attention span

A 2013 Twitter global trend would last for an average of 17.5 hours, contrasted with a 2016 Twitter trend, which would last for only 11.9 hours.

don't try to fix me, i'm not broken

The science shows that we are not only bad at remaining skeptical, we’re bad at correcting our beliefs when they’re proven wrong. In a University of Michigan study called “When Corrections Fail,” political scholars Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler coined a phrase for it: the “backfire effect.”

After showing subjects a fake news article, half of the participants were provided with a correction at the bottom discrediting a central claim in the article—just like one you might see at the bottom of a blog post. All of the subjects were then asked to rate their beliefs about the claims in the article.

Those who saw the correction were, in fact, more likely to believe the initial claim than those who did not. And they held this belief more confidently than their peers. In other words, corrections not only don’t fix the error—they backfire and make misperception worse. What happens is that the correction actually reintroduces the claim into the reader’s mind and forces them to run it back through their mental processes.

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premises vs conclusion

Psychologists call this cognitive rigidity. The facts that built an original premise are gone, but the conclusion remains—the general feeling of our opinion floats over the collapsed foundation that established it.

tv vs guillotine

Sociologist Gerald Cromer once noted that the decline of public executions coincided almost exactly with the rise of the mass newspaper.

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we vs there

But one piece of evidence is telling: if you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself. In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back. While we are always at the center of the world, and it would never occur to us that pointing in the direction of our chest could mean anything other than to draw attention to ourselves, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant.

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tv vs reality

Cultivation theory is a social theory which examines the long-term effects of television. "The primary proposition of cultivation theory states that the more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television." 

Cultivation leaves people with a misperception of what is true in our world.

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happiness vs weather

happiness is maximized at 13.9°C

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please update

“That’s your responsibility as a person, as a human being — to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don’t contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you’re not thinking.”

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winston vs flintstone

The latter series would later come under fire for advertising cigarettes on an animated series watched by many children, but Winston pulled their involvement with the series after the Pebbles Flintstone character was born in 1963.

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freedom vs constraint

He noted that fun, at its essence, isn’t freedom from constraint, but the complete acceptance of it

newness vs. timeless

Because of its ability to instantly satisfy this thirst for “newness,” Twitter emphasizes the now while eschewing the timeless. 

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new idea

Cryptomnesia occurs when a forgotten memory returns without it being recognized as such by the subject, who believes it is something new and original. It is a memory bias whereby a person may falsely recall generating a thought, an idea, a song, or a joke,[1] not deliberately engaging in plagiarism but rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.

memory refresh

Memories, the new science suggests, are actually reconstructed anew every time we access them, and appear to us a little differently each time, depending on what’s happened since. 

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remix vs originality

but the key thing is that the more likely your work is going to get remixed, the less likely it's going to be in a genuinely new and interesting way. They call this trade-off between originality and generativity "the remixing dilemma".

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Proximity vs similarity

In general, people chose friends of similar age and race. But if the friend lived down the hall, then age and race became a lot less important. Proximity overpowered similarity.

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one vs all

The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint.
He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous, and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.

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virus vs gammarid

The gammarid’s odd swimming behavior allows the parasite to take the next step in its life cycle. Unlike baculoviruses, which go from caterpillar to caterpillar, thorny-headed worms need to live in two species: a gammarid and then a bird. Hiding in the pond mud keeps a gammarid safe from predators. By forcing it to swim to the surface, the thorny-headed worm makes it an easy target.

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voting vs cereals

Since the great majority of voters presumably do not expect to influence election outcomes, who they support is influenced disproportionately by campaign rhetoric, debates among candidates that have little intellectual content, and by other methods of persuasion that are not very informative about the candidates. I like to say that consumers put more time and effort into deciding which cereal to buy and into other small consumer choices than in gathering information on economic and other issues about presidential candidates.

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80/20

Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the "work" will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes.

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gambling & cocaine

He was learning that a game is, at its root, a structured experience with clear goals, rules that force a player to overcome challenges, and instant feedback. What he couldn't have known then is that because they offer those clearly articulated rewards for each point players score and new level they achieve, games trigger the release of dopamine, a hormone in the brain that encourages us to explore and try new things. Since we like the feeling we get when our brains are awash in dopamine, we'll do whatever it takes to get it, over and over again. Video and computer games, as well as slot machines, are particularly good at this. They offer "threshold effects," where prizes or level changes are dribbled out to keep us hooked. It's the same system that drives compulsive gamblers and cocaine addicts.

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in & out

We are trained to think that what goes into any transaction or relationship or system must be directly related, in intensity and dimension, to what comes out.

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cats & toxoplasma

This research could potentially provide important clues about human behavior. In the case of Toxoplasma, for example, humans can become hosts if they handle contaminated cat litter or eat parasite-laden meat. Some studies have linked Toxoplasma infection with subtle changes in personality, as well as with a higher risk of schizophrenia.

life & warcraft

Since the game's release in 2004, users have racked up some 50 billion hours of playing time -- the equivalent of 5.93 million years. McGonigal points out that 5.93 million years ago is when early primates began to walk upright. "We've spent as much time playing World of Warcraft," she notes, "as we've spent evolving as a species."

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memory vs pot

The interesting thing about smoking pot is that marijuana is one of those rare drugs that seems to interact with both the dopamine and the acetylcholine system, speeding up the former and slowing down the latter. That's why when you get stoned, your heart races but your memory sucks.

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ipod & shuffle

When Apple first introduced the shuffle feature on its iPods, the shuffle was truly random; each song was equally as likely to get picked as any other. However, the randomness didn't appear random, since some songs were occasionally repeated, and customers concluded that the feature contained some secret patterns and preferences. As a result, Apple was forced to revise the algorithm. "We made it less random to make it feel more random," said Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple.*

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'oh, shit' & dopamine

Whenever the dopamine neurons make a mistaken prediction—when they expect juice but don't get it—the brain generates a unique electrical signal, known as error-related negativity.
The signal emanates from the ACC, so many neuroscientists refer to this area as the "oh, shit!" circuit.

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reason & emotion

If it weren't for our emotions, reason wouldn't exist at all.

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snoopy & gambling

"People enjoy investing in the market and gambling in a casino for the same reason that they see Snoopy in the clouds," says the neuroscientist Read Montague.
"When the brain is exposed to anything random, like a slot machine or the shape of a cloud, it automatically imposes a pattern onto the noise. But that isn't Snoopy, and you haven't found the secret pattern in the stock market."

real vs absolute

From the point of view of absolute truth a cube or a circle are invariable geometrical figures, rigorously defined by certain formulas. From the point of view of the impression they make on our eye these geometrical figures may assume very varied shapes. By perspective the cube may be transformed into a pyramid or a square, the circle into an ellipse or a straight line. Moreover, the consideration of these fictitious shapes is far more important than that of the real shapes, for it is they and they alone that we see and that can be reproduced by photography or in pictures. In certain cases there is more truth in the unreal than in the real.

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history vs people

The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought.

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