…there you are.

Let’s say you fall off a balcony and break your leg. When this happened, you were wearing a red shirt. Would you say “Red shirts cause broken legs?”

That’s an obvious example. Here’s a less obvious one: You got a cell phone as a pre-teen. As an adult, you have an eating disorder. Did the cell phone cause you to have an eating disorder?

Simple narratives are appealing, but in the absence of a counter-factual, they don’t mean anything. Even if you can add details like, “I always watched videos of super-skinny models!” I believe you – but did watching those give you an eating disorder, or did you already feel uncomfortable in your body and so you gravitated to videos like that?

The world is complex. Don’t try to solve the simple version. Work on the complex but meaningful solutions.

There’s a funny sort of “gotcha” that people tend to do when discussing hypotheticals. First, they’ll pose a question like: “Would you rather eat a slice of pizza or a spoonful of dirt?” And you say pizza, and then they go: “Aha! But what if they pizza had the Ebola virus on it? Are you saying you’d rather eat the Ebola virus than dirt?!”

People who say this genuinely think they’ve done something clever.

Look, if you ask me what I’d do in a given situation, I’ll tell you. If you then change the situation, my answer is going to change as well! I’m not dying on a hypothetical hill.

So be flexible. Don’t create identities around answers like this; don’t become a “Die-Hard Pizza Guy” after the first answer and then try to defend it all the way to the Ebola ward. Just shrug, and find better people to talk to.

Advise to everyone, including myself: Disrespectful or hurtful language never serves you. It gains you no points, no advantage. It heals no part of your soul nor psyche. Because words are free, they are easy to choose poorly. It’s free to sling insults or to mock. That’s exactly why it’s a test of character not to do it. Pass that test as often as you can.

If you can’t decide what to collect, collect resources. You can always exchange them later!

What people do and what people say they (would) do varies so wildly it’s like people are just barking at each other all the time. It honestly boggles my mind that people will use other people’s words as a measure of who they are as a person or to try to predict that person’s behavior, instead of simple observation of what they do.

If a person is cheering for the Eagles but buys and wears Steelers gear, then they’re a Steelers fan, not an Eagles fan.

It’s easy to show you care about something (or someone) when things are good. But when there’s strife, you learn a lot about people’s true priorities. People who quickly turn away from a thing in difficult times don’t really internalize a devotion to that thing.

Imagine a parent who showers their child with love when the child is well-mannered, but as soon as the child is sullen or cranky the parent ignores them. How would we judge such a parent?

The test of love is what you do when it’s hard to love.

A general piece of life advice: if a particular fact, event, or other happening will benefit you if remembered and benefit others if forgotten, then not only should you remember it, you should keep very accurate records.

No one else will be as careful of a steward with your receipts as you, so don’t trust vital things to the faulty memories of others.

Build a life where you do favors for others, often. Big ones and small ones. Why? Not only is it good for your soul, but the secondary effect is that if you’re building a life that makes it possible for you to do this, that life is inherently successful. If you want to maximize your favor-granting potential, that means your own health is good, it means you have financial security, and it means you have a wide circle to do favors for. What a joyous life!

One of the surest ways to cloud your thinking about a question is to map the possible answers onto tribal affiliations. In other words, if a question has an “us” answer and a “them” answer, then it doesn’t matter which one is right – you’ll pick your tribe’s answer nine times out of ten.