cognitive load

89 results back to index

Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais

anti-pattern, business logic, business process, call centre, cognitive load, continuous integration, Conway's law, database schema, DevOps, different worldview, Dunbar number, holacracy, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kubernetes, Lean Startup, loose coupling, meta-analysis, microservices, Norbert Wiener, operational security, platform as a service, pull request, remote working, systems thinking, two-pizza team, web application

If the team wants to send the same person to six or seven conferences during the year because they are so good at reporting back to the team, that should be the team’s decision. Good Boundaries Minimize Cognitive Load Having established the team as the fundamental means of delivery, organizations also need to ensure that the cognitive load on a team is not too high. A team working with software systems that require too high of a cognitive load cannot effectively own or safely evolve the software. In this section, we will identify ways in which the cognitive load on teams can be detected and limited in order to safely promote fast flow of change. Restrict Team Responsibilities to Match Team Cognitive Load One of the least acknowledged factors that increases friction in modern software delivery is the ever-increasing size and complexity of codebases that teams have to work with.

…

Specifically, that is why monoliths need to be broken down (in particular, any indivisible software part that exceeds the cognitive capacity of any one team) while keeping a team focus, a topic we will discuss in depth in Chapter 6. Cognitive Load and Bottlenecks When we talk about cognitive load, it’s easy to understand that any one person has a limit on how much information they can hold in their brains at any given moment. The same happens for any one team by simply adding up all the team members’ cognitive capacities. However, we hardly ever discuss cognitive load when assigning responsibilities or software parts to a given team. Perhaps because it’s hard to quantify both the available capacity and what the cognitive load will be. Or perhaps because the team is expected to adapt to what it’s being asked to do, no questions asked.

…

Restrict Team Responsibilities to Match Team Cognitive Load One of the least acknowledged factors that increases friction in modern software delivery is the ever-increasing size and complexity of codebases that teams have to work with. This creates an unbounded cognitive load on teams. Cognitive load also applies to teams that do less coding and more execution of tasks, like a traditional operations or infrastructure team. They can also suffer from excessive cognitive load in terms of domains of responsibility, number of applications they need to operate, and tools they need to manage. With a team-first approach, the team’s responsibilities are matched to the cognitive load that the team can handle. The positive ripple effect of this can change how teams are designed and how they interact with each other across an organization.

Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout

cognitive load, conceptual framework, fault tolerance, functional programming, iterative process, move fast and break things, MVC pattern, revision control, Silicon Valley

One of the goals of good design is to reduce the amount of code that is affected by each design decision, so design changes don’t require very many code modifications. Cognitive load: The second symptom of complexity is cognitive load, which refers to how much a developer needs to know in order to complete a task. A higher cognitive load means that developers have to spend more time learning the required information, and there is a greater risk of bugs because they have missed something important. For example, suppose a function in C allocates memory, returns a pointer to that memory, and assumes that the caller will free the memory. This adds to the cognitive load of developers using the function; if a developer fails to free the memory, there will be a memory leak.

…

If the system can be restructured so that the caller doesn’t need to worry about freeing the memory (the same module that allocates the memory also takes responsibility for freeing it), it will reduce the cognitive load. Cognitive load arises in many ways, such as APIs with many methods, global variables, inconsistencies, and dependencies between modules. System designers sometimes assume that complexity can be measured by lines of code. They assume that if one implementation is shorter than another, then it must be simpler; if it only takes a few lines of code to make a change, then the change must be easy. However, this view ignores the costs associated with cognitive load. I have seen frameworks that allowed applications to be written with only a few lines of code, but it was extremely difficult to figure out what those lines were.

…

Similarly, a high cognitive load will increase the cost of a change, but if it is clear which information to read, the change is still likely to be correct. With unknown unknowns, it is unclear what to do or whether a proposed solution will even work. The only way to be certain is to read every line of code in the system, which is impossible for systems of any size. Even this may not be sufficient, because a change may depend on a subtle design decision that was never documented. One of the most important goals of good design is for a system to be obvious. This is the opposite of high cognitive load and unknown unknowns.

This Will Make You Smarter: 150 New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking by John Brockman

23andMe, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, banking crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, biofilm, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, butterfly effect, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive load, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data acquisition, David Brooks, delayed gratification, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, Flash crash, Flynn Effect, Garrett Hardin, Higgs boson, hive mind, impulse control, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, market design, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, open economy, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, placebo effect, power law, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, randomized controlled trial, rent control, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, Satyajit Das, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, security theater, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, sugar pill, synthetic biology, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, Turing complete, Turing machine, twin studies, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Inference to the Best Explanation Not all explanations are created equal. Emanuel Derman Pragmamorphism Being pragmamorphic sounds equivalent to taking a scientific attitude toward the world, but it easily evolves into dull scientism. Nicholas Carr Cognitive Load When our cognitive load exceeds the capacity of our working memory, our intellectual abilities take a hit. Hans Ulrich Obrist To Curate In our phase of globalization . . . there is a danger of homogenization but at the same time a countermovement, the retreat into one’s own culture.

