ICYMI: Dumb Inspirational Quotes, Dumber People – The Daily Beast

2015/12/23 Leave a comment

Next time you are tempted to post an ‘inspirational quote’, this study may prompt second thoughts:
A new study finds that people who love bulls**t inspirational quotes have lower intelligence and more “conspiratorial ideations.” Sounds about right.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Stars can’t shine without darkness. A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Feeling inspired? Well, perhaps you shouldn’t be, because those who post motivational quotes on social media have been found to display lower levels of intelligence than those who are more discerning over such ‘profound’ messages.

“On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit,” a studyundertaken at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, surveyed nearly 300 students on their reactions to so-called meaningful statements, which were in fact syntactically sound but quasi-nonsensical lines made up of buzzwords. They were asked to rate each statement on its level of profundity on a scale of one to five.

“Bullshit, in contrast to mere nonsense, is something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth,” the paper explains. It takes its meaning of the word from Harry Frankfurt’s 2005 work “On Bullshit,” which defines it as something engineered to impress yet requiring no direct concern for the truth. “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction,” he wrote.

In this particular study, participants’ personality traits were also analyzed in order to create a clear picture of those who were most likely to be impressed by motivational quotes.

“More analytic individuals should be more likely to detect the need for additional scrutiny when exposed to pseudo-profound bullshit,” the researchers posit. For those who scored highly on the profundity levels of buzzword-filled sayings, researchers detected lower numerative and cognitive abilities, as well as lower general intelligence levels. The bullshit-lovers were also found to have more “conspiratorial ideations” than those unimpressed by such statements, as well as lesser ability in verbal fluidity and being reflective.

The paper, which uses the word “bullshit” more than 200 times, addresses Twitter’s role in the surge of online meaninglessness. It cites a Deepak Chopra tweet—which reads, “Attention and intention are the mechanics of example”—to reinforce its claims.

“The vagueness…indicates that it may have been constructed to impress upon the reader some sense of profundity at the expense of a clear exposition of truth.”

“Bullshit is not only common, it is popular,” note the researchers of Chopra’s appeal (that line is, in fact, a more meaningful tweet from The New Yorker‘s Maria Konnikova). Indeed, Chopra has amassed more than 20 New York Times Bestsellers and over 2.5 million Twitter followers. The latter site’s stringent 140 character limit is key to the proliferation of such “woo-woo nonsense” posts, as having to shrink down statements is a surefire way of reducing the quality and clarity of meaning.

Source: Dumb Inspirational Quotes, Dumber People – The Daily Beast

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As More Israelis Go Vegan, Their Military Adjusts Its Menu : The Salt : NPR

2015/12/12 Leave a comment

Interesting example of reasonable accommodation and responding to demographic trends:

After the war, Yuval, 27, realized there were likely thousands of other vegan soldiers who were suffering from inadequate nutrition. About 5 percent of Israel’s population is vegan, among the highest rates in the world. In a nation where military service is compulsory for most people, this means ever more vegans in uniform.

So Yuval drafted a letter to the army requesting more vegan meals, more nutritionally balanced food without animal products, vegan options for prepared sandwiches, and less bureaucracy in recognizing a soldier as vegan. The note included suggestions, such as adding hummus and soy milk to breakfast, quinoa to lunch and avocado to sandwiches.

“This letter is not a demand or hint for easing of the military service,” the note read. “To the contrary, this letter aims to create equal rights and opportunities to allow for the vegan soldier to maintain a lifestyle that will enable him to perform every task assigned to him and to serve the country the best he can, whether in compulsory, career or reserve service.”

The Israeli military, it turns out, was surprisingly eager to help. A military spokesman tells The Salt that vegans serve in all capacities, including as combat soldiers. Vegan soldiers wear wool-free berets and leather-free boots, and they get an additional stipend to supplement their food, the military says.

