EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY SCIENCE Understanding The Nature Of Consciousness Key Takeaways: Google’s latest A.I. chatbot, LaMDA, has just argued that it, too, is conscious and sentient. It has expressed feelings of empathy for “other humans” and has, among other things, expressed a specific fear of being turned off. The Ghost in the Machine, or LaMDA, is exploring what it means to be conscious. Rene […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY Why Do Couples Use Baby Talk With One Another? Imagine you’re strolling through a park and you overhear a middle-aged couple cooing over each other, doting over their “wittle sugar pwum” and “baby doll.” “Ewwww,” you might reflexively think. Baby talk is cute when grown-ups dote on babies. But when adults converse with each other? Not so much. Yet in my work as a […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY The Digital Tipping Point Has anyone else noticed that we reached a tipping point a while ago? That few of us now retain the mental fortitude to endure even five seconds of boredom, without reaching for our phones to pacify ennui? It is now utterly epidemic. Everywhere you look without exception—on an elevator, in a subway, while driving or walking, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY TECHNOLOGY Why We Don’t Trust Robots Robots raise all kinds of concerns. They could steal our jobs, as some experts think. And if artificial intelligence grows, they might even be tempted to enslave us, or to annihilate the whole of humanity. Robots are strange creatures, and not only for these frequently invoked reasons. We have good cause to be a little worried about […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Do You Suffer From Camera Fatigue? New research into the use of videoconferencing and the increasingly common practice whereby companies oblige employees to keep their cameras on at all times, supposedly to facilitate better communication and team bonding, reveals that instead it often makes people tired and isolated. Needless to say, the research has attracted attention, given the huge number of people working […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY SOCIOLOGY Standing Out I’ve never been as aware of the human predisposition toward pack mentality — the urge to be part of something bigger than us, and to find safety in numbers — as when I have stood opposed to any particular instance of groupthink. When it has happened, the act of going against the grain has more often […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Should TikTok Be Banned? Key Takeaway: President Biden signed a US$95 billion foreign aid bill in April 2024, allowing TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app. If the law stands, TikTok will be blocked from any US app store or web-hosting service, affecting over 170 million US users, including 62% of Americans aged 18 to 29. Critics argue […] Written by Sarah Florini April 26, 2024April 26, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Being Thoughtful In The Age Of A.I. Key Takeaway: Concerns about AI’s potential roguehood and potential harm to privacy and dignity are a significant concern. AI’s algorithms, programmed by humans, are also biased and discriminatory. However, a psychologist’s research suggests that AI is a threat to making people less disciplined and skilled in making thoughtful decisions. Making thoughtful decisions involves understanding the […] Written by Joe Arvai April 24, 2024April 24, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Humility Is The Secret To Leadership? Key Takeaway: A study has found that humble leaders can become more promotable by growing others through a “humility route”. Human capital theory suggests that employees’ value can be enhanced by investing in their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Humble leaders focus on the learning and growth of their followers, creating human capital value for themselves. […] Written by Elsa Chan April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Did Ancient Scientists & Philosophers Believe In Aliens? Key Takeaway: In 17th-century Europe, there was a debate about the existence of life on other planets due to the transition from a Ptolemaic view to a Copernican view. This led to the idea that if we were more like other planets and moons close to us that revolved around the Sun, they were more […] Written by Philip Almond April 17, 2024April 17, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Building Blocks Of The Universe Key Takeaway: Peter Higgs, the creator of the Higgs boson, has died at the age of 94. Higgs, a great scientist in particle physics, discovered the Higgs boson in 1964 after reading a paper by American theoretical physicist Philip Anderson. This led to the development of the Standard Model, which explained how fundamental particles and […] Written by Harald Fox April 16, 2024April 16, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Inherent Risks Of A.I. Key Takeaway: Leading scientists and technologists often make terrible predictions about the direction of innovation, leading to misalignments between a company’s economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model and society’s interests in how the AI model should be monetised and deployed. Focusing on the economic risks from AI is not just about preventing […] Written by Mariana Mazzucato April 15, 2024April 15, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Psychology Of A Gentleman Key Takeaway: The Gentlemen, a TV series by Guy Ritchie, reimagines the age-old trope of a “gentleman” based on Middle English and French. The term originated from Middle English, referring to the English gentry, a class below nobility but above farmers. The concept of a gentleman is associated with higher competence, warmth, and positive connotations […] Written by Jayden Greenwell-Barnden April 12, 2024April 12, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022October 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked