8/28/2008
- Means and Ends: Opening a can (and can’t) of worms.
Q: Why do dogs lick their genitals? A: Because they can. As with all jokes, this one is a bait and switch. More
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8/22/2008
- Meta-cons: Righteous indignation as a con about conning
A couple of weeks ago Jared Diamond, of Guns, Germs and Steel fame, had an article in the New Yorker describing tribal warfare in the New Guinea Highlands. Diamond takes us through a typical feud that started over accusations by one tribe that another tribe’s pig had messed up their garden. He follows Daniel, a tribesman who takes formal responsibility for avenging the killing of a fellow tribesman. Three years, twenty-nine deaths, and the sacrifice of three hundred pigs later, Daniel succeeds in discharging this responsibility. More
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8/15/2008
- SCIBIT: Building a Scientifically Coherent Integrated Bottom-Up Information Theory
Information theory is a theory about what information is and how it happens. For creatures who rely on information as much as we do, we don’t really have a good explanation for what information is. More
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8/08/2008
- Seven Wonderings of the Ancient World: Life’s Universal Tough Judgment Calls
There never was a perfect being who got it right all the time. We didn’t fall from grace, we rose from slime. More
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8/01/2008
- Granularity: Think as big as possible but no bigger
It would be nice if we had more all-weather, all-purpose truths. For lack of them, we’re forced to say “it depends,” which opens a bottomless can of worms. What things depend upon is a more or less infinite set of conditions, exceptions to rules that are themselves exceptions to other rules. Start specifying exceptions and you end up chopping your laws into ever smaller bits. More
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7/25/2008
- ACIDs (Ambiguous Cues; Incompatible Dos): What eats at us when something does
I want to specify the three characteristics all tough judgment calls have in common: - The circumstances are hard to read.
- You can’t hedge your bets.
- Your choice matters.
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7/03/2008
- Exaptation: The loose link between representation and function
In the 1200s, “nice” meant foolish. In the early 1300s it meant timid, in the late 1300s, fussy, in the 1400s, dainty, in the 1500s, precise, around 1800, agreeable. Only after the 1830s did the meaning of “nice” settle into what we hear in it today, very far from “foolish.” More
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6/20/2008
- Floating For-ness: Under a Firm Mantle of Function, Molten Motives Churn
You’re in love, or so you think. You certainly feel in love, but now that you’ve been run through the mill a few times, you wonder what the feeling really means. More
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6/13/2008
- Zipslide Errors: Confusing the nature of past and future
Loosely speaking, time is like zipping up a very long zipper. The future is open; the past is closed. The present is like the zipslide closing up possibilities. While we may not be able to determine what happened in the past, the past is nonetheless determined. The future is not. It’s unknowably open. There is post-destiny but no pre-destiny. More
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6/06/2008
- Brain Velcro: Why good things happen to bad ideas
Toward the end of his book, “The Selfish Gene,” Dawkins argues that ideas are like genes. As with genes, it’s reasonable to imagine that ideas selfishly want to make copies of themselves. They use us as vehicles for their replication. People are repeater stations for ideas, and the ideas that are better able to exploit people for their self-copying purposes are the ideas that are most likely to persist. More
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5/31/2008
- Self-Efficacy: How Supply Permits Demand
“Give the work to the busy man,” my mother used to say. It made sense. A busy man (or woman, in her case) had momentum and a can-do spirit. More
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5/23/2008
- Prevenge: “I’m like rubber; you’re like screwed.”
Prevenge is among the most powerful and pervasive of all rhetorical moves. By “rhetorical,” I mean that it adds heft to any argument regardless of the argument’s intrinsic merit...It’s a general-purpose persuader, a generic influencer. To improve your chances of being persuaded by sound instead of unsound arguments, it’s worth practicing to be efficient at stripping the rhetoric away so you can see the content for what it is. More
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5/17/2008
- Butterfly Punch: Shaming your opponent into putting on kid gloves before you knock him out.
Ideally we wouldn’t fight. When a difference of opinion arose we would discuss it calmly and decide together who was right or how to handle the situation. If everyone in the world were naturally limited to behaving this way, fighting wouldn’t be necessary. But at least some of us have it in us to fight, so peace, respect, and an open mind don’t always provide the answer. More
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5/09/2008
- Turing’s Blurring Anxiety (TBA): Forgiving dead jerks but not live ones.