What’s more, the Israel Defense Forces “is currently working on creating a complete meal plan for vegan soldiers who serve on closed bases,” the spokesman tells us via email. Soldiers will get extra plant-based products for breakfast and lunch, “as well as supplementary vitamin packs to ensure that the soldiers receive all the necessary nutrients.”

The army follows a number of other Israeli institutions to accommodate vegans.

In November 2014, the cafeteria for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, began offering two to three vegan options daily, with extras on Mondays, according to spokesman Tal Vider.

And in 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his residence would also commit to “Meatless Mondays” — though a spokesman in Netanyahu’s office could not confirm whether the program was ongoing.

According to Israeli media reports, veganism is on the rise among Arab citizens of Israel as well.

Even Domino’s Israel has joined in, serving more than half a million vegan pizzas in 2014.

Yuval says the army has indeed changed in the past year, in no small part because of efforts like his. There are more vegan options at lunch, but he says there is still more to be done for breakfast, dinner and sandwiches.

In Israel, the fierce embrace of veganism has not been without controversy. Among the vegans in Israel are the founders of the radical 269 movement, whose members stage publicity stunts — including branding themselves, leaving severed cattle heads in public places, and “liberating” animals from farms. The Hebrew-subtitled version of an incendiary speech by U.S. animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky, who compares the meat and dairy industries to the Holocaust, has received more than 1 million views. Yourofsky raised eyebrows for speaking at an Israeli settlement during a visit in 2013.

“I don’t care about Jews or Palestinians, or their stupid, childish battle over a piece of Godforsaken land in the desert,” Yourofsky told +972 Magazine at the time. “I care about animals.”

While many vegans do comply with Israel’s near-universal draft for Jewish citizens, some say serving in the Israeli army violates the same morals that drove them to avoid eating animal products.

Haggai Matar, a vegan and a journalist in Tel Aviv, spent two years in prison as punishment for refusing the draft in 2002. He said he did not understand vegans who participated in what he sees as Israel’s abuse of Palestinian rights.

“It’s absurd that combat soldiers can feel very bad about hurting animals, but they have no problem to drop bombs on Gaza and kill hundreds of people,” he says.

Matar, 31, says military prison had few vegan options, but his parents brought him soy chocolate milk, and he and other vegan prisoners were often allowed access to the prison kitchen.

Law professor Aeyal Gross of Tel Aviv University warned in 2013, in the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, against “veganwashing,” or using Israel’s vegan-friendly face as a mask to cover up what he sees as human rights violations.

Yuval, the soldier who pushed for vegan food in the army, says not all vegans are pacifists.

“We are fighting terror organizations,” he says. “I believe that the vegan reform in the IDF is paving the way for an even more moral army.”

Source: As More Israelis Go Vegan, Their Military Adjusts Its Menu : The Salt : NPR

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Charts: No, the Y-Axis Doesn’t Always Need to Start at Zero | Re/code

2015/12/09 Leave a comment

Having spent more than a year on finding the right charts for my book, Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote, I liked this little video on when to use the 0 and when not (also applies to the x-axis, where for median income data, starting at 0 made no sense):

If you write things on the Internet, angry email is inevitable. If you make charts on the Internet, angry email about those charts is inevitable. Especially if your charts sometimes use a y-axis that starts at a number other than zero. You see, an old book called “How to Lie With Statistics” has convinced people that truncated axes are a devilish tool of deception.

The truth is that you certainly can use truncated axes to deceive. But you can also use them to illuminate. In fact, you often have to mess with the y-axis in order to craft a useful image — especially because data sometimes reaches into negative territory and sometimes goes nowhere near zero. The right principle is that charts ought to show appropriate context. Sometimes that context includes zero, but sometimes it doesn’t. It’s long past time to say no to y-axis fundamentalism.

