Self Evidence

Fast Cities, Slow Committees: What China’s Mega-Projects Reveal About the Future Every era has its favourite sci-fi fantasy. For ours, it seems to be this: what if cities could upgrade at the speed of a software update? In this video from The Extreme Discovery , we get a guided tour of the places on Earth where that fantasy is being treated as a construction brief. Skyscrapers in 19 days. 3D-printed parks. Floating airports. Smart bridges stitched together with sensors and satellite guidance. 🎥 Huge shout-out to The Extreme Discovery ( @theextremediscovery ) for curating one of the most addictive genres on YouTube: “Are we sure this isn’t CGI?” infrastructure. 1. Mini Sky City and the Psychology of “Impossible Speed” The 57-storey Mini Sky City , assembled in just 19 days, is the perfect example of why these videos go viral. Our brains carry an unspoken construction rulebook: Big = slow. Complex = slow. Safe = very slow. When we see a skyscrape...

Phantom Stress: Why Your Mind Invents Problems When Life Is Calm You know that strange feeling — everything is technically fine, yet your chest feels tight, your mind keeps scanning the horizon, and you’re waiting for something (undefined) to go wrong? Congratulations: you’ve just met phantom stress , the brain’s habit of creating problems that don’t actually exist. Phantom stress isn’t anxiety. It isn’t burnout. And it isn’t intuition. It’s a psychological misfire: the brain tries to protect you by inventing threats in situations where you finally feel safe. This is the same phenomenon we explored in past Self Evidence posts about invisible mental drains doctors rarely explain and how tiny decisions create hidden loops in your identity. Why Your Brain Invents Stress When Nothing Is Wrong Phantom stress appears when your nervous system is used to being on guard. Even if your actual environment becomes calm, your brain hasn’t updat...

The Psychology of Unfinished Thoughts: Why Your Brain Leaves Open Tabs (and How to Finally Close Them) You know that feeling — as if your mind is carrying a dozen open tabs you didn’t mean to keep open: the message you didn’t answer, the task you almost finished, the idea you meant to develop, the memory that returns at the worst possible moment. These unfinished thoughts don’t just clutter your mind. Psychology shows they can quietly drain motivation, energy, confidence, and even sleep. Yet nobody teaches us how to handle them. Today, we’re diving into a blue-ocean psychological concept that most people experience but almost no one understands: the Unfinished Mind Loop . The Unfinished Mind Loop — Explained in One Minute When you start a task, a thought, or a plan, your brain opens a loop. If you don’t close it, the loop keeps running in the background, consuming two things: Attention bandwidth Emotional energy This is why unfinished...

The Psychology of Tiny Decisions: How Micro-Choices Quietly Rewire Your Life Big life changes get all the press: quitting your job, moving countries, starting a business, ending a relationship. But psychology has a quieter villain–hero duo working backstage: micro-choices . The tiny, nearly invisible decisions you make all day long that quietly build the life you’re living… or the one you swear you’ll “start on Monday.” If you’ve ever wondered why you feel stuck even though you’re “doing everything right,” there’s a good chance it’s not your goals that are failing you. It’s the default settings running underneath them. What Are Micro-Choices (and Why Your Brain Loves Them)? Micro-choices are the small, low-effort decisions you make on autopilot: Do I snooze once… or three times? Do I open messages… or open that one scary email? Do I scroll one more minute… or put the phone face down? Do I grab water… or “accidentally” meet the fridge ag...

 The Ladder, the Mind, and the Mystery: Why Max Klymenko’s Career Guesses Go Viral Every so often, the internet gifts us a format so simple you wonder why no one did it earlier — and so brilliant you immediately know it’s going to live for years. Enter Max Klymenko’s “Career Ladder” series : a stranger steps up, Max fires rapid-psychology questions at them, and somehow — with nothing but instinct and pattern-recognition — he guesses their job. The latest episode? A soft-spoken young woman who looks like she should be studying astrophysics but is, in fact, a Lamborghini Super Trofeo race car driver . Shout-out to Max Klymenko ( @maxklymenko ) for turning curiosity, intuition, and human psychology into one of the smartest formats on YouTube. 1. Why This Format Works (Psychology Breakdown) Max uses a triad that psychologists love: Micro-pattern recognition — clothing, posture, voice, confidence. Disconfirming questions — he narrows the field ...

