Colin Christman

@Qblon137 @Noahpinion I agree that skepticism is warranted when a particular culture is less compatible. But, not every member of a society is an avatar, sharing all of that society's traits and values. *If* you can discriminate effectively among individuals, there's no cause for a group exclusion.

*Selectivity* is just such a crucial thing when designing an immigration policy. It's why you see some nationalities do so well in some countries and so poorly in others. Had the UK been more selective with Pakistani immigration, we'd all be praising its success.

@jeremykauffman Wrote about this very element of post-material politics at play in the recent election in the first of four long "big issue" Substack posts. intentionalconvo.substack.com/p/how-things-l…

The most important sociopolitical lesson I've learned — though it took me the longest to grasp — is this: 1) Satisfaction is substantially derived from relative status. 2) Politics is primarily about self-interested attempts to redistribute status. 3) Status is roughly zero-sum. Material wealth and technological progress don't make people happy. Subjective well-being isn't rooted in having a longer life expectancy or a god-like computing device in your pocket. Such progress may feel meaningful to those who experience a transition, but once people are born into it, it becomes their baseline. Fish don’t know they’re wet. As a result, politics devolves into a game of redistributing status while disguising these efforts as being "better for everyone." But pay attention and you'll notice: nearly no one holds political beliefs that would lower their own status or the status of their coalition relative to others. This realization led me to consider what actually "grows the status pie", or otherwise allow humans to escape zero-sum competition: 1) Lower-status Americans can feel higher status by comparing themselves to worse-off foreigners. 2) People reduce their focus on relative status when faced with existential threats. The most successful world religions and cultures promote practices that discourage zero-sum status competition. "Do not covet" and "love thy neighbor" are both examples of this. Additionally, America experienced its greatest eras while facing or fearing foreign adversaries. Groups that manage to escape zero-sum status games tend to outcompete those that don’t. But humans will always retreat to status redistribution games, because relative social status is the primary driver of the mating market.

Part 4: US vs. China competition, Global Fertility Decline intentionalconvo.substack.com/p/how-things-l…

Part 3: Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence intentionalconvo.substack.com/p/how-things-l…

Completed a *very* long four-part Substack series on the major issues in the world as I see them, with a bit of a psychologically-informed take (it's free to subscribe!)

@nntaleb @ElectionLegal I think this is a distinction between money's capacity to reduce certain forms of negative emotion, which is considerable, and its capacity to provoke positive emotion, which diminishes rapidly. "Happiness" is ill-defined but presumably positive emotion and so wealth-inelastic.

The idea by psychologists that "happiness" becomes rapidly insensitive to wealth/income fails (among other flaws) to get the dynamics, the risk management aspect of wealth as a solid "buffer" & protection against tail events & ruin. Like unread books in your library, unspent money has a huge value. Note that their tests were naive, inadequate, & unconnected to the conclusions made from them.

@oldbooksguy Gould's Book of Fish

What's the most underrated novel you know?

@mattyglesias Exacerbates an incentive mess in which people may misrepresent their goals even absent online the app. And, to take it a step farther, people may have subconscious goals that motivate their behavior--desire to fail, to find the "wrong" partner, or to be lied to. Yet it can work.

@DrWinarick I think his work helps to delineate the nature and evolution of psychological needs. Doing so is just as important to a practitioner as discussing therapy or the nature of illness, but some practitioners probably overestimate the extent to which they know what people need.

Erick Erickson, the psychoanalyst with the theory of psychosocial development, is very underrated. Why?

Global Psychological Wellbeing, Part I A new post on goals for therapy, a concept for the universal ideal of psychological wellness, its limitations as anything more than a directional goal in therapy, and how it's not a goal for life (in Part II) open.substack.com/pub/intentiona…

@featherty Motivation to expend effort varies inversely to degree of present bias--willpower's effects depend upon emotion. I think the pandemic trained people to seek short-term hedonic reward under stress. Wrote a Substack about procrastination and present bias. Maybe long COVID rarely.

@MarkLRuffalo I think all cognitivist and behaviorist interventions arrive more or less back to an object relations/relational psychoanalytic lens. Any theory of a change process has to include (a) how things got to where they are, and (b) how the therapy relationship could change (a).

Dishonesty and its Varieties A new post about the use of dishonesty in therapy and in life, as a way to turn relationships (or the therapist-patient dyad) into a "game" through Berne's transactional analysis lens. Please subscribe (it's free) and share! open.substack.com/pub/intentiona…

Guilt, Self-Punishment, and Self-Forgiveness #therapy #psychology #psychodynamic open.substack.com/pub/intentiona…

@DrGipps I disagree. A janitor is not at fault for a mess in a bathroom, but it is nevertheless his responsibility to clean up. A therapy patient can acknowledge responsibility to solve his problems without accepting blame or even adjudicating it at all.

It's oft said that therapy is about understanding how we contribute to our own problems - but "isn't about blame". I'd like to report that I'm unconvinced. It mightn't be an exercise in finger wagging - but "acknowledging responsibility" and "accepting blame" just are synonyms.

Present Bias and Procrastination, a post on what it is, what it might be, and what it probably isn't. Please share and subscribe if you enjoy it (it's free!) open.substack.com/pub/intentiona…

A post about anxiety, how to logically examine the motivating beliefs of anxiety, patterns of maladaptive anxious behavior, and therapy for anxiety, with a few other concepts thrown in. The blog is free, check it out: open.substack.com/pub/intentiona…

@lrb100 It is, when it happens. I'd also say that I think it's good to be nervous at least sometimes. Therapy is a job with a a big responsibility--if you think what we does matters, you necessarily have to believe you could screw it up. Having some aversive emotion around that is good.