Ambigamy

Insights for the deeply romantic and deeply skeptical

Jeremy E Sherman Ph.D., MPP

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.

Just: A Four-Letter Word to Use Cautiously

The word "just" seems innocuous enough. It's not. It's a very powerful term for ending doubt and debate. If you use it carefully, you'll make better decisions.

Name-Calling: Thirteen Myths You’ll Be Relieved to Debunk

The pop-psych ban on name-calling in the name of civility is a failure. We must get more realistic about name-calling, learning how to name-call with careful strategic precision.

You Are an Emergent Constraint

The great scientific puzzle underlying all life and social science: Life is something different from nothing but chemistry. What could it be? Here's a promising new solution.

Troll Model

We'd all like relief from life's uncertainty. Total jerks try to take their relief at other people's expense.

If We All Lie, What Distinguishes a Liar?

Lying sets us free more than we care to admit. So what's the real difference between a healthy and an unhealthy liar? Just asking the question sets you on the right path.

Here's Why We Often Talk Past Each Other

The aspirational gap, the gap between what is and what we hope will be, is a great chasm we often find ourselves shouting across. Learn how to manage it for better communication.

Beware the Dissociation Death Spiral

When reality gets too hard to face, we dissociate. Neglecting reality, we make it worse, which makes us dissociate even more. That's the dissociation death spiral we must counter.

The Self-Aggrandizing Myth of Universal Unconditional Love

The alternative to greed, selfishness, and egomania? It's not all-embracing love, despite what many claim.

The Right and Wrong of Ridicule

In mocking Blasey Ford, did Trump cross a line? What line? Here we look at ridicule, a popular power move that sometimes helps, sometimes harms.

Psychic Momentum

We dread being jerked around because it causes us to doubt our paths. We'd rather merrily roll along. Resilience can be a problem, not just a solution.

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