Abhishek Chakraborty

We Have Selfish Reasons to Help Others

We have an inbuilt habit to help those in need. While it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that human beings are good in spirit and hence they help out, it wouldn’t be as much interesting to understand why we really help others (as a species) and how it actually benefits us (as an individual).

Don’t Seek Too Much Stability

A stable life is one where—in theory—nothing goes wrong. You have an okay job, a happy marriage, good kids, and live in a decent neighbourhood. But soon we’ll learn that longterm stability is only a ticking time bomb and, if we know any better, we should avoid it at all costs.

The Problem with Too Much Fairness

We care so much about fairness that we are willing to sacrifice economic well-being to enforce it. Research shows that just to ensure shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to make ourselves poorer.

The Importance of Doubt in Scientific Thinking

Even though it’s safe to assume that the field of medicine is the epitome of scientific method, ironically, it wasn’t always so. It was a field marred with arrogance, hubris, and a sheer lack of scientific rigour. Most importantly, what medicine lacked was doubt, a necessity in scientific thinking.

Phase Transition: What Traffic Jams Teach Us About Office Politics

You’re driving home from work on a highway. The traffic is flowing well. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the highway turns into a parking lot of stopped cars. There’s no visible cause. There are no accidents in sight. Where did this traffic jam come from? And what does it have to do with office politics?

How I Explain Things

All my essays are either explanations or instructions, most of them full of arguments. I’m not the best writer, but since I write (two newsletters) every week I do get a lot of practice. And over the years (knowingly or unknowingly) I’ve developed a list of common pitfalls to avoid.

Counterfactual Reasoning: How to Ask Better What-if Questions

Suppose Jonny takes a drug and dies a month later, how do we go about investigating whether the drug might have caused his death? To answer this question (correctly) we need to imagine a scenario in which Jonny was about to take the drug but changed his mind.

The Limits of Our Reasoning

Statistical concepts such as regression are confounding. While they have an explanation, they don’t have any cause. Our mind is strongly biased toward causal explanations and cannot swallow the reason for something being “mere statistics.”