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. 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. Left unexamined, these rituals will be chosen for us, not by us.
Dorian Minors
I’m Dorian Minors, Cambridge-educated brain scientist and professor of behavioural science, and I reckon it’s better to choose yourself. Hence btrmt. A place to discover ideologies worth choosing.
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More about me

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 and behaviour science, 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.

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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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Neurotypica

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.
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Black Cortex

black cortex

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

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Lectures

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.

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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.
Check it out

filed under:

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

audio

Stress isn’t poorly calibrated to modern life. It’s the energising force that allows us to perform. Optimal performance requires optimal stress. The difference between eustress and distress isn’t biological—it’s psychological. Controllability matters more than the stressor itself.

Stress is Good

audio

Everyone’s convinced stress is this outdated evolutionary technology—poorly calibrated to modern life, something to avoid at all costs. The story goes that it evolved to help us run from tigers, but now it’s just triggered by email notifications. This is nonsense. Stress is the only thing that gets us to perform at all. It’s the most valuable biological technology we have. This lecture walks through the Yerkes-Dodson Law—a simple, 100-year-old model that explains how stress actually works, why we need it, and how to use it well.
Stress isn’t poorly calibrated to modern life. It’s the energising force that allows us to perform. Optimal performance requires optimal stress. The difference between eustress and distress isn’t biological—it’s psychological. Controllability matters more than the stressor itself.
Check it out

filed under:

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

Latest Content

Latest

article

Nature is just nurture over time, and nurture is far more obviously in charge; nothing changes if free will <em>isn’t</em> real; and the same is true of consciousness. They’re just complicated debates with no real outcomes.

Stupid Questions

article

There are a few questions which, on the surface, seem hugely important. Then, on closer inspection, turn out to be more or less irrelevant. I need a place to write about them, so I thought I’d make it a sort of always-evolving article. So far, I talk about how useless the nature-vs-nurture debate is and how boring the questions of whether free-will is real, and what consciousness might be are.
Nature is just nurture over time, and nurture is far more obviously in charge; nothing changes if free will isn’t real; and the same is true of consciousness. They’re just complicated debates with no real outcomes.
Check it out

filed under:

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

audio

The hard problem of consciousness is just a complicated debate with no real outcomes. It’s the behaviour that matters, not whether there’s ineffable qualia behind the curtain.

Stupid Questions: Consciousness

audio

What is consciousness? From Mary’s Room to philosophical zombies, from panpsychism to eliminativism, everyone has theories about the “hard problem.” But under what realistic circumstances would it actually matter whether something is truly conscious versus merely appearing conscious?
The hard problem of consciousness is just a complicated debate with no real outcomes. It’s the behaviour that matters, not whether there’s ineffable qualia behind the curtain.
Check it out

filed under:

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

audio

Nothing changes if free will isn’t real. The world is so intractably complex that it doesn’t matter, and we can shape behaviour either way. Why bother asking?

Stupid Questions: Free Will

audio

From Libet’s experiments to modern neuroscience, evidence keeps mounting that our decisions might be predetermined. But even if free will is an illusion, what would actually change? Behaviour is still something we can modify, determinism doesn’t excuse us from consequence, and the debate itself is practically irrelevant.
Nothing changes if free will isn’t real. The world is so intractably complex that it doesn’t matter, and we can shape behaviour either way. Why bother asking?
Check it out

filed under:

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

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

Against McAskillian Longtermism:

Whatever is wrong with utilitarians who advocate the murder of a million for a 0.0001 percent reduction in the risk of human extinction, it isn’t a lack of computational power. Morality isn’t made by us—we can’t just decide on the moral truth—but it’s made for us: it rests on our common humanity

See also anti-consequentialism, and anti-utilitarian economics.

Check out the site

filed under:

betterment thought-architecture wealth-architecture collective-architecture on-ethics on-politics-and-power on-thinking-and-reasoning

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

The continued failure of the economy of small pleasures.

extrinsic incentives such as money or grades to learn [make it] harder to learn new related information when that incentive is gone … the learning outcome may be poorer due to the absence of reward

Actually, speaks a bit to the value of violence (or, rather, the lack thereof).

Check out the site

filed under:

betterment somatic-architecture neurotypica on-being-fruitful
All the Analects

Recent Missives

Missives

January 11, 2026

January 9, 2026

Last Changelog

Happy new year. On top of my updates last December, I have two new articles out: one on Hydraulic Despotism, and one on three questions that seem important, but end up being irrelevant. Specifically, questions about consciousness, free-will, and nature vs nurture.

Relatedly, I have four more podcasts/lectures out. Three are the audio version of the irrelevant questions article: Consciousness, Free Will, and Nature vs Nurture. Then one more on Mundane Cults.

Looks like it wasn’t a passing fancy, so I guess I should launch it properly now.

It’s hosted at Substack for the free storage and bandwidth for now, but you don’t need to subscribe there. I’ll still include the links in the normal newsletter.

Speaking of, I will be restarting the newsletter! I think you can tell I needed the break.

All the Missives
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