costly signaling—apply. So it might be better to ask the evo psych people who study cooperation. I think they’d have the most useful things to say on the topic.
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I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but I think economists have deeper theoretical insights and better empirical and quantitative methods than other social scientists. Economists’ higher status is well-deserved.
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The theory here is that consciousness evolved because it made us value our lives more. But why didn’t we just evolve to value our lives more, if we weren’t valuing them enough? Why does valuing our lives (or anything) require consciousness? I don’t buy it. newyorker.com/news/annals-of…
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Why is it so hard to sleep when we're anxious? Hypothesis: if a threat is severe enough, lying awake ruminating about that threat—i.e., strategizing, rehearsing, preparing, imagining all the ways it might play out—is actually a better use of our time than sleeping.
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RIP Frans de Waal. Here’s a link to my favorite book of his—one that had a big influence on my thinking—Chimpanzee Politics. Yes, chimps have a kind of politics, not all that dissimilar from our own. amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politi…
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"The benefits of status and tribal solidarity often outweigh the costs of false beliefs, particularly if those beliefs are vague, unactionable, or unfalsifiable." optimallyirrational.com/p/th…
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What’s the greatest threat to humanity’s long-term future? Is it AI? Bioweapons? Climate change? Nuclear war? Check out my latest post, where I argue for an even more depressing answer. everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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Helping those who are weaker and less powerful is a purely selfless act of benevolence, right? Not so fast. New paper shows that helping the little guy can also be self-interested—a way to preen and bolster one’s reputation. sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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What is the defining feature of humanity? Is it art? Morality? Self-awareness? No, it’s bullshit. Introducing my free newsletter, “Everything Is Bullshit”. everythingisbullshit.substac… (1/7)
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Is it possible to strive in your career “for yourself” instead of for others? Or to wear makeup “for yourself” instead of for others? Nah. We do this stuff for status, but we can’t admit it, cuz that lowers our status. So we make up bullshit about how it’s really “for ourselves.”
Go to the gym for yourself not for others.
Strive in your career for yourself not for others.
Be a good person for yourself not for others.
Wear makeup for yourself not for others.
Don't do anything for others. What have they ever done for you? robkhenderson.com/p/the-logi…
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You don't actually want to be happy. everythingisbullshit.substac…
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Common knowledge is one of the most important and underrated concepts in social science, and now one of my favorite writers is tackling it. This book is going to be a goodie.
Available for preorder: My new book, "When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life" a.co/d/dgDk3Ix #Amazon via @Amazon
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Your reminder that you don’t have to agree with 100% of a person’s beliefs to find something they say insightful. There is nobody I agree with 100% of the time. Not even myself. I often look back at my writing and think, “I disagree with me”. Nobody has all the answers.
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Book recommendation: The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. One of the most insightful works of political science I've read in a long time. Perfect blend of cynicism, game theory, and richly detailed case studies.
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How do we figure out how biased we are, when we are biased about how biased we are? Seriously, I want to know the answer.
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New evidence for my theory of paradoxical status games just dropped: people who desire status are given less status. HT @robsica journals.plos.org/plosone/ar…
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Is AI going to kill us all? There are many brilliant people who think the answer is yes. These people are so brilliant they cannot be dismissed with a tweet. But they can be dismissed with a long, thorough essay I just finished called, "AI Doomerism Is Bullshit." (link below)
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Hot take: "you only live once" is bullshit. It's usually used as an excuse for status-seeking and self-gratification––splurging on a vacation or pivoting to a more competitive career. There's no logical connection between "life is short" and "hedonism and risk-taking are good."
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According to @robinhanson, life is full of hidden motives: politics is not about policy, school is not about learning, charity is not about helping, etc. Well, I have a new one to add to the list: arguing is not about persuasion.
(Link below).
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Breaking news: the outgroup is not filled with bad people.
Meta-analysis: Contrary to previous assumptions, liberals and conservatives are equally likely to have dark personality traits. sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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Best way to tell when someone is lying: detail. True memories have more detail. Could this be an explanation for the conjunction fallacy? Conjunct probabilities (feminist + bank teller) are more detailed—and judged as more trustworthy? nature.com/articles/s41562-0…
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“Voters on the left and right share broadly similar moral intuitions.” The evidence is continuing to pile up, folks. It’s time for a paradigm shift.
Just published on APSR First View: “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Very Similar Sets of Foundations When Comparing Moral Violations”, by Jack Blumenau and Benjamin E. Lauderdale.
cambridge.org/core/journals/…
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When did we decide as a culture that reading novels is a cure for all societal ills—that it fosters empathy, makes us better people, etc.? Does anybody have any actual evidence for this hypothesis? Why are people so credulous about it?
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Today I made a mistake and felt awful about it. Then I said to myself, "What is going on in your head right now is a process that is preventing you from making that mistake again. The process is helping you. Let it help you." And you know what? It made me feel less awful!
