BPS Research Digest

You broke (3) with this comment! Similarly, there's some research that less-legible text is recalled better: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/12/harder-to-read-fonts-b… Compare also bloggers who intentionally oversimplify and make small errors in their headlines/articles, guaranteeing more attention via outrage-forwarding, a vibrant comment section, and 'hook' for a followup post that extends/clarifies/apologizes. Strightforwardness is good for many things... but not memorability.

We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time Our identity is more stable at some times than others however. Supposedly, stability peaks mid-life[1]. I wonder if middle aged people procrastinate less. Also, how much do people differ in their ability to identify with their future selves? We know that people have different time preference and some people emphasize the immediate (discount) more than others. Do they procrastinate more, too? Is this difference innate, cultural, ideological? Peter Frost theorizes that viewing yourself as part of this great chain of ancestors and descendants was very adaptive (maybe even more important than mastering agriculture) at one time and helped drive human expansion.[2] Which would make it at least partially cultural. Finally, some people view procrastination as a fundamentally rational way to avoid doing work that may never need to be done, like you would a gut feeling about someone's trustworthiness. This doesn't work in an artificial setting of term papers but in a complex system you can simply wait things out quite often. [1] http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-stability-of-your-… [2] http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-agricultural-revolution-th…

This was a survey of 771 Australians, almost all men, working in construction[1]. Also "coworker support" is a big factor[2], the authors concluded. It's entirely unclear to me whether the results have any applicability to the types of technology jobs that the largely (I speculate) Silicon Valley HN audience holds. For one, software engineering isn't exactly hard physical labor, where getting a promotion to foreman in your 40s may mean a lot less hauling concrete. Second, women are present in greater numbers in white-collar jobs than in construction. Third, relationships with your coworkers are likely going to be different in an office environment. Fourth, there may be cultural differences between Australian construction workers and the rest of the world, even U.S. construction workers. Fifth, there's likely not the same (alleged, at least) age discrimination in construction, where you gain more skills over time and aren't expected to know the latest inane web JSRubyPythonGolangMartiniNodeDjangoErlangLuaRailsExpressConnectHaskellRestMVCController framework du jour. So in other words the NYMag.com article this HN thread links to could have been written exactly the opposite way -- by concluding that the study's results have no proven applicability except to, well, Australian male construction workers. [1] http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/07/peoples-happiness-at-w… [2]…

the article is paywalled, the link only gives the abstract. there is an informative summary here: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.fr/2014/06/women-young-people-and-…

> What would really need to be done is look properly into why there is a disproportionate number of men versus women who go into technology, rather than introduce yet more segregation. This isn't some big mystery. At least one reason that women don't enter technology fields is a lack of female role-models. Another is societal pressure that dictates that women are bad at technology. Technology conferences focusing on women aren't just for the participants, they help counteract these two forces by giving visibility to notable women in tech. http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.ca/2006/03/women-need-female-role-… http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/21/where-have-all-the-wome…

We're happier when busy, but our instinct is for idleness: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/07/were-happier-when-busy…

It probably has something to do with differences in how people think about abstract concepts like time.. Read these, really fascinating stuff actually. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758822 http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009/08/surprising-links-betwe…

I've often wondered how most people read comments. There's something funny you see in voting patterns if you make a comment, and then someone replies with refutation, and then the refutation is refuted, and so on. Fist, you see your comment get upvoted. But, if someone replies with a refutation that uses the word because[1], or is otherwise convincing, and calls you an idiot, you'll start to get downvoted (downvotes are rarer if there's no invective). That happens even if the 'refutation' consists purely of blatant logical fallacies. I tend not to reply to those, because it seems like a waste of time, so I'll often get downvoted to or below 0 before someone replies to the reply, at which point my comment score will start climbing upwards again. This is the only site I regularly comment on, because I don't know of any public forum that has a similarly high level of discussion. I'm not sure the level of reading is the same, though. Skimming is dangerous. I do it, too, unfortunately. There's actually been a set of studies that have shown that people are more likely to be convinced by nonsense they've read if they're distracted. The dangerous part here is that once you've been convinced by something, you don't tag that information as being unreliable because you didn't think critically about it when you first saw it. I'll sometimes catch myself, in a friendly debate, repeating something I've read, and then immediately saying "nevermind; that doesn't make any sense", because…

there's no evidence to suggest that this applies to non-linguistic things That seemed odd to me just going off (less than scientific) bits and pieces I've read over the years, especially relating to retail design where a popular adage is that "people tend to walk to the right upon entering a store" (so that's where you put the more expensive goodies). But a cliché isn't evidence. So I thought I'd look for stronger citations. And man, it's tough. I haven't found anything on the retail thing yet but there seems to be evidence of preferences for one direction over another in studies. For example: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2006/12/satisfaction-guarantee… Reading direction appears to have an influence on the ease with which items are detected in different hemispheres: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/1/15.abstract (and sort of related: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/6/487.abstract)

Work ethic leads to better performance than IQ in college students: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=789312 Example of what can happen when the workload exceeds one's raw intelligence and exposes the limitations of work ethic: http://lwn.net/Articles/393694/ And another HN post provides evidence that working harder will contribute to your happiness: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/07/were-happier-when-busy… The simple fact is you are plugging yourself into where some very bright people are communing (namely, HN) and that shows that you recognize value. You seem to also be able to assess yourself. That is good. At least you know where you are starting from. Focus on the positive. What you set your mind on tends to be what you get more of in your life. Don't worry about how smart everyone else is. Results are the only things that matter at the end of the day. So set your mind on what you want (a goal) and work harder than you did the previous day/week/month/year to get there. Constantly be learning (by coming here, you will.) Learn how to learn better, faster, easier. Learn how to work faster, cheaper, more productively. "Hack" your mind/heart and apply your life to the expression of your mind/heart and you will see more results. (Notice the absence of moral guidance there. I don't want to start a flame war only indicate a system and a pattern.) Enough self-help guidance. I wish you well.

> Ironically, [the patient] scared one of the [people dressed as] monsters [and tried to scare her in a famous haunted house for research purposes] when she poked it in the head because she was “curious” as to what it would feel like. This article and the other few I'll link in this comment are about a condition of human amygdalae (a brain part), symptoms of which includes lack of fear. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdalae * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdalae#Fear * http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com.tr/2013/02/extreme-fear-experi… This is among the weirdest human conditions I've seen in my life, thus I had to submit it here. I ended up finding about the subject while reading another submission about schizophrenia[1], which is an awesome read. The original title of the research is “The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear”, I chose to use this simpler and more provoking title as it highlights the interesting point: the lack of fear. NoScript users: you'll see near-nothing on the page, (temporarily) enable JS in order to see the text. The website supplies a PDF download of the text, but it is written with a bold sans-serif font all through, so it is hard on eyes. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7662957, http://theamericanscholar.org/what-killed-my-sister/?key=55917458 edit: formatting