Source: Charts: No, the Y-Axis Doesn’t Always Need to Start at Zero | Re/code

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Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design – The New York Times

2015/12/07 Leave a comment

Next time you can’t stop yourself looking at your various social media feeds and other apps, consider how companies are engineering such stickiness:

Tech companies tend to present these feedback loops as consumer conveniences. A new Intel TV ad, for instance, shows a young girl in the back of a car growing sad because the laptop on which she was watching a singalong video suddenly runs out of power. The company’s new battery-preserving processor, though, ultimately saves the day, “so you never have to stop watching.” T-Mobile has just introduced BingeOn, a feature that offers subscribers on certain plans unlimited high-speed access to popular streaming video channels.

An image from “Network Effect.”

There’s even an industry term for the experts who continually test and tweak apps and sites to better hook consumers, keep them coming back and persuade them to stay longer: growth hackers.

“How do you drive habitual use of a product?” said Sean Ellis, the chief executive of GrowthHackers.com, a software company specializing in online growth techniques. “It’s not just about getting new people. It’s about retaining the people you already have and, ultimately, getting them to bring in more people.”

As an example, Mr. Ellis described how he recently started using a free meditation app, called Calm, which has a calendar feature that gently nudges subscribers to use the service more. Every time he finishes a session, the app “shows me I’m doing one every three to four days,” Mr. Ellis said. “But it’s clear to me that I should be doing one every day, based on the graphic.”

Yet technologists like Tristan Harris, a design ethicist who is also a product philosopher at Google, warn that growth hacking, taken to its extreme, can encourage sites and apps to escalate their use of persuasive design techniques with potentially unintended consequences for consumers. He compares online engagement maximization efforts to the so-called bliss-point techniques some food companies have developed to hook consumers on a stew of fat, salt and sugar.

“The ‘I don’t have enough willpower’ conversation misses the fact that there are 1,000 people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down the self-regulation that you have,” said Mr. Harris, who emphasized that he was speaking only for himself and not for Google.

Mr. Harris is also the co-director of an effort called Time Well Spent, which encourages tech companies to provide more choices for users who would like to limit session-prolonging techniques like autoplaying one video or song after another. He said he envisioned alternative app designs that might measure success not in followers, connections, endorsements or likes accumulated, but in meaningful relationships developed or desired jobs offered.

“Right now, many company leaders and designers would like to do these things differently, but the incentives aren’t aligned to do this,” Mr. Harris said.

Certainly, it may be difficult for efforts like Time Well Spent and art projects like “Network Effect” to sway companies that find themselves in increasingly heated competition for online users’ attention.

Source: Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design – The New York Times

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In praise of induction – The Washington Post

2015/11/09 Leave a comment

Another way at looking at the difference between evidence and anecdote, and the merits and utility of each, by Daniel W. Dresser of  the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University:

One of the tensions that explains the fraught relationship between politics and the academy is that academics are big fans of deductive thinking and politicians are not.

At the risk of exaggerating the gap, academics like to think deductively — i.e., start from theory and then test whether that theory explains parts of the real world. When I was in graduate school, my professors talked a lot about the perils of thinking inductively — i.e., building a general theory from looking at a particular case. The obvious danger was to build a theory from a particular case, and then use that case as evidence of the theory’s power — the very definition of a tautology.

Politicians preternaturally think in an inductive manner. They build from experience, narrative and analogy to articulate what they think matters in the world of policy. For politicians, this makes a great deal of sense, because they trust their own experiences far more than abstract data, and because they know that narratives resonate far more with voters and citizens than abstract theories. Consider, for example, Chris Christie’s moving discussion of how to treat drug addicts. It’s a brilliant demonstration of a politician using a particular narrative to make a deeper point on policy.

In splitting the world like this, I’m simplifying things a lot. One could argue that Barack Obama’s problem as a politician is that he is too abstract and not inductive enough. Similarly, most scholarship emerges from the interplay of deductive and inductive thinking. But still, I think there is some truth in this dichotomy.

My reason for bringing this up is to point out that my own tribe of academics still looks down on the inductive method of theorizing as a flawed approach that is prone to error. And those flaws are real. But I fear that this has blinded many academics to the virtues of induction, because they exist. Indeed, twice in the past week, it’s come up in policy debates.

