On the 8 Spot

What this means for me would be drink coffee while coding and don’t drink it while thinking about design and while trying to study the requirement documents.

So:

Use caffeine for short-term performance on a focused task (such as an exam).

Avoid caffeine for tasks that require broad creativity and long-term learning.

(Disclaimer: The greater altertness, larger short-term memory capacity, and eased recall might make the memories you do make of higher quality.)

via Less Wrong: Coffee: When it helps, when it hurts.

I know I’m demand resistant. yikes.

A person who is “demand resistant” has a negative response to expectations, pressure, or obligations. They don’t respond well to demands or to being told that they “should” do something – sometimes, even when they’re trying to place those demands on themselves.

via The Happiness Project: Do You Hate to Hear “No,” “Don’t,” or “Stop”? Plus the Weekly Video..

This is why I love the saying the plural of anecdotes is not data.

In other words,

1. In a popular area there’s more temptation to fiddle with the data or analysis until you get what you expect.

2. The more people who test an idea, the more likely someone is going to find data in support of it by chance.

The authors produce evidence of the two effects above in the context of papers written about protein interactions in yeast. They conclude that “The second effect is about 10 times larger than the first one.”

via Popular research areas produce more false results — The Endeavour.

can you train yourself to see this change? I think I’m too slow or absent minded to notice this.

The researchers used an infrared eye-tracking device to measure the diameter of the participants’ left pupils up to 2,000 times per second while they performed the tasks. They found that pupil dilation was tightly coupled with the time at which the decisions were made, and betrayed the participants’ decisions before they were openly revealed. In the first experiment, maximum pupil dilation was observed during the 2-second interval in which the button was pressed. In the second, where there was a delay between the choice and the participants’ report of which number they had chosen, their pupils were maximally dilated during the interval at which they chose the digit. During task three, maximum dilation was again observed during the time at which the participants “chose” the underlined number.

via Your eyes betray the timing of your decisions : Neurophilosophy.

Now I just need to wake up earlier than usual to get some sunlight and exercise!!! although my problem with waking up early has always been about having my creative times between late nights and early mornings.

The new research has applications for more than 3 million shift workers and Alzheimer’s patients who suffer from lack of a regular sleep pattern.

Studies have shown that this lack of synchronization between a shift worker’s rest and activity and light/dark patterns leads to a much higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, seasonal depression and cancer over decades.

via Study: Lack of morning light keeping teenagers up at night Boing Boing.

The ability to speak a second language isn’t the only thing that distinguishes bilingual people from their monolingual counterparts—their brains work differently, too. Research has shown, for instance, that children who know two languages more easily solve problems that involve misleading cues. A new study published in Psychological Science reveals that knowledge of a second language—even one learned in adolescence—affects how people read in their native tongue. The findings suggest that after learning a second language, people never look at words the same way again.

via The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages: Scientific American.

Apple are evil?

by John on February 8, 2010

Mike Croucher wrote a post the other day explaining why he’s going to buy an iPad. He said that one of the objections to the iPad he’d heard was

Apple are evil because they take away control of how we use their devices.

I teased Mike that I would never say “Apple are evil.” On this side of the Atlantic we’d say “Apple is evil.” But in the UK it is accepted usage to say “Apple are evil.”

“Apple” is a collective noun when used to refer to Apple Inc. British English treats collective nouns as plural, but American English treats them as singular. Although the British usage sounds odd to my American ears, it makes sense just as much sense as the American convention. You could argue for plural verbs because corporations are made of individual people, or you could argue for singular verbs because the corporations act as a single entity. See Grammar Girl’s tip on collective nouns for more background.

via Apple are evil? — The Endeavour.

Again with the numbers:

30

32

The first number is the likelihood, expressed as a percentage, that a child born to parents whose incomes fall within the top 10 percent of Americans will grow up to be at least as wealthy.

The second is the percentage likelihood that a person born into the bottom 10 percent of society will stay at the bottom.

Just to drive the point home, here’s a third number: 1.3

That’s the percentage likelihood that a bottom 10 percenter will ever make it to the top 10 percent. For 99 out of 100 people, rags never lead to riches.

via Born Poor? | Santa Fe Reporter.

Abductive logic, Logic of what could be. I like the sound of that!!!

Does that mean we are doomed to live in world devoid of proof—that innovation must be consigned to a realm of cross-our-fingers hopefulness? No, it’s not so bleak. Instead, when facing an anomalous situation, we can turn to a third form of logic: abductive logic, the logic of what could be. To use abduction, we need to creatively assemble the disparate experiences and bits of data that seem relevant in order to make an inference—a logical leap—to the best possible conclusion.

via Innovation’s Accidental Enemies – BusinessWeek.

Why does the gunslinger who draws first always get shot?

Posted on: February 2, 2010 7:00 PM, by Ed Yong

In Western films, the gunslinger that draws first always gets shot. This seems like a standard Hollywood trope but it diverted the attention of no less a scientist that Niels Bohr, one of history's greatest physicists. Taking time off from solving the structure of the atom, Bohr suggested that it takes more time to initiate a movement than to react to the same movement. Perversely, the second gunslinger wins because they're responding to their opponent's draw.

Now, Andrew Welchman from the University of Birmingham has found that there's something to Bohr's explanation. People do indeed have a “reactive advantage”, where they execute a movement about 10% more quickly if they're reacting to an opponent. Of course, ethics committees might frown on scientists duelling with the pistols in the name of discovery, even if the people in question were graduate students. So Welchman designed a laboratory gunfight, played out using buttons rather than guns.

via Why does the gunslinger who draws first always get shot? : Not Exactly Rocket Science.