The dead couldn’t have done other than they did. Apparently. But we can, and so we keep trying. More
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5/02/2008
- Guesswork: Enough is enough, but how much is enough?
So here’s one disappointment for anyone dreaming of a determinate universe. Our general laws about how it works have to be derived from an indefinite number of specific instances. To come up with any general laws at all we’ve got to guess. There’s no way to simply deduce general laws from nothing. Any general law we come up with ultimately rests on a bed of unsettled guesswork. More
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4/11/2008
- Deduction: The dream and nightmare of absolute certainty
Just as Laplace thought, if you knew the determinate laws, you would be able to deduce all future states from past states. We’d be able to deduce all of tomorrow’s truths from things known today. On the one hand we’d miss out on the fun of surprises; on the other we would have gotten rid of uncertainty, the root of all anxiety. More
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4/03/2008
- The Free Willies: Are computers like humans? Are humans like computers?
The World Wide Web, it’s like a giant human mind the way it processes billions of pieces of information. Someday it will become so smart it takes over the world. It will be able to think instead of us. Or so some cognitive scientists say. More
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3/28/2008
- Cause and Effect: Not black and white, but read all over as if it were
It’s this behavioral science ambivalence about final cause that’s most unsettled within us these days. Which are you, a purpose-driven life form or just a very fancy machine? More
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3/11/2008
- Co-dependence: When do two wrongs make a right?
I’m trying a new way to deal with effronteries...My natural response has been ‘You’re only as good as your last mistake to me.’ This new response I’m cultivating is ‘I’m only as free as your last mistake to me.’ ... I like this new approach, but I do notice how it can lower standards. More
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3/06/2008
- Transceiver Bias: Writing and reading are not the same thing
Transceivers transmit and receive, and we do too. ‘Transceiver bias’ is my name for self-image distortions that arise from receiving information about how we’re doing while we’re preoccupied with transmitting information, that is, expressing ourselves. More
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2/28/2008
- The Golden Paradox: If we always sacrificed for each other, no one would ever have to make sacrifices
You know me. I’ve got hardly any moral principles; I’m all about moral dilemmas...if you can come up with a Liar’s Paradox-like statement regarding some moral principle, then it really isn’t a moral principle. Instead, it’s a moral dilemma. So let’s take a look at the Golden Rule and see whether it passes the liar’s paradox moral litmus test. More
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2/18/2008
- The Other Golden Rule: Do Unto Yourself as You Do Unto Others
Through symbols we mix and match features into a composite mental sketch that forms a fairly complex approximation of what it would be like to be another person. It’s this ability to draw far-reaching connections through the use of words that enables us to empathize in detail and to sympathize voluntarily—that is, to make sacrifices to accommodate others. More
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2/06/2008
- Ambigamy: Love's Lost Labors
Here’s one whose target audience is not the middle-aged but rather the young and restless. It was inspired by an argument I couldn’t get started with someone who only wanted to talk about how the media was to blame for youth culture’s slide into promiscuity. I agreed with her about the media but thought other factors also contributed to shifts in attitudes toward sex and love. More
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2/01/2008
- I'm Sure Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone
I’m sure gonna miss me when I’m gone.
I’ll be crying for years after I say my last so-long
The end of me will be my biggest tragedy
I’m sure gonna miss me when I’m gone. More
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1/11/2008
- Mindreader’s Rights: Don’t tell me what I’m thinking
Mindreader’s rights are not a moral absolute but a moral dilemma. When should you stick to your belief that people are being stubborn, and when should you take their word that they’re not? When should you try to convince them, and when should you let them do what they’re doing? More
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1/03/2008
- The Second Fundamental: Stalemates and infinite loops in a human-persuade-human world.