Source: In praise of induction – The Washington Post

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How to be less stupid, according to psychologists: Tone down that ‘confident ignorance’

2015/10/31 Leave a comment

Interesting study and characterization of the three kinds of stupidity (and how awareness and mindfulness are key to reducing it):

What they found is that people tend to agree about what deserves to be called stupid and what doesn’t — remarkably, there was a roughly 90 per cent rate of agreement. They also learned that there are, it seems, three situations, that we tend to use the word stupid for. Three scenarios, characterized by specific types of behavior, that make people cringe or laugh or put their hands to their forehead.

The first is what Aczel and his team call “confident ignorance.” It’s when a person’s self-perceived ability to do something far outweighs that person’s actual ability to do it, and it’s associated with the highest level of stupidity.

Think of a drunk driver, who wrongly believes he or she is perfectly capable of manning the wheel. Or a burglar, who, meaning to steal a phone, instead plucks a GPS device, which leads the police straight to him.

People don’t just find this type of behavior stupid — they seem to associate it with the highest level of stupidity. These were given a mean stupidity score of 8.5 out of 10, a good deal higher than that for any other.

“The stupidest thing someone can do is overestimate themselves,” he said. “What that tells us is that you don’t have to have a low IQ, in people’s eyes, to act stupidly. You just have to misperceive your abilities.”

The second thing we use the word stupid to describe is when someone does something because they have, on some level, lost their ability to do otherwise.

Aczel calls this “lack of control” and characterizes it as the result of “obsessive, compulsive, or addictive behavior.” He offers the example of a person who decides to cancel plans with a good friend in order to keep playing video games at home.

The third type of behavior people like to call stupid is what Aczel coins “absentmindedness — lack of practicality.” It’s an either/or scenario, in which someone does something that’s clearly irrational, but for a reason that could be one of two things: they either weren’t paying attention or simply weren’t aware of something.

Think of someone who, having overfilled their car tires, ends up on the side of the road with a flat. That person either forgot to pay attention while filling the tires or didn’t know that he or she needed to do so in the first place. And we’re apt to call both of those scenarios stupid, albeit less stupid than the previous examples.

In some ways, Aczel’s research recalls the famous and oft-quoted scene from “Forrest Gump,” in which Tom Hanks, asked whether he’s crazy or just plain stupid, quips, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

These stupidity categories can potentially predict what environmental or inner states increase the likelihood that one would behave in a way that others could call stupid

The research, as it turns out, offers important lessons for all of us, because what we choose to call stupid actually has a significant impact on our behavior. As Aczel and his colleagues write in their paper:

“These stupidity categories can potentially predict what environmental or inner states increase the likelihood that one would behave in a way that others could call stupid. For example, ingested substances or excessive social support can promote confidence disproportionate to competence.

Executing habitual behaviors or multi-tasking can lead to absent-mindedness. Intensive affective states can result in failure of behavior control. Our findings would suggest that these environmental or inner contexts make us more susceptible to commit foolishness. An interaction of individual differences and environmental factors may serve as predictors for people’s propensity to show behavior that others would label as stupid.”

Source: How to be less stupid, according to psychologists: Tone down that ‘confident ignorance’

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Why Fans Are Sending the Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Boxes of Legos – The Atlantic

2015/10/30 Leave a comment

Installation and performance art combined, along with politics:

Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist known worldwide for his politically charged art installations, has long butted heads with his country’s government over its censorship policies and human-rights violations. Now, he’s facing resistance of a different kind. The Danish toy company Lego refused to send the artist its plastic bricks to use in a project for the National Gallery of Victoria, explaining that it “cannot approve the use of Legos for political works.”

In an Instagram post on Friday, Ai announced the company’s rejection of his request, and suggested that it’s related to the recently announced opening of a new Legoland in Shanghai. In subsequent posts, he blasted the company’s decision and questioned their ethics: “Lego’s refusal to sell its product to the artist is an act of censorship and discrimination,” he wrote. Commenters on his posts expressed disdain for Lego (“Will never see Lego the same way again after their decision,” said one), and others suggested that Ai’s supporters send him all the bricks he needs.

