12. Switch Cost Effect
We simultaneously inhabit two worlds — online and off — and both regularly interrupt us with demands/notifications, so we’re never able to settle in either. The constant switching of attention apparently lowers working IQ by around 10 points, dumbifying us twice as much as being high on cannabis.
13. St. George in Retirement Syndrome
Many who fight injustice come to define themselves by their fight against injustice. So, as they defeat the injustice, they must invent new injustices to fight against, simply to retain a sense of purpose in life.
14. Goodhart’s Law
When a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good measure. Since schools started to use test-scores as targets, they’ve gradually stopped teaching kids how to live fulfilling lives — and now mainly teach them how to pass school tests.
15. Hotelling’s Law
Rival products — burgers, pop songs, political parties — tend to grow more alike over time, because creators copy more successful rivals to steal their customers or audiences. Paradoxically, this increases the value of being different.
16. Segal’s Law
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with 2 watches is never sure.” Ancient societies followed a single narrative. Modern societies are cacophonies of competing narratives. Without trust, more data doesn’t make us more informed but more confused.
17. Parkinson’s Law
Work expands to fill the time allotted for it. No matter the size of the task, it will often take precisely the amount of time you set aside to do it, because more time means more deliberation and procrastination. The underlying principle, known as induced demand, applies to many other resources: software expands to fill memory (Wirth’s law), patient numbers expand to fill hospital beds (Roemer’s law), energy consumption expands to meet supply (Jevon’s paradox), road congestion expands to fill roads (Braess’ paradox).
18. Pareidolia
We see whatever we look for. For aeons, survival favoured the paranoid — those able to discern a predator from the vaguest outline. From these survivors we inherited hyperactive pattern-detection, which once saved us from the lions, but now curses us to see them even in the skies.
19. Safetyism
After US schools banned peanuts because some kids had allergies, more kids developed peanut allergies from lack of exposure. We’re increasingly protecting kids from life, which only makes them more vulnerable to it. Too much safety is dangerous.
20. Nutpicking
Online political debate mainly involves cherry-picking the most outlandish members of the enemy side and presenting them as indicative in order to make the entire side look crazy. The culture war is essentially just each side sneering at the other side’s lunatics.
21. Celine’s 1st Law
National security is the chief cause of national insecurity. Government attempts to stop a threat to security lead it to draft harsher laws and to spy on its citizens, which eventually becomes a greater threat than that which it’s protecting against.
22. Problem Selling
Problem solvers take an issue and break it down into small solvable chunks. Problem sellers — such as politicians, or the press — do the opposite, blaming many small issues on one big problem that looks insurmountable and terrifying.
23. Idiocy Saturation
Online, people who don’t think before they post are able to post more often than people who do. As a result, the average social media post is stupider than the average social media user.
24. Celine’s 2nd Law
Honest communication occurs only between equals. If one person has power over another, then the less powerful person can’t risk saying what they really think. Thus, in any hierarchy, honest communication only occurs horizontally.
25. Crabtree’s Bludgeon
It’s possible to create a coherent explanation for any set of observations — even ones that are mutually contradictory. In other words, there is at least one seemingly rational argument to justify even the most idiotic bullshit. So be careful.
26. Presentism
We judge history by modern standards. We regard slave-owners as evil, but slavery was so common and familiar to our forebears that they were blind to its iniquities, as we are to the industrial slaughter of animals — for which we too will eventually be called evil.
27. Cynical Genius Illusion
Cynical people are widely seen as smarter, but sizeable research suggests they actually tend to be dumber. Cynicism is not a sign of intelligence but a substitute for it, a way to shield oneself from betrayal and disappointment without having to do or think.
28. Boxer’s Child Paradox
Each generation tries to make life better for the next, but this deprives future generations of the ordeals needed to build character. In our relentless quest for ever more convenience, are we dooming posterity to weakness?
29. Ambiguity Aversion
A 2016 study found that test participants who were told they had a small chance of receiving an electric shock exhibited much higher stress levels than those who knew they’d certainly receive an electric shock. People tend to find uncertain outcomes less tolerable than bad outcomes.
30. Semantic Stopsign
One way people end discussions is by disguising descriptions as explanations. For instance, the word “evil” is used to explain behaviour but really only describes it. It resolves the question not by creating understanding but by killing curiosity.
31. Opinion Shopping
Many who conduct research online ignore every source they disagree with till they find one they agree with, and then use this source as an authority to justify what they already believe. They don’t consider someone an expert unless they agree with them.
32. Compassion Fade
“One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” When presented with two appeals for charity — one based on famine statistics and one based on a single starving girl — people tend to donate much more to the girl. Our minds can’t grasp big numbers, so we navigate the world through stories, not statistics. We’re moved by drama, not data.
33. Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity
Evil can be guarded against. Stupidity cannot. And the world’s few evil people have little power without the help of the world’s many stupid people. Therefore, stupidity is a far greater threat than evil.
This is an edited version of lists that first appeared on The Prism.
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