analects noun, pl

/ˈan.ə.lɛkts/

a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings.

On Leadership

stuff On being the strength of others

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analects under the categories btrmt. believes in, as set out in the manifesto

analects organised according to the fundamental questions of philosophy

sequences of articles gathered around a more focused idea

  • successful prophets 5 Jun 2026 [article] We think of cults as the product of dangerously charismatic leaders but on examination this narrative falls apart. Really, the most successf...
  • folie à deux: the madness of two 4 Jun 2026 [article]
  • values don't matter 21 Feb 2026 [article] Values often function as virtue ethics—traits we’re expected to cultivate. But virtues are context-dependent: courage for a soldier isn’t co...
  • hydraulic despotism 1 Dec 2025 [article] Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice....
  • mechanical ethics 1 Oct 2025 [article] Vincent’s S-CALM model describes the situational and cognitive factors that undermine ethical behaviour. Mechanistic thinking helps explain...
  • on motivation 15 Sep 2025 [article] We can think of motivations in terms of three things. There is the content: what things motivate us. Then there is the process: how things m...
  • navigating moral terrain 1 Sep 2025 [article] I describe five levels that help understand how good people do bad things—neural, cognitive, situational, social, and cultural. Inject some...
  • practical ethics 4 Jul 2025 [article] To avoid rationalising poor ethical intuitions, we can use three tools to develop our ethical muscles. Sensitising ourselves to the small nu...
  • moral blindspots 27 Jun 2025 [article] Most people think better ethical decision-making is just a matter of stopping to think before acting. But many moral judgements are intuitiv...
  • moral terrain 20 Jun 2025 [article] You could try to make ethical decisions by reasoning through. You want to do good, so you work out what good means. Then you work out what y...
  • positive intelligence pt.iii 30 May 2025 [article] This might be the most comprehensive example of the neuroscience confidence game I’ve ever written about. That and a heavy dose of self-indu...
  • positive intelligence pt.ii 23 May 2025 [article] Chamine’s ‘Positivity Quotient’ is based on nothing beyond ‘being happier is better than being sad’, and unless they appeal to you, there’s...
  • positive intelligence pt.i 16 May 2025 [article] It says it’s based on the latest research, but actually it’s based on a 40 year old version of the concept of an ‘inner critic’, and a pack...
  • uncertainty vs risk 9 May 2025 [article] Our brains track two kinds of uncertainty. Expected uncertainty makes us trust our model of the world more and exploit familiar patterns (be...
  • sacrificing the self 4 Apr 2025 [article] When we want to identify with a group, we bias ourselves to filter out all theother ways we could be. It helps us cut down all our competing...
  • stress and creativity 28 Mar 2025 [article] Stress promotes bias—stereotypical thinking and behaving. Less stress promotes cognitive flexibility—an openness to new ways of thinking and...
  • language is a barrier to communication 28 Feb 2025 [article] Our brain clusters things that are similar to each other together. This includes ideas and the words we attach to them. If your words are at...
  • anticipation beats reward 31 Jan 2025 [article] Basically, reward and ancipation both use the same system, but differently. Anticipation seems to come in through the senses and get sent th...
  • when groups go bad 3 Jan 2025 [article] Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile e...
  • useful groups are biased groups 27 Dec 2024 [article] The strength of our attraction to a group is a function of how different a group is from other groups in ways that we feel like we are, or l...

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