“You can’t change other people. All you can do is change your attitude.” People say this sort of thing when they’ve decided to stop trying to change someone. Maybe generalizing like this helps convince them to let go, but of course it’s not true. Influence happens. Influence is as old as ecosystems. We are extensions of each other, under each other’s influence, and serving each other–sometimes unknowingly (you have about ten times as many bacteria as human cells in your body) and sometimes unwillingly. More
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12/27/2007
- Extended Memotype: On Advice, Part 1
People who give advice are annoying, kind, nosy, generous, pushy, helpful, proud, selfless, self-serving, and domineering. My advice is to ignore them completely and at your own expense. More
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12/14/2007
- Cocky: Self-certainty made easy
A remarkable number of derogatory terms analogize the male genitalia. I’ve wondered why, and I think I know at least a couple of the reasons. For one, we’re shy about our genitalia–so calling attention to them will shock and embarrass. More
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12/07/2007
- Minutia and Highfalutia: Evasion by scrambling to a safer level of analysis
It’s scale-to-scale combat over which level of analysis is most appropriate to the situation. You say the mid-level; they say low or high—anywhere but the middle. You want to talk forest; they want to talk trees or biosphere—nothing in between. More
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11/30/2007
- Sorry: That Big Dumb Powerful Word
People say "sorry" a lot, often leaving its meaning ambiguous. Many of the words we rely upon most are ambiguous. Love, for example, can mean what you feel for your children or your socks—kind of a wide range there. More
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11/09/2007
- Sorrytaliatory Cycle: “I owe you an apology or a scolding, I can’t tell which.”
Sorrytaliatory cycles are the strained effort to draw new boundaries when the relationship is in transition, when you can’t tell where the boundaries belong and you wish you didn’t have to redraw them anyway. More
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11/02/2007
- Poser-Proof Practices: Don’t tell–show
Nature...abounds with lie-detectors, systems for spotting the fake. And nature therefore abounds with costly signals, poser-proof practices that require so much energy that viceroy wannabes can’t afford them. More
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10/23/2007
- Aspirational Tense: "I most definitely am, I hope"
When should you call people on their inconsistencies? In effect, that means holding them down long enough for reality to hit. Not too soon or it will crush their aspirations. Not too late or they’ll invest in dangerous delusion. More
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10/12/2007
- Realincarnation: Requiem for the immortal soul
I lost a friend a few months ago. I miss him, but he is gone, though he lives on in my memory. My friend didn’t die, but our connection did—and it happened over the subject of death. More
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10/05/2007
- Spit or Go Blind: Slang with cosmic implications
When something is amiss, you can either attack the problem head-on or turn a blind eye. You can throw a spit fit, or you can look away. When a relationship runs into conflict, you can marshal the energy to hassle it out (spit) or dissipate that energy (go blind). It’s hard to do both at the same time—hence the confusion. More
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9/20/2007
- Yintimidation: Wolf in she’s clothing
When you don’t have yang working for you, you make yin work instead. Centuries of co-evolving yang and yin strategies and counterstrategies have generated a daunting arsenal of very powerful meekness maneuvers. Yintimidation generally exploits what I’ve called “defaulty logic”: You’re wrong, therefore by default I must be right; you’re mean, therefore by default I must be kind. More
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9/11/2007
- Offanonda Meditation: Learning flexibility in fits and starts
Meditators sit doggedly too, but they know for how long and have something very clear and specific to do with their time, so they’re happy. Fits and starts are harder to bear. You don’t know how long it’s going to be and whether it’s going to take so long you should go do something else. You don’t know whether to give up or try harder. Offanonda meditation is a challenging, humiliating, confusing, frustrating practice. More
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9/05/2007
- Rather Partial: The delicate art of clinging right
The Tao Te Ching has a line, “If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.” Who knows what the ancient Chinese meant by it. It was a long time ago. But all three of meanings I’m finding in “partial” apply. If you want to become whole, let yourself become partial to someone. Fall in love. The beloved will round you out. You can’t be whole by yourself. More
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8/07/2007
- Youjustifications: Why are we fighting? Let me not count the ways
Youjustifications justify behavior by implying that the opponent has just one motive and it’s a bad one. Indeed, the worst one plausible. As issues arise, you concentrate on the one where you have an advantage and ignore the ones where you have a disadvantage. Above all, you ignore the way the issues accumulate. Youjustification means you always act as though there’s only one thing going on. More
