Reader Post: Spicy Food

This post was submitted by reader Josh Vogel. Please submit ideas for posts to metaist.blog@gmail.com.

Commentary
Many of us enjoy spicy food. At the same time, many of us really don't like spicy food. According to an article in The New York Times, there may be more of a personality trait to this than one might have originally thought. Additionally, the fact that any human being likes spicy food might say a lot about the evolution of our species.

Not to be confused with the spice.
(Photo: Will Clayton at Flickr)

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say that our enjoyment (or non-enjoyment) of spicy food might have to with the unique human capability of getting pleasure out of painful experiences: "Humans and only humans get to enjoy events that are innately negative, that produce emotions or feelings that we are programmed to avoid when we come to realize that they are actually not threats," said Dr. Paul Rozin of University of Pennsylvania, who calls this trait "benign masochism". After all, we are the only animal that likes spicy food, as evidenced by the inclusion of Capsaicin (the chemical compound that makes chilies spicy) in many animal repellents.

What this might say about people who do and do not like spicy food is not covered by the article, but it doesn't take too much thinking to see if people who like spicy foods are also ones who have a high tolerance for pain.

Josh Vogel is a Candidate for the Master of Public Health at Boston University School of Public Health.

See Also

• A Perk of Our Evolution: Pleasure in Pain of Chilies at The New York Times for the article.
• Food for Thought: Paul Rozin's Research and Teaching at Penn for a lengthy interview with Paul Rozin from 1997 where he discusses many of the aspects of his research.

Commentary text licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Additional editing by The Metaist.

Nobody Likes a Goody Two-Shoes

Summary
The term goody two-shoes is based on a children's story in which a poor orphan girl (Margery Meanwell) goes through life with only one shoe, but is eventually rewarded with a pair of shoes earning her the nickname Goody Two-Shoes. The phrase "goody two-shoes" refers to an excessively or annoyingly virtuous person, but has now come to include a connotation of insincerity (Wikipedia).

Thanks for the offer, but I think I'll go barefoot.
(Photo: Northsky71 at Flickr)

Commentary
A recent set of studies at Washington State University showed that not only are people who abuse a public good excluded from the group, but so are people who give too much toward the group, but use very little of that good. The fourth study in the set suggests that such behavior "is seen by some as establishing an undesirable behavior standard and by others as a rule breaker" (Parks & Stone, 2010). Regardless of the perception, people wanted this unselfish person removed from the group.

I'm assuming that "establishing an undesirable behavior standard" means something like "setting the bar too high" or "making me look bad." Alternatively, people might assume mixed motives and become wary of such behavior.

Meta
Do you remember a situation in which you felt someone was being too unselfish? How did you react? Have you ever noticed you were being excluded after you behaved unselfishly? What could you do differently?

See Also

• Goody Two-Shoes at Project Gutenberg for the full text of the 1766 edition of the classic children's tale.
• The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes at Wikipedia
• Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First at ScienceDaily for a longer discussion.
• Parks, C. D., & Stone, A. B. (2010). The desire to expel unselfish members from the group. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(2), 303-310.

Forer Effect

Summary
The Forer Effect refers to the tendency of individuals to believe that generic personality descriptions are highly accurate when being told that the descriptions are tailor-made.

Sorry, I have a schedule conflict. Could we do next sometime?
(Photo: partiallyblind at Flickr)

Commentary
Forer famously gave a group of students a personality test. Then he provided them with an individual "analysis" which the students were supposed to rank from 0 to 5 (poor to excellent). The analysis read thusly (Thanks Wikipedia!):

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in life.

The average score was 4.26. It was then that Forer revealed that they all got the same text.

See Also

• Forer Effect at Wikipedia. Specifically, see Variables influencing the effect for additional criteria.
• Derren Brown - Cold Reading at YouTube for a video of Derren Brown acting strangely, but demonstrating the basics of the Forer Effect.

Prisoner's Dilemma

Definition
In game theory, the prisoner's dilemma refers to a situation in which two parties can:

1. cooperate (each gains a moderate amount),
2. defect (each looses a moderate amount), or
3. one defects (gains a large amount), the other cooperates (looses a large amount).

Cat got your tongue? If you cooperate, we can get you off on a smaller charge.
(Photo: phphoto2010 at Flickr)

Summary
I recently had an interesting experience in which I had to play 9 rounds of an iterated prisoner's dilemma as part of a large group. The process by which my group decided to behave was both enlightening and disturbing.

