btrmt. | Betterment

ideologies you choose

btrmt.

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About

betterment

noun

making or becoming better

ideology

noun

patterns or rituals of thought, feeling, and action

Most of what you believe, you didn’t choose. We inherit these patterns of thought, feeling, and action, from the world we live in. Your brain’s graceful solutions to impossible complexity, but not yours. As a brain scientist, I spent fifteen years—military, Cambridge, clinical practice—looking for the instruction manual for this device in our head. I didn’t find it. But you can see the patterns, once you know where to look. Then you can choose which ones to keep. If you don’t do the thinking, the thinking will be done for you.

So, let me help you choose.

More about me →

Projects

The btrmt. projects aren't random. They're the threads I keep pulling on.

  • analects

    I have a terrible memory, see. So, everything I learn I have to leave somewhere I can find later. This is where. With a background in brain and behaviour science, my analects are me teaching myself and anyone else interested in our patterns of thinking and behaving.

    See them all →

  • 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.

    Check it out →

  • neurotypica

    Lots of people ask me “what’s a good neuroscience book to read?” I never really had a good answer. So I made one. This is my experimental attempt to teach you how a brain scientist thinks about our patterns of thinking and acting. Neurotypica is my guide to brain and behaviour. See what you think.

    Check it out

  • black cortex

    Black Cortex is the place I send people looking for leadership consulting. Myself and a colleague at Sandhurst delivering transformation that goes beyond buzzword. We take on select work where outcomes are measurable.

    Check it out

  • lectures

    I mostly write my articles for me. These lectures are for you. I spend so much of my time teaching, why not do some of that in front of a microphone. The btrmt. lectures, where I take one concept I write about or teach, and try and teach it to you. Currently hosted on Substack.

    Check it out

  • omen

    It’s not silly to be superstitious. The placebo effect is an ‘effect’ because it works, and the scientific method is a ritual like any other. Rituals surface meaning regardless of the mechanism. Omen is a daily tarot draw. One card, personalised, as a moment for reflection. Bring your friends. Currently Invite only.

    Check it out

Content

Latest and best the Analects, or my latest Missives to you all.

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Featured

Latest Content

Latest

All the Analects

Recent Missives

Missives

May 2, 2026

June 5, 2026

Last Changelog

I finally finished Successful Prophets. An article that took essentially five years to write. It’s of no particular consequence to you, probably, but this was the article that got me writing again. Made me realise I could use my articles to think through ideas, and make it exciting to write.

What you will care about is, much like Mundane Cults, it shows just how vulnerable we all are to being collected into high-control groups like cults. That there’s nothing special about them, and nothing that especially protects you from them. In fact, the way we talk about cult leaders, like the way we talk about cults, actually leaves us more vulnerable.

I also republished the sister article, Folie à deux. This was the idea that started my thinking about cult leaders and successful prophets. Written during the height of the pandemic, I think you might be able to read the subtext. A time of widespread human craziness, and again very comprehensible if you look at what happens when people are isolated with just a couple of people to keep them company.

I think, after reading, the new era of digital gurus makes a great deal more sense, as do the more malevolent online communities surrounding them. If anything, it’s surprising that there aren’t more. It’s just the human machine at work. An article for another day, though. For now, I hope you enjoy these.

In other news, I’m publishing an article on making AI useful, so lots of marginalia about that, as I collect my thoughts and scattered notes. Worth a skim—the jagged edge of AI is less and less reassuringly far away. This is good for you in the short term—some clear ideas about how to make AI more productive for you. But bad in the long term, because the clear benefit of humans is in jobs that are more fragmentary, and we are getting better at chaining AI across fragments.

All the Missives
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