The idea took off: Offers from fans seeking to donate Legos to Ai have been pouring in on Twitter since, and the company is receiving backlash for inadvertently making a political statement in their refusal to sell to the artist.

Source: Why Fans Are Sending the Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Boxes of Legos – The Atlantic

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Religious Fundamentalism: A Side Effect of Lazy Brains? – The Daily Beast

2015/09/16 Leave a comment

The neuroscience of belief and how we are more likely to believe than doubt:

Brain activation, overall, was much greater and persisted longer during states of disbelief. This is important because neuroscience has long shown that  greater brain activity requires more mental resources, of which there is a limited supply. A cognitive process that demands little mental resources, such as believing, is less work for the brain and therefore favored. This concept was summed up nicely in a 2015 NewScientist cover story on the science of beliefs, which stated, “Harris’ results were widely interpreted as further confirmation that the default state of the human brain is to accept. Belief comes easily; doubt takes effort.”

This finding has great implications for understanding the factors involved in human behavior and decision-making. We all know that our beliefs strongly guide our actions and shape our moral and political attitudes. Since the brain tends to accept ideas rather than reject them, those raised in cultures that promote religious indoctrination of children at a very early age—long before they are taught science, if taught science at all—are more susceptible to holding fundamentalist beliefs later in life.

…The hard truth of the matter is that for the human mind, believing is more of a reflex than a conscious, careful, and methodical action. Rather than looming over this somewhat disconcerting fact, we should use this information to change the conditions that allow fundamentalist beliefs and dangerous ideologies to flourish. We may not yet be able to go into the brain and change it to fit what needs to be learned, but we can certainly change what needs to be learned to fit the brain.

The same process is likely with respect to political partisans of whatever stripe.

Source: Religious Fundamentalism: A Side Effect of Lazy Brains? – The Daily Beast

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Escaping the election cocoon

2015/09/12 Leave a comment

Good piece by Scott Gilmore on the risks of living in a bubble (I try to ensure my newsfeed includes a range of perspectives). As always, it starts from mindfulness of one’s own biases and applies to more than just politics).

Sound advice:

Unfortunately, our habit of tuning out ideas and voices we don’t like is part of our biological programming. “Confirmation bias,” the tendency to search for information that confirms our beliefs and to remember it longer, is a well-documented and inescapable element of our behavior. As a result, we instinctively tailor our universe to limit the emotionally upsetting views that contradict us. Until recently, the shortage of media choices made this hard to do. Left or right, we all watched the same suppertime newscast. Now, it’s finally possible to be bound in a nutshell, and count ourselves kings of infinite space, because we can avoid any bad dreams.

This has been very apparent in the refugee debate. A significant number of Canadians are opposed to allowing in more Syrians, due to the possibility that they would include Islamic State supporters, or that they would spread Islam or because we should be helping our own poor first. If you listen to a specific set of radio stations, read certain blogs and interact with people similar to yourself on Facebook, these ideas aren’t only defensible, they are overwhelmingly obvious.

Likewise, another group of Canadians who subscribe to different newspapers, listen to the CBC and read the Huffington Post are equally convinced of the self evident fact that there is a clear need for Canada to do more, and accepting far more refugees would neither strain our economy nor our social fabric. In reality, both sides are filtering out important pieces of information, making it impossible to see the full picture. Which is why neither group can grasp how anyone could possibly be so asinine as to dispute what is so clearly self-evident.

This is bad, and not just because it prevents us from having civil conversations about Canada’s refugee and immigration policies. It creates a lack of empathy that leads us to denigrate and dismiss the opinions of others. The leaders of all political parties, who are equally unable to acknowledge they do not have a monopoly on the truth, demonstrate this attitude repeatedly.

Our self-made cocoons also impair our ability to make intelligent decisions. In this election, most voters will not watch a single debate, read any of the party platforms or attend any campaign events. They don’t need to. They already know whom they’re going to vote for and, coincidentally, everyone else in his or her cocoon is voting the same way.

