Ambigamy

Insights for the deeply romantic and deeply skeptical

Jeremy E Sherman Ph.D.

What Comes After Post-Truth Politics?

What would leadership sound like if pandering stops working?

Intelligent Design's One Valid Scientific Point

Intelligent Design poses a great question that scientists skirt. What is agency? What accounts for our functional, fitted behavior?

Retro-Gloating: "I Won So From Now on I Always Win!"

Retro-gloating is pretending you're fighting a fight you already won or claiming eternal victory for having won it, rather than facing new challenges.

Tease-Test Your Courtships

Looking for chemistry in a new partnership? Look for the ability to tease each other without taking offense. Healthy teasing is love lube for the long haul.

Time to Update Our Definition of a Sinner

We tend to diagnose sinners or buttheads based on their beliefs, motivations or tactics. All three are problematic. Instead, focus on what people gain by being one.

Are You Dating Someone Who Runs Very Hot and Very Cold?

If you're dating someone who runs piping hot and icy cold, you are not alone. Here's some context.

Don’t Speak With Authority About Your Nature and Behavior

How to psychologize and introspect respectfully.

Be A Smart Reality-Shopper: Three Options

We don't just shop for what's true about reality but for what makes us feel good about ourselves as smart shoppers. Here are the three main options for confident meta-shopping.

The Culture War Won't End Until Scientists Explain Organisms

At least religion admits that purpose needs explaining. Scientists don't. They dance around the most fundamental question: How mattering emerges from matter.

Putting Religion and Spirituality In Their (Healthy) Place

We all have delusions of grandeur. We enjoy them every time we identify with a movie hero. It's odd that we're expected to honor them when they're faith-based.

Playing Pundit: What Drives the New Know-It-All?

Why the rise of trolls? Social media, but not just. As life's practical decisions get harder, people build imaginary fortresses of certainty for self-soothing.

Rethinking the Devil

Is it time to retire the concept of a devil? No, it's time to update the concept. Here's how.

The Mythaholic's Failure to Distinguish Fantasy From Reality

The Gun Epidemic is bad. The mythaholic epidemic is worse.

An Evolutionary Fable that Puts the Culture Wars In Context

Who are we and what are we doing these days in the context of all the life that has come before us? In this 5-minute video fable, I distill a biological perspective.

Just Be True To Yourself? Not Quite.

When everyone who disagrees with you is dumb or bad, you've taken that faith-in-yourself thing too far.

What is Choosing and How Did it Start?

We choose. Molecules don't. We're made of molecules. What's the deal?

Clearing Up the Confusion about PC

People wield the term PC without thinking much about what it means. It means indulgent sensitivity and it has a counterpart in indulgent insensitivity.

R & Deism: An Atheist's Religious Children's Story

Many people take religion so seriously that it throws their judgment off. Here's a children's story to cultivate serious spiritual play.

The Language User's Quick Start Guide

Humans are the bulls in the China shop of the world. Why? Because we have language. Here's a short video on how to use it wisely.

Hardening of the Smarteries

Cultishness is not a product of what you believe but how you clutch and strut it. Here's a test for figuring out who has gone cultish with a few comments on why people do.

A Refreshing New Approach to the Free Will Debate

What could stop the free will debate from circling forever? A realistic explanation for what will is and how it emerges from aimless chemistry presented here in four short videos.

With Moral Do's and Don'ts, the Don'ts are Better

Constraint-based morality: In a free society you don't want to tell people how to live. Still, you've got to put a leash on dangerous behavior.

What Living Is and How It Started

Selves try. Non-selves don't. What are selves and trying really and how did they start in an otherwise aimless universe? Here's an unprecedented answer in two very short videos.

R & Deism: A Religious Fable Children's Story

Though I happen to be an atheist, I'm human and therefore prone to fantasy and delusion. Here's a healthy delusion I've crafted for those who believe in a higher power or God.

Some-nipotence: A Real Answer to the Free Will Question

You have free will and the reason you hear otherwise is that scientists got stuck on the assumption that you're just a complex chemical robot.

An Evolutionary Fable

Adaptation got much more complicated once we gained the power of language.

The Obvious Which, Ignored, Makes Anyone a Jerk

Don't want to be a jerk? Remember that winning and being right are not the same thing.

How to Win Mindless Loyalty

Wouldn't it be fun to have people who think you're right no matter what you think or do? A little dangerous, perhaps, but fun. Here's how to get it.

Will Lookism Ever End?

Caring about how we look is a huge and cruel distraction, here's a way we might end up working through it.

Adaptation? It's Way Different For Humans

Adaptation—good fit to reality—is as old as life but very different for humans given our power of language. Here we imagine a beginner's guide for us newfangled language users.

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