A collection of 113 posts
Understanding this mental tick, and how it operates, provides us with a clear picture of the process that turns outlier events into sources of persistent worry.
Listen onSpotify Veteran political journalist Steve Richards talks to Toby Young about the U.K.’s forthcoming General Election, becoming a stage performer late in life, and his recent book about recent British Prime Ministers. This podcast was recorded in front of a live studio audience at the Battle of
In recent years, psychologists and political scientists have identified several factors that influence conspiratorial thinking, such as political orientation, race and power (or the lack thereof). These are proximate causes of conspiracism.
Most setups that might appear to be non-hierarchical are actually deeply hierarchical.
Empathy is a fundamental human emotion that helps us to understand one another.
The unambiguous conclusion seems to be that people are better off believing in either libertarian free will (which grants us complete agency) or the intuitive compatibilism (which grants us compromised agency) that they tend to favour.
Virtue signalling includes the best of human instincts, and the worst of human instincts.
The evidence that men are more violent and more criminal than women is overwhelming, and yet it doesn’t imply that all men are violent, deserve to be incarcerated, or are undeserving of our sympathy or compassion if they are imprisoned.
If partisanship is shaping our perceptions of reality, then democratic decision-making becomes incredibly difficult.
Each “side” sees the other’s behavior as evidence of evil, and their own behavior as justified on the ground that we good folks must defend ourselves against them.
Before a youth makes the decision to murder, before the gun is stashed in his backpack, before his state of mental health is so deteriorated that he commits the unthinkable, what has happened to him?
Psychological scientists are quick to spot unwarranted causal inferences in others' research — but blind to the same errors in their own, possibly driven by ideological commitments and self-interest.
The same is true of happiness and positivity. They’re not mere feelings. They are behaviors.
In the months leading up to the news, I was in a bad place. Nothing in life felt right, and every day was a fight against hopelessness—to the point that even when good things happened, I would remain afraid or numb.
It makes no more sense to believe in a numinous “will” that subverts the laws of physics than to accept a god for which there’s no evidence. Any reforms of society should begin by accepting the unalterable truths of nature.