Category: Psychology


  • This one is a nutshell for Adam Grant’s newest book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. I loved the book. I encourage everyone to read it. I’ve long strived for confident humility. I love that he names this talk after the myth of the frog in a slowly boiling pot. Frogs…

  • Face blindness means that I would not recognize individuals I know. Clothing, voice, or other cues would be the only way to know person A from B. I keep thinking new people I see look like a close relative of an acquaintance. I am not confusing them with the person. Just wondering if they are…

  • I am seeing more and more where people are complaining about the filming of an attack and not intervening in it. People are claiming they would do something. But… I suspect many of the people who film these events without intervening think beforehand they would do something too. Why they do not intervene is pretty…

  • Thinking back to Obama’s campaign for reelection, I recall much talk about how incompetent, evil, and terrible a president he was from his opposition. Not Romney directly but the his likely voters on social media. To the point of Romney feeling moral obligation to defend Obama as not that bad of a person to his…

  • A friend asked me this last night and my unprepared answer was all over the place, but I think in retrospect there was a theme. I was aware that being a parent changes the brain in the abstract. I was unprepared for the experience for how hard it hits. Think the stepson being only a…

  • I ran across this image of the interstellar asteroid. It struck me that I recognize an artist’s impression as the actual representation of the object. Because we do not have an actual photo, an artist made something. And yet, to me, it IS the asteroid enough that when I see the impression photo, I think…

  • Because I’m happy; Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth I occasionally review how I am using social media. For years now, I worry about how I leverage social signaling. (read more) There is an awareness of the temptation to make myself appear more successful than I am. And that excessive signaling on…

  • This sounds likely to be fraught with false positives. In particular, the language a student uses during an interview can help distinguish a high-risk teenager [shooter] from a low-risk one, according to previous research Barzman directed. That study concluded that the former was more likely to express negative feelings about himself and about the acts…

  • Geeks have intense interests. They border on obsessions. They know EVERYTHING about those interests. And argue vehemently for them, about them, and against others. These habits bleed over into other non-geek areas such that it felt like an intrinsic part of the culture. For decades I doubted you could have geeks without arguments, so I…