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Posted by Alex Lickerman on May 13th, 2012  Print  Email to a friend  Photo: Tomas Sobek Other than my autonomy, there’s nothing I dislike having challenged more than my competence. I like to be good at things, and I don’t like it when people think I’m not. I know this because when my competence is challenged in an area in which I think I’m competent, I get angry.
I don’t mind making mistakes. But that’s only because mistakes don’t necessarily imply incompetence. In fact, competent people make them all the time, whether due to lack of attention, working too fast, or being too tired. But one thing competent people don’t do is make mistakes because they don’t know what they’re doing. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on May 6th, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: Vinoth Chandar Why have people throughout history been willing to fight and even die for their freedom? From one perspective the answer is obvious: oppression causes suffering and we’re all hardwired to flee suffering. But recent research suggests an additional reason: we also seem to be hardwired to desire autonomy. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on April 29th, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: Nathan Reading One hundred fifty million prescriptions for antibiotics are written each year in the United States. By some estimates, one third of them are unnecessary. One of the most common diagnoses for which antibiotics are inappropriately prescribed is upper respiratory tract infections (URIs). The overwhelming majority of these infections are viral—infections for which we have no treatment that speeds resolution of symptoms (with one possible non-antibiotic exception, discussed below). Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on April 22nd, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: shutterhacks I love to read. In fact, there are few things I enjoy more. Though my great passion is fiction, I’ll read almost anything: non-fiction, comic books, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, poems, candy wrappers, it doesn’t matter—anything with words in it. Reading is listening to someone else’s thoughts, learning from and about someone else’s mind. Reading teaches. Reading entertains. And reading sometimes changes lives. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on April 15th, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: Esparta Every year around December, my in-laws, who live in the north, do what thousands of other people do: move to a warmer climate (in their case, Florida). And though for years I never thought I would do the same, recently the idea has begun to appeal to me. I’m finding for the first time that my tolerance for cold weather is decreasing. I grew up in Chicago where the brutality of the winters is matched only by its dwellers’ ability to handle them, and for decades I counted myself among those who were indifferent to the wind and the cold. But no longer. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on April 8th, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: kevin dooley I was bullied intermittently throughout my childhood, but in seventh grade it became particularly severe. One boy named Tim bullied me daily until I came up with the idea to pay him a cookie at lunch in order to turn him from my tormentor into my protector. That he accepted the idea—that in fact he one day punched another boy who’d started pushing me around—astounded me and only testified to the capriciousness with which bullies often choose their targets. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on April 1st, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: Marco Bellucci Our minds are simply not to be trusted. As Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, we’re all at the mercy of a voluminous set of cognitive biases that distort our thinking: we routinely ignore evidence that contradicts our preexisting beliefs, we think anecdotally rather than statistically, we’re overly influenced by even brief messages that are unrelated to a question we’re asked to consider, and we routinely exaggerate the effect of changed circumstances on our future well-being, to name just a few of the ways our thinking goes wrong. In short, it’s amazing that we ever get anything right at all. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on March 25th, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: adam*b My wife and son recently returned from a trip to Florida where they were visiting my in-laws. They were gone for only six days, but when they returned, my son seemed somehow older (that is, by more than just six days). I was once again reminded of the important Buddhist truth that everything—everything—is impermanent. I was also reminded just how blind we all are to this truth. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on March 18th, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: asenat29 Who we are turns out to be largely a function of who we’re with. Have you ever noticed, for example, how you feel and behave one way with your family and another with your friends—and yet another with your co-workers and boss? We may all be multiple selves, but just which self we are at any one moment isn’t as much up to us as it is to the people around us. Continue reading…
Posted by Alex Lickerman on March 11th, 2012 Print Email to a friend  Photo: kaibara87 I’m among the most disciplined people I know, but when it comes to avoiding procrastination I know one person who’s even better than I: my wife. She delays nothing. Even when it seems like she might be, it’s only because she’s getting a long series of other things done first. She’s been gifted (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with an inability to leave any open items floating around in her brain. Continue reading…
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