Psychology and behavioral economics

Is sex binary? The answer to this question depends on who is asking, and why.

There is a classic taboo against discussing politics, religion, and money at polite social gatherings.  These days, one probably needs to add sex and gender to that list. 

(Sex and gender are not the same thing. My commentary here is limited to biological sex as a category and does not address the social construct called gender.)

Is religious belief inevitable? Is it useful?

Our brains are lying to us.

Our brains do three things:
    •    Collect, organize, and store information.
    •    Use that information to identify possible patterns and create models.
    •    Use those patterns and models to produce behaviors that increase our probability of surviving and reproducing.

(In response to the person who insisted on believing the science he learned in high school - decades ago.)

Cognitive neuroscience shows us that humans fall on a continuum between two poles that I like to label as the Warrior Perspective and the Scout Perspective. (With a shoutout to Julia Galef, whose interests are the philosophy of science and applied rationality, and who has written about this.)

Consider the math on the timeline of our species: 99.5% of our history was spent as hunter-gatherers (family groups, clans, small tribes) and only 0.5% since about 10,000 BCE and the development of farming, animal husbandry, fixed populations centers with governance (cities).

We shouldn't be surprised that our evolutionarily derived hard wiring is poorly adapted to the modern world.

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A recent Boston Review has a good article on close reading.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a really persistent one.” (Albert Einstein)

Here is an image that illustrates the central concept of this essay: things are seldom what they seem. Almost everyone who views this image describes it as red strawberries:



Even when told there are no red pixels in the image, almost everyone still sees the strawberries as red.

My family likes to complain that I am a pessimist and tell me I would be happier if I were more optimistic. They don’t understand. Some of the unhappiest people I know are optimists, because they falsely assume that optimism produces good outcomes. Their optimism feels to them like a magical talisman that will protect them. When their positive thinking does not shield them from bad outcomes they feel betrayed by Fate, often taking it personally, and sometimes becoming bitter.

In my experience, people who seem unable or unwilling to listen with curiosity  are constrained by one or more of the following traits: