Monthly Archives: December 2025

The process of identifying where you are in relation to your goals (something we might call point A) and mastering new material to maneuver yourself to where you want to be (something we might call Point B) is essentially what … Continue reading →

One of the things you learn from physical training* is that, ideally, your energy expenditure should either be high or low. This is measured by my Garmin as “stress.” It’s not good to cruise through your day at a moderate … Continue reading →

This is a suggestion for an ideal social norm we could approach someday, not something I would suggest actually trying to negotiate explicitly in real life in the current year with your real employer. They probably aren’t ready. As a … Continue reading →

There’s an old question from one of my math proofs classes that I like to ask people because it’s accessible to adults and children alike, and it’s interesting to see how they attempt to answer it. Imagine a blue circle. … Continue reading →

The Peter Principle says people rise until they are incompetent to do their current job, at which point they cease to rise. Let’s imagine that it’s stressful to be incompetent. Hogan’s Development Survey predicts people’s strengths would become weaknesses when … Continue reading →

This is a trivial insight in retrospect, but an important one for troubleshooting the apparent loss of reproductive and survival instincts in post-industrial populations. Treating this as purely an absence of courage presupposes that people have desires that they want … Continue reading →

– On a holistic level, we want to glide over the water effortlessly, not muscle through it. It’s better to gently float on a big breath than to pull and kick strongly. Our inspiration here is to think of a … Continue reading →

From before: These will be subjective ratings from 1-10 based on my knowledge and experience. A one means you basically can’t change the trait, and if you do the interventions have to be pretty extreme. An example of something rated … Continue reading →

In “Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad” by William R. Johnson, he talks about how intelligence people put potential assets on a spectrum from idealistic to pragmatic. For an ideologue to change sides, he has to be convinced out of … Continue reading →

Today I read half of two Richard Hanania substack posts, decided neither was worth finishing, and wrote him off as a third-rate mind. His conscientiousness as a writer is worth emulating, but his psychological ideas are shallow and don’t survive … Continue reading →