I want to present you with three hypothetical scenarios. Read each one and decide your answer before moving on to the next.

Scenario #1: You and 99 other random strangers are each given a panel with two buttons on it – one orange and one purple. You are all told the rules (everyone gets the same information): You must each press one of the buttons. If 51 or more of you press the orange button, then everyone in the group of 100 people lives. If not (i.e. if a majority press the purple button), then only people who pressed the purple button live, and everyone who pressed the orange button dies. Everyone presses their button choice at the same time. What button do you press? Option A: Press the orange button. Option B: Press the purple button.

Scenario #2: You and 99 other random strangers are in a condemned office building (the reason isn’t important) that has caught on fire. Again, everyone has the same information: The fire suppression system has already been deactivated, but if it was turned back on, it would put out the fire and everyone would be saved. The fire suppression system is on the roof, and while it requires no special skill, it does require 51 people to activate it. If fewer than 51 people go to the roof, they’ll die in the fire. The other option is to simply leave the building. The exits are clear and nothing is preventing you from doing so; there’s plenty of room & time to exit safely. Because of the smoke, you can’t see what other people choose until you’re either on the roof or outside, and it will be too late to change your mind. Which do you choose? Option A: Go to the roof. Option B: Go outside.

Scenario #3: You and 99 other random strangers are at a party when it’s discovered that the punch that has just been put out has been accidentally poisoned, though no one has drank any yet. Everyone has the same information again: If at least 51 people split the punch, then the dose of poison won’t be sufficient to be lethal and no one will die. But if 50 or fewer people drink the punch, the dose will be high enough to kill them. You can also not drink the punch at all. Do you drink the punch or decline? Option A: Drink the punch. Option B: Politely decline.

Did you answer each one? Great, thank you. Now, one more question for you:

If you didn’t answer the same way for all three questions, why not?

All three questions are mechanically identical. In all three scenarios, there are two options: Option A saves everyone if a majority chooses it but kills you if a majority chooses the other option. Option B saves you (and doesn’t contribute to the majority necessary for Option A, obviously), but there’s nothing preventing everyone from choosing it. The rational choice in every scenario is Option B, which not only introduces no risk to you personally, it also doesn’t inflict any harm or risk on anyone else, since everyone else can also choose Option B. So the rational choice for you personally is also the optimal choice for the group, assuming rational actors.

Yet, as I’ve been asking these questions to a lot of people lately, I’ve noticed that a huge number of people pick Option A for the first question. Most people pick Option B for the second question, though there are a few outliers. And no one has picked Option A for the third question so far. This absolutely fascinates me, so I’ve been diving deep into respondents’ reasons behind what caused them to diverge in their answers. Here are the broad categories of reasons why some folks answered A for #1, but B for #2/#3:

1. Inserting assumptions into scenario 1. Several people said they simply assumed that part of the scenario involved some number of people needing to pick the orange button, or there being a limited number of purple button pushes available, etc. In other words, they assumed that the only way for everyone to live was the orange option, and they didn’t put together (or accept?) that everyone could simply push the purple button and be fine. It felt either “too easy” (because of the unconscious assumption that suffering is zero-sum; if someone avoids harm, it must be because they’re harming others) or they simply made the morally intuitive jump that since the orange button is framed as the “selfless” choice, it must also be the correct one. Or at least, they didn’t want to make the “selfish” choice and didn’t consider the effects further than that intuition.
2. Mentally “swapping” the stated scenario for an allegorical one. Lots of people seemed to defend their answer of Option A in scenario one by speaking as if the scenario was an explicit metaphor for another one. People used it as an allegory for voting/democracy, or simply for acting selfishly at the expense of their broader community, and then defended the more community-minded choice in that context. (One person even hilariously commented, “What if everyone thought like you did?” to a person defending Option B, which is very funny because the literal answer is, “Then everyone would be fine.”) So some people seemed to be assuming that the scenario was being presented disingenuously and was trying to trap them into advocating for a philosophical position they otherwise wouldn’t hold. Notably, many people maintained this stance even when it was explained that that wasn’t the case.
3. Believing the scenarios aren’t actually mechanically identical. This was less common, but some people suggested that there actually was a difference between the three scenarios. Namely, that in #1 you make an “active” choice to push the purple button, while in #2 the choice is less active since it’s “just leaving,” and in #3 it’s completely passive since you just don’t drink the punch. In reality, those are still identical, as they involve a decision on your part, even if the physical manifestation of that decision appears more “active.” But it’s true that psychologically people feel differently about them – I asked numerous people if their answer would change if scenario one has been “push an orange button or don’t push the orange button” rather than a choice between pressing two buttons, and many said yes, that felt different and would make it easier for them to choose not to push the orange button! (I didn’t think to ask, but I wonder what the responses would be like if the choice was between the orange button, and a button labeled ‘I Choose to Abstain.’)

