Not matter how intelligent you are, you will still say and do stupid things to the extent that your mind is not cool. Only in a state of mindcoolness, unperturbed by distracting thoughts and emotions, can you access the full capacity of your intelligence. One prominent emotion that diminishes intelligence is anxiety, and it does so by restricting working memory capacity, which we need for processing information using complex cognitive operations, that is, for all tasks we typically associate … [Read more...]
Optimism, Pessimism, or Realism?
What Happened With cheery eyes I look back at the past, embracing with love that which cannot be undone—in a great amor fati. With lucid eyes I look back at the past, striving for accuracy in my memories, treating them as historical facts that ought to be true, not emotionally valanced. With gloomy eyes I look back at the past, understanding that what I remember is bound to be distorted, bound to diverge from truth. What Will Happen With cheery eyes I look forth into the future, … [Read more...]
Meta-Hypocrisy Undermines Our Judgment of Hypocrisy
When I criticize someone for doing something that I would do myself, I am a hypocrite because my criticism typically implies the pretense that I wouldn't. The same glass house logic applies to hypocrisy itself. Unless I have absolute certainty that I would never be hypocritical, which I practically cannot have, I cannot judge anyone of being hypocritical because this would make me meta-hypocritical, that is, hypocritical about my own hypocrisy. … [Read more...]
True Will Revisited
Will (volition) denotes unpredictable, endogenous behavior. It is an intricate function of thoughts, goals, and emotions that triggers an action. But thoughts can be inaccurate, goals short-sighted, and emotions maladaptive. Hence the concept of the True Will, which consists of three essential aspects: thinking rationally about oneself and the world around,viewing goals from a long-term perspective, andhaving adaptive emotions. Epistemic rationality ensures that we are on a path to … [Read more...]
Statistics Versus the Individual
The distinction between statistics and the individual is among the most far-reaching concepts of the modern world. We can view everything from science and its philosophy to politics, ethics, and economics in the light of that distinction. Recall that statistics is about averages, trends, and patterns that emerge from large numbers (effects of scale), whereas the individual, though it may appear in a statistic as a data point, escapes most typical methods of quantification. This has … [Read more...]
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