http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/18/lessons-on-cyberbullying-is-rebecca-black-a-victim-experts-weigh-in/
It may be Friday, but it's doubtful that 13-year-old Internet sensation Rebecca Black is excitedly singing about wanting to party in her car right now.
Ever since the music video for her song "Friday" hit YouTube, Black as well as her questionable vocal abilities and songwriting chops (even though she didn't write the song) has been the subject of much online vitriol.
Unfortunately, Black inadvertently added fuel to the media flame on Thursday when she linked her recent experiences to those of victims of cyberbullying.
And Black, 13, certainly never anticipated the social media uproar, mainstream media hellfire, parodies and remixes that greeted "Friday" as the video became nearly ubiquitous across Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Time.com called the song which provides a primer on the days of the week, innocently celebrates partying, and ponders the merits of "kickin' it" in a car's front versus the back seat from a wholesome teen girl P.O.V. "a whole new level of bad" and "a train wreck" . Slate proclaimed "Friday" "disastrous" while yahoo asked straight up, "Is YouTube sensation Rebecca Black's Friday'the worst song ever?
2011年3月24日木曜日
Why some people will pay $2000 For a date
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2059625,00.html
There is no upside to setting people up. At best, you're struck writing a speech for a wedding; at worst, you find out your friends cry during sex. When I found out you could get paid to set people up, however, I got a lot more interested. I asked Barbie Adler, CEO of selective search, to let me spend a day setting up men who pay her a minimum of $20000 a year to set them up on dates with women who want to be set up with men who pay $20000 a year to be set up on dates. This was the kind of love I could deliver.
I got to Barbie's office in Chicago, where I was the only man employed. All the women who interview her clients were attractive and had posters and sculptures about love in their office. This was not the tone I was going to set with my clients. I was just going to ask them if they were boob men or butt men and get to work.
There is no upside to setting people up. At best, you're struck writing a speech for a wedding; at worst, you find out your friends cry during sex. When I found out you could get paid to set people up, however, I got a lot more interested. I asked Barbie Adler, CEO of selective search, to let me spend a day setting up men who pay her a minimum of $20000 a year to set them up on dates with women who want to be set up with men who pay $20000 a year to be set up on dates. This was the kind of love I could deliver.
I got to Barbie's office in Chicago, where I was the only man employed. All the women who interview her clients were attractive and had posters and sculptures about love in their office. This was not the tone I was going to set with my clients. I was just going to ask them if they were boob men or butt men and get to work.
2011年3月23日水曜日
Do people really make life dicisions based on their names_
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/21/do-people-really-make-life-decisions-based-on-their-names/
What's in name? Letters that offer clues to one's future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that a person's monogram may influence his life choices -- where he works, whom he marries or where he lives -- because of "implicit egoism" or the allure of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the notion of living in Frenso, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.
Now a new study by Wharton professor Uri simonsohn takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and offers other explanations for the phenomenons. Simonsohn analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign -- which included donor's names and employers -- and found that the name of a person's workplace more closely correlated with the first three letters of a person's name than with just the first letter. But Simonsohn suggests that the reason for the association isn't implicit egotism, but perhaps something exactly the opposite:
One alternative explanation to implicit egoism for these findings is reverse casuality: Rather than employees seeking out companies with similar names, people starting new companies may name them after themselves. Walt Disney worked for a compnay starting with D not because of an unconscious attraction to that letter, but because he so christend it.
A second alternative explanation is an ethic/languege confound: VanBoven works for VanDyke Associates while Le Boeuf for LeBlanc Associates because the former lives in Dutch speaking Flanders and the latter in French speaking Wallonia.
He analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political campaigns. This is, of course, a very specific subset of people that is likely to contain an overrepresentation of high achievers, richer people(lawyers, rich business owners, etc) that are more likely to indeed have a company named after their own. This explains why he sees a 160 percent name-letter effect in his sample while we only got an overrepresentation of 13 percent. This shows that he is just measuring something else.
Still, he notes that his theories are plausible, and that even while some people may found eponymous companies, employees may be gravitating toward those companies because they start with the same letter as their names.