Background
During the summer I took a course on negotiating. On the last day of class, the professor announced we would be doing a large-scale group negotiation. He split the class into two large groups of 12 people each and provided everyone with the following information:

Each group represents a store in a town where commerce is forbidden on Sunday. For various reasons, the two stores are now considering being open on Sundays with the following ramifications:

• If both stores are closed, each makes $20,000 during the week.
• If both stores are open, the town will fine each store $20,000 for that week.
• If only one store is open, that store will make $40,000 during the week and will actually take business away from the other store for a week, so the the closed store looses $40,000 for that week.

For those of you playing along at home, here is the payoff matrix:

(You, Them)	They're Closed	They're Open
You're Open	(+$40k, -$40k)	(-$20k, -$20k)
You're Closed	(+$20k, +$20k)	(-$40k, +$40k)

The two group convene in separate classrooms where for each of the next 12 "weeks" a new representative must exit the room with a sign that says "Open" or "Closed." The two representatives have the option of negotiating for up to one minute except after weeks 4 and 8 when they must negotiate. This is because on weeks 4, 8, and 12, the profits and losses double, triple, and quadruple, respectively.

Game Play
As the twelve members of my group finished reading the assignment I pointed out that this was, indeed, the classic prisoner's dilemma game in which we can maximize our gains by cooperating, although there are short-term gains in defecting.

A fellow classmate (let's call him Bob) responded saying he did not care; he just wanted to win. I pointed out that there are a few ways of defining win in this particular circumstance. Did he mean that we should try to make as much money as we could? No. He wanted to make sure we made more money than the other team. Okay, I said, but let's focus on the short-term goal here on figuring out whether or not we should be open for week 1.

Eventually, we came to a consensus that we should be open week 1 as a precaution. As the first representative to go out, I displayed our "Open" sign to the amazement of the other team representative. I made a deal, offering to be closed for the remaining 11 weeks (as my team had proposed), and the other representative agreed-- provided that they were allowed to open the following week while we remained closed. Deal.

When I returned, the discussion picked up on a theme that might be described as "When Should We Screw Them?" Several people agreed that "we have to screw them sometime," but I was at a loss to explain my position that we should not screw them. In the meantime, we were being pressed to send out representatives for the following weeks, and we continued to abide by the agreement laid out in the first week.

Both teams remained closed for weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Our group became more passionate. We tried to define what our interests were. While we could not agree what the expression "maximize your profits" (as written in the instructions) meant, we did agree on the following two principles:

1. We want to have a positive balance at the end of the game.
   
2. We want to make more money than the other team.

At this point, I raised the issue that I had a very specific interest in remaining honest. To illustrate my point, I suggested that on week 11 we tell the other team to be open week 12. I had forgotten that the losses would quadruple, for my intent was to prevent anyone from cheating on week 12 (when there would be a strong desire to cheat). This idea did not go over well ("You're willing to loose money to be honest!?"). I tried to backtrack. Okay, but now-- it's only week 8-- why should we screw them now? Let's continue to abide by our agreement. They've been abiding by the agreement so far-- let's just keep going-- we're making money, people!

Honesty or Profits
Someone calculated that if we screwed them now (week 8), and subsequently stayed open the remaining weeks (since we assume that they would stay open as well), we would still be in the black at the end of week 12, while the other team would be in the red.

We had been summoned to send a representative out for week 8 (our team was consistently late in sending someone out as our deliberations slowed us down). At this point our debate reached a fever pitch. Bob of the "I want to win" camp asked for a vote; should we choose honesty or profits (his words).

So I asked each person: "Honesty or profits?"
Profits. Profits. Profits. Profits. Profits. Profits. Honesty. Profits. Honesty. Profits. Profits. My vote was well known at this point, so I didn't even bother announcing my position. Moments later, one of the votes for "honesty" changed her mind and agreed that week 8 was an opportune time to screw the other team.

I decided that since Bob was so in favor of screwing the team "at some point, and it might as well be now" he should be the representative to go and announce that we were open. As he was walking out the door, I said "This is a stupid move; you're firing nukes on Russia-- how do you think this is going to end?" My other classmates asked me "But what if they're open?"
"If they're open," I replied, "then I'm an idiot and I was wrong. But watch, they are going to abide by the agreement, and from now on, it will just be us nuking each other." (I choose the Cold War analogy because we had all watched Thirteen Days as part of a previous assignment.)