If you’re familiar with philosophy, you may realize that these questions follow the structure of the Trolley Problem – present a mechanically identical scenario three different ways with different social cues and then examine why people answer differently. In case you’re unfamiliar, the full trolley problem isn’t just “Do you pull a lever diverting a runaway trolley so it kills only one person instead of five?” The full thought experiment asks that question, and then two more: “A runaway trolley is on a collision course with five people. There’s no lever, but there’s a very large man who is big enough to stop the trolley if pushed in front of it, and you’re close enough to push him. He’ll die if you do, but the trolley will stop. Do you?” And then the last question: “A doctor has five patients all about to die from injuries to five different organs, with no replacements available. A homeless but healthy man wanders into the hospital to warm up. Is it okay for the doctor to kill the homeless man and take his organs in order to save the five patients?”

Mechanically, those questions are identical: “Five people are about to die if you do nothing, and their deaths aren’t your fault. You can save them by actively causing the death of a different person. Should you?” But because the questions are framed differently with different social cues, people’s answers to them vary greatly. It’s fascinating to explore not only the reasons people will say “Yes, I’ll pull the lever,” but “No, I won’t murder a homeless man and harvest his organs,” but also to explore their explanations for why those scenarios are different.

Both the trolley problem and my button questions are exploring the same overall concept: We make what we believe to be rational judgements while under the influence of a great many irrational things. Without even realizing we’re doing it, we bring in our own biases, project our own beliefs, make decisions based on gut instincts trained by a lifetime of social desirability cues, and view the world from our own stance as if it were universal.

(A note on that last one: People who have a tendency to believe in win/win scenarios overall seemed more likely to recognize that in Scenario #1, everyone could simply press the purple button and be fine. People had a harder time seeing that solution if their general mindset was one where all “wins” must be someone else’s “loss.”)

It is incredibly worthwhile to examine why people make the decisions they do – including ourselves. It’s often uncomfortable to do so, especially when we realize the flaws and inconsistencies in our own thinking. But diagnosis is the only way to improve, and so if that discomfort allows new clarity to bloom, I’m happy I caused it.

There’s a lot to be said for knowing how to ignore distractions and focus. Sometimes you have to dedicate not just a few hours, but a significant stretch of your life – weeks, maybe months – to a particular project. The timeline is intense, and being pulled away from your rhythm can mean not succeeding at all.

When you come up for air to keep your body and mind energizes, you should even do this with intention. Exercise breaks, healthy meal regimens, and genuine relaxation and social time are all part of the successful marathon. But getting caught up in things that don’t energize you are the opposite. Yes, take breaks to see friends and family. No, don’t take breaks to doomscroll and get blackout drunk.

Of course, even in the midst of the marathon, there is one thing I think is worth breaking from the routine a little for. And that’s opportunity.

Look, I’m a pragmatist. If I’m training for a real marathon and my training is important to me, I don’t want to stop in the middle of my practice run, ruining my time and my momentum, to check social media. But if I see a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk while I’m running? I’m not made of stone, man.

Likewise, there are metaphorical “hundred-dollar bills” along the way of your life, sometimes. They’re worth pausing for – if you have the sense to differentiate them from the pennies.

You have to pay for past mistakes. Don’t pay with interest.

That means fix the mistake.

Try to make the payment an investment in your intelligence.

One of the ways we discover, innovate, and create is by taking discrete tidbits of information we already have and attempting to combine them in novel ways. It’s amazing what you can do with what you already know!

I love seeing early development of this ability in children. My four-year-old niece was playing pretend restaurant with me today. She claimed they didn’t have what I ordered (pizza), but that instead I could have “flamingo juice.” After a few inquiries to make sure this wasn’t a concept from some book or show she’d seen, I worked out that she simply knew there were different words that could go in front of “juice,” and she hadn’t yet worked out what those words signified. So she put a word she liked in front and bam, a delicious (?) new beverage was invented.