In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that egotism is involved on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. "I can't imagine people don't like their own letters more than other letters," but the differences it makes in really big dicisions are probably slim.
What's in name? Letters that offer clues to one's future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that a person's monogram may influence his life choices -- where he works, whom he marries or where he lives -- because of "implicit egoism" or the allure of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the notion of living in Frenso, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.
Now a new study by Wharton professor Uri simonsohn takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and offers other explanations for the phenomenons. Simonsohn analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign -- which included donor's names and employers -- and found that the name of a person's workplace more closely correlated with the first three letters of a person's name than with just the first letter. But Simonsohn suggests that the reason for the association isn't implicit egotism, but perhaps something exactly the opposite:
One alternative explanation to implicit egoism for these findings is reverse casuality: Rather than employees seeking out companies with similar names, people starting new companies may name them after themselves. Walt Disney worked for a compnay starting with D not because of an unconscious attraction to that letter, but because he so christend it.
A second alternative explanation is an ethic/languege confound: VanBoven works for VanDyke Associates while Le Boeuf for LeBlanc Associates because the former lives in Dutch speaking Flanders and the latter in French speaking Wallonia.
He analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political campaigns. This is, of course, a very specific subset of people that is likely to contain an overrepresentation of high achievers, richer people(lawyers, rich business owners, etc) that are more likely to indeed have a company named after their own. This explains why he sees a 160 percent name-letter effect in his sample while we only got an overrepresentation of 13 percent. This shows that he is just measuring something else.
Still, he notes that his theories are plausible, and that even while some people may found eponymous companies, employees may be gravitating toward those companies because they start with the same letter as their names.
In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that egotism is involved on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. "I can't imagine people don't like their own letters more than other letters," but the differences it makes in really big dicisions are probably slim.
2011年3月22日火曜日
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
WSJ
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do.
I'm using Chinese mother loosely. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and qualifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mother said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun" By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting", and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents"were not doing their job" Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something- whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet- he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young- maybe more than once - when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend the host tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable- even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "hey fatty--lose some weight" By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, taking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f---word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.( I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you" By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've though long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extreamely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A- minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid", "worthless" or " a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principle to chellenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B-- which would never happen--there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do.
I'm using Chinese mother loosely. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and qualifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mother said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun" By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting", and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents"were not doing their job" Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something- whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet- he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young- maybe more than once - when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend the host tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable- even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "hey fatty--lose some weight" By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, taking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f---word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.( I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you" By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've though long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extreamely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A- minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid", "worthless" or " a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principle to chellenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B-- which would never happen--there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
2011年2月21日月曜日
Bother Me, I'm Thinking
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703584804576144192132144506.html#printMode
We live in a time that worships attention. When we need to work, we force ourselves to focus, to stare straight ahead at he computer screen. There's a Starbucks on seemingly every corner -caffeine makes it easier to concentrate and when coffee isn't enough, we chug Red Bull.
In fact, the ability to payattention is considered such an essential life skill that the lack of it has become a widespread medical problem. Nearly 10% of American children are now diagnosed with atention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD)
In recent years, however, scientists have begun to outline the surprising benefits of not paying attention. Sometimes, too much focus can backfire; all the caffeine gets in the way. For instance, researchers have found a surprising link between day dreaming and creativity- people who daydream more are also better at generating new ideas. Other studies have found that employees are more productive when they're allowed to engage in "Internet leisure browsing" and that people unable to concentrate due to severe brain damage actually score above average on various problem-solving tasks.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Memphis and the University of Michigan extends this theme. The scientists measured the success of 60 undergraduates in various fields. from the visual arts to science. They asked the students if they'd ever won a prize at a juried art show or been honored at a science fair. In every domain, students who had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder achieved more: Their inability to focus turned out to be a creative advantage.
And this lesson doesn't just apply to people with a full-fledged idsorder. a few years ago, scientists at the university of Toronto and Harvard gave a short mental test to 86 Harvard undergraduate. The test was designed to measure their ability to ignore irrevant stimuli, such as the air-conditioner humming in the background or the conversation taking place nearby. This skill is typically seen as an essential component of productivity, since it keeps people from getting distracted by extraneous information.
