Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? - Magazine

The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science Modern science originated from an attempt to weed out such subjective lapses—what that great 17th century theorist of the scientific method, Francis Bacon, dubbed the "idols of the mind." Even if individual researchers are prone to falling in love with their own theories, the broader processes of peer review and institutionalized skepticism are designed to ensure that, eventually, the best ideas prevail. Scientific evidence is highly susceptible to misinterpretation. Giving ideologues scientific data that's relevant to their beliefs is like unleashing them in the motivated-reasoning equivalent of a candy store. Our individual responses to the conclusions that science reaches, however, are quite another matter. Sure enough, a large number of psychological studies have shown that people respond to scientific or technical evidence in ways that justify their preexisting beliefs. And it's not just that people twist or selectively read scientific evidence to support their preexisting views.

On Improving When Your Friends Aren’t | SebastianMarshall.com: Strategy, Philosophy, Self-Discipline, Science. Victory. Just got a comment on "Having Your Own Ethics is Lonely" by a reader. He asked one of the hardest questions about becoming successful - what happens when you're improving when your friends aren't? I found this blog because I'm looking for advice. Indeed, that's one of the hardest parts about becoming successful. Most people don't like to change after they get established. Perhaps the worst time is when you're still on a shaky ground with your old improvement. That was pretty much what we'd do. Most of my friends at this time were pretty healthy, as I was hanging out with a lot of athletes, gym-going types, and other fencers (I was an epee fencer back then). To be honest, I never really fully answered that question. I used to play a lot of poker, and I was pretty good at it. Anyways, when I quit playing cards, I lost a lot of my card-playing buddies. I've talked this over with other people who go on the rise in the world. 1. Well, not everyone. Not everyone. So, what now?

How to Avoid Exchange-Based Relationships | SebastianMarshall.com: Strategy, Philosophy, Self-Discipline, Science. Victory. On this coming Monday or Tuesday, I'll be asking the Director of Sales and Marketing at one of the most prestigious local businesses for $100,000. I have all manner of charts, research, data, and numbers showing why this is an exceptionally good idea that will have a fantastic ROI - and it is a good deal. But still, it's mildly terrifying to present in that sphere. Part of what I'm going to do is go in and ask for a considerable sum of money, but I'm trying to build a different sort of relationship than most people would think. If they choose my company, we'll be producing lots of good work for high pay - but I'm trying to build something other an exchange-based relationship. What's an exchange-based relationship? Let's go over quickly what market/exchange norms look like and how they push out social norms - then I'll have some ideas and guidelines for your own life. If you like digging into primary source papers, this one from 1993 by Clark and Mills is pretty good.

List of cognitive biases Systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment. They are often studied in psychology, sociology and behavioral economics.[1] Although the reality of most of these biases is confirmed by reproducible research,[2][3] there are often controversies about how to classify these biases or how to explain them.[4] Several theoretical causes are known for some cognitive biases, which provides a classification of biases by their common generative mechanism (such as noisy information-processing[5]). Explanations include information-processing rules (i.e., mental shortcuts), called heuristics, that the brain uses to produce decisions or judgments. There are also controversies over some of these biases as to whether they count as useless or irrational, or whether they result in useful attitudes or behavior. Belief, decision-making and behavioral[edit] Anchoring bias[edit] Apophenia[edit]

Power Posing: Fake It Until You Make It We can't be the alpha dog all of the time. Whatever our personality, most of us experience varying degrees of feeling in charge. Some situations take us down a notch while others build us up. New research shows that it's possible to control those feelings a bit more, to be able to summon an extra surge of power and sense of well-being when it's needed: for example, during a job interview or for a key presentation to a group of skeptical customers. "Our research has broad implications for people who suffer from feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem due to their hierarchical rank or lack of resources," says HBS assistant professor Amy J.C. “It’s not about the content of the message, but how you’re communicating it.” The result? "We used to think that emotion ended on the face," Cuddy says. The experiment In their article, to be published in a forthcoming Psychological Science, Cuddy and coauthors Dana R. Why we judge “It’s about understanding what moves people.” About the author

Tajimoto comments on 24 year old who suffered social anxiety his entire life. I finally conquered it. IAmA How external cues make us overeat. <a href=" external cues make us overeat.</a> What made you eat more of that ice cream than you intended? Why do you always eat too much when you go out for Chinese? If you're like most people, external cues influence how much you eat, which foods you eat, how fast you eat, whether you enjoy what you eat, and more. Brian Wansink of Cornell University has spent a career unearthing those cues. "Don't say, 'Now that I know it, it won't happen,'" cautions Wansink. His solution? Q: Why do people overeat? A: We should be pretty well calibrated to know how much to eat to fill us up. Yet when we asked people, "When was the last time you ate to the point of regretting it?" What we found is that roughly 12 percent said, "I overate because of something emotional," or "I had a terrible day," or "I was feeling down," or "I was bored." So we asked ourselves what happens if the person is not hungry and the food is terrible.

Sheryl Sandberg & Male-Dominated Silicon Valley In 2007, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, knew that he needed help. His social-network site was growing fast, but, at the age of twenty-three, he felt ill-equipped to run it. That December, he went to a Christmas party at the home of Dan Rosensweig, a Silicon Valley executive, and as he approached the house he saw someone who had been mentioned as a possible partner, Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s thirty-eight-year-old vice-president for global online sales and operations. Zuckerberg hadn’t called her before (why would someone who managed four thousand employees want to leave for a company that had barely any revenue?), but he went up and introduced himself. “We talked for probably an hour by the door,” Zuckerberg recalls. It turned out that Sandberg was ready for a new challenge. That winter, Sandberg met with Eric Schmidt, who was then the C.E.O. of Google, about her desire to do something else at the company.

