Simply K

Decision-making & Behavioral Biases

Action bias

Actor–observer bias

Ambiguity effect

Anchoring bias

Anthropic bias

Attentional bias

Availability heuristic

Availability cascade

Backfire effect

Bandwagon effect

Base rate fallacy

Belief bias

Bias blind spot

Bystander effect

Choice-supportive bias

Clustering illusion

Commitment bias

Conservatism bias

Continuum fallacy

Contrast effect

Courtesy bias

Cynicism bias

Decoy effect

Default effect

Denomination effect

Dunning–Kruger effect

Duration neglect

Empathy gap

Endowment effect

Escalation of commitment

Evaluation apprehension

Exaggerated expectation

Experimenter’s bias

False consensus effect

False uniqueness bias

Focusing effect

Forer effect

Framing effect

Frequency illusion

Functional fixedness

Gambler’s fallacy

Goal gradient effect

Group attribution error

Groupthink

Halo effect

Hard-easy effect

Herding effect

Hindsight bias

Hot-hand fallacy

Hyperbolic discounting

Identifiable victim effect

IKEA effect

Illusion of control

Illusion of transparency

Impact bias

Implicit bias

Information bias

Insensitivity to sample size

Intergroup bias

Irrational escalation

Just-world hypothesis

Law of the instrument

Less-is-better effect

Loss aversion

Mere exposure effect

Moral luck

Naïve realism

Negativity bias

Neglect of probability

Normalcy bias

Not invented here bias

Observer-expectancy effect

Omission bias

Optimism bias

Outcome bias

Overconfidence effect

Pareidolia

Parkinson’s law of triviality

Peak–end rule

Peltzman effect

Planning fallacy

Post-purchase rationalization

Pro-innovation bias

Projection bias

Pseudocertainty effect

Reactive devaluation

Recency bias

Restraint bias

Risk compensation

Selective perception

Semmelweis reflex

Shared information bias

Social comparison bias

Social desirability bias

Spotlight effect

Status quo bias

Stereotyping

Sunk cost fallacy

Survivorship bias

System justification

Time-saving bias

Third-person effect

Trait ascription bias

Unit bias

Wishful thinking

Zero-risk bias

Memory Biases

Absent-mindedness

Childhood amnesia

Cryptomnesia

Egocentric bias

Fading affect bias

Google effect (digital amnesia)

Hindsight bias (memory version)

Leveling and sharpening

Misinformation effect

Misattribution of memory

Modality effect

Mood congruent memory

Persistence

Picture superiority effect

Rosy retrospection

Self-relevance effect

Source confusion

Spare-time effect

Telescoping effect

Testing effect

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

Verbatim effect

Von Restorff effect

Zeigarnik effect

Social & Interpersonal Biases

Affiliation bias

Authority bias

Beneffectance

Cheerleader effect

Confirmation bias

Courtesy bias

Defensive attribution

Disposition effect

Effort justification

Egalitarianism bias

Empathy gap

False consensus effect

Fundamental attribution error

Gender bias

Group-serving bias

Halo effect

Horn effect

Illusory superiority

Ingroup bias

Intergroup sensitivity effect

Just-world hypothesis

Moral credential effect

Naïve cynicism

Naïve realism

Outgroup homogeneity bias

Overjustification effect

Self-serving bias

Shared information bias

Social proof

Sympathy bias

Probability, Logic & Math Errors

Anecdotal fallacy

Base-rate neglect

Conjunction fallacy

Hot-hand fallacy

Illusory correlation

Ludic fallacy

Masked man fallacy

Probability matching

Prosecutor’s fallacy

Regression to the mean

Simplicity bias

Zero-sum bias

Belief, Ideology & Perception Biases

Apophenia

Authority heuristic

Belief perseverance

Confirmation bias

Disconfirmation bias

Essentialism

Magical thinking

Narrative fallacy

Optimism bias

Pessimism bias

Placebo effect

Priming

Representativeness heuristic

Salience bias

Selective exposure

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Superstitious learning

Doomscrolling bias

Outrage bias

Virality bias

Algorithmic confirmation bias

FOMO bias

Echo chamber effect

If you’ve ever wondered why economic forecasts fail with the enthusiasm of a New Year’s gym resolution, welcome to the Lucas Critique: the academic equivalent of a slap to the face, delivered by Robert Lucas, the economist whose ideas made half the world’s policymakers suddenly question their life choices.