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8/02/2007
- Down & Out, Up & Out, Out & Out: Reading between the lines on "Fine"
“Fine.” A single syllable, so rich in possible meanings--does it mean fine as in “You’re right,” as in “You’re wrong,” as in “I fold,” or some complex blend of the three? Conflict within a relationship often leads to reflection about the relationship. Saying “fine,” we step out of the conflict for a little perspective. Psychologically minded people like us value such reflection. It saddens us to note that other people resist and even fear it. More
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7/26/2007
- Myopium: One day at a time as a drug
Only two things can hold us to a path over the long haul. One is stubbornness; the other is growth, progress, an endless supply of promising moves to make from day to day and year to year. The latter is much to be preferred, so it pays to find a way to manage the metriholic addiction. Curbing the appetite for short-term gratification makes for more flexible goal-tending. Paradoxically, the flexibility increases our ability to line up daily affirmations that not only feel like progress, but are. More
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7/06/2007
- Going Uncertain: Casting doubt on inconvenient possibilties
For the most part, people hate uncertainty. It's mentally taxing. It distracts us from our focused pursuits. It reduces our confidence. It vaporizes our mojo. Still, we do welcome one kind of uncertainty--uncertainty that frees us from a larger uncertainty. More
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6/27/2007
- Liar's Paradox Moral Litmus Test: If you contradict yourself you can't both be right
I've got a new litmus test by which to judge candidate moral absolutes: if you can make an inescapably self-contradictory or hypocritical statement out of them--the equivalent of the liar’s paradox (the undecidable statement “I am lying.” )--then they can’t be moral absolutes. More
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6/12/2007
- Breakthrough Baggage: How a winning formula becomes a strange brew
Your friend had been up against a wall until she discovered this spiritual program that helped her break through it. She was impressed—so impressed she subscribed to the whole program: the rituals, the grand assumptions, the preposterous theories. Never mind how irrelevant they were to her breakthrough. Never mind how many other programs could have caused a similar breakthrough. Never mind how ripe she was for breakthrough by whatever means... More
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5/30/2007
- Can'tibration: What do you mean, you can't?
Dinner at an all-you-can-eat restaurant last week reminded me how fundamentally ambiguous the word can is. Its meaning falls between “want to” and “can endure without dying,” just as, conversely, the word need falls somewhere between “want” and “will die without.” Imagine an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a reverse bouncer, a big galoot who won’t let you go until you've stuffed the last non-fatal morsel down your gullet. More
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5/22/2007
- Sweating the Petty vs. Petting the Sweaty: Two ways to play the game of life
People interpret the parallel between life and games in two ways. The most common implies that like a game, life is no big deal, so you should just relax. This notion can be a comfort when you're feeling stressed—stressed, in fact by the other way to take the statement: that in the game of life, you’re really trying figure out how to win, live right, make the world work better for you and others. And sometimes it’s not easy. More
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5/10/2007
- Careful Caring: We can't always care, so why feel guilty when called uncaring?
It would be nice if the rule for caring were as simple as always just do it . Realistically, what to care about is about the most important question in your life. And not just your life, but all of life. From evolution to the serenity prayer, it's all about investing attention and effort in those things that pay off and not in things that don’t. More
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5/03/2007
- Exempt By Contempt: “I've checked with me and we both agree you're inferior”
The Exempt by contempt recipe can be applied to other so-called vices, such as self-deceptiveness, ego, and self-indulgence (each of which also has its virtues). The recipe is consistent with what Freud called "projecting," finding in others the traits one is loath to see in oneself. But here's the rub: Not every critique of others is a projection. Sometimes they really are more closed-minded than you. More
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4/25/2007
- Coherence: Making our ideas consistent with each other
When we go spelunking around in our own minds, we generally find coherence. Maybe that's because we're careful to avoid looking directly at the inconsistencies. Straightening out our inconsistencies generally entails hard work and sacrifice. If you find a real inconsistency between two of your cherished beliefs, you may have to give one of them up. More
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4/18/2007
- Co-Satisficing: Squeaky wheels and vicious cycles
We can't afford to think about everything, so we grease the squeakiest wheel until it stops squeaking, then we go on to the next squeakiest wheel. Consciousness is a pinhole in a flood—so little conscious attention, so many things we could attend to—that we simply have to prioritize this way. More