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"Our imaginations are flawed and feeble programs built by natural selection to navigate small tribes and small-to-medium-sized objects—not globalized economies, fractal inequality, neurobiology, or existential risks." everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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In my latest post, I revisit my most controversial thesis—the idea that human beings do not actually want to be happy. It’s a deep dive where I address all the possible counterarguments I could think of. (Link below).
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According to @robinhanson, life is full of hidden motives: politics is not about policy, school is not about learning, charity is not about helping, etc. Well, I have a new one to add to the list: wanting is not about happiness. everythingisbullshit.substac…
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Most non-evolutionary social science is stuck in epistemic hell.
@RogersBacon1 : "Being trapped in an epistemic hell means that all of the small, incremental steps through idea-space are unhelpful or downright misleading. Liberation comes through paradigm shifts, quantum leaps to entirely new regions of idea-space."
theseedsofscience.pub/p/epis…
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Interesting hypothesis👇. If we play multiple status games, losing in one is not the end of the world. The stakes are lower, and we don't need to resort to violence to save face.
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Is morality all about cooperation? A thread in response to @Oliver_S_Curry's thoughtful critique of my post, Morality Is Not Nice. Thread here (nitter.app/Oliver_S_Curry/status/…), original post here (everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…). @bsgallagher @Lucidly_Elias @A_Marie_sci @kaveinthran 1/11
I find these “good things are actually bad, mmkay” takes a bit silly. But ok, briefly... @DavidPinsof @JonHaidt @kaveinthran
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Can someone explain to me how evolutionary psychology would work without assuming a modular mind? If we’re talking about different selection pressure shaping different parts of the cognitive phenotype, what are we to call these parts, if not modules? What is the alternative?
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Another great issue of Evolution & Human Behavior. There is and continues to be excellent work being done in evolutionary social science. I'm proud to be a part of this field. Props to the editor-in-chief, @lieberman_deb.
New issue of Evolution & Human Behavior! Check out the articles on war, contraception, cultural transmission, mating, race categorization, friendship (human & non-human), faces, weaponry, genetics, honour cultures, and more: sciencedirect.com/journal/ev…
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Here's one of my favorite graphs. It's a venn diagram showing overlap between Republicans who think "people should not be so easily offended" and Republicans who think Black Lives Matter is offensive.
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Today marks the one-year anniversary of Everything Is Bullshit. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this bullshit for a whole year. In this post, I take a look at some of the laughs we had and lessons we learned along the way: everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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Political psychology journals are like,
"Who's more biased, liberals or conservatives?"
"Who's dumber, liberals or conservatives?"
"Who believes more fake news?"
"Ideology predicts random thing #374"
Why isn't anyone studying our shared political psychology as human beings?
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Anyone out there who's well-versed in the arguments for AI doomerism? I'm looking for someone to give feedback on an upcoming post called "AI doomerism is bullshit." Genuinely open to the possibility of my post itself being bullshit. If interested, please DM me. @AISafetyMemes
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But if happiness and suffering aren't necessary for motivation, then why did they evolve? Aha! That is the right question to ask. My answer is that they recalibrate expectations and motivations in response to prediction errors—things going unexpectedly well or poorly. (7/22)
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Stellar new work from @TaniaArline on how women use "I'm concerned about..." as an excuse for talking shit about their rivals. Yet more evidence that bullshitting is strategic and reaps handsome social rewards for the bullshitter. sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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"What moral ends could be so important that perpetrators are willing to harm others in pursuit of them? The short answer is that the moral priorities driving terrorists appear to be the same moral values that drive everyone else.”
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Has ideology been explained? I'm excited to share with you our response to commentaries on "Strange Bedfellows: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems," with David Sears and @haselton osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zr… (1/7)
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Classic paper. And the evolutionary logic is sound. Put any of our goals (food, sex, status) on the x axis, and biological fitness on the y axis, and you will not see a straight, diagonal line. You will see a sharp drop-off at zero and diminishing returns.
The breadth and convergence of evidence that bad is stronger than good is striking—we are more sensitive to, and influenced more by, bad stuff than good stuff. This is because responding to the world in this way is adaptive, argue @royfbaumeister et al:
assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/7…
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Pseudoargument: a verbal sparring match, status competition, diss fight, or tribal chant disguised as an earnest attempt to persuade or be persuaded. everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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The difference between psychologists and philosophers:
“X explains 75% of the variance.”
Psychologists: “Whoa! That’s amazing! This changes everything!”
Philosophers: “I will now fill hundreds of pages with caveats about the 25% of cases where this doesn’t apply.”