For decades, economists behaved like astrologers with spreadsheets. They’d examine past data, draw lines, squeeze equations, and confidently declare,

“If we raise interest rates, A will happen. If we cut taxes, B will happen.”

Bless their optimism.

Because Lucas stood up and basically said:

“No, geniuses… that’s not how humans work.”

The Brain Behind the Chaos

Lucas argued something so embarrassingly obvious that you’d think the field of economics would’ve figured it out before the 1970s:

People aren’t robots. They adapt. They learn. They change behaviour when the rules change.

In other words, you can’t predict tomorrow with yesterday’s data, because yesterday’s people were reacting to yesterday’s rules. Today’s people are reacting to your brand-new policy disaster.

If you announce a tax hike, people don’t behave like the last generation did…

They behave like people who know a tax hike is coming.

This is a bit like expecting your teenager to react “normally” after you suddenly install parental controls on the WiFi.

Good luck. Enjoy the mutiny.

The Core Idea (Minus the Boring Textbooks)

Here’s Lucas in one sentence:

Policies change expectations. Expectations change behaviour. Behaviour changes outcomes.

Translation:

Every time a government or central bank tweaks the system, humans adjust.

The old patterns break.

The data becomes useless.

It’s like switching the rules of football mid-match and then trying to predict the score using statistics from last season.

Why It Matters

Lucas’s work launched the era of rational expectations theory, which assumes people form predictions based on logic, learning, and available information.

FMRI studies actually support this: the prefrontal cortex lights up when we anticipate future outcomes, meaning the brain constantly updates models of the world.

Your mind is not a passive sponge; it’s an adaptive prediction machine.

Sometimes wrong, sometimes drunk, but always updating.

The Dark Comedy Behind It

What makes the Lucas Critique so deliciously funny is how it exposes the fragile ego of policymakers.

They announce a new monetary rule and expect citizens to politely follow the script.

Instead, people innovate, evade, optimize, cheat, panic, hoard, invest, flee, or reinvent the entire game.

Humans are basically economic cockroaches: always adapting faster than the system expects.

Economists watch this and think:

“Why are our models wrong?”

Lucas replies:

“Because you assumed people were stupid.”

Real-Life Example

Say the central bank raises interest rates to fight inflation.

Old data says people spend less.

Modern humans?

They just switch to BNPL, crypto, or ask their cousin to move money through six offshore accounts and a WhatsApp group.

And the policymakers stare at the numbers like,

“This wasn’t in the model.”

No kidding.

Why You Should Care (Especially in Aviation)

Forecasting demand, pricing, capacity, or consumer travel behaviour using old patterns is dangerous. When policy changes in KSA, or when airlines adjust fares, or when the government shifts visa rules, travellers don’t follow historical charts. They adapt instantly.

Lucas would say:

“Every policy shock rewrites the map.”

If you ignore it, you’re flying blind.

If you understand it, you’re playing chess in a room full of people stuck on checkers.

Final Thought

The Lucas Critique is the intellectual equivalent of your brutally honest friend who tells you the truth you didn’t want to hear:

You can’t control human behaviour with old data.

People evolve.

People react.

People mess with your models.

Economics isn’t physics.

It’s psychology hiding inside spreadsheets.

And Lucas?

He’s the guy who exposed the whole magic trick.

“Some deceive you with their cover, and others surprise you with their content”

Humans love pretending they’re in control. We write goals, make promises, join gyms, and buy planners — then proceed to forget all of it by Wednesday. The truth? Your brain runs on habit loops, tiny self-reinforcing circuits that decide what you do long before your “logical” self gets out of bed.

⸻

The Science Bit (Don’t Skip This One)

In the 1990s, a neuroscientist named Ann Graybiel at MIT discovered that habits aren’t mystical willpower problems — they’re neurological shortcuts in the basal ganglia. Your brain builds loops to save energy: once it learns a routine, it stops thinking. You become efficient… or enslaved, depending on what the routine is.

Each habit follows a three-step dance:

1. Cue: The trigger. A time, place, emotion, smell, or even a notification.

2. Routine: The behavior that follows automatically.

3. Reward: The payoff — dopamine, relief, distraction, pleasure, whatever your poison.

Over time, your brain begins firing dopamine at the cue, not the reward. That’s the cruel part. You don’t even crave the cigarette, drink, or cookie — you crave the anticipation of it. Dopamine isn’t pleasure; it’s hope, dressed as excitement.

