SSC
Burdens
Scott examines the feeling of being a burden in depression, arguing that society owes individuals support and suggesting a need for new ways to find meaning beyond traditional 'contribution'.
11 min read 1,553 words
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evolutionary psychology
Essays tagged “evolutionary psychology”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Essays on evolutionary psychology
39 essaysSSC
List Of The Passages I Highlighted In My Copy Of Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind”
Scott Alexander shares and briefly comments on various insightful quotes from Jonathan Haidt's 'The Righteous Mind', covering topics like psychology, politics, and religion.
11 min read 1,609 words
SSC
Do Life Hacks Ever Reach Fixation?
Scott Alexander examines why life hacks don't seem to reach universal adoption in society, despite potential competitive advantages.
8 min read 1,171 words
SSC
The Lottery of Fascinations
Scott Alexander compares reactions to coming out as gay versus disliking math, introducing the concept of a 'Things To Be Fascinated About Lottery' to explain diverse interests and talents.
13 min read 1,951 words
SSC
Can You Condition Yourself?
Scott Alexander critically examines the concept of self-conditioning, expressing skepticism while considering potential benefits and deciding to experiment with the technique.
15 min read 2,214 words
SSC
If opposites attract, why is my sister so pretty?
Scott explores the conflicting evidence on whether humans are attracted to genetically similar or dissimilar partners, concluding with a paradoxical observation that both seem true in different contexts.
8 min read 1,127 words
LW
Real World Solutions to Prisoners' Dilemmas
Scott explains how real-world solutions to Prisoner's Dilemmas work through social institutions, reputation systems, and evolved emotions like friendship and anger.
15 min read 2,190 words
LW
Trivers on Self-Deception
Scott explains Robert Trivers' evolutionary theory that consciousness evolved as a 'public relations agency' to help people deceive others by first deceiving themselves about their true motives.
8 min read 1,145 words
LW
Behaviorism: Beware Anthropomorphizing Humans
Scott defends behaviorism as a sophisticated methodological approach that avoided using mental phenomena as fundamental explanations, connecting it to reinforcement learning and the idea that minds are behavior-executors rather than utility-maximizers.
8 min read 1,118 words
LW
Guilt: Another Gift Nobody Wants
Scott proposes that guilt evolved as a costly signal to prove trustworthiness to potential cooperation partners, explaining why guilt involves public self-punishment and can even occur when someone hasn't done anything wrong.
15 min read 2,285 words
LW
Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up?
Scott argues that the 'Cynic's Theory of Akrasia' (which says people's actions reveal their true preferences, contradicting their stated preferences) is functionally equivalent to the naive theory, just valuing unconscious over conscious preferences, and defends prioritizing conscious preferences because they're rational and morally informed.
9 min read 1,246 words
LW
Why Real Men Wear Pink
Scott explains Bell's theory that fashion functions as status signaling, where the upper class deliberately adopts outrageous or lower-class styles that the middle class wouldn't dare wear, creating fashion cycles and explaining phenomena like men wearing pink or the 'ghetto look.'
7 min read 1,051 words
LW
Where's Your Sense of Mystery?
Scott analyzes why people are more curious about pseudoscience than real science, arguing that our sense of mystery is an evolutionary algorithm that responds to solvability, worldview-altering potential, social status, and human-level problems rather than actual importance.
11 min read 1,562 words
LW
Why Support the Underdog?
Scott examines the universal human bias toward supporting underdogs, presents evidence it significantly influences opinions, and asks why evolution would favor such an apparently irrational strategy.
6 min read 781 words