Here's where the data get interesting: those undergrads who had a tougher time ignoring unrelated stuff were also seven times more likely to be rated as "eminent creative achievers" based on their previous accomplishments. (The association was particularly strong among distractible students with high IQs)
According to the scientists, the inability to focus helps ensure a richer mixture of thoughts in consciousne..Because these people struggled to filter the world, they ended up letting everything in. They couldn't help but be open-minded.
Such lapses in attention turn out to be a crucial creative skill. When we're faced with a difficult problem, the most obvious solution - that first idea we focus on is probably wrong. At such moments, it often helps to consider far-fetched possibilities, to approach the task from an unconventional perspective. and this is why distraction is helpful: people unable to focus are more likely to consider information that might seem irrevant but will later inspire the breakthrough. when we don't know where to look, we need to look everywhere.
This doesn't mean, of course, that attention isn't an important mental skill, or that attention-deficit disorders aren't a serious problem. THere's clearly nothing advantageous about struggling in the classroom, or not being able to follow instructions.(It's also worth pointing out that these studies all involve college students, which doesn't tell us anything about those kids with ADHD who fail to graduate from high schoo. Distraction might be a cognitive luxury that not everyone can afford)
Nevetheless, this new research demonstrate that, for a certain segment of the population , distractibility can actually be a net positive. Although we think that more attention can solve everything that the best strategy is always a strict focus fueled by triple espressos that's not the case. Sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is surf the Web and eaversdrop on that conversation next door.
We live in a time that worships attention. When we need to work, we force ourselves to focus, to stare straight ahead at he computer screen. There's a Starbucks on seemingly every corner -caffeine makes it easier to concentrate and when coffee isn't enough, we chug Red Bull.
In fact, the ability to payattention is considered such an essential life skill that the lack of it has become a widespread medical problem. Nearly 10% of American children are now diagnosed with atention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD)
In recent years, however, scientists have begun to outline the surprising benefits of not paying attention. Sometimes, too much focus can backfire; all the caffeine gets in the way. For instance, researchers have found a surprising link between day dreaming and creativity- people who daydream more are also better at generating new ideas. Other studies have found that employees are more productive when they're allowed to engage in "Internet leisure browsing" and that people unable to concentrate due to severe brain damage actually score above average on various problem-solving tasks.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Memphis and the University of Michigan extends this theme. The scientists measured the success of 60 undergraduates in various fields. from the visual arts to science. They asked the students if they'd ever won a prize at a juried art show or been honored at a science fair. In every domain, students who had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder achieved more: Their inability to focus turned out to be a creative advantage.
And this lesson doesn't just apply to people with a full-fledged idsorder. a few years ago, scientists at the university of Toronto and Harvard gave a short mental test to 86 Harvard undergraduate. The test was designed to measure their ability to ignore irrevant stimuli, such as the air-conditioner humming in the background or the conversation taking place nearby. This skill is typically seen as an essential component of productivity, since it keeps people from getting distracted by extraneous information.
Here's where the data get interesting: those undergrads who had a tougher time ignoring unrelated stuff were also seven times more likely to be rated as "eminent creative achievers" based on their previous accomplishments. (The association was particularly strong among distractible students with high IQs)
According to the scientists, the inability to focus helps ensure a richer mixture of thoughts in consciousne..Because these people struggled to filter the world, they ended up letting everything in. They couldn't help but be open-minded.
Such lapses in attention turn out to be a crucial creative skill. When we're faced with a difficult problem, the most obvious solution - that first idea we focus on is probably wrong. At such moments, it often helps to consider far-fetched possibilities, to approach the task from an unconventional perspective. and this is why distraction is helpful: people unable to focus are more likely to consider information that might seem irrevant but will later inspire the breakthrough. when we don't know where to look, we need to look everywhere.
