CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

Amen!

Richard Feynman is a genius, but what sets him apart is his ability to communicate and his humor. Someone I could listen to all day.

Full article can be found here.

Here is an awesome youtube video of him explaining the question “why?”.

The Brain

There is a great debate going on, which really brings out what we know about the brain, and its future prospects. Many people in their life question the substance of their consciousness, and wonder if we can emulate it. I find both views cogent, and I do not know where I stand in the debate. On the one hand, I understand the reductionist, mechanical view regarding everything, brain included. But, is there oversimplification in the debate? Are we arrogant to think we can emulate everything?

Here is a summary of the debate:

NeuroLogica - Kurzweil vs Myer on Brain Complexity

Here is a Bloggingheads.tv with one of my favorite thinkers Eliezer Yudkowsky, debating this very topic:

Eliezer Yudkowsky vs Massimo Pigliucci.

Self-Esteem and Free will

There is a great web site called Barking Up The Wrong Tree. The author now writes for the weird magazine.

Positive Thinking:

“Believe in yourself” may be a cliché, but there’s a growing mass of scientific evidence showing us just how much of a difference it can make. In studying negotiation, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley concluded that those who strongly believed they could improve their skills had better results across the board.

Of course, it’s not as simple as saying, “I believe X ”. A University of Waterloo paper found : “Two experiments showed that among participants with low self-esteem, those who repeated a positive self-statement (‘I’m a lovable person’) felt worse than those who did not repeat the statement.”

So, your belief must be sincere.

Here is an article from a great site called Mind Hacks:

A delightful study just published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that belief in free will predicted job performance better than conscientiousness, belief in influence over life events and a commitment to a ‘Protestant work ethic’ where diligent labor is seen as a benefit in itself.

Seems like a pattern. Does the belief in free will also need to be sincere? In there a link with the belief in free will and positive self-esteem?

Nature

I find this topic fascinating, how the environment has an effect on our personality.

Psychology Of Nature:

 

“Sometimes wonder if, when we look back at the mass cognitive mistakes of the 21st century, we’ll worry less about the internet and multitasking – people have been multitasking forever – and instead fret about our turn away from nature. The human species is urbanizing at an unprecedented rate”

 

We may not fully understand the pure technological effects on society for years to come, a topic that we should be on the look out for.

Market Efficiency

 

Choice Blindness - Frontal Cortex

And yet, that’s exactly what happened. According to the scientists, less than a third of participants realized at any point during the experiment that their preferences had been switched. In other words, the vast majority of consumers failed to notice any difference between their intended decision (“I really want Cinnamon-Apple jam”) and the actual outcome of their decision (getting bitter grapefruit jam instead). We spend so much time obsessing over our consumer choices – I just spent ten minutes debating the merits of Guatemalan coffee beans versus Indonesian beans –  but this experiment suggests that all this analysis is an enormous waste of energy. I could have just gotten Sanka: My olfactory system is too stupid to notice the difference.

What’s most unsettling, however, is that we are completely ignorant of how fallible our perceptions are. In this study, for instance, the consumers were convinced that it was extremely easy to tell the difference between these pairs of jam and tea. They insisted that they would always be able to tell grapefruit jam and cinnamon-apple jam apart. But they were wrong, just as I’m wrong to believe that I would be able to reliably pick out the difference between all these different kinds of coffee beans. We are all blind to our own choice blindness.

One of my favorite blog.

I always wondered, if the market is so efficient, and people know that they are choice-blind, will Starbucks still succeed? It seems like there is a contradiction here.

I guess Starbucks offers more then just coffee e.g., status signaling (you can afford expensive coffee), free internet (opposite of reason one, no?), or an environment to meet friends.

Perception

 

People Who Are Trusting Are Better At Detecting Liars:

 

“Although people seem to believe that low trusters are better lie detectors and less gullible than high trusters, these results suggest that the reverse is true," write co-authors Nancy Carter and Mark Weber of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. "High trusters were better lie detectors than were low trusters; they also formed more appropriate impressions and hiring intentions.

"People who trust others are not pie-in-the-sky Pollyannas, their interpersonal accuracy may make them particularly good at hiring, recruitment, and identifying good friends and worthy business partners."

Does the ability to accurately asses if someone is lying, cause people to have more faith in people?

What I mean is: If you cannot detect liars, is seems that you are more likely to assume a general stance of mistrust as a safety net due to your lack of detections skills. On the other hand, if you have the ability to detect liars you will lean on your ability, and will, by the your very nature, detect many more trusting people which causes a more trusting attitude.

Lie detection can be the cause of more trust. It is interesting how our skills affect our perceptions of the universe.