btrmt. | Betterment

ideologies worth choosing

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About

betterment

noun

making or becoming better;

ideology

noun

rituals of thought, feeling, and action;
the science of ideas;

Humans are animals first. At our core, we are creatures like any other—responding adaptively to the environment around us. We see this in our habits, our routines, and our rituals. Automatic patterns of behaviour that gracefully handle the predictable shapes of everyday life. But rituals of behaviour are preceded by rituals of thought. This is what brains do. And unexamined, such things are karstic: pretty landscapes that obscure sinkholes, caves, and rivers beneath. I thought, better to look where you tread. Hence, btrmt. A place to discover ideologies worth choosing.

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Who am I?

Projects

Analects

analects

I have a terrible memory. Everything I learn I have to leave somewhere I can find later. This is where I put them. Analects are a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings. These are mine, to myself, and anyone else who might find them interesting. With a background in brain science and the sciences of mind, I explore how ideas become ideologies become action, for better or worse. Here, you’ll find links to all the content I produce for any of the btrmt. projects.

The latest | See them all

Animals First

animals first

You might have read about me, but now, let me introduce you to btrmt. Animals First walks you through this little website of mine. The philosophy, and all the major threads and minor projects that make it up. Let's see if you can't find something worth your time.

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Karstica

karstica

Karstica is where I put anything designed to impress people who might want to pay me. White papers, development tools, things like that. Something like the research and development arm of btrmt. The things that work and those that don't. Right now, it's mostly just a landing page, until I get the site moved properly.
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Content

Random Featured

Featured

article

The scientific claim of ‘no evidence’ both indicates that we have evidence something isn’t true, and that no one has really looked. This fact bears forth the alluring capacity for science to sweep inconvenient truths aside rather than tackle them.

The trap of scientific evidence

Article

There is an odd tension in the journalistic use of ‘no scientific evidence’. No evidence for something is our scientific method telling us that we should accept alternative explanations. Unless of course, we never tested that thing in the first place, in which case our claim of no evidence has no particular meaning at all. But something interesting happens in the middle ground between these two spaces. When scientists must bridge the gap with a funny kind of scientific common sense. The result is often rather lazy.
The scientific claim of ‘no evidence’ both indicates that we have evidence something isn’t true, and that no one has really looked. This fact bears forth the alluring capacity for science to sweep inconvenient truths aside rather than tackle them.
Read this article

filed under:

betterment on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning thought-architecture

Latest Content

Latest

article

Cognitive dissonance is often thought of as the <em>discomfort</em> we have with conflicting cognitions. But it’s really about how the brain will smooth over <em>dissonant</em> cognitions, whether they’re uncomfortable or not. It happens a lot.

Cognitive dissonance isn't discomfort

Article

I’ve never written an article about the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, even though I’ve referenced it a lot. It’s so mainstream that I assume everyone knows what it is. But, actually, people don’t. And even the guy who came up with it was a little disappointed by where the literature around it went. So I thought we’d revisit it, and keep it short and fun.
Cognitive dissonance is often thought of as the discomfort we have with conflicting cognitions. But it’s really about how the brain will smooth over dissonant cognitions, whether they’re uncomfortable or not. It happens a lot.
Read this article

filed under:

betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-aesthetics on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture wealth-architecture

article

Without time-travel, evolutionary narratives can only identify theories that <em>don’t</em> make sense (like death drives). It can’t tell you what theories <em>do</em> make sense, because you can make many to explain the same thing. All they do is let you see what people wish the world was like.

Evolution is overrated

Article

People love a good evolutionary narrative. I wouldn’t be able to count the number of times I’ve heard “back in our evolutionary past…”. Somewhere along the line, evolutionary theories went from a useful way to fix psychological theories, to a generator of some of the most superficially idiotic. And I think, reading between the lines, we can find a new use for them. But first, let me convince you that evolutionary narratives aren’t usually worth very much.
Without time-travel, evolutionary narratives can only identify theories that don’t make sense (like death drives). It can’t tell you what theories do make sense, because you can make many to explain the same thing. All they do is let you see what people wish the world was like.
Read this article

filed under:

betterment on-aesthetics on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture

article

There’s no hidden version of you. If anything, we are a collection of bits and pieces that we weave together from the stories we learn from others. You don’t need to find an authentic <em>self</em>, you need to find a story you can weave that makes you happy.

There is no authentic self

Article

There’s this idea that other people’s expectations stop us from finding our ‘authentic’ self. Other people somehow take us away from who we are. Inside us is some truer version of us that is slowly withering in the face of the demands of the world around us to be something else. And I just reject this premise out of hand.
There’s no hidden version of you. If anything, we are a collection of bits and pieces that we weave together from the stories we learn from others. You don’t need to find an authentic self, you need to find a story you can weave that makes you happy.
Read this article

filed under:

betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture spiritual-architecture

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

Nostalgia as a parasite:

It is now commonly understood that nostalgia can also be a prosocial emotion in the sense that it helps us recognise what is universal to all of us, such as a lost childhood or a longing to be part of romanticised versions of the past
…
The 17th-century medical-scientific literature possessed a weirdly inhuman and morbid philosophy of the effects of nostalgia, their diagnoses of homesickness resembling a grim tale of the fantastique.

Something like nostalgia being a fuel for an overactive imagination. Interesting read.

Check out the site

filed under:

gratification somatic-architecture on-(un)happiness

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

The mystery of Pope Francis. I have been watching the articles on him, wondering why I know much more about Pope Francis than other Popes. Looks like it wasn’t because I was more news attentive, but because he was a very confusing Pope. Fun read.

Check out the site

filed under:

gratification collective-architecture spiritual-architecture on-leadership
All the Analects

Recent Missives

Missives

April 25, 2025

February 14, 2025

Last Changelog

Last week I was supposed to do this week’s article, and got distracted by a cool feature of the study of language regions of the brain. Anyway, I updated last week’s article to stand alone, and this week’s article is what it should have been. If you read last weeks’ you can skip the intro to this weeks’ and just dive right in.

All the Missives
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