So hey, maybe flamingo juice isn’t going to fly off the shelves. But the basic concept of just putting together two things you know is absolutely the way we form higher levels of knowledge and creativity. You should always try it.

And from now on, my term for a brilliant combination of two existing but previously separate things will be “flamingo juice.”

What joy! My niece is having her very first sleepover ever, and I get the honor of hosting it. She’s currently eating cookies and watching movies with her three favorite cousins, just being spoiled rotten, and it’s absolutely wonderful.

Such joy we take in doing perfectly normal things just a little differently. Is this house vastly different from her own? Of course not. But it’s different than what she’s used to, and that is a treasure all its own. We would do well to remember that as adults! A little change of pace can be a holiday, a celebration, an experience worth remembering.

May you walk home a different way tomorrow!

Sometimes the greatest gift isn’t some new thing, but room to move around.

Bless me with empty space! Grace me with cleared clutter! Purge and prosper!

My children, in honor of a special occasion, threw away a bunch of junk. There are few better gifts I could receive. I love them so!

I miss my father, and I miss my best friend. Too much loss for the memory, in one day. But I am connected to people here on this world, and even in our grief we’re linked. The hole in our individual hearts is extra glue for the collective, like the wood you carve out of two pieces so they’ll fit better together. I will take it.

When someone is overly curious about the exact rules of a situation, asking many questions before engaging, they tend to fall into one of two camps:

1. People who are very interested in following the rules because they don’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to infer the correct behavior in ambiguous situations, and
2. People who intend to do very weird things and want to know what they can get away with.

In other words, when someone asks a lot of questions about all the laws of a town before setting foot there, they’re typically either a socially-inept but obedient person, or they’re a lawyer.

Cleverness often requires structure. Left to pure imagination, some people can go absolutely wild. But the joy of a clever solution is in making a clever solution that works within the confines of the restrictions set by the opponent. Making a highly-unexpected but legal move in chess is a satisfying way to outsmart your opponent. Playing an Uno Reverse Card when they take your queen isn’t.

The responsibility of people who like to play smart is that they have to know the rules better than anyone else. You can’t just be a clever and persuasive person to be a good lawyer, you also have to know the law better than anyone else in the room. Remember that, clever kids, and study up.

Today I taught a class on being resilient in the face of adversity and unexpected challenges. And a bunch of stuff went wrong in the morning leading up to it! It was perfect!

You couldn’t ask for a better time for a bunch of random mini-disasters to happen. Tech issues, miscommunications, last-minute changes; we had the whole set. A half-dozen things went wrong in the two hours or so before the event.

And the event went perfectly fine.

Rule number one, straight out of the hitchhiker’s guide, is just “Don’t Panic.” Nothing is unfixable, nothing will kill me. Always remember that most people can’t even see those challenges, and won’t even notice their effects on the final product.

“Change” is neither good nor bad. It’s just different. You now exist in a new world; if you view that as a “challenge to overcome,” then you’re fighting the normal progress of life. Don’t. Just think of it as a new town, and now you’re looking for a new place to eat. Neither better nor worse, just different.

There are problems everywhere. No job, house, school, community, relationship, or anything else will be perfect. Perfection shouldn’t be the goal nor the standard.

But not all problems are equal! Here’s an extremely basic example: let’s say your preferred temperature is 70 degrees. You have two apartments you can pick from to live in: one is 65 degrees naturally, and the other is 75 degrees naturally.

Neither is 70, so neither is “perfect” for you on that metric. But even though they’re both off by the same amount, one of those is probably better for you! Being too hot makes me more uncomfortable than being too cold, so I’d choose the 65-degree place (plus, I own more clothing that lets me deal with cold than the reverse, not to mention that it’s generally cheaper to warm a place up than cool it down). But some people find being too cold much more uncomfortable and would choose the other apartment.

So it’s not always about finding something “perfect,” but you can make a lot of improvements by finding a better-fitting imperfection. Everything has trade-offs, and every person is unique. That means you can find the job, community, relationships, or whatever else that gets the things you care about most right. The rest, you just laugh away.