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What Happens To Our Decision-Making Brain As We Age
Huffington Post: It's 2031, and you are among the first humans to set foot on Mars. You and the other pioneering astronauts have discovered that there is actually a small amount of oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, but you need to figure out how to extract it. The future colonization of the Red Planet depends on your success in this task. Imagine you're the leader of this mission, and you have two oxygen extraction systems that might work. You need to pick someone to test the two competing systems, and you have two equally qualified candidates. One is an up-and-comer, just turned 20 and eager to make his mark. The other is 67, a veteran. Which do you put in charge of this crucial job?
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Profanity on TV Linked to Foul-Mouthed Kids
U.S. News & World Report: Is TV turning our kids into fountains of four-letter words? Maybe so, says a new study that finds a link between foul-mouthed inner-city children and profanity-ridden shows and video games. However, the research doesn't confirm that exposure to trash-talking adults directly leads to swearing among kids, nor does it explain why non-aggressive cussing might be a bad thing. And the actual size of the possible effect is unknown, although the study's lead author called it "moderate." "As a society we've gotten pretty lax concerning profanity. We're desensitized to it," said the author, Sarah M. Coyne, an assistant professor at Brigham Young University.
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Spoiler Alert
American Scientist: Movie critics might do their readers a favor by slipping more plot spoilers into their reviews. Far from wrecking a story, revealing a surprise ending makes fiction more enjoyable. Psychologists picked a dozen short stories—including mysteries and tales with clever plot twists—and wrote a spoiler for each. At least 30 people read the original version of each story alone, while another 30 read the spoiler first. Those who knew a story’s ending consistently ranked it as more pleasureable than did naive readers. The authors speculate that people who already knew the endings felt less anxious and enjoyed anticipating events in the story.
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Steve Jobs and LSD: A Q&A on hallucinogenic drugs
The Star-Ledger: In the cascade of news coverage about Apple founder Steve Jobs following his death on Oct. 5, it was reported that he had taken LSD, the hallucinogenic drug popularized in the 1960s. The Apple innovator, who was 56 at the time of his death from pancreatic cancer, said taking the drug was "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." In another interview, Jobs said Microsoft would have been a better company had founder Bill Gates "dropped acid." That statement is at odds with the anti-drug message most young people hear from parents and teachers.
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Kind Words Can Lead to Harsh Consequences
Yahoo! Canada: Politeness has a place, but not in high-stakes situations, according to researchers. Whether a pilot is making an emergency flight or a doctor is trying to help a patient make a surgical decision, the sort of vague, evasive responses that help us avoid hurting someone's feelings can have disastrous consequences, according to a team of scientists, including Jean-François Bonnefon and Wim de Neys of the National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Toulouse in France, and Aidan Feeney of Queen's University in the United Kingdom. The more sensitive an issue, the more polite we tend to become, according to the researchers.
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The Default Choice, So Hard to Resist
The New York Times: IN the wide-open Web, choice and competition are said to be merely “one click away,” to use Google’s favorite phrase. But in practice, the power of digital distribution channels, default product settings and traditional human behavior often matters most. In a Senate hearing last month about Google, Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, pointed to that reality in his testimony. “If competition really were just ‘one click away,’ as Google suggests,” he said, “why have they invested so heavily to be the default choice on Web browsers and mobile phones?” “Clearly,” he added, “they are not taking any chances.” Read the whole story: The New York Times
