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Analects

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On (Un)happiness

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Stress promotes bias—stereotypical thinking and behaving. Less stress promotes cognitive flexibility—an openness to new ways of thinking and behaving. Neither is better than the other. It’s about the situation you deploy them in.

Bias vs Noise pt. II: Stress

Article

Bias is just you using your expectations and assumptions to ignore the noise, and see the picture more clearly. The trade-off is that, sometimes, the noise is useful or your expectations are off. The human stress response is perhaps the most fundamental example of this in behaviour, and a very valuable tool.
Stress promotes bias—stereotypical thinking and behaving. Less stress promotes cognitive flexibility—an openness to new ways of thinking and behaving. Neither is better than the other. It’s about the situation you deploy them in.
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betterment on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful somatic-architecture on-leadership

article

The behavioural economists treat bias as an error. But the brain isn’t an economist. It’s more like a statistician, using bias as a trade-off. Bias ignores noise to see something more clearly, though of course, sometimes the noise shouldn’t be ignored.

Bias vs Noise pt. I: Bias vs Bias

Article

The perils of cognitive bias is a subject that’s dominated a substantial slice of social psychology, and appears in any leadership or personal development course as something to be avoided at all costs. It’s interesting, but it’s not actually that useful. You can’t sift through 200+ biases to work out what you might do wrong. The brain treats bias differently. Bias is a strategy to solve certain kinds of problems. Let me show you how.
The behavioural economists treat bias as an error. But the brain isn’t an economist. It’s more like a statistician, using bias as a trade-off. Bias ignores noise to see something more clearly, though of course, sometimes the noise shouldn’t be ignored.
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betterment on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful somatic-architecture

article

Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits of our success and betterment is only meaningful in its reflection in the lives of others. Everyone agrees.

On Cynosure

Article

I use a lot of odd words around here, to mark out my interpretation of things to others. But they aren’t unique ideas. And mapping them to where I found them is one way of explaining them. So here I explain the idea of cynosure: the three values I hold closest, and the three things I think we should all focus on.
Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits of our success and betterment is only meaningful in its reflection in the lives of others. Everyone agrees.
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betterment connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-aesthetics on-thinking-and-reasoning

article

Basically, reward and ancipation both use the same system, but differently. Anticipation seems to come in through the senses and get sent throughout the brain, but pleasure seems to come in from more evaluatey bits—maybe to help us learn what’s rewarding.

Anticipation beats reward

Article

A lot of people reckon the brain treats rewards quite differently from the anticipation of rewards. And, in fact, the anticipation of reward seems like the bigger driver of our behaviour. And this little tidbit is one of the few places where human behaviour is actually explained well by exploring the brain. So let’s explore it.
Basically, reward and ancipation both use the same system, but differently. Anticipation seems to come in through the senses and get sent throughout the brain, but pleasure seems to come in from more evaluatey bits—maybe to help us learn what’s rewarding.
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betterment gratification on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful on-leadership somatic-architecture wealth-architecture

article

BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and socialisation, but there is something deeper there.

BDSM as a lazy ideology

Article

I write a lot about ideologies here. Rituals of thought and behaviour that come out of our need to automatically solve predictable problems of a complex world. I also point out that ideologies ‘stack’. They all sort of ‘stick together’, making these bundles of beliefs and behaviours. Most of these are lazy: stacks of ideologies we adopt just because they’re there. I reckon BDSM might be just one of these. It might be an ideology stack that people gravatate to, not because it’s the most efficient way of expressing some core human need, but because it’s just the most common. Let me explain what I mean.
BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and socialisation, but there is something deeper there.
Read this article

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connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love somatic-architecture thought-architecture
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