That’s why slot machines and social media use variable rewards. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. The uncertainty fries your prefrontal cortex like an egg.

⸻

Your Brain Is Basically Pavlov’s Dog With Wi-Fi

Every time you repeat a behavior that brings relief, the loop gets stronger — like digging a deeper trench through your own mind. Skip the gym once? Your brain claps and says, “Ah yes, comfort over pain, let’s bookmark that.” Do it ten times and congratulations: you’ve trained yourself to hate effort.

The tragedy is that the brain doesn’t care if the loop serves you or destroys you — it only cares that it’s predictable. Consistency is its fetish. That’s why breaking bad habits feels worse than heartbreak: you’re not fighting addiction; you’re fighting familiarity.

⸻

Rewriting the Code — The Only Way Out

Forget “stopping” habits. You don’t stop them. You replace them. The cue and reward remain; you just swap the routine.

Let’s break it down like an adult version of Sesame Street:

Cue Old Routine Reward New Routine Same Reward

Stress after work Smoke Calm Deep breathing or 10 pushups Calm

Loneliness Drink Numbness Call a friend or cold shower Emotional reset

Morning alarm Snooze Comfort Cold towel on face (your genius idea) Alertness

Boredom Scroll Instagram Dopamine Read one page / walk Dopamine

Your brain’s too lazy to notice the swap. Keep the cue, deliver the reward, just change the middle part.

⸻

The Gym Dilemma: Turning “I Should” Into “I Do”

You’re not lazy; you’re looped wrong. Your cue is “after work,” your brain screams “sofa,” and the reward is relief. Rewire it like this:

1. Cue: Finish work.

2. Routine: Drive directly to the gym before the body negotiates.

3. Reward: Immediate small win — a cold shower, a protein shake, or just not hating your reflection.

Bonus hack: start with a 2-minute rule — promise yourself to just arrive at the gym. Once you’re there, inertia flips in your favor. The hardest part of any habit is the first 30 seconds.

Neuroscience calls this the activation energy threshold. Once you cross it, momentum takes over.

⸻

Eating Healthier Without Becoming a Monk

Food loops are emotional. Cues like stress, fatigue, or boredom trigger the dopamine chase for sugar and salt. The key isn’t eliminating those triggers (life’s full of them); it’s preparing alternate rewards before your frontal lobe gives up.

• Cue: Late-night hunger.

• Old routine: Open fridge, pretend cheese is dinner.

• New routine: Protein snack, cold water, brush teeth (yes, that helps).

• Reward: Relief, without shame.

Also, make your cue frictionless for good habits — keep cut cucumbers or salad bowls at eye level in the fridge. Hide junk food behind something boring like spinach. Your primitive brain will pick the path of least resistance.

⸻

The Dark Side of “Reward”

People think rewards must be pleasant. Wrong. Sometimes the “reward” is simply not feeling terrible. That’s why stress loops are so persistent: smoking or drinking stops discomfort for a minute — and that’s enough for the brain to write it in stone.

The solution? Introduce delayed rewards with equal emotional punch. Exercise doesn’t give instant pleasure, but track the metrics — calories burned, progress photos, or that smug post-workout exhaustion that feels oddly holy. Reinforce that.

Behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg calls it “celebration reinforcement” — your brain remembers emotional peaks, not logic. So every time you do the right thing, feel proud on purpose.

⸻

When You Slip (Because You Will)

Relapse isn’t failure; it’s data. It tells you which part of the loop cracked — was it the cue you didn’t see coming, or the reward that wasn’t satisfying enough? Adjust, don’t self-flagellate. The brain rewires with repetition, not guilt.

Psych fact: it takes roughly 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. That’s not mystical — that’s just how long neurons need to myelinate a new pathway. Think of it as pouring concrete over a dirt road.

⸻

Final Thought — You’re the Architect, Not the Victim

Most people live as if their mind is an untrained puppy dragging them through life. The habit loop is your leash. Learn it, and you can redirect your instincts before they hijack you.

To build a better life, don’t chase motivation — it’s unreliable and drunk half the time. Engineer the environment: make the good habits easy, the bad ones awkward, and the rewards meaningful.

Your future self doesn’t need discipline. It needs better design.

