Ethereum: Centralized Scam & The Future of Ponzi Meme Pyramid Schemes

Ethereum is a centralized scam, and the future of Ponzi memes. This isn’t to say you can’t make money from ETH. However, there is some risk to getting involved in the largest Ponzi scheme facilitator the world has ever seen. Pre-mine: Ethereum’s launch misled investors by suggesting there was merely a 12 million gifted pre-mine, but

Ponzi Memes

I’m going to coin, or at least try to popularize, a new term, “Ponzi Meme“. Obviously it’s a play on the term Ponzi scheme, but unlike a Ponzi scheme, a Ponzi meme is unorganized and unintentional. A Ponzi scheme isn’t necessarily a malicious “pump and dump”, but does follow a similar trajectory: the meme lifespan.

Outsmarting IQ: Why Attitude is as Important as Aptitude for Making Good Judgements

Making good judgements is not only about intelligence in terms of raw analytical skill, pattern-recognition, logic, scientific aptitude, intellectual capacity and so on. It’s also about having a scientific attitude and being intellectually honest. Good judgment is not only about logic, it’s also about emotions. Cognitive biases. Biases are ways we deviate from rationality. Humans

Gender Attractiveness Inequality

This is the probably the most sophisticated, data-driven, scientifically backed gender attractiveness inequality visualization you’ll ever see: To fully understand it, we first need to see how it was made.  Let’s talk about the between-gender attractiveness differential. Most people find women to be objectively more attractive than men. One survey found that 58% of people

Mindfulness vs Flow: Opposing Self-Improvement Concepts?

Flow state: feeling in the zone, being fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of an activity. The complete absorption in what one does. The creator of the concept, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, has even called it “the secret to happiness” – Check out his great TED talk about

Trying To Be Happy Could Make You Miserable

Accepting negative emotions and thoughts can reduce them. The idea is a cornerstone in many ancient eastern philosophies, and is also backed by modern western science. This way of thinking has truly stood the test of time. The practice of accepting emotions have existed in Buddhism for thousands of years. Recent research has validated the

The Case Against Day Trading

While the story of a man trading stocks actively and making huge profits is alluring, it is not a replicable one. That is a story of luck, not skill. Success stories of day-traders are the epitome of survivorship bias. Your cousin will only talk about the investment they made profits on, and hide their failed

Race to The Bottom of The Brainstem

Emotion evolved far before abstract thinking. Emotion is primal, coming from the deepest, oldest part of the brain, the brainstem. The newest part of the brain, the neocortex, contains areas devoted to abilities that are enhanced in or unique to humans, such as complex language processing and abstract thinking. In many ways, it is what

Does social media really cause poor mental health?

Social media is heavily criticized for causing poor mental health. Indeed multiple studies have found relationships between social media usage and decreased wellbeing, depression, loneliness [1][2], worse sleep and reduced attention span. At the same time, multiple researchers have called into question whether social media itself is the cause of poor mental health. Perhaps instead

Setting goals the smart way

Goal setting works. Researchers have concluded that the beneficial effect of goal setting on task performance is one of the most robust and replicable findings in the psychological literature [1]. Furthermore, the hundreds of studies done have revealed many details about the right way to go about setting goals. Several goal-setting frameworks have been developed,