Gwern — Psychology↗

Human and animal sunk costs often aren’t, and sunk cost bias may be useful on an individual level to encourage learning.

The metal lithium is a well-known mood stabilizer & suicide preventive widely used in psychiatry. It is also a trace mineral present to various levels in all drinking water and much food.

Chemicals active at the nanogram scale are invisible, difficult to observe, and near-impossible to clean or remove; but they are still psychoactive enough to torment you like demons.

In looking at historical paintings & statues, I’ve always been struck by how, athletes & warriors look subpar by contemporary standards (eg.

Incompetence is the norm; most people who engage in a task (even when incentivized for performance or engaging in it for countless hours) may still be making basic errors which could be remedied with...

What is the “collecting mentality”? Is it a dimension of which hoarding is the extreme?

Countless genres of art start in appropriating objects long incubated in subcultures for originally practical purposes, often becoming fashionable and collectible because no longer practically...

A 1974 52ya Richard Feynman speech recounts an anecdote about a scientist, Mr Young, who in 1937 89ya discovered serious flaws in rat maze-running psychology research: the rats were using information...

John Irving ( Paris Review interview ) appears to write mostly in the morning to afternoon: A novel is such a long involvement; when I’m beginning a book, I can’t work more than two or three hours a...

As well as asking about doing podcasts, people sometimes ask me whether I am going to write a book or turn Gwern.net into a book.

Matt Levine is the most well-known newslettrist ( “Money Stuff” ) in the financial industry, having blogged or written since 2011 15ya , finding his niche in popularization after stints in Wall...

https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-tesla-x-xai-executives-leave-fcdc6795 : “Elon Musk Is Back at Work and Burning Through Executives: Renewed Executive Churn Marks the Billionaire’s Return to...