The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was a pioneer of electronic music in TV programmes between 1958-1998, and is an absolute monument in the field.
This documentary shows some key members who clearly had not the faintest idea how incredibly cool they were:
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If someone shares their worries with you, the words to use that are experienced as the most supportive and trusting are ‘I’ (self-disclosure) and ‘you’ (responsiveness), new research suggests—while advice giving etc had little or no effect:
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Research by Li et al suggests texting daily with a
random human peer may be more effective in alleviating loneliness than texting with a highly supportive chatbot (designed to offer consistent support rooted in principles from relationship science):
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HT @jayvanbavel.bsky.social
Little toddlers test the boundaries of their power—like when they have found mum’s unguarded makeup box.
Could the same instinct be what drives leaders who violate unguarded “international law”? Or is there more to it?
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“We are designed to be hypocrites.”
Rather than a moral failing, hypocrisy is a structural feature—a deliberate disconnection between the module that acts and the module that explains, writes Aditya Kulkarni:
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HT @robsica
Voor wie enkel voor eigen parochie wil preken volstaat retoriek om een koerswijziging goed te praten of de keuzes van een tegenstander te veroordelen.
Maar voor geloofwaardigheid en respect beantwoord je beter de wanneer-vraag.
Mijn @apache.be stukje:
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Nature trumps nurture
New German twin research suggests that it is principally a person’s genes that drive the connection between cognitive ability and socio-economic outcomes (education and occupation), rather than their environment:
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via @psypost.bsky.social
Exercise is said to be the best prescription for maintaining independence in old age.
But what is the right dose — in terms of frequency, intensity and duration? What type of exercise is best?
At what age do you need to start — and how late is too late?
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Anyone afflicted with an excess of nostalgia for the world of the 1990s, check out this somewhat critical look back to the decade by @brankomilan:
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Ideological fanaticism is not a pleasant affair—from Nazism and totalitarian communism to religious fundamentalism, it has a grim death toll.
And while it lost a lot of its feathers, it still has plenty of adherents, posing a considerable risk:
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What motivates people in their daily lives?
Research by Ko et al in 27 societies across the world suggests familial motives (care for kin—children and family) and mate retention are of primary importance and mate-seeking much less so:
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The McDonald's Paradox—the People demand healthy options… and when they are offered, the People don’t buy them.
@cjferguson1111 gets to the bottom of this conundrum:
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Blogged: Why we follow some laws (but not others) without being made to
International law violations galore... yet most of us don't really need enforcement to behave. What explains this difference? The search for an answer leads to an unexpected place:
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Research by @standehaene.bsky.social et al suggests learning to read—even at advanced age—boosts and alters the visual cortex, fine tuning it for recognizing written text relative to other visual categories. Some minor tradeoffs occur (eg facial recognition):
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What really makes us attracted to each other?
Researchers examined two hypotheses—"One Ornament" and "Multiple Messages" (different traits signal the same thing/different things)—focusing on facial, bodily and vocal attractiveness:
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Social distancing? A vague memory of something we adopted during the COVID pandemic.
We’re not alone. Ants apply this idea too—when exposed to a pathogen, they build nests with more spread-out entrances and fewer direct connections between chambers:
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Say when
Top tip for adding credibility to momentous decisions, or condemnations thereof: state clearly what the conditions and criteria are that would/will change your mind.
ICYMI, last call for my post with the shortest title ever, When:
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Pursuing two goals is not what you’d expect to increase your chance of success.
But if they are complementary or otherwise connected, you may stand a better chance to reach both, research suggests:
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Total recall!
Research by Seffen et al suggests people find it harder to reduce their meat consumption when eating out, when in the company of others, and during dinner (vs other meals), and evaluates the effectiveness of various self-control strategies:
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HT @bxjaeger.bsky.social
Setting a cap on the rate of false positives on AI detectors can help handle the tradeoffs they pose, and compare the efficacy of different services:
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The ATM, literally the *automated teller machine*, did not automate the teller. It was the iPhone, writes David Oks—a complementary technology.
Maybe we should adopt similar thinking when exploring what AI will (and *wont*) do to jobs:
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HT @aleximas.bsky.social
Culture can shape cognition through 4 pathways, argue @dorsaamir.bsky.social & @benjaminpitt.bsky.social (explained with 3 examples):
•privilege some cognitive processes, leaving alternatives intact
•prune unused alternative processes
•produce new cognitive processes
•no effect
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I don’t think there is confusion—it is precisely the preference differential (and the consequential value differential) that eliminates the fungibility.
Belief in conspiracy theories is not (just) something for people with poor reasoning skills.
New research suggests an important predictor is a need for finding patterns and rules (referred to as “systemizing”), even in strong analytical thinkers:
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What is now the Mediterranean was once a barren desert. Then, the Gibraltar strait, blocked 700,000 years earlier, burst open and the basin filled up.
What if we used technology to create more seas like the Mediterranean? wonders @tomaspueyo
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In typical spoken Japanese, there are 20% more syllables per second than in spoken English.
Why is that, and what does that tell us about how we use language?
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We are more than our memory, but without it we’re nothing—that’s how crucial it is.
Yet we only remember certain things, and not all in the same way.
If you want people to remember something, you’d better understand this, writes @neuroscienceof.bsky.social:
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There’s more than one possible reason why a taxi driver might not wear a seat belt.
@alextabarrok explores the economic puzzle he proposed earlier, and reveals a case of *advantageous* selection.
Thinking like an economist FTW!
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Meta-analysis by Hart et al suggests both the motivation to feel validated and the motivation to gain an accurate understanding of reality are important in information selection, but
tendencies toward congeniality prevail:
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