You're on Autopilot More Than You Think
A new study found that 65% of daily behaviors are habitual and 88% are executed without conscious thought. The science of why your brain prefers shortcuts, and what that means for change.
Casey Cooper·
Category
Ideas
Latest ideas articles and coverage
9 articles
Active Forgetting: Why Your Brain Deletes Memories on Purpose
Forgetting isn't a failure of memory. It's a deliberate neural process, powered by dopamine and fine-tuned by evolution, that keeps your brain functional.
Casey Cooper·
When the Sun Disappears: Eclipses Between Science and Myth
An annular solar eclipse arrives February 17. For thousands of years, eclipses stopped wars, toppled kings, and drove scientific revolutions. The ring of fire still has stories to tell.
Casey Cooper·
Why We Overestimate Ourselves When AI Helps Us Think
New research reveals a troubling pattern: AI tools improve our performance while simultaneously making us believe we're even better than we actually are.
Casey Cooper·
The Fermi Paradox Sixty Years Later: New Answers to 'Where Is Everybody?'
Enrico Fermi's lunchtime question has haunted scientists for decades. With thousands of exoplanets now discovered, we're finally getting closer to an answer, and it might not be the one we wanted.
Casey Cooper·
The Sunk Cost Fallacy: Why We Can't Walk Away
We stay in bad movies, failing projects, and dead-end relationships because of money already spent. The psychology behind this irrational behavior reveals something deeper.
Casey Cooper·
Why You Think You Knew It All Along
Hindsight bias convinces us we predicted events we never saw coming. Understanding this cognitive illusion reveals how memory rewrites itself to maintain our sense of competence.
Casey Cooper·
Your Brain Is Hallucinating Your Reality Right Now
The brain does not passively record the world. It actively constructs reality from expectations and guesses, and understanding this changes everything.
Casey Cooper·
Flow State: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying why some moments feel effortlessly engaging while others drag. His answer changed how we understand happiness.
Casey Cooper·