⸻

Summary Cheatsheet:

• Cue → Routine → Reward = Habit Loop.

• Dopamine fires at anticipation, not pleasure.

• Replace routines; don’t delete them.

• Stack habits on existing cues.

• Shrink the start: 2-minute rule.

• Celebrate small wins.

• Don’t moralize failure — debug it.

⸻

So next time you light a cigarette, skip a workout, or inhale pizza in existential panic, remember: it’s not weakness. It’s wiring. And wiring can be rewritten — preferably before your frontal lobe files for early retirement.

Let’s talk about the giant nuclear reactor that gives you life and burns you for sport — the Sun. Humanity spends billions on supplements, creams, and LED gadgets, but the single most powerful antidepressant, fat-burner, hormone regulator, and immune-booster is right above your head. Literally free. Yet we avoid it like it’s a tax auditor.

1. Why the Sun Matters More Than You Think

Sunlight is not just about Vitamin D (though that’s the headline act). It regulates your circadian rhythm — your body’s internal clock — and dictates when your brain secretes melatonin, serotonin, and cortisol. Screw up your light exposure, and you’ll end up wide awake at 2 AM, snacking on existential dread and peanut butter.

When you step outside and sunlight hits your retina and skin, it triggers a biochemical symphony: nitric oxide release (which relaxes blood vessels and lowers blood pressure), dopamine and serotonin spikes (hello, good mood), and a healthy dose of UVB radiation that tells your body, “time to make Vitamin D, sunshine.”

2. The Swedish Study That Blew Everyone’s Mind

A 20-year study from Karolinska Institute in Sweden followed nearly 30,000 women. The result? Women who avoided sun exposure had mortality rates similar to smokers. You read that right — staying indoors was as bad for your health as puffing on a Marlboro.

The researchers concluded that regular, moderate sun exposure is associated with longer life expectancy. In short: hiding from the sun might actually shorten your life. So next time someone brags about their SPF 1000 routine, remember — they might look young in the coffin, but they’ll still be in it.

3. Even Cloudy Days Count

Here’s the fun twist: up to 80% of UV rays penetrate clouds. So, even on those Scandinavian-gray mornings, your skin is still clocking in some light exposure. Indoor light, by comparison, is a tragic imitation. Your cozy office emits 300–500 lux of light; the outdoors, even on a cloudy day, blasts you with 10,000–20,000 lux.

Translation: your body knows the difference between real sunlight and that IKEA lamp you’re clinging to.

4. Sunlight and Mortality: The Day-Length Link

Humans evolved in sync with the sun’s cycles. Longer daylight hours are tied to lower mortality rates and reduced inflammation. Shorter days — like during winter — correlate with spikes in cardiovascular deaths, depression, and high blood pressure.

In a fascinating epidemiological twist, death rates literally rise when daylight hours shorten. Blame it on melatonin-cortisol imbalance, Vitamin D drop, or just the emotional toll of seeing the sun less than your dentist — it all matters.

5. When to Catch the Sun (and Not the Cancer)

The optimal time for sun exposure is early morning or late afternoon — roughly within the first two hours after sunrise or before sunset. That’s when you get the good infrared light that heals, without the harsh ultraviolet that fries.

Infrared (IR) = the warm, invisible part of sunlight. It helps mitochondria (your cell’s power plants) produce energy more efficiently. It also stimulates collagen, improves blood flow, and helps you recover from inflammation. Ultraviolet (UV) = the drama queen of sunlight. Small doses trigger Vitamin D synthesis and strengthen immunity. Excessive doses? Skin damage and aging. Like tequila — one shot energizes you, ten make you regret your life choices.

So the smart play: go outside at sunrise, let the light hit your eyes and skin (no sunglasses, no sunscreen yet), and stay for 10–20 minutes. That’s enough to set your circadian rhythm and produce healthy nitric oxide levels.

6. HSCRP — The Canary in the Inflammation Mine

Now let’s get blood-deep for a second. HSCRP (High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein) is a marker doctors use to measure systemic inflammation. Think of it as your body’s “check engine” light. When your HSCRP is high, your body’s basically whispering, “Something’s not right — fix it before you explode.”

High HSCRP levels are linked to:

Heart disease Diabetes Obesity Chronic stress Poor sleep And yes, lack of sunlight.