…

In the 1950s, Princeton psychologist George Miller famously argued that our brains can hold only about seven pieces of information simultaneously. Even that figure may be too high. Some brain researchers now believe that working memory has a maximum capacity of just three or four elements. The amount of information entering our consciousness at any instant is referred to as our cognitive load. When our cognitive load exceeds the capacity of our working memory, our intellectual abilities take a hit. Information zips into and out of our mind so quickly that we never gain a good mental grip on it. (Which is why you can’t remember what you went to the kitchen to do.) The information vanishes before we’ve had an opportunity to transfer it into our long-term memory and weave it into knowledge.

…

Developmental psychologists and educational researchers have long used the concept of cognitive load in designing and evaluating pedagogical techniques. They know that when you give a student too much information too quickly, comprehension degrades and learning suffers. But now that all of us—thanks to the incredible speed and volume of modern digital communication networks and gadgets—are inundated with more bits and pieces of information than ever before, everyone would benefit from having an understanding of cognitive load and how it influences memory and thinking. The more aware we are of how small and fragile our working memory is, the better we’ll be able to monitor and manage our cognitive load.

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel, Stian Westlake

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Andrei Shleifer, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book value, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Charles Lindbergh, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, congestion charging, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, Diane Coyle, Dominic Cummings, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, equity risk premium, Erik Brynjolfsson, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, facts on the ground, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gentrification, Goodhart's law, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, index fund, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job-hopping, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, market design, Martin Wolf, megacity, mittelstand, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shock, patent troll, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, price discrimination, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, remote working, rent-seeking, replication crisis, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skeuomorphism, social distancing, superstar cities, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, urban planning, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, work culture , X Prize, Y2K

We do not claim that we can predict the manifestations of the new culture that the new economy will call forth. But there may be some clues from cultures and parts of the world where the transition to intangible capital has gone the furthest. Specifically, it seems that the cognitive load on individuals has risen in the digital arena. But solutions to this challenge have arisen, often from the market itself; they include ad blockers, anonymous search engines, and price-comparison sites. Debt also keeps cognitive load low (in periods of no crisis), and so the returns to new financial innovation that will enable intangibles to be securitised will help. Finally, we saw that one institution is fit for purpose throughout the ages and over all the dimensions of exchange: trust and reciprocity.

…

; “What effect will the sharing of the upside and downside have on the way the thing is managed?”; and “Am I selling my shares too cheap?” For a debt investment, all you need to think about is “Do I think this guy is good for the money?,” and all the borrower needs to think about is “Can I pay this back?” Debt finance is useful because it reduces the cognitive load on both the lender and the borrower.6 Intangibles, Debt, and Collateral Debt finance creates a fundamental problem for an intangibles-intensive firm. It involves the creditor taking a charge on the debtor’s assets, to be invoked if the debtor cannot meet its financial obligations. But intangible assets are more likely to be sunk costs—worth little or nothing in the event the debtor business fails.

…

The Friedman Doctrine, named after a 1970 essay by Milton Friedman that argues “the business of business is business” rather than serving the needs of stakeholders, began growing in popularity in the 1980s and now represents the mainstream position on corporate governance, especially in the United States and Britain. The epitome of value-based management is activist hedge funds, which buy into the stocks of companies with unimpressive share price performance and try to force management to improve it. Value-based management is another example of a financial innovation that cuts down on cognitive load. It replaces a messy, embedded, judgment-based system with a simpler set of rules and a more clearly divided set of responsibilities. It is an innovation that harnesses a powerful force: if managers own stock or options, then shareholders can rely on the managers’ self-interest to motivate them to improve company performance: the interests of the principal and agent are better aligned.

Scarcity: The True Cost of Not Having Enough by Sendhil Mullainathan

American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Andrei Shleifer, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cognitive load, computer vision, delayed gratification, double entry bookkeeping, Exxon Valdez, fault tolerance, happiness index / gross national happiness, impulse control, indoor plumbing, inventory management, knowledge worker, late fees, linear programming, mental accounting, microcredit, p-value, payday loans, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Thaler, Saturday Night Live, Walter Mischel, Yogi Berra

The challenge for the subjects was that this was served by a Chinese experimenter, creating some pressure to act civilized. As in the cake study, some subjects’ minds were loaded: they were asked to remember an eight-digit number. Those whose minds were not loaded managed to maintain composure, keeping their thoughts to themselves. Not so with the cognitively loaded subjects. They would blurt out rude comments, such as “This is bloody revolting,” despite their best intentions. Whether it is eating cake we would rather resist or saying things we do not mean to say, a tax on bandwidth makes it harder for us to control our impulses. And because scarcity taxes bandwidth, this suggests that scarcity not only can lower fluid intelligence but can also reduce self-control.