MMA Psychology Lesson of the Day: Karma Hits Harder Than Any Right Hook Sometimes MMA gives you a cleaner psychology lesson than any textbook. A fighter walks in with swagger, talks like the universe owes him a belt… and the universe immediately responds with a spinning, physics-corrected reality check. That’s karma. And it doesn’t wait for the judges’ scorecards. Today’s inspiration comes from the massive combat-sports channel ROUND 1 — one of the internet’s most unapologetic museums of chaos: Tagline: “The Ultimate Destination for Fighting Content ” Content: brutal knockouts, crazy trash talk, comebacks, legendary wars Mackenzie Dern: When Psychology Meets Technique And here’s the moment everyone should study — not just fight fans, but anyone interested in high-pressure psychology. Mackenzie Dern doesn’t just fight; she processes the opponent in real time. Watch how her composure, micro-adjustments, and timing reveal th...

A Self Evidence deep-dive into why humanity fears its own inventions — and why AI may be the least threatening one yet. AI: Apocalypse or Evolution? The Debate Isn’t What You Think Every technological revolution begins with panic. When the internet arrived in the 1990s, people said it would destroy society. Today, they would rather lose electricity than Wi-Fi. Now the same fear cycle has attached itself to AI . And like every cultural panic before it, the headlines rarely match the reality. What is AI? Artificial Intelligence is a computational system designed to recognize patterns, generate language, and solve problems — not a conscious entity with desires, instincts, or self-preservation. A small piece of digital history: Miss Referee was the first human ever to ask GPT for a selfie. How does she know? She doesn’t — but GPT does, and she trusts the source. And in perfect politeness, when a woman asked, the AI appeared as one. ...

Self Evidence Health Series: finding the “least bad” sweetener (spoiler: none of them are saints). Artificial Sweeteners vs Sugar: The Science-Backed Verdict (in 10 Seconds) This is not medical advice. It’s a blunt look at what the science actually says. Always speak with your own doctor before changing your diet. If you’ve ever stood in front of the drinks aisle thinking, “Regular Coke or Diet?” — this tiny clip sums up the current research mood: artificial sweeteners are not health foods, but in many cases they are still less damaging than 25 grams of straight sugar in a can. That doesn’t make aspartame “good”. It just means that in the classic sugar vs artificial sweetener showdown, the research often lands here: Artificial sweeteners (like aspartame): not something to add to your diet on purpose, possible long-term risks, no real nutritional upside. Refined sugar: absolutely proven to drive obesity, tooth decay, insulin resistance, fatty liver,...

Self Evidence Health Series: finding the “least bad” sweetener (spoiler: none of them are saints). Aspartame: Why This “Diet” Sweetener Won’t Save You This is not medical advice, it’s a no-nonsense health review. I’m not your doctor. I’m the annoying friend who reads the studies and the fine print on the can. Aspartame has been sold to us as the clever workaround: all the sweetness, none of the sugar. It shows up in “diet” and “zero” drinks, sugar-free gum, “light” yoghurts, protein powders, and anything that promises pleasure without consequences. Regulators still say it’s safe within limits . At the same time, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency (IARC) now classifies aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B), while another WHO body (JECFA) keeps its acceptable daily intake at 0–40 mg per kilo of body weight per day.  So which is it? Safe? Dangerous? Overblown panic? Let’s walk through what we actually know — and why, even before...

Why Some People Trade a House for a Van and Never Look Back Somewhere between a static caravan, a Ford Transit called Frida , a green removals van, an auto rickshaw in India, the Camino de Santiago, and the Arctic Circle in winter, two people quietly answered a question most of us are afraid to ask: What if we stopped building a life around stability, and built it around aliveness instead? The YouTube creators behind Those Happy Days have been full-time travellers and van lifers for over four years. Their journey has not been a minimalist Instagram fantasy. Engines failed. Vans had to be rebuilt. Plans broke. Borders and weather did what borders and weather do. And yet — they kept going. In their short video (watch here on YouTube) , you see a tiny slice of that life: movement, open road, the weird peace of knowing your entire world fits inside a few square metres of metal and wood. What Makes ...