Taking Things for Granted

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 22 2024

We are grateful when we initially receive things and we know that it makes us feel good, yet we lose it over time. What gives? Unfortunately for us modern humans, emotions are an evolutionary system that tells the body and mind how to react to given stimuli. So, if there is a threat, your fear drive kicks in and you act accordingly. If you eat...

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What If You Don’t Find Meaning in Your Growth?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 15 2024

The Meaning of Life discusses the eight driving factors that cause a person to find meaning in their life. The first—because it is essentially the meaning of life—is growth. Granted, you need all eight, so it’s a slight oversimplification, but it is the primary point. So that naturally leads to the question of growth without meaning. So let’s...

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The Ethics of Victimization

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 8 2024

There is a famous condition known as Munchausen’s. It is a fancy way of saying that a person is faking a condition to gain sympathy. There is another one, Munchausen’s by proxy, where a person pretends that a dependent has an illness so that they can take care of them and be a hero. As life becomes easier and less risky, people need to create...

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Cooperation, Competition, and Growth

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, May 1 2024

We all want our lives to be better tomorrow than they are today. That is the nature of life. Life is growth. But how do you get better most effectively—or how do you get to be the best that you can be? The obvious answer is work/effort: to become more fit, you have to exercise. To improve a skill, you have to practice. To get a higher education,...

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Why Do People Believe Things That Are Wrong?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, April 24 2024

Probably the thing that drives most people nuts in the world is when someone believes something that they don’t. This is the fundamental issue that has led to wars, genocide, and plenty of arguments on the internet. So what is happening here, and do you need to do anything about

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Critical Thinking and the Primacy Effect

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, April 17 2024

You will often hear people spout the virtues of critical thinking. Ironically, they can often be the people who are least likely to exhibit it themselves in certain situations. The reason is the Primacy Effect, or when you become biased toward the first explanation you hear about a topic and only then display critical thinking of information...

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What Drives You?

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, April 10 2024

Understanding what motivates you is one of the most important things you can do to improve your sense of purpose in life. When you have a driving force, you will continue forward no matter what it takes. But how do you know what motivates you? There are a few ways to determine this, but let’s start with what motivation is and what things can...

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Consciousness as a Meta-Capability

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, April 3 2024

They call it “The Hard Problem” of consciousness; it is commonly described as, “What is it like to be a bat?” Effectively, how can you break down consciousness into a definable set of components so that you can both understand consciousness and identify life forms that have it. They test the problem with various thought experiments, such as if...

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On Value, Worth, Self-Esteem, and Objective Standards

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 27 2024

There is a major equivocation/conflation of the words “value” and “worth” going on, and wherever there is a confusion around meaning with regards to life, you know I’ll be here covering it. Let me give you some background on what is going on: millennia ago, humans were not too much more civilized than animals, and so we did have very much a...

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Goals

Nathanael Garrett Novosel, March 20 2024

What are you supposed to do with your life? It’s a big question that’s become more common more recently since we live in a modern world of relative luxury where want has trumped need to a certain extent. Historically, it was to do whatever was required of you to survive: hunt, forage, construct shelters, etc. Recently, however, with both freedom...

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