Ambigamy

Insights for the deeply romantic and deeply skeptical

Jeremy E Sherman Ph.D., MPP

Frustrated by Politics? Try Psycho-Proctology

Instead of focusing on what you wish everyone would do, try your hand at identifying what no one should get away with doing.

The Deeper Reason it's So Hard to Escape Prejudice

Why do we build walls? Why can't we all just be open to everything? Because with the power of language, humans face way more of everything than any other organism.

The Biggest Blind Spot in Psychology We All Ignore

Engineering is genius. With it, we can model any behavior using just lines and switches, like train tracks. Trouble is, it can never explain why you try to do anything.

A Non-Woowoo Definition of Wisdom

A practical definition of wisdom is Reversitility: A versatile ability to hold opposites in mind. It's a great way to keep oversimplification from getting you in trouble.

Are You On Track? What's the Object of Life's Game Anyway?

Scientists know the consequences of purpose but not what it is. A new origins of life theory provides grounding for your personal quest for peace of mind that you're living right.

Why Extremists Prevail

Attention seeks efficiency, ignoring what stays the same, attending to what's extreme and surprising. This explains our trend toward polarized extremists capturing our attention.

An Atheist and an Evangelical Walk into a Bar...

An imagined meeting of the minds about faith and fiction.

What a Setback Really Means

12 observations to help you orient for efficient learning from things not going as you expected.

How to Handle Self-Affirming Fictions

Myfi—my fictions, delusions of grandeur, can make great, healthy hobbies. But myfi lobbying—pressuring others to buy into them—can get dangerous.

Cognitive Sciences' Made-Harder Problem

Cognitive scientists ponder the "Hard Problem" — how experience emerges from chemistry.

Toward a Universal Book of Common Prayer

Even atheists pray in their way. We all do. It would help us find common ground if we began to identify the universal prayers, distinct from who or what might grant them.

How Did Evolution Start?

How to explain the emergence of will, motivation, agency and effort from aimless chemistry? We think evolution causes them, but it's the other way around.

Romanticynicism: Living Between a Crock and a Hard Place

Pure romanticism is dangerous gullibility. Pure cynicism is heartless cruelty. What's the alternative? Romanticynicism!

What Sex Really Means

Sex runs the gamut from trivial to the most meaningful experience on earth. Here's an incomplete list of things it can mean and a warning if you think it can only mean one thing.

The Essence of Total Jerk Behavior

To keep society free, everyone needs to guard against total jerk behavior, defined as simply, accurately and objectively as possible. Here's an attempt at such a definition.

Two Kinds of New Year's Resolutions

Often the things we resolve to do are actually just things we wish we could claim to have done. These do not make for sustainable New Year's resolutions.

Cultivate Your Indifference Management Skills

Are you uncaring? If so, good for you, if you don't care about differences that won't make a difference. Indifference management is a skill worth cultivating. Here's a start.

Here's How People Become Just Awful

Here's a walking tour down the path to stubborn entrenchment, a path open to anyone.

In Search of the Universal Psychological Vaccination

If you could vaccinate human nature against one trait, what would it be? Here's an answer. Whether you agree with it or not, the question is worth your careful attention.

The Arrowing Illusion: Psychology's Misleading Intuition

Language enables us to simplify what happens into a connect-the-dots story which leaves us confused about what's really going on in our lives.

The Key to Explaining Life and Mind? Unlikelifying

To get good work done, we make bad work unlikely.

Here's How to Feel Better About the Mess You’re In

Is it all too much to bear sometimes? Chalk that up to language, a precarious adaptation that makes life much harder for humans than for other living beings.

A Generic Cult Recruitment Speech

Though it comes in many flavors, brands, and ideologies, authoritarianism always pitches the same simple proposition. Recognize it to guard against all threats to open society.

Peace of Mind from a New Scientific Explanation of Our Souls

For all the details gathered sciences we haven't had an explanation for will, mind, agency. Call it soul if you like. Naming isn't explaining. Here's a real scientific explanation.

13 Tips for Using Entertainment as Therapy

You're not just wasting time on entertainment if you're using it right. Here are some ideas for making it therapeutic.

Sermonomics

Getting the last word satisfies a deep human appetite, the appetite to dispel debate and doubt once and for all.

How to Make Better Sense of Your Life and Life in General

Are you a cog pushed and pulled by mechanical-force arrows? A soul directed to your fate by spiritual arrows? Neither. Narrowng, not arrowing explains how you navigate your world.

How to Make Decisions You'll Still Love in Ten Years

Loyalty to good people is a virtue. Loyalty to bad people is a vice. Loyalty proves nothing.

How to Decide Whether to Marry

Six tips for making a satisfying, sustainable decision about whether to commit till death do you part.

Godwannabes: How to Spot a Know-It-All

Between diagnosable abnormality and lawless criminality, there's the Godwannabe, which may be what you mean when you decide someone is a narcissist or psychopath.

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