An important and possibly overlooked part of fallibility is that you are very frequently wrong about the way in which you are wrong, even if you’ve identified that there’s an error. These are mistakes about mistakes!
Example: You think: “I sort of understood this concept, but then forgot it, and that’s why I messed up.”
The truth: [...]
A page of a math PDF i downloaded. I thought this was awesome due to its reach ^_^
It’s possible to understand something in a vague sense, but not really think through the implications of it because you don’t want to deal with those implications. Ayn Rand referred to this sort of thing as a “blank-out” in her work. Here’s her talking about it:
Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all [...]
There’s something in Poker called “going on tilt.”
It’s what people do when they they suffer a serious loss, particular one that was unlikely given the odds. They will start to play much more aggressively, get sloppy, make mistakes, take silly risks, etc.
This is irrational, of course: the loss suffered is a sunk cost. While losing [...]
Came across this article a while ago, which claims that women have more orgasms if partners are wealthier according to an analysis they did of a survey.
The link between enjoyment of sex and partner’s wealth was statistically significant even when they took into account other factors such as age, education, happiness, the length of relationship [...]
Revision 1
People think certain traits are inherent, even when they cause harm.
Why? Sometimes genes are blamed. Sometimes no real explanation is put forth.
Examples: A person who eats to excess might blame genes. A person who has a temper, and knows this is bad, may say “that’s just the way I am.”
Sometimes people will deny that [...]
There are various theories as to what sort of state humans should try and get themselves in. This probably asks the wrong question (we should expect that people will wind up in a good mental state by solving problems, and focus on doing that, not the end result), but one approach seems worth talking about.
The [...]