Sharing what I have learned from what I have read: A blog by Joe Abittan
A theme that runs through a lot of the writing that I do, influenced by Stoic thinkers such as Marcus Aurelius and modern academics and productivity experts like Cal Newport, is that we don't have as much control over our lives as we generally believe. Writings from Aurelius show us how much happens beyond our … Continue reading Depleting Self-Control
Humans are gossip machines. We like to talk about and think about other people, especially the negative traits and qualities of others. At the same time, we are self-deception machines. We downplay our own faults, spend little time thinking about our mistakes, and deny any negative quality about ourselves. Even when we are the only … Continue reading Gossip Machines
Morality and our behavior is one of the spaces that I think demonstrates how little our actions and behaviors seem to actually align with the way we think about ourselves and the level of control we have in our lives. We believe that we are the masters of our own sails and that we are … Continue reading The Time for Being Moral
A topic I am fascinated by and plan to dig into in the future is motivated reasoning. We are great at finding all of the reasons and examples for why the things we do are overwhelmingly good and justified, while finding all the flaws in the people and things we dislike. Our brains seems to … Continue reading Take a Close Look at What Feels Right
There are not many things that pull people together quite like religious beliefs. Sports pull us together when our kids are on the same team, when we are all in a stadium, or when two of us are wearing the right hat on an airplane, but those don't make for strong ties that are lasting … Continue reading Religion As a Community Social Structure
In The Elephant in the Brain authors Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson consider human ethics in a framework laid out by Peter Singer. Singer suggested that if we saw someone dying right in front of us, we would have a moral obligation (in instances that did not put us in mortal danger ourselves) to try … Continue reading An Ethical Dilemma
Recently I have written about the way we use wealth and money to purchase things that signal something about us. The ideas for my posts have been from The Elephant in the Brain where Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson discuss ways in which we intentionally deceive ourselves and others in order to gain something, demonstrate … Continue reading The Signaling Motives Behind Purchasing Decisions
What inputs drive what types of behaviors in humans? This is a question I think about at an incredibly basic level all the time, but I don't really hear much insightful discussion about this topic. We all like to believe we (and everyone else) is in complete conscious control of our thoughts, minds, and decisions, … Continue reading How To Describe a Norm
"Our minds are built to sabotage information in order to come out ahead in social games." In The Elephant in the Brain, Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson write about the ways in which we act out of our own self-interest without acknowledging it. We are more selfish, more deceptive, and less altruistic than we would … Continue reading Sabotage Information
Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson have an interesting idea about gossip in their book The Elephant in the Brain. Instead of seeing gossip as some terrible moral failure on the part of human beings, the authors take a more deep and close look at gossip to try to understand just what is taking place. By … Continue reading The Role of Gossip