This doesn't mean, of course, that attention isn't an important mental skill, or that attention-deficit disorders aren't a serious problem. THere's clearly nothing advantageous about struggling in the classroom, or not being able to follow instructions.(It's also worth pointing out that these studies all involve college students, which doesn't tell us anything about those kids with ADHD who fail to graduate from high schoo. Distraction might be a cognitive luxury that not everyone can afford)
Nevetheless, this new research demonstrate that, for a certain segment of the population , distractibility can actually be a net positive. Although we think that more attention can solve everything that the best strategy is always a strict focus fueled by triple espressos that's not the case. Sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is surf the Web and eaversdrop on that conversation next door.
2011年2月16日水曜日
2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal 1/5
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html
On Feb. 15, 1965 a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeard as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and tha panelists they included a comedian and former Miss America had tu guess what it was.
On the show, the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.
Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blase about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs.Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif, whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.
But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. to see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial inteliggence.
That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. when that happens, humanity our bodies, our minds, our civilization will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this mooment is not only inevitable but imminent. according to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.
Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster that is , the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.
True? True.
So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might concevably come a moment when they are capable of something compratbale to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they creat consciousness not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethcal decisions , appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.
If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer.It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.
Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which(with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are alot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciouseness into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.
The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about hte future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.
On Feb. 15, 1965 a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeard as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and tha panelists they included a comedian and former Miss America had tu guess what it was.
On the show, the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.
Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blase about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs.Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif, whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.
But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. to see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial inteliggence.
That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. when that happens, humanity our bodies, our minds, our civilization will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this mooment is not only inevitable but imminent. according to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.
Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster that is , the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.
True? True.
So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might concevably come a moment when they are capable of something compratbale to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they creat consciousness not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethcal decisions , appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.
If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer.It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.
Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which(with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are alot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciouseness into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.
The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about hte future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.
2011年2月5日土曜日
How Your Name May Cost You at the Mall
Looking to sell some of that stuff from your garage, fast? Call the Zimmermans.
According to a new study, people whose surnames start with letters late in the alphabet may be the fastest to buy. What could possibly explain this weird phenomenon, which the study authors dubbed "the last -name effect"? The research didn't provide a definitive reason, but the authors offer an intriguing theory. Since America's obsession with alphabetical order often forces the Z's to the back of the line in childhood, they suffer.They were always the last to get lunch in the cafeteria --sorry, Young , the other kids bought all the chocolate milk again-- and had to beg for the teacher's attention from the back of the classroom. So later in life, when the Z's -- and even onetime Z's who became A's through marriage see an item they really like for sale or are offered a deal, they jump on it, afraid that supplies won't last. The chocolate milk is finally in front of them. So they grab it.
"For years, simply because of your name, you've received inequitable treatment," says Kurt Carlson , an assistant professor at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business and a co-author of the papre, which is to be published in the Journal of Consumer research. " So when you get to exercise control, you seize on opportunity. It's a coping strategy, and over time it becomes a natural way to respond"
Carlson and Jacqueline Conard an assistant professor at the Massey Graduate school of business at belmont Univ uncoveered the last-name effect through four different experiments. In the first one, MBA students received offers via e-mail for four free tickets to a women's basketball game but were told the overall supply was limited. The average response time for people with names beginning with one of the last nine letters of the alphabet, T through Z was 19.38 minutes. Those with names starting with one of the first nine letters, A through I, replied in 25.08 minutes a statestically significant diferences.
For the second experiment, 280 adults with an average age of 39.1 responded to an e-mail invitation to fill out an online survey. In exchange, they were told, they had a 1 in 500 chance of winning $500 in a drawing. (In fact, since only 280 people responded, the odds were much better.) Again, people with surnames closer to the end of the alphabet responded faster to the offer. The results didn't idffer by gender, and the researchers also found that people whose current surnames were at the beggining of the alphabet but whose childhood surnames had been closer to the end also responded to the offer more quickly. In other words, Zimmermans who married Addisons and changed their names were still coping with their lousy place in past lines.
These two experiments have a relatively obvious shortcoming: people who responded more slowly to the e-mail offers could have just been checking their accounts less frequently. A third experiment addressed that issue by giving everyone a deal simultaneously. At the end of a college wine-evaluation class, the instructor told the attendees they'd get $5 and a bottle of wine if they participated in a 45-min. study a few days later. As expected, students with late-in-the-alphabet names were more likely to accept the offer, and they did so faster than the others.
