On average, people rate themselves as more skilled than 57 out of 100 peers. But surprisingly, this overconfidence reverses for some skills. I break it down in my latest YouTube video where I tackle controversial psychology questions ⬇️

A 75-year-old woman in rural Kenya used her cash transfer to buy a 10,000-gallon water tank - then resold clean water to her village. No NGO would've designed that. Why cash often beats experts, with GiveDirectly's Nick Allardice, in my latest podcast episode👇

A question for you: not including food/beverages, what's something you don't experience the hedonic treadmill for - that is, even if you do it every single day, you still keep enjoying it just as much each time?

I was surprised to learn that there were a number of competing theories to Stoicism during the time it flourished in Greece, and that each proposed a different "purpose of life" (or telos) to spend your life optimizing for: 🧵

We analyzed Elon Musk's predictions to see how accurate they have been (only including those that had an explicit or implicit time frame, and where that time has passed). Here are the results:

A call to academic psychologists (and those who trained in related fields) - it would be fantastic if you'd participate in our study on controversial and hotly debated topics in psychology! We'd also really appreciate it if you'd share this as we need more participants: ⬇️

New podcast ep! Had fun talking US-China competition, military AI, and more with @spencrgreenberg.bsky.social: podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/251/... Even spent a few min at the end on something I rarely get to ramble about: what I've learned about relating to humans from working with horses🐴

As the year comes to a close, you may find it useful to reflect on the past year or quarter, as well as what lies ahead. We made a free tool to help you do so, called "Your Life Review": programs.clearerthinking.org/your_quarter... It lets you decide which areas of life you want to focus on.

There's a simple yet effective way to conquer acute fears like flying or public speaking. I used it to overcome my intense (and irrational) fear of approaching strangers at events. If fear interferes with your happiness, it's a method worth learning: 🧵

This is a controversial claim, but in my experience, more than 90% of the time, when people bring up neuroscience during explanations of psychological phenomena, the neuroscience adds nothing of value to the explanation other than making the explanation *seem* more authoritative

Statistics is hard enough for most people as it is; please stop using the phrases "type I" and "type II" errors. Unless, of course, your goal is to confuse people - in which case, congrats - you've succeeded! Just say "false positive" and "false negative" instead.

It's confusing when I meet die-hard free-market folks who believe in economic theory. Economics has clear predictions that markets will fail (even if everyone's rational) in the face of: • information asymmetries • natural monopolies • externalities • public goods etc.

Even many of the smartest people that have ever lived convinced themselves of false things (just like the rest of us). Here are some fun and wild examples: [thread]