Why Facebook Needs Sheryl Sandberg On a Tuesday afternoon in late April, 30 managers of Facebook's various business units come together to discuss a matter that preoccupies its famous founder: how to keep their rapidly growing little company from getting too big. The meeting, organized and led by the second-most-famous person at the social network, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, focuses on how to solve the problems of users, advertisers, and partner websites by using automated systems rather than bringing in thousands of new employees. One by one, the managers stand and present their progress on new productivity-generating tools. Sandberg, sitting with one leg tucked underneath her, the other folded over the arm of the chair, listens intently and responds with a mix of positive feedback and disarming camaraderie. Sandberg hopes the new procedures discussed at these meetings will allow the Palo Alto company to maintain a moderate pace of hiring. Even with all that, Sandberg now faces her toughest challenge.

How the Great Reset Has Already Changed America - Richard Florida - Business In the wake of the recession, cities and suburbs are being knit into giant city-states, with millions of people and billions -- even trillions -- of dollars of business A year ago, I published a book that argued that, for all the privations and dislocations of the economic crisis, it also provides us with the opportunity to make fundamental changes in our economy and society. I characterized these changes as a Great Reset, and I found similar moments in American history when new economic orders arose from the ashes of old ones, ushering in new eras of growth and prosperity. Since writing the book, I've been able to see for myself what I've long suspected: that Great Resets unfold not from top-down policies and programs but gradually, as millions upon millions of people respond to challenging economic times by changing the ways that they live. Watching the Reset unfold, it's been fascinating to see how quickly the once great divide between our cities and suburbs has been shrinking.

The Rising Cost of At-Home Tech - Peter Osnos - Technology As we move closer to relying entirely on the Internet, the free information services of the past are being eliminated, extending the divide between the haves and have-nots A recent rundown we conducted on our monthly bills for communications, home entertainment and digital information was striking. The bill for Cablevision in Connecticut was $232.64, covering cable (including HBO and Showtime) and broadband for our PCs. Our BlackBerrys were another $84.18 and $81.28. Ironically, it is many impoverished countries that are using cheap cell phone technology to close the gap with developed nations. Now, there are extenuating circumstances. All that added technology has also put pressure on electricity bills (ours can run as high $400 a month) and on the power grids that support the added equipment. It is easy enough to cut back on the frills, and there are signs that cost-conscious consumers are stripping down their cable packages in favor of on-demand access on laptops and tablets.

How to Talk About Haiti's Rape Epidemic - Conor Friedersdorf - International After touching on the subject, a journalist is accused of having a colonialist mindset. But it's her critics whose attitude is imperious. Mac McClelland traveled to Haiti, reported on one of its rape victims, developed post-traumatic stress disorder, and coped in an unusual way: "All I want," she explained, "is to have incredibly violent sex." She tells her story in an essay published at GOOD Magazine, where Ann Friedman, formerly of The American Prospect and the group blog Feministing, is the new executive editor. The essay, titled "I'm Gonna Need You To Fight Me On This: How Violent Sex Eased My PTSD," is surely the most provocative piece that GOOD has ever published. Descriptions that graphic are sure to stoke controversy, as is subject matter like female sexuality and violent intercourse. Before grappling with it, let's read the passage that provoked them: There are a lot of guns in Haiti. This part is relevant too: The reader is told nothing more about Haiti. An excerpt:

The Wealth (and Happiness) of Nations - Jennie Rothenberg Gritz - Business Clive Crook has an insightful post up about an Aspen session on the economics of happiness. The two panelists from this discussion, Justin Wolfers and Robert Frank, have both given a lot of thought to the age-old question of whether rich people truly have better lives than poor people do. Wolfers, a Wharton professor with an Australian accent and surfer-style blond hair, certainly seems like someone who should be an expert on happiness. Frank, a professor at Cornell's MBA program, refuses to see things so simply. Crook is convinced by Wolfers' rebuttal: If relative wealth mattered so much, Americans would be rushing south across the Mexican border. Later, though, Wolfers's conclusion is challenged by an audience question from Dalia Mogahed, an Egyptian-American scholar who heads the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. Wolfers doesn't have a response except to say that in 2010, he turned down an invitation from the Gallup Center to study their newest data on those countries.

Zinsser on Friday: An Interesting Life | The American Scholar Zinsser on Friday Print By William Zinsser Because of various academic ties our household receives a half-dozen alumni magazines, and I sometimes think I’ve been sent an architecture magazine by mistake. Proudly arrayed on their pages are photo layouts of construction sites–yellow cranes against the sky–and new buildings in strange shapes and materials. But where exactly are all those new facilities? Those thoughts were on my mind last week as I drove to Deerfield Academy, the boarding school in Massachusetts that I attended in the late 1930s, for a ceremony at which I was expected to “address” the entire student body and faculty. In 1902 a young man named Frank L. Nobody visiting the school would have suspected that he was the person in charge. One of his deft solutions comes back to me today. But those words weren’t in Frank Boyden’s vocabulary. Now it was 2010 and I was being shown around a campus that was in my bones but different in its vistas–and considerably bigger.