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As soon as a status signal is uncovered, it morphs into a cue of selfishness or low status. Status games are constantly collapsing and re-emerging in antithetical forms, leading to endless cultural variation. (7/14)
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People believe that, deep down, we all have a “true self” that is morally good. This belief is found across cultures—even among misanthropes! Any ideas why this is? Maybe a kind of cooperative BS that helps us and our allies excuse our bad behavior? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…
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More evidence that people don't actually want to be happy: using Twitter/X for just 30 min makes people less likely to say they feel "happy," "contended," or "pleasant." And yet, hundreds of millions of people continue to use Twitter/X. nature.com/articles/s44271-0… HT @SteveStuWill
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Why does this matter? First, it explains why status symbols are so culturally variable and seemingly arbitrary. Status is inherently fragile, because people must somehow signal their status without signaling that they are signaling their status. (6/14)
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In my most self-reflective post yet, I argue that bullshit is a choice, and insight is involuntary. everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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Astrology, eastern mysticism, psychoanalysis… why is bullshit so often vague and abstruse? And why would anyone enjoy it? Find out in my latest. everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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In which we go over the new evolutionary theory of humor I'm working on.
This week: The evolutionary psychology of humor with
@DavidPinsof ! An account of why the mind finds things funny, and why "funny" has the features it has.
podbean.com/eas/pb-ppaqi-191…
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
piped.video/wGm-WhqB5p0?si=EeGq…
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Many agree that sincere moral convictions can lead people astray—people committing evil, or even just being annoying, in the name of morality. But how do we know we’re not being led astray by our own morals? Seriously, has anyone come up with a good way to figure this out?
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Is effective altruism bullshit? Check out my latest post, where I argue the answer is yes (naturally), but also it’s complicated. everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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"Morality helps us lie, steal, and kill, by giving us a menu of excuses to choose from. Want to lie? Tell a noble lie. Want to steal? Take what you rightly deserve. Someone has to go? Serve them a cold helping of justice." everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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We lack direct, introspective access to the reasons for our behavior. When asked to provide such reasons, we rationalize, confabulate, and make up stories.
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Many of the signals we send to each other are "paradoxical": that is, they are designed to conceal, from both the signaler and the recipient, the fact that a signal is being transmitted. (2/14)
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"If there are powerful incentives to help others, then even evil people will help others. If there are powerful incentives to hurt others, then even good people will hurt others." everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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Hotter lawyers are more likely to win their cases. 😬 HT @PFinuras cambridge.org/core/journals/…
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Cool paper. Explains why we are hypocritical about our own hypocrisy.
Accusations of hypocrisy are meant to be damning, but they are also flexible: For the same patterns of behavior, we see hypocrisy in our enemies, but not in ourselves or our friends.
In a new paper @CognitionJourn, @JZBerman and I try to explain how such flexibility works.
🧵
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Wow, who’d have thought that explaining the mind in terms of musical metaphors like “harmony” and “dissonance” was a bad direction for psychology.
One of the most famous phenomena in psychology - cognitive dissonance - might not be real. doi.org/10.1177/251524592312…
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Check out my latest post, where I call bullshit on virtue, free will, history, politics, art, modern discourse, the "power of ideas," and more. everythingisbullshit.blog/p/…
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Really killer paper. And a great example of how bullshit (i.e., the Freudian concept of "venting") is used to strategically conceal darker motives in ways that handsomely benefit the bullshitter.
Why do we vent?
Now online @EvolHumBehav: Venting about one mutual friend (the target) to another (the listener) can make the people we vent to prefer--and also preferentially support--us over the people we vent about
A🧵on friends + Freud being wrong
👇sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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It’s kind of incredible that we lack a neutral, non-judgmental term to describe the phenomenon of “wokeness.” The English language threw up its hands and said, "Sorry guys, I'm stumped." This thing is so divisive we cannot even point to it without implicitly taking a side on it.
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Cool new paper. If you don’t like immigrants, and the immigrants don’t like gay people, then you might start to get a bit more friendly toward gay people. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. HT @mjbsp cambridge.org/core/journals/…
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In case you needed more evidence that our desires are relative to what other people have and not absolute, this new paper shows that exposure to “McMansions” makes people less satisfied with their homes and more willing to take on debt to expand them: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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We endorse political bullshit to fit in with, and gain status from, likeminded peers. When the audience is politically dissimilar, we refrain from sharing, suggesting that we’re not very interested in changing hearts and minds. @A_Marie_sci osf.io/nmg9h/
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For example, virtue signalers don’t know they’re virtue signaling, and neither do the people who award them virtue. "Brave" norm-violators don't know they're seeking praise, and neither do the people who praise them. (3/14)
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Is there any source of information I can turn to that is free of political bias?
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This was one of the best part's of @erikphoel's new book (recommended)—a neuroscientist calling bullshit on neuroscience. I had suspected that much of that research was overhyped, but I was not aware of how deep the bullshit hole went. The chapters on causal emergence are also👌
"A specific example might include telling the difference between a depressed person and a non-depressed person from neuroimaging data alone. Yet, even with extraordinarily large sample sizes...it turns out that using neuroimaging is not very accurate." a.co/d/7ZIUHaL
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