In a final experiment, researchers asked 41 undergraduate students to imagine a scenario in which they needed a backpack, then saw a bookstore sign offering the item at 20% off "while supplies last." But, the students were told, they did not have their wallet, and it would take 15 minutes to fetch it and return to buy the backpack. THe late-in-the-alphabet students were more likely to say they found the discount appealing and that they'd run home to close the deal.
The results are provocative, but come on: Isn't it a stretch to posit that one's place in a grammar-school lunch line has any impact on adult behavior? Perhaps not, at least according to my own utterly unscientific surveys. I grabbed a TIME staff list and started scanning the Z's. I found one Paul Zelinski, 59, a production director for TIME and sports Illustrated for Kids. Zelinski says he spent many days in the back of the class as a student in Brooklyn Catholic schools. "In grammar school, I didn't mind, because there was this girl next to me who was cute", says Zelinski. " But in high school, it stunk. I couldn't see over the taller guys in front of me"
Upon hearing an explanation of the last-name effect, Zelinski said it made perfect sense. He's always looking to close a deal quickly. He recently bought a car on the Internet; instead of haggling forever, he got what he considered a fair price, made the purchase and moved on.
Zelinski still frets about being in the back. In early January, he attended college football's national championship game in Arizona, where he stood near a railing for two hours to guarantee a good view of the Auburn pep rally. He also says he gets to New York Giants game early, at 8 a.m., to tailgate, because he fears that the prime spots will run out. " Idon't know if that has to do with being Zelinski or being Polish", he says. " I might have to go into therapy next week to find out"
What do the lucky ones at the front of the line think? Do they, in fact, inquire about things more slowly than poor souls named Zelinski? I scanned the contact list in my cell phone. Since I don't have a direct line to Hank Aaron or former New York Mets relief pitcher Don Aase, my first entry is Henry Abbott, the excellent basketball writer who runs the True Hoop blog at ESP totally fit this theory" says abbott, 36. "My wife calls me the researcher. I don't get dazzled by the first deal. I just finished scanning 30 websites for a stupid muzzle for my dog"
Does he buy the last-name effect? "Maybe," he says. " I can understand that if my name began with a Z, I'd be sick of waiting. I do have a feeling that if I miss a deal, there are going to be other good deals." Three days later, Abbott e-mailed me a note: "Found myself thinking about this story several times since we talked. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense"
The last-name effect has very practical implications. Companies especially those pitching limited-time offers, should first mail out those promotions to consumers with surnames that fall deeper in the alphabet. Shoppers with these names should be more aware of their tendencies. Does it really make sense for me to buy this item? Or is alphabet angst at play?
As for teachers, the takeaway is clear. " There may be no great alternatives to alphabetical order", says Carlson. "but, flip it around every now and then. That's a reasonable way to balance things out."
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2045050,00.html
According to a new study, people whose surnames start with letters late in the alphabet may be the fastest to buy. What could possibly explain this weird phenomenon, which the study authors dubbed "the last -name effect"? The research didn't provide a definitive reason, but the authors offer an intriguing theory. Since America's obsession with alphabetical order often forces the Z's to the back of the line in childhood, they suffer.They were always the last to get lunch in the cafeteria --sorry, Young , the other kids bought all the chocolate milk again-- and had to beg for the teacher's attention from the back of the classroom. So later in life, when the Z's -- and even onetime Z's who became A's through marriage see an item they really like for sale or are offered a deal, they jump on it, afraid that supplies won't last. The chocolate milk is finally in front of them. So they grab it.
"For years, simply because of your name, you've received inequitable treatment," says Kurt Carlson , an assistant professor at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business and a co-author of the papre, which is to be published in the Journal of Consumer research. " So when you get to exercise control, you seize on opportunity. It's a coping strategy, and over time it becomes a natural way to respond"
Carlson and Jacqueline Conard an assistant professor at the Massey Graduate school of business at belmont Univ uncoveered the last-name effect through four different experiments. In the first one, MBA students received offers via e-mail for four free tickets to a women's basketball game but were told the overall supply was limited. The average response time for people with names beginning with one of the last nine letters of the alphabet, T through Z was 19.38 minutes. Those with names starting with one of the first nine letters, A through I, replied in 25.08 minutes a statestically significant diferences.
