Why Fish Don’t Know They’re Wet

November 27, 2025 ~ cafebedouin

You know that David Foster Wallace speech about fish? Two young fish swimming along, older fish passes and says "Morning boys, how's the water?" The young fish swim on, then one turns to the other: "What the hell is water?" That's the point. We don't notice what we're swimming in. The Furniture We Sit In … Continue reading Why Fish Don’t Know They’re Wet

Finding Your Best Starting Point: A Simple Guide to Personal Growth

September 8, 2025 ~ cafebedouin

The Big Idea Instead of asking "What's wrong with me?" ask "Where should I start today?" This guide helps you pick the best place to focus your energy so you can grow and feel better. Step 1: Look at Four Areas of Your Life Think about these four parts of yourself: Your Body How tense … Continue reading Finding Your Best Starting Point: A Simple Guide to Personal Growth

Seven Varieties of Stupidity

May 28, 2022May 28, 2022 ~ cafebedouin

"1. Pure Stupidity...2. Ignorant stupidity...3. Fish-out-of-water stupidity...4. Rule-based stupidity...5. Overthinking stupidity...6. Emergent stupidity...7. Ego-driven stupidity...-Ian Leslie, "Seven Varieties of Stupidity." ianleslie.substack.com. May 21, 2022 It's a fun classification exercise. I'd say that 3 is a subset of 2, being in an unfamiliar environment is a variety of ignorance. However, if you think about the kinds … Continue reading Seven Varieties of Stupidity

The Big Here Quiz

February 17, 2022February 17, 2022 ~ cafebedouin

30 questions to elevate your awareness (and literacy) of the greater place in which you live:1) Point north.2) What time is sunset today?3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?5) How many feet (meters) above sea level are … Continue reading The Big Here Quiz

The Understructure of Thought

November 24, 2021November 24, 2021 ~ cafebedouin

Language imposes limitations. When we reason, we use language, whether symbolic or natural. But, our understanding, or, perhaps it is better to talk about it as an intuition, runs deeper than our reason. A common example can be found in a terms like "creepy", "janky", etc. We use these terms when there is uncertainty, when … Continue reading The Understructure of Thought

Meditation Without Meditating

August 21, 2021 ~ cafebedouin

"Over the past several decades, studies examining the potential for meditation to curb mental anguish and increase wellbeing have yielded promising, if complicated, results. For patients, complications can arise when meditation is marketed as a ‘happy pill, with no side effects’. This commodification and oversimplification is at the root of a conundrum for Jay Sanguinetti … Continue reading Meditation Without Meditating

Preferring Pain to High Cognitive Effort

April 20, 2021 ~ cafebedouin ~ 2 Comments

"Cognitive effort is described as aversive, and people will generally avoid it when possible. This aversion to effort is believed to arise from a cost–benefit analysis of the actions available. The comparison of cognitive effort against other primary aversive experiences, however, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we offered participants choices between performing a cognitively demanding task … Continue reading Preferring Pain to High Cognitive Effort

The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real

February 9, 2021 ~ cafebedouin

"For an effect of human psychology to be real, it cannot be rigorously replicated using random noise. If the human brain was predisposed to choose heads when a coin is flipped, you could compare this to random predictions (heads or tails) made by a computer and see the bias. A human would call more heads … Continue reading The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real

[Question] Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses.

October 19, 2020October 17, 2020 ~ cafebedouin

"To be explained: It feels to me that in recent years, people have gotten stupider, or that stupid has gotten bigger, or that the parts of people that were always stupid have gotten louder, or something like that.I’ve come up with a suite of hypotheses to explain this (with a little help from my friends). … Continue reading [Question] Is Stupidity Expanding? Some Hypotheses.