On my runs, I often find lost phones, credit cards, wallets, IDs and other items. A few years ago, I came across a wallet fat with cash and credit cards. As always, I sought out the owner and returned it. Being a philosopher, I’m interested in the ethics of this. While using found credit cards…
An earlier version of this article was published December 15, 2006 Of all the habits I’ve written about and tested over the years, the one-minute rule is the one people bring up most. I think it resonates because it’s so simple. There’s nothing to set up, no planning needed; you just do it. What is…
Negativity bias is the tendency to give more weight to the negative than the positive. For example, people tend to weigh wrongs done to them more heavily than the good deeds done for them. As another example, people tend to be more swayed by negative political advertisements than by positives ones. This bias can also…
“Andersen had the courage to write stories with unhappy endings. He didn’t believe that you should try to be good because it pays … but because evil stems from intellectual and emotional stuntedness and is the one form of poverty that should be shunned.” “If you want your children to be intelligent,” Einstein is credited…
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in such times another reflex is…
