Mind Readers Dictionary : Mind Readers Dictionary

What is with him? How can he believe such garbage? It's so bad it's not even wrong. It's worse than wrong! Sometimes I think he's just clueless. He simply can't see the truth. But then other times I get this whiff of the devious and think he can see the truth just fine but refuses to. For self...

That's the fourth time she's done it and this time you're not going to let it pass. Carefully, diplomatically you tell her that she has got to stop insulting you in front of your friends. It's getting weird. If she has complaints and criticisms, you want her to talk with you about them frankly and p...

"The secret to a stable relationship like ours," she said proudly," is give and take, a real 50/50 balance." I should look at her while she's talking to me, but I'm sneaking peeks at him, checking for a reaction. I know the couple well and you would have to cook the books pretty creatively to ca...

Maybe they just didn't hear you. Or maybe they heard you just fine and have decided that you're an idiot, not even worth responding to. Maybe they got your message but are simply too busy to respond. Maybe they're just quietly thinking it over and still haven't decided. Maybe they're so apologet...

After I left the world's largest hippie commune but before I cut off my long hair, it occurred to me that the two central tenets of our hippie beliefs were on a collision course with each other. We were talking out both sides of our mouths, saying opposite, irreconcilable things. On the one hand we...

Do you watch movies and TV, read fiction, follow politics or like good gossip? If you do, then chances are you're a lifelong student of Villainology, the study of what makes bad guys bad and mean people suck. Criminology is something else, the study of people who break laws. A lot of the world's wo...

If you want a simple but accurate explanation for why civilizations sometimes veer toward evil, here's a theory worth considering: Psychopaths are overrepresented in positions of power and they make sociopaths out of large numbers of us. Robert Hare, psychology's most famous expert on psychopaths...

In economist Ha-Joon Chang's wonderful book, "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism," the first of the 23 things is that there are no absolutely free markets. Think about it. If freeing up markets were always the solution, then wouldn't we allow the purchase of slaves, hiring of eight ye...

My ex-partner is a sociopath. No really. I hope you believe me. But then I also hope you doubt me too. A sociopath has little or no conscience, and "the little" in that definition is a very big problem. How little is little enough to warrant the diagnosis of sociopathy? Conscience is expensi...

I'm entitled to do what you, in my same circumstances would not be entitled to do--that's a double standard. Being civilized means trying to constrain the natural human tendency toward such double standards. The tendency toward double standards doesn't originate with humans. It is as old as life...

"The conviction persists -- though history shows it to be a hallucination -- that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer aban...

Between optimism and pessimism, optimism has a better reputation. 'Tis better to be optimistic than pessimistic, or so says conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is wrong. Buy into it at your own peril because, if you don't watch out people will manipulate and bully you with the supposed but f...

All adages are seeds of wisdom, eggs we fertilize by bringing our attention to them, causing them to start subdividing into a range of complementary and conflicting perspectives about matters fundamental. We fertilize them by cracking through the shells that hold them together. Opened, their parts...

A pinhead is a person so small-minded his shoulders taper up to either a pin's head or even narrower, a pinpoint. We apply the epithet like an X marking the spot, pinpointing anyone we think is an idiot. I'm on a never-ending quest for objective definitions of wisdom and conversely, stupidity. B...

I both envy and loathe the self-certain. I envy them their peace of mind. I loathe their bullying. Increasingly, I see debate as doubting matches, opponents casting doubt on each other's opinions. The self-certain are master doubt-casters impervious to doubts cast their way. A mighty fortress is ...

Qaddafi is a sociopath, a man impervious to any sense of self-doubt. His kind are all too common in positions of power. Sociopathocracy--government by sociopath is so common, the argument that the war in Iraq was a priority because it got rid of one such sociopath makes little sense. Yes the world i...

Let me tell you how spiritual paths should work from beginning to end. I know it's bold of me to claim to know, but I'm taking my cue from the many spiritual teachers out there who speak with just this kind of audacious authority. You ask the average Joe or Jo on the street, "Is it best to be in...

I've been concerned about climate crisis for decades, doubly concerned because I've been unable to find any action likely to make a big difference. Every little bit we can do, seems to add up to not nearly enough, because most of what we can do runs against political and economic currents and I have...

What does confidence in our opinions indicate about the likelihood that our opinions are correct? Think of confidence as a delectable treat, a cookie rewarded when you have worked hard, or stolen from the cookie jar when you haven't. If you only reward yourself with the satisfying treat for do...

"Ok, from now on I won't be angry at you about that." "I swear from here on out, I'll be more appreciative." "Trust me, starting now I'll stop being irritated all the time." In my experience, an increase in such pledges to feel a certain way "from now on" is a sure sign that a partnership i...