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No Action Without Emotion — On emotion as operating system

• [audio] Stress is Good — 1 Nov 2025
  Stress isn’t poorly calibrated to modern life. It’s the energising force that allows us to perform. Optimal performance requires optimal stress. The difference between eustress and distress isn’t biological—it’s psychological. Controllability matters more than the stressor itself.
• [article] Stress and Creativity — 28 Mar 2025
  Stress promotes bias—stereotypical thinking and behaving. Less stress promotes cognitive flexibility—an openness to new ways of thinking and behaving. Neither is better than the other. It’s about the situation you deploy them in.
• [article] Speaking in tongues — 23 Aug 2024
  Glossolalia has a unique pattern of neural activity, distinct from psychopathologies and even other trance-like states. So, the feeling underneath is special, but the actual speaking itself seems learned. It makes you wonder where that feeling comes from.
• [article] Why do people kill themselves? — 16 Aug 2024
  Suicide is the interaction between personal despair and the failure of communities to provide reasons to live. We can’t answer Camus’ “one truly serious philosophical problem” for people, only they can. But we can provide an argument to live, by showing people where they fit.
• [article] Active listening is misleading — 11 Jan 2024
  Active listening isn’t about ticking boxes in conversation; it’s about diving into emotions to transform surface-level chit-chat into deep, collaborative dialogue. Forget models, focus on feelings.
• [marginalium] What’s making kids not alright — 6 Sep 2023
• [marginalium] Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs — 1 Sep 2023
• [marginalium] The Quest To Quantify Our Senses — 31 Aug 2023
• [marginalium] Do feelings have a ‘hard problem’ — 28 Aug 2023
• [marginalium] Animals Trapped In Human Bodies — 23 Aug 2023
• [marginalium] The problem of news from nowhere — 8 Jun 2023
• [marginalium] Conspiracies are the price of a complex, liberal society — 14 May 2023
• [marginalium] How to be a happy nihilist Let me demonstrate with a game, ‘spot the meaningless meaning’ — 25 Mar 2023
• [marginalium] Is ‘feeling fat’ really a manifestation of underlying sadness — 21 Mar 2023
• [marginalium] How to function in an increasingly polarized society — 2 Mar 2023