The other team was closed and they were upset. Since negotiations had to occur, Bob tried to present the situation as "nothing personal"; that our group was "chaotic" and that it was "impossible to say how things would proceed".

On Week 9, both teams came out "Open", although the other team's sign also depicted a middle finger. Both representatives made it clear that they would remain open the remaining weeks, so the professor aborted the game and we convened for a post-session discussion.

Post-mortem
During the discussion, it became clear that the other team had plans to screw us on Week 11 (on the assumption that we would screw them on Week 12). Unlike our team, they had chosen to make liberal use of the blackboard (we used the computer screen). Their board clearly showed their train of thought: "Ethics", "Honesty Is the Best Policy" were followed up by a large "SCREW THEM!" It was pointed out that despite being told "it's just business, nothing personal" every single person on their team took it very personally.

I raised the issue of how quickly people choose "profits" over "honesty", but my fellow teammates objected on the grounds that "they were operating within the game." My professor tried to make the point that "in real-life" people tend to weigh in the consequences more and that they might be less likely to defect.

Needless to say, I did not find this reassuring.

Final Score
Despite my feeling that we had "lost" as we broke our agreement (and, in retrospect, we lost $140k in potential profits), we did satisfy the two criteria pinpointed by the group: we were in the black, and we made more money than the other team. Here is the final score:

	Us	Them
Week 1	+$40k (Open)	-$40k (Closed)
Week 2	-$40k (Closed)	+$40k (Open)
Week 3	+$20k (Closed)	+$20k (Closed)
Week 4 (double)	+$40k (Closed)	+$40k (Closed)
Week 5	+$20k (Closed)	+$20k (Closed)
Week 6	+$20k (Closed)	+$20k (Closed)
Week 7	+$20k (Closed)	+$20k (Closed)
Week 8 (triple)	+$60k (Open)	-$60k (Closed)
Week 9 (game ends)	-$20k (Open)	-$20k (Open)
Week 10	-$20k (Open)	-$20k (Open)
Week 11	-$20k (Open)	-$20k (Open)
Week 12 (quadruple)	-$80k (Open)	-$80k (Open)
Totals	+$160k	-$160k

See Also

• Prisoner's Dilemma at Wikipedia.
• Pareto Efficiency for the game-theoretic concept of optimizing gains.

Effective Apologies

Summary
An apology is an expression of regret. Effective apologies involve the apologizer taking full responsibility and pledging to prevent repeat offences.

Sorry, Frankenapple. At least you're alive.
(Photo: 1happysnapper at Flickr)

Commentary
When we hear a child say "I'm sorry" when prompted, the insincerity is often palatable. Similar apologies by politicians and CEOs of recent have illicit similar reactions. What makes an apology effective?

Effective apologies should address:

1. which norm (personal, social) was violated,
2. acceptance of responsibility by the violator, and
3. how the violations will be prevented in the future.

If these ideas sound familiar, it may be because that's what we tell our children.

Meta
What apologies have you found to be the most effective?

See Also

• The Role of Apology in Negotiation for a discussion about apologies and their implications.
• Why Is It So Hard to Apologize Well? at The New York Times Magazine for a longer discussion.

Meanness & Executive Pay

This post is based on a submission by reader Phillip Vedol. Please submit suggestions for posts to metaist.blog@gmail.com.

Summary
According to a recently published paper increases in compensation lead to increases in meanness among corporate leaders.

You talkin' to me?
(Photo: patrick_q at Flickr)

Commentary
The study's posits that "higher income inequality between executives and ordinary workers" leads to a perception of power that ultimately results in maltreatment of "rank and file workers" (p. 1). This follows the research on the relationship between power and lying and reinforces the image of powerful managers who abuse their position (e.g., Emmett Milbarage in Chuck).

Meta
Have you experienced this sort of behavior? What about the opposite (magnanimous over-paid managers)?

See Also

• When Executives Rake in Millions: Meanness in Organizations for the original paper.
• Executive Compensation: The More Leaders Make, the Meaner They Get at the Harvard Business Review Research Blog for a longer discussion.

Babies & Morality

This post is based on a submission by reader Professor Daniel Bitran via Professor Martin Patt. Please submit suggestions for posts to metaist.blog@gmail.com.

Summary
Researchers at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale are conducting studies to try and assess the capabilities of infants to understand the world around them.

