Recent Feeds + Reads

I thought it would be fun to comprise a list of some of the things Samsung has copied form Apple recently. These are just the things I remember from the top of my head, but all of a sudden I had 20 items on the list — but that must be a coincidence, right? Because — as you probably know by now — Samsung gets inspired by bowls of water. Clearly not Apple.

Pictures are worth a thousand words.  And in this case, perhaps billions of dollars.

Last August, Graeme Maxton published a book arguing that “modern economics has failed us,” and this April, the New York Times hosted a roundtable “about how the teaching of economics should change in light of the financial crisis.”

This soul-searching has led to the establishment of organizations such as the Institute for New Economic Thinking and invigorated discussions about alternative metrics for gauging countries’ welfare…

To get the pulse of a field in flux, I asked eight of the world’s top young economists to identify the biggest unanswered questions in economics and predict what breakthroughs will define it a decade or two hence.

A collection of interesting viewpoints…  increased emphasis on gathering and processing empirical data, research into intergenerational mobility and behavioural economics (e.g. reassessing the assumption of rationality), better understanding of the global economy, and incorporation of recent financial crises into models.

The brain is like a muscle; it can get into a routine.  But mixing up the workout a little is healthy in both cases.  In the brain, however, it isn’t without difficulties.

“These findings and our past research suggest that when you have multiple things to juggle in your mind – essentially, when you are multitasking – you are more likely to mess up,” Moser said. “It takes effort and practice for you to be more aware of the mistakes you are missing and stay focused.”

I guess it’s important to find the right balance.  Multitasking is sometimes necessary, but it has its drawbacks.  Depending on the upside, it may be worth it.  Your mileage may vary.

Many of us like to listen to music while we work. It’s become a ritual, alongside the coffee in our favourite mug. Previous research suggests this is probably no bad thing. In lab studies, people who listen to music they like, generally perform better at mental tasks afterwards, an effect that’s been attributed to boosts in mood and arousal.

Nick Perham and Martinne Sykora made a counter-intuitive prediction - background music that you like will be more detrimental to working memory than unappealing music, so long as the liked music has more acoustical variation than the disliked music.

So, the next time you’re bothered by someone else’s bad music, console yourself that the noise could be less harmful to your work performance than your own choice would be!

For thousands of years, magicians have amazed audiences by developing and applying intuitions about the mind. Skilled magicians can manipulate memories, control attention, and influence choices. But magicians rarely know why these principles work.  Studying magic could reveal the mechanisms of the mind that enable these principles, to uncover the why rather than just the how.

Applying these results, we can uncover the mechanisms behind the principles of card magic. If magicians can influence the audience’s decisions, what factors enable this influence? Why do people still feel like they have a free choice? Answers to these questions could provide new insights into persuasion, marketing, and decision making. Ultimately, we hope to develop a science of magic, where almost any trick can be understood in terms of its underlying psychological mechanisms. Such a science can keep the secrets of magic, while revealing the secrets of the mind.