That’s because low sunlight = low Vitamin D = immune dysregulation = inflammation spike. Studies show people with higher Vitamin D (and more sunlight exposure) have lower HSCRP and better heart health.

7. The Simple Equation of Sanity

You’re a solar-powered organism pretending to be nocturnal. The farther you drift from natural light, the more your biology pays the price. Depression, low testosterone, poor sleep, anxiety, inflammation — all rise when we hide indoors.

Ten minutes of sunrise is worth more to your body than an hour in the gym under fluorescent lights. So stop worshiping supplements and step outside. The universe literally sends you health in photons.

In Short:

☀️ Sun = dopamine, nitric oxide, Vitamin D, longevity

🏠 Indoors = melatonin confusion, low mood, high HSCRP, early death

So next time you’re debating whether to open the curtains or not — remember, the sun doesn’t just rise for poetic Instagram captions. It rises for your mitochondria, your heart, and your sanity.

You’re not burning out — you’re just underexposed.

You know that foggy, stupid feeling when you wake up and can’t remember your own name? Congratulations — you’ve met sleep inertia, the human brain’s way of saying, “You woke me up too early, you idiot.”

What it is:

Sleep inertia happens when you wake up during deep sleep. Your brain’s prefrontal cortex — the part responsible for logic, planning, and pretending to be an adult — takes a few minutes (or up to an hour) to boot up. Until then, you’re basically a very slow-moving Wi-Fi connection.

Why it happens:

Your body’s still marinating in melatonin, blood flow to the brain is sluggish, and your temperature and cortisol (the “wake up” hormone) are still low. So when you pop up mid-cycle, the system lags — badly.

How to avoid it:

• Keep a consistent sleep schedule (I know, revolutionary).

• Don’t hit snooze — that’s like rebooting Windows every 9 minutes.

• Time your naps under 30 minutes so you don’t fall into deep sleep.

How to snap out of it:

• Light — step outside or near a bright window; it murders melatonin fast.

• Water — dehydration makes the fog worse.

• Movement — a few squats or push-ups, not scrolling Instagram.

• Caffeine — but only after ten minutes of being awake; otherwise you just become an anxious zombie instead of a slow one.

So, yeah — next time you wake up feeling like your soul’s buffering, don’t panic. It’s just sleep inertia, your brain’s way of reminding you that consciousness was never meant to be this abrupt.

———

It’s pronounced like this:

Sleep in-UR-shuh

Breakdown:

Sleep — easy. Same as “deep sleep.” Inertia — comes from Latin iners, meaning “idle” or “lazy,” which fits perfectly. The stress is on the second syllable: in-UR-shuh.

So when you say it, drag the “UR” just slightly — like your tongue itself hasn’t fully woken up.

Your brain doesn’t care about “lights off” in the poetic sense — it cares about how much light actually hits your retina, specifically the melanopsin-containing cells in your eyes. Those cells feed directly into your suprachiasmatic nucleus, the brain’s body-clock boss, which tells your pineal gland whether to pump out melatonin (the “sleep” hormone) or not.

• Melanopsin : meh-luh-NOP-sin.
  
  It’s that pigment in your retinal ganglion cells that basically moonlights as a sleep-schedule manager — the one that freaks out the second you look at your phone at 1 a.m.
• Suprachiasmatric: soo-pruh-kai-az-MAT-ik.
  
  That little cluster of neurons sits just above your optic chiasm (hence the name) and tells your body, “Hey genius, it’s daytime,” or “Go to sleep already.”

People conform to what they see others doing — that’s the foundation of human social behavior.

If the social environment doesn’t punish or stigmatize spitting, littering, or noise, those acts become descriptive norms (what’s normal), not injunctive norms (what’s acceptable).

Proof:

In classic experiments, when researchers increased visible litter in an area, people littered more. When the area was clean, people self-corrected.

→ Hygiene behavior follows visible cues, not personal ethics.

Modern humans are drowning in micro-stimulation — phones, alerts, dopamine grenades. The brain adapts by dulling receptors, which means normal life feels like beige soup. That’s why you can feel “meh” even when things are fine.

The fix? Controlled boredom. Periods of deliberate stillness restore dopamine sensitivity. Boredom literally rebuilds motivation.

Hence

Do abs / core 3 x weekly

Forearms 3 x weekly

Triceps / Biceps / Shoulders / Chest 2 x Weekly

Back / Legs once a week