Did you know that it is the default settings of our brain that often drive us—despite past experiences—to do things that make no logical sense, though they make perfect emotional sense? That, however, does not make us completely irrational; it…
Let me ask you: “Do you feel the urge to check your latest Facebook friends’ updates, news-feeds or Instagram photos—on the go? And do you succumb to this urge; thereby coincidentally increasing the probability of eliminating yourself—prematurely—from the gene pool?” The…
1) Next Tuesday: Before a purchase, take the time to consider what you’ll be doing, from morning to night, this coming Tuesday. How will this purchase affect you on Tuesday? This simple exercise—thinking about time used on a specific day (you…
We have the tendency to overestimate the degree to which others agree with us; therein making this—tendency—just another of those predictable patterns of thought and behavior that lead us to draw incorrect conclusions. Psychologists call this the False Consensus Bias. Let me ask you: “Is agreeing…
Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. Some things are fragile—they don’t like chaos, while others are robust—they don’t care if things are crazy. Antifragility is beyond…
Do you love your brain? I mean, really, really love it? And do you treat it as well as you can? Do you appreciate the way it keeps you going, day after day, night after night? After all, it is your brain that ensured that you keep…
Nothing Méi shénme Nada Gar nichts Hmm, interesting, I guess I have to visit an Audiologist to check on my hearing. Still, this—hearing nothing—could be a good thing, because when we say something repeatedly, we are likely to believe it with increasing…
We sometimes tend to think that ideas and feelings arising from our intuition are essentially superior to those achieved by reason and logic. As such, intuition—the good old “gut feeling”—has come to be idealized as the Noble Savage of the mind, fearlessly cutting through…
… the Framing Bias. This is another beautiful mental shortcut that we use to solve common problems. Although this heuristic speeds up processing in our brain, it occasionally makes us think so fast that we miss what is important. When heuristics work, they…
Have you ever been convinced that you could predict how well you would perform in any stock market situation? If the answer is yes, then you are suffering from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. What that effect literally means is that you are so bad at a…