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4/10/2007
- Multi-Level-Headed: The ins and outs of humor
At its simplest, multi-level-headedness plays out on two planes: We’re either participating as insiders or observing from the outside. When things are going smoothly we’re just in it, doing what we’re supposed to be doing. When we encounter resistance, ambiguity, strangeness, or ambivalence, our perspective shifts from being in it to being outside observing it. When a relationship starts to feel less like a groove and more like a rut, we start to think about it rather than merely being in it. A lot of humor plays with the jumps we make between being within it and about it--up out of it. More
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4/02/2007
- MOGIBO (Me Outside. Good Inside. Bad Outside): Personal popularity in popular culture
MOGIBO is the sentiment expressed in many popular tunes, old and new: I’ve lost at love. I’m out of the loop and it’s sad. I can’t win in the mainstream. The world has left me behind. MOGIBO is one of just a few basic relationships possible between the in-crowd, the out-crowd, good and bad, and the songster. More
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3/26/2007
- R.O.S.C.O. (Right On Schedule, Chill Out): Global warming as inevitable
R.O.S.C.O. is a handy concept, but one that can easily be construed as an argument for complacency. Yes, at one level the conflict between forces for denial and alertness to global warming within and between us are right on schedule and in perfect harmony with each other. But that’s no reason to stop fighting. Chill out about the fact that there’s a fight, and keep fighting the forces of denial. More
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3/14/2007
- Bottom Fine Line: Beneath every bottom line secret to success there's a fine line between success and failure
Have you heard about “The Secret”? A student invited me to his house to watch the DVD, which has sold over 1.5 million copies. He claimed it had changed his life. We made an informal field trip of it, but I had to cut the engagement short. It made my skin crawl. I couldn’t stay seated. More
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3/06/2007
- Flying By Instrument: The difference between doing and feeling like your doing
Last week I wrote about the way my ambitions shrank to a more human scale at midlife. Before my midlife crisis I had grand plans. I thought making a big difference would bring me satisfaction and peace of mind. By midlife, having not achieved greatness, I felt the monkey slowly slide off my back. I learned that I don’t need 15 minutes of fame, I need 15 people who care about me. I’ve got them and I’m content…. The good news is that we can be satisfied locally. The bad news is that though we mostly seek local satisfaction, it’s an imperfect guide to what counts. More
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2/26/2007
- Flow: Being a player at work makes work feel like play
Maintaining flow is really an inventory problem. You've got to be moving new challenges in neither faster nor slower than the thrill is gone from your old challenges. It's about keeping the inventory in proper circulation. If you don't have a new thrill in time, then you get idle moments and your mind wanders into wondering what's amiss. More
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2/20/2007
- Letter and Spirit: Two-fisted adventures at home and in the classroom
On one hand there's the letter of the law; on the other hand there's the spirit. The spirit of the law is its intent. The letter of the law is its implementation. There has to be balance between the two, a kind of give-and-take, because intent divorced from implementation is toothless, and implementation divorced from intent is empty--or worse, dangerous. This is true for laws imposed on us, laws we impose on others, and laws we impose upon ourselves. More
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2/12/2007
- United States: Your life as an oxymoron
Some oxymorons are neither physical impossibilities nor merely amusing if read wrong. Some pose dynamic paradoxes that lead to perpetual unsettledness. I’m a proud citizen of the United States , a country whose name is one such oxymoron. States are separate, individual things. United means a unified whole. The United States is a one-many, so which is it? More
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1/26/2007
- Reversals: Coinings for the other side of the coin
Mind Reader's Dictionary started out as a real dictionary. I wanted to collect and systematize the jargon of mind reading. I wanted the everyday terms such as mudslinging, preaching to the converted, and talking your ear off. I wanted to include the technical terms too, such as confirmation bias, satisficing, and ad hominem argument. I figured that mind reading was something we all do a lot, and that success and failure in life depends upon our doing it well. I noticed that we're pretty casual about learning its intricacies. Most of us apply ourselves much more rigorously to learning the jargon of a vocation or avocation than we do to learning that of mind reading, even though mind reading is crucial to success no matter what vocation or avocation we pursue. I wanted to collect and systematize state-of-the-art mind reading jargon. More
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1/12/2007
- Value: The Pursuit of happiness; the happiness of pursuit
Purpose and value are related. They're both about apparent preference. We do some things and not others, "on purpose," because we value the outcomes we predict will come from the things we do. And t |