And for those we ultimately elect? Their own filters will make their governing decisions less effective. Ruling parties of all stripes tend only to listen to academics who support their agenda, only attend rallies that contain true believers, only read newspapers that  endorse their policies and only engage constituents who already voted for them. If it looks as if the Conservative party has only been thinking about its base for the last nine years, it’s because that’s literally true.

There are ways to cut through these cocoons, however. Just by being aware that you are constantly self-censoring the information that reaches you helps. You can also consciously resist the urge to mute the outspoken critic on Twitter, or unfollow the Facebook friend who shares articles in support of that politician you loathe. One step further would be to actually read some of those articles, or pick up a newspaper you wouldn’t normally read, no matter how much of a rag you think it is.

Source: Escaping the election cocoon

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Selecting Boys Over Girls Is A Trend In More And More Countries

2015/08/28 Leave a comment

Worrisome trend:

But in some countries the balance is tipped unnaturally toward an overabundance of boys, an imbalance that is likely to last through the reproductive years. Several things have combined to lead to what researchers call “missing women.”

Many countries have a deep-seated cultural preference for sons over daughters. Inexpensive blood tests that can determine the sex of a fetus as early as seven weeks have been developed. And countries around the world have imported ultrasound equipment. “Ultrasound is available even in very poor countries,” says Hudson. “The Chinese government actually imported ultrasound machines mounted on carts in the 20th century, so that even the most remote village would have access to this technology.”

In 1995, only six countries had such a marked imbalance of boys to girls. Today, 21 countries have a skewed sex ratio favoring boys. The growth of gender imbalance in only two decades points to widespread acceptance of modern technology that can predict the sex of the fetus, according to Hudson.

Technology has enabled even the poorest of countries to bypass the natural gender balance. “It’s largely due to the abortion of females,” says Hudson. “But it’s also due to passive neglect, such as underfeeding, underimmunization, and failing to take girls to the doctor when they’re sick.” Abortions of females can happen before anyone in the community notices a pregnancy, she says. And when girls are abandoned or neglected so severely that they die, it often doesn’t create much of a stir among people who understand the preference for boys.

“No one raises it as a public issue within the community, so while it’s not secret, it isn’t commented upon,” says Hudson.

The result of sex-selective abortions, infanticide and neglect of baby girls, according to the United Nations Population Fund, is more than 117 million “missing” females in Asia alone, and many more around the world.

And for every missing woman, there is a surplus man who will never establish a family. “Men are unable to marry,” Hudson says, and frustrated, single men are more likely get into trouble. “It leads to instability. In masculinized societies, there are issues such as rising violent crime rates, increasing rates of gang activity and rebel group activity, increasing prostitution and trafficking, and greater constraints on the movement of women.”

One country with a tradition of preferring male offspring has successfully corrected the imbalance. “South Korea is the only country I know of that has clawed back its abnormal sex ratios back to the normal range,” says Hudson. And it did this not by trying to change culture, tradition, hearts or minds — but by changing laws.

In South Korea, sons were responsible for performing ancestral rites and for the care and support of elderly parents. When the government began promoting a two-child norm in the 1970s, Hudson wrote in Foreign Policy, the ratio of boys to girls climbed to a peak of 116.5 to 100 in 1990. That’s when the South Korean government began to overhaul laws that favored sons. Women gained full rights in inheritance and in heading families. The government enforced a ban on prenatal sex testing. A pension system was established so that neither sons nor daughters were fully responsible for the care of the elderly. And today, South Korea’s ratio of boys to girls reflects nature’s average.

But a growing number of countries continue traditions, policies and practices that favor sons over daughters. “These trends do not bode well for the stability and security of nations, regions and even the international system,” says Hudson. “There is a real price to be paid for the devaluation of female life.”

Source: Selecting Boys Over Girls Is A Trend In More And More Countries : Goats and Soda : NPR

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