(Video: YouTube)

Commentary
While I'm hesitant to label this as "bunk", there appear to be at least two deficiencies in the research methods used (based on five minutes of film and not much else).

The first, pointed out to me by Professor Bitran, is that the caregivers always hold the children and may unconsciously influence the result (as in facilitated communication).

Second, the videos seem to show that the researchers who present the option know which one is the "good" one. The babies may be responding to the researcher rather than the choice (similar to Clever Hans). Nonetheless, the results of better controlled studies might show that a basic understanding of cooperation.

See Also

• Infant Cognition Center at Yale for their website.
• Can Babies Tell Right from Wrong? at The New York Times for the article related to the video.

Facilitated Communication

This post is based on a discussion with reader Professor Daniel Bitran. Please submit suggestions for posts to metaist.blog@gmail.com.

Definition
Facilitated communication (FC) is a process by which a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a communicatively impaired individual while using a keyboard or other devices with the aim of helping the individual to develop pointing skills and to communicate.
(Source: Wikipedia)

(Video: YouTube)

Commentary
Facilitated communication may be related to the Ideomotor Effect or the Clever Hans Effect. This would go a long way to explaining the facilitator's denial of interference as well as the subject's inability to answer questions to which the facilitator does not know the answer (among other anomalies in this form of communication).

See Also

• Prisoners of Silence at Google Video for an hour-long Frontline documentary highlighting issues with facilitated communication.
• Facilitated communication and Rom Houben at Digital Bits Skeptic for a more recent story.
• Facilitated communication at Wikipedia.

Ideomotor Effect

Summary
The ideomotor effect is a phenomenon in which people make unconscious movements.

Most Ouija boards don't move by themselves.
(Photo: scriptingnews at Flickr)

Commentary
The ideomotor effect is the result of unconscious processing of external stimuli. While much of the brain's functioning is unconscious, these reactions manifest themselves physically (typically in movement).

This is how Ouija boards work. Participants touch a planchette and their brain, expecting a response (from the dead, aliens, or Parker Brothers), forces small (unconscious!) movements until the piece moves.

More on this later.

See Also

• Ideomotor at Wikipedia for more information.
• The ideomotor effect at Digital Bits Skeptic for a longer discussion.
  

Synthetic Happiness

Note: This post contains embedded video which may not appear in your RSS reader. Click here to view the full post.

Correction (2010-07-04): The idea for this post was incorrectly attributed;it was actually from a post "Reader Survey: Which Personal-Finance Books Should I Review?" at GetRichSlowly. The Metaist apologizes for the error.

Summary
Dan Gilbert has an interesting discussion about ways in which our "experience simulator" (aka prefrontal cortex) makes mistakes-- particularly in judging our future happiness.

(Video: TED)

Commentary
Gilbert highlights the notion of Impact Bias: "tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future feeling states." Example: both lottery winners and paraplegics feel about the same level of happiness after a year.

Why? Here are some reasons & insights:

• There is a sort of psychological immune system that allows us to synthesize happiness.
  
  
• Despite our feeling that "natural happiness" (when we get what we want) is somehow superior to "synthetic happiness" (when we don't get what we want) they are both about the same in quality.
  
  
• Synthetic happiness actually changes your intrinsic preferences and outlook.
  
  
• Irreversible conditions promote synthetic happiness. However, people think they would prefer reversible decisions.

Meta
Ever catch yourself synthesizing happiness?

Clever Hans Effect

Summary
Clever Hans was a horse that seemed to be able to perform arithmetic and solve puzzles. However, after a formal 1907 investigation, it was shown that Hans was actually picking up on and responding to subtle audience cues rather than solving problems.

Step right up! Come one, come all! See the amazing wonder horse!
(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
The Clever Hans Effect is important because it exposes how some of our involuntary reactions influence or cue others. This is why there are occasionally problems with police lineups or interrogation of children. It is also why use of double-blind experiments is encouraged.

More on this later.

See Also

• Interrogation Of Children at Institute for Psychological Therapies for a lengthy discussion on the subject.
• Observer-expectancy effect at Wikipedia for the general form of this issue.

First Instinct Fallacy

Summary
Popular advice about taking multiple-choice tests is to stick with your first response because, you're more likely to switch from a correct response to an incorrect one. However, many decades of research seem to suggest otherwise.

