• The call of the void: The phenomenon of a healthy individual, when at a high location or ledge, having the spontaneous urge to jump off.
• The Imp of the Perverse: The urge to do wrong simply because one can.
• Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
• Cognitive biases (list of cognitive biases)
  • Frequency illusion: After noticing something for the first time, one begins to notice it more often, leading one to believe that it occurs often or with increasing frequency compared to before noticing it for the first time.
  • Fallacies
    • Formal Fallacies
    • Informal Fallacies
      • Post hoc ergo propter hoc: X happened before Y, therefore X caused Y.
      • Ad hoc hypothesis: If someone wants to believe in leprechauns, they can avoid ever being proven wrong by using ad hoc hypotheses (e.g., by adding "they are invisible", then "their motives are complex", and so on)
      • Argumentum ad populum / Appeal to the masses / democratic fallacy: Fallacious argument of affirming that something is real or better because the majority thinks so
        • Three men make a tiger: An individual's tendency to accept absurd information as long as it is repeated by enough people.
      • Hindsight bias
        • Preparedness paradox: The more one (or a group) prepares for a potential disaster, the less dangerous it will seem in hindsight, thus making the preparation seem unneeded.
• Game "Moral Machine" (a game of moral dilemmas whose results are/were used by MIT to guide them in their decision making for self-driving automobiles)
• Availability cascade
• Groupthink
• Bystander effect: Inverse correlation between the quantity of people that can help and the the urge for any one individual to help.
• Confounding factor: A variable/factor that influences both the independent variable (e.g. a treatment, a drug) and dependent variable (the outcome), causing a spurious association. E.g. Testing to see if birth order (independent variable) causes down syndrome in children (dependent variable). A confounding factor is maternal age upon child's birth.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy, & similar but conversely Self-defeating prophecy
  • Nominative determinism: A person's name attracts them towards certain areas of work. E.g. Igor Judge was an English judge, Daniel Snowman wrote a book on polar explorations.
• Self-refuting idea
• Hitchens's razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.". Meaning that the burden of proof rests on whomever is making the claim.
• Münchhausen / Agrippan trilemma: Any proposition, to be accepted as true, requires proof. Said proof requires its own proof. This repeats until any 1 of 3 unsatisfying arguments is used:
  • The circular argument, in which the proof of some proposition presupposes the truth of that very proposition
  • The dogmatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts which are merely asserted rather than defended
  • The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum
• Paradox
  • List of paradoxes
  • Fermi's paradox
  • Automobile congestion
    • Braess' paradox
    • Downs–Thomson paradox: Improvements in the road network can make congestion worse if the improvements make public transport more inconvenient or if it shifts investment, causing disinvestment in the public transport system.
    • Induced demand
  • Time paradox: E.g. If one were to go back in time and kill their grandfather, it would prevent one from being born, thus one couldn't kill their grandfather, thus returning the the original state and potentially repeating forever.
    E.g. If time-traveling to the past is possible, where are all of the time-travelers from the future?
• Game theory
  • The Prisoner's dilemma: (similar to the tragedy of the commons) Two criminals are being interrogated separately. If neither snitches, they both get the best outcome. If each snitches, they both get the worst outcome. If only one snitches, then the snitcher's outcome is modest, but the non-snitcher's outcome is the worst. Each has the incentive to snitch on the other for their own personal gain, but the best outcome (both individually & as a group) is only possible with cooperation. (video regarding prisoner's dilemma and strategies for it)
  • Nash equilibrium
  • Positive-sum game (e.g. Prisoner's Dilemma) vs Zero-sum game
  • Performative contradiction
  • Performative utterance
• Types of disingenuous speaking commonly used by politicians: Fedspeak , Officialese
• nocebo, placebos, Placebo button
• vuja de, deja vu, & terms similar to deja vu
• The Mandela effect
• Woozle effect: "evidence by citation" Cccurs when a source is widely cited for a claim it does not adequately support, giving said claim undeserved credibility. Similar to circular reporting, and argument from authority.
• Self-perception
  • One's voice does not sound like how it does in one's head. Seeing one's self in the mirror is horizontally reversed.
  • Endaural phenomena
  • Dunning-Kruger effect: The least competent individuals tend to overestimate their competency, while conversely the most competent individuals tend to underestimate their competency.
    • 4 Stages of competence
• List of laws
  • List of eponymous (named after the creator) laws:
    • Segal's law: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.".