SECTION · 18 ARTICLES
Habits, motivation, fear, focus and clear thinking: what the evidence supports, what it doesn't, and how to put it to use.
BACKGROUND · GEORGES DE LA TOUR, THE PENITENT MAGDALEN, C. 1640 · THE MET, OPEN ACCESS
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 6 MIN
Expected utility is not expected money. The theory says to choose the act with the highest expected utility, and it has known puzzles, such as the St. Petersburg game first published by Bernoulli.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 1 MIN · 52 POINTS
52 thinking tools on one page, each with a verdict and a source: 11 true, 30 partly true, 7 disputed, 2 unverified and 2 myths.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 11 MIN
"Mental models" means two different things. In psychology it goes back to Kenneth Craik (1943) and Philip Johnson-Laird (1983); the self-help sense, a "latticework of models", is Charlie Munger's, from a 1994 talk.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 7 MIN
"Scarcity mindset" mixes two unrelated ideas: a self-help attitude from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Mullainathan and Shafir's research on how shortage takes up attention. A 2021 re-run of 20 studies that cited their work found most effects smaller, and the scarcity researchers disputed that audit in 2023.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 4 MIN · 14 POINTS
Fourteen famous psychology findings, checked against the large projects that tried to repeat them. Two held up cleanly, seven are real but smaller or narrower than the famous version, four are genuinely disputed, and one has not been confirmed.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 8 MIN
SIFT is four moves: Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, and Trace claims to their original context. It was set out by Mike Caulfield in 2019.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 7 MIN
Some famous names attract quotes they never said. The writer Ralph Keyes, author of The Quote Verifier, calls them "flypaper figures", because words tend to stick to them.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 9 MIN
Read the methods, not just the headline. The abstract is a summary and the discussion is the authors' interpretation; the methods tell you what was done.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 11 MIN
A fallacy is a flaw in reasoning, not a false conclusion. A bad argument can still reach a true conclusion, so naming a fallacy never proves the other side wrong.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 8 MIN
Most misleading numbers are not false. They are true figures presented without the comparison, the base or the sample that would change what they mean.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 4 MIN · 12 POINTS
Twelve claims from motivational posts and shop folklore. Four animal lessons are myths, one is disputed, one is a line from a TV script, and one shop trick fully holds up.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 6 MIN
Lifemaxxing is internet slang for deliberately improving every part of your life at once — health, work, money, relationships, learning.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 11 MIN
Self-affirmation theory (Claude Steele, 1988) is well studied: reflecting on values you hold can make people less defensive about threatening information. A 2015 meta-analysis found the effects small but reliable.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 10 MIN
“Dark psychology” is a popular label, not a research field. A search of Europe PMC found no paper with the phrase in its title or abstract; a public book catalogue lists hundreds of books with it in the title.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 9 MIN
“Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”) is Julius Caesar's report of his quick win over Pharnaces at Zela in 47 BC. Plutarch says Caesar wrote it to a friend at Rome; Suetonius, that it was carried in his triumph.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 11 MIN
Fear starts as an alarm in the brain: the amygdala signals danger, adrenaline speeds the heart and breathing, and cortisol keeps the body on alert.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 10 MIN
Motivation is the reason and the drive to act; discipline is keeping to a course of action when the drive is not there. You need the first to pick a goal and the second to get through the days it does not feel like it.
MINDSET & DISCIPLINE · 6 MIN
Survivorship bias is drawing conclusions from the cases that made it through, while the failures have dropped out of view.
