“For the study, published in the journal Behavioural Processes, Shinozuka and colleagues Haruka Ono and Shigeru Watanabe played two pieces of classical music near goldfish in a tank. The pieces were Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.”
Category: ideas
In The Age Of Computerization, Which People Will Succeed?
“Increasingly, machines are providing not only the brawn but the brains, too, and that raises the question of where humans fit into this picture — who will prosper and who won’t in this new kind of machine economy?”
Neuro This, Neuro That. There’s Got To Be A Better Explanation
“The neurological turn has become what the “cultural” turn was a few decades ago: the all-purpose non-explanation explanation of everything.”
What Isaac Asimov, Back In 1964, Thought 2014 Would Look Like
“Past predictions about the future oftentimes fail miserably – or at least produce a few giggles. In 1949, Popular Mechanics predicted that future computers would at least ‘weigh no more than 1.5 tons.’ … [But] Asimov, writing for the New York Times about the 1964 World’s Fair, was nearly spot-on with a few predictions for what would turn up at a 2014 World’s Fair.”
Does The “Exposure Effect” Work With Bad Art? Evidently Not
“An oil painting of a piece of wood with a sad face sitting on the ground or a pink pony with Disney Princess-like hair. Would people come to like these pieces, considered ‘bad art by some websites, if they became more familiar with them?” According to this study, rather the opposite.
The Relationship Between Poverty And The Ability To Think
“Does bad decision-making help cause poverty, or does poverty interfere with decision-making?”
Our Shriveling Consciousness?
“Students increasingly seem conditioned by the fact that much of their waking life is populated by mechanically mediated images in which they can see other beings on screens but those others cannot see them. As a result the viewer can become oblivious to others, having no need to interact or maintain a minimum of civil conduct with them.”
Do Our Brains Work Like Dictionaries?
“A mathematical analysis of the connections between definitions of English words has uncovered hidden structures that may resemble the way words and their meanings are represented in our heads.”
The Rad New Words Added To The Dictionary In The ’90s: Where Are They Now?
“Will twerk and phablet go the way of e-tailing and palmtop, or endure like geek and LOL?”
Is “The Sharing Economy” Just A Mirage?
“The success of the sharing economy depends on the degree to which a culture of using versus owning triumphs over the deeply ingrained consumerist notion of our stuff as an extension of ourselves. While the first generation of digital natives may feel comfortable sharing every aspect of their online lives, it’s hard tell to whether they’ll be anywhere near as comfortable sharing their possessions offline.”