For the second experiment, 280 adults with an average age of 39.1 responded to an e-mail invitation to fill out an online survey. In exchange, they were told, they had a 1 in 500 chance of winning $500 in a drawing. (In fact, since only 280 people responded, the odds were much better.) Again, people with surnames closer to the end of the alphabet responded faster to the offer. The results didn't idffer by gender, and the researchers also found that people whose current surnames were at the beggining of the alphabet but whose childhood surnames had been closer to the end also responded to the offer more quickly. In other words, Zimmermans who married Addisons and changed their names were still coping with their lousy place in past lines.
These two experiments have a relatively obvious shortcoming: people who responded more slowly to the e-mail offers could have just been checking their accounts less frequently. A third experiment addressed that issue by giving everyone a deal simultaneously. At the end of a college wine-evaluation class, the instructor told the attendees they'd get $5 and a bottle of wine if they participated in a 45-min. study a few days later. As expected, students with late-in-the-alphabet names were more likely to accept the offer, and they did so faster than the others.
In a final experiment, researchers asked 41 undergraduate students to imagine a scenario in which they needed a backpack, then saw a bookstore sign offering the item at 20% off "while supplies last." But, the students were told, they did not have their wallet, and it would take 15 minutes to fetch it and return to buy the backpack. THe late-in-the-alphabet students were more likely to say they found the discount appealing and that they'd run home to close the deal.
The results are provocative, but come on: Isn't it a stretch to posit that one's place in a grammar-school lunch line has any impact on adult behavior? Perhaps not, at least according to my own utterly unscientific surveys. I grabbed a TIME staff list and started scanning the Z's. I found one Paul Zelinski, 59, a production director for TIME and sports Illustrated for Kids. Zelinski says he spent many days in the back of the class as a student in Brooklyn Catholic schools. "In grammar school, I didn't mind, because there was this girl next to me who was cute", says Zelinski. " But in high school, it stunk. I couldn't see over the taller guys in front of me"
Upon hearing an explanation of the last-name effect, Zelinski said it made perfect sense. He's always looking to close a deal quickly. He recently bought a car on the Internet; instead of haggling forever, he got what he considered a fair price, made the purchase and moved on.
Zelinski still frets about being in the back. In early January, he attended college football's national championship game in Arizona, where he stood near a railing for two hours to guarantee a good view of the Auburn pep rally. He also says he gets to New York Giants game early, at 8 a.m., to tailgate, because he fears that the prime spots will run out. " Idon't know if that has to do with being Zelinski or being Polish", he says. " I might have to go into therapy next week to find out"
What do the lucky ones at the front of the line think? Do they, in fact, inquire about things more slowly than poor souls named Zelinski? I scanned the contact list in my cell phone. Since I don't have a direct line to Hank Aaron or former New York Mets relief pitcher Don Aase, my first entry is Henry Abbott, the excellent basketball writer who runs the True Hoop blog at ESP totally fit this theory" says abbott, 36. "My wife calls me the researcher. I don't get dazzled by the first deal. I just finished scanning 30 websites for a stupid muzzle for my dog"
Does he buy the last-name effect? "Maybe," he says. " I can understand that if my name began with a Z, I'd be sick of waiting. I do have a feeling that if I miss a deal, there are going to be other good deals." Three days later, Abbott e-mailed me a note: "Found myself thinking about this story several times since we talked. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense"
The last-name effect has very practical implications. Companies especially those pitching limited-time offers, should first mail out those promotions to consumers with surnames that fall deeper in the alphabet. Shoppers with these names should be more aware of their tendencies. Does it really make sense for me to buy this item? Or is alphabet angst at play?
As for teachers, the takeaway is clear. " There may be no great alternatives to alphabetical order", says Carlson. "but, flip it around every now and then. That's a reasonable way to balance things out."
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2045050,00.html
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