Who are you? If you have a ready answer, you are not in a state of mindcoolness. Because what could your answer be? Are you perhaps your status in society, your family role, your gender, your ethnicity, or your affiliation with some other group? Are you your skills, your hobbies, your occupation, your professional calling, your purpose in life? Maybe you are your values, your religion, your philosophy, your moral convictions, your political opinions? Or do you identify with your … [Read more...]
Egoism vs. Altruism: A Game-Theoretic Perspective
We can clearly define concepts like egoism, selfishness, and selfless altruism when we look at our everyday decisions from a game-theoretic perspective. Think of every possible interaction between people as a game where each party can either win or lose. This gives us the following grid with four possible outcomes: 1. Win-Win (Effectiveness) In a win-win situation, both you and the other group or person benefit from the interaction, and with your plus added to the other's plus, you get a … [Read more...]
A Psychological Motivation for Mindcoolness
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...]
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