…

A taxed bandwidth leads to carelessness. The student forgets his study group meeting. The server rings up the wrong item. The bandwidth tax changes us in surprising and powerful ways. It is not merely its presence but also its magnitude that is surprising. Psychologists have spent decades documenting the impact of cognitive load on many aspects of behavior. Some of the most important are the behaviors captured in these vignettes: from distraction and forgetfulness to impulse control. The size of these effects suggests a substantial influence of the bandwidth tax on a full array of behaviors, even those like patience, tolerance, attention, and dedication that usually fall under the umbrella of “personality” or “talent.”

…

PARENTING One study on parenting focused on air traffic controllers. What made air traffic controllers interesting is that their jobs change daily and can be intense. Some days there are many planes in the air, weather conditions are bad, and there are congestion and delays. On those days the cognitive load—tunneling for long hours on landing all planes safely—is very high. Other days are more relaxed, with not many planes in the air or on the mind. What the researchers found was that the number of planes in the air on a particular day predicted the quality of parenting that night. More planes made for worse parents.

Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought by Barbara Tversky

Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, clean water, cognitive load, continuous integration, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, fundamental attribution error, Hans Rosling, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Snow's cholera map, Lao Tzu, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, natural language processing, neurotypical, patient HM, Richard Feynman, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the new new thing, theory of mind, urban planning

What matters are the movements in space, not what they look like. Surprisingly, gesturing while reading didn’t slow reading, even though people were doing two things at the same time. Doing two things simultaneously is supposed to increase cognitive load and lower performance. Not so for gesturing and thinking. Paradoxically, adding to the cognitive load reduced the cognitive load. Understanding the explanations was hard; it took effort to figure out where everything was. Words march one after another in horizontal rows; they bear only symbolic relationship to the environments. But the gestures resemble the environments, they put the places and paths in a virtual map step-by-step.

…

Taking your perspective rather than mine might be in part a matter of politeness, though Japanese people, members of the most stereotypically polite culture, take your perspective no more than Americans, about 70 percent of the time, depending on the circumstances. And that’s just it—whose perspective seems to depend on the circumstances, in particular, on the relative cognitive loads, yours and mine. In the case of the wine glass, I know whose is whose, but you don’t, so your cognitive load is greater than mine. You have to both understand the utterance and map it to the glasses; I know the mapping and only have to create the utterance. On the other hand, if my cognitive load is greater than yours, say, you know the answer but I don’t and I’m asking you, I’ll favor my perspective, “Is mine on my right?” If we are offered a neutral way to specify the location, neither your perspective nor mine, we’ll both prefer that one.

…

., Giardino, V., & Tversky, B. (2013). Gestures for thinking. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 35. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0zk7z5h9 Tversky, B., & Kessell, A. (2014). Thinking in action. Pragmatics & Cognition, 22(2), 206–223. Gestures lighten cognitive load Cook, S.W., Yip, T., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2012). Gestures, but not meaningless movements, lighten working memory load when explaining math. Language and Cognitive Processing, 27, 594–610. Goldin-Meadow, S., Nusbaum, H., Kelly, S. D., & Wagner, S. M. (2001). Explaining math: Gesturing lightens the load.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biofilm, blood diamond, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Brownian motion, car-free, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, domesticated silver fox, double helix, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Flynn Effect, framing effect, fudge factor, George Santayana, global pandemic, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, intentional community, John von Neumann, Loma Prieta earthquake, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, mirror neurons, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, nocebo, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, publication bias, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social contagion, social distancing, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, trolley problem, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Pertinent to this is the concept of “cognitive load.” Make the frontal cortex work hard—a tough working-memory task, regulating social behavior, or making numerous decisions while shopping. Immediately afterward performance on a different frontally dependent task declines.45 Likewise during multitasking, where PFC neurons simultaneously participate in multiple activated circuits. Importantly, increase cognitive load on the frontal cortex, and afterward subjects become less prosocial*—less charitable or helpful, more likely to lie.46 Or increase cognitive load with a task requiring difficult emotional regulation, and subjects cheat more on their diets afterward.*47 So the frontal cortex is awash in Calvinist self-discipline, a superego with its nose to the grindstone.48 But as an important qualifier, soon after we’re potty-trained, doing the harder thing with our bladder muscles becomes automatic.

…

For example, for the same degree of implicit racial prejudice (as shown with the IAT), the bias is more likely to be expressed behaviorally in individuals with poor frontal executive control (as shown with an abstract cognitive task).63 Chapter 2 introduced the concept of “cognitive load,” where a taxing frontal executive task diminishes performance on a subsequent frontal task. This occurs with Us/Them-ing. White subjects do better on certain behavior tests when the tester is white as opposed to black; subjects whose performance declines most dramatically in the latter scenario show the greatest dlPFC activation when viewing other-race faces.64 The cognitive load generated by frontal executive control during interracial interactions can be modulated. If white subjects are told, “Most people are more prejudiced than they think they are,” before taking the test with a black tester, performance plummets more than if they are told, “Most people perform worse [on a frontal cortical cognitive test] than they think they did.”

…

As