Test of knowledge and ability to cope with proofreading errors!
(Quote & Photo: karen_d on Flickr)

Commentary
A study on strategies for multiple choice tests posed the following question to students and teachers:

When taking multiple-choice tests, it is sometimes the case that one answer seems correct at first, but upon further reflection another answer seems correct. As a general rule is it better to stick with your initial "first instinct" - or to change your answer if another choice seems better? In other words, which answer is probably more likely to be correct?

Many students and teachers thought that the first answer you choose is more likely to be correct. Yet, the reality is quite different. Here is an excerpt of the study's results regarding changed answers:

• 51% - wrong to right,
• 25% - right to wrong, and
• 23% - wrong to wrong

(Percentages do not add up to 100% due to rounding errors.)

The study goes on to show that the reason so many people think that sticking with your first answer is better is because of excessive counterfactual thinking. That is, when you change answer from a correct response to an incorrect one, you are more likely to think "if only I hadn't..." which is easier to recall in the future.

See Also

• Counterfactual Thinking and the First Instinct Fallacy for the full text of the study.

fMRI & False Positives

This post is based on a submission by reader Professor Daniel Bitran. Please submit suggestions for posts to metaist.blog@gmail.com.

Definitions
fMRI is a way of measuring blood-flow in the brain or spinal cord and, by extension, neural activity in those areas.

A false positive is the sort of mistake your smoke detector makes when it goes off, but there's no smoke.

Summary
Despite the widespread use of fMRI, a few false positives may result in inaccurate results.

The fMRI is showing neural activity, but the salmon is definitely dead.
(Image: Courtesy of Prefrontal.org)

Commentary
The image above is striking because the false positives seem to show neural activity in a dead salmon's brain. According to researchers at UCLA Santa Barbra, these errors are due to a problem of multiple comparisons.

Imagine we're playing One of These Things is not Like the Others with several tin cans of Atlantic salmons. At first, it's hard to tell which one is not like the others -- there's a bunch of canned salmon. They have similar color, weight, shape, etc. But as we add different ways of comparing the cans (or more cans to compare), we increase the probability that there will be some way in which one of them differs from the rest -- particularly because of small differences, say manufacturing defects.

[Note: Corrections appreciated.] Now imagine we're collecting data for an fMRI. Each each point (called a voxel) is measured several times with certain extreme values discarded. Now we want to figure out which of the voxels is not like the others -- that's because that's where we expect to see differences in blood flow. However, by comparing voxels we're actually comparing multiple measurements of each voxel to multiple measurements of other voxels. This is like adding more ways of comparing the cans. Moreover, because there is a small bit of noise, the measurements for each voxel can be slightly different each time. This is why we occasionally find some difference between neighboring voxels that isn't really there -- it's a false positive. Luckily there are ways of correcting for this sort of error, but unfortunately, it is not applied as frequently as it should.

Meta
What are other examples of widespread errors of multiple comparisons or false positives?

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Craig Bennett of Prefrontal.org for providing a high resolution version of the Atlantic salmon fMRI.

See Also

• Human Brain Mapping 2009 – Presentations at Prefrontal.org for the conference posters & slides.
• Multiple Comparisons with Repeated Measures by David Howell for a lengthy discussion on the subject.
• The Importance of Numeracy

Conference: Biological Foundations of Morality

This post is based on a submission by reader Professor Daniel Bitran. Thank you! Please submit suggestions for posts to metaist.blog@gmail.com.

Announcement
From the conference event page:

How does what we are learning about the brain through neuroscience and evolutionary science influence how we ought to think about ethics?

Recent advances in functional neuroimaging have increased scientists' understanding of how our brains process moral decisions. Some thinkers suggest that moral decision making is fundamentally an intuitive or emotional process, and that what we call "reason" is a post-decision making method of justification for actions, not a "higher order" process for making decisions.

If so, the new science challenges the principle of free will, the argument that reason is the foundation of moral decision making, and the importance of understanding intentions before judging responsibility for action. The potential implications for most Western ethical traditions are enormous.

(Formatting added.)

The conference is Thursday-Friday, March 18-19, 2010 at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.

See Also

• Agenda for the conference.
• About the Speakers at the conference.
• Thinking About Other People's Thoughts

Split-brain

Definition
Split-brain is when the two hemispheres of the brain (left & right) are not connected. This is often due to surgery in which the corpus callosum is severed to avoid the spread of epileptic seizures.

