For group dynamics to produce really bad behaviour, you really need to work at it. You have to train your authority figures to be cruel, prevent dissent or disengagement, and intervene all the time to stop people fixing things. It’s <em>hard</em>.

We can think of motivations in terms of three things. There is the <em>content</em>: what things motivate us. Then there is the <em>process</em>: how things motivate us. And lastly, we have those things that <em>maintain</em> our motivation.

Individually, the disconnected dichotomies of intrinsic vs extrinsic, normative vs motivating, ‘cognitive’ and ‘biological’, and the like have little utility. But when you put them together, you can get some quite juicy fidelity on why people do what they do.

Stress is a good thing before it’s a bad thing. It motivates us to act. We are scared of the f’s, but we don’t need to be. We should fight for things worth fighting for and fly from things that aren’t. Use the f’s as guides to action, not just things to avoid.

Bias reduces noise—if you know <em>roughly</em> what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less relevant data points.