(Video: YouTube)

Commentary
One might think that severing all of the connections between the two hemispheres would lead to significant impairment of functioning, yet the two halves continue to communicate-- just outside of the body (e.g., writing, talking, pointing).

There have been cases, however, in which patients behave as though they have two personalities:

Case 1...would sometimes find himself pulling his pants down with one hand and pulling them up with the other. Once, he grabbed his wife with his left hand and shook her violently, with the right hand trying to come to his wife's aid in bringing the left belligerent hand under control. Once, while I was playing horseshoes with the patient in his backyard, he happened to pick up an ax with his left hand. Because it was entirely likely that the more aggressive right hemisphere might be in control, I discretely left the scene-not wanting to be the victim for the test case of which half-brain does society punish or execute. (Gazzaniga 1970, p.107)

I wouldn't want to be the test case either.

Inattentional Blindness

Definition
Inattentional blindness is an explanation for our inability to see certain changes that are usually considered obvious.

(Video: YouTube)

Commentary
Derren Brown has demonstrated this effect with different races, accents, and even genders! While the original studies had a fail rate of 75%, Brown's informal study had about a 50% fail rate.

Meta
Think of all the things we don't notice. Did you notice that in the first video the color of the presenter's shirt changed?

See Also

• Person Swap at YouTube for Derren Brown's version of this experiment.
• What Clown on a Unicycle? Studying Cellphone Distraction at The New York Times for a discussion about a similar phenomenon.

Thinking About Other People's Thoughts

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Summary
The right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) appears to be dedicated to thinking about other people's thoughts. You can alter people's judgments of others by interfering with the rTPJ's activity.

(Video: TED)

Correction
In the video, Rebecca Saxe mistakenly attributed the following quote to Alan Greenspan when it was actually said by Robert McCloskey:

I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.

Commentary
Moral thinking is critical in many legal systems. In fact, the insanity defense depends on demonstrating that the defendant is incapable of moral thinking (temporarily or permanently). I imagine this research has far-reaching consequences.

Meta
Suppose you know that someone has a deficient rTPJ; how does that alter your perception of their judgments?

Crowdsourcing & Crowd Wisdom

Definition
Crowdsourcing is a combination of the words "crowd" and "outsourcing." It refers to work done by volunteers (usually online) that is traditionally outsourced.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
Crowdsourcing is a popular concept that harnesses the wisdom of crowds to solve a problem. This communal wisdom is especially popular online where we vote, rate, and assess content. James Surowiecki published a book called The Wisdom of Crowds on this subject (I haven't read it).

Many famous demonstrations involve a large audience guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar and having the guesses averaged. There have been interesting discussions about how it works, how it fails, and how it could have saved us from the financial crisis.

Meta
The answer to the previous meta is crowds.

See Also

• Amazon Mechanical Turk (Wikipedia) for an archetypal example.
• Netflix Prize for another example.
• Crowdsourcing - Controversy on Wikipedia for a brief discussion of possible issues.

Vending Machines for Crows

Note: This post contains embedded video which may not appear in your RSS reader. Click here to view the full post.

Summary
Josh Klein has a fascinating discussion about crows, their intelligence, and potentials for mutually-beneficial (between humans and crows) scenarios.
Enjoy.

(Video: TED)

Meta 
So we've harnessed the power of children playing and the intelligence of crows; what's next?

Fear of Spiders and Snakes

Summary
Fear is an important part of how we make decisions. Everything from selecting car seats for our children to our policy decisions.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
Fear of snakes and spiders is relatively common (among humans). And thanks to shows like Fear Factor, we can all watch others try to overcome these primal fears from the comfort of our homes.

However, there is reason to believe that these fears are not strictly rooted in genetics (nature), but are learned (nurture). Yet, a recent study does show the role that nature might play, particularly for females, in facilitating fearful associations for certain things such as spiders and snakes.

In Does women's greater fear of snakes and spiders originate in infancy? David Rakison extends results from previous studies (done on adults) on the rapid association between fear and snakes and spiders (as opposed to mushrooms and flowers) to infants only 11 months old. The results show that infant girls learn the association between fearful facial expressions and fearful stimuli (snake, spider) more quickly than do boys. There was no similar distinction between non-fearful stimuli (mushroom, flower). The resulting hypothesis, then, is that certain types of fears are the products of evolutionary psychology.

Meta
What steps have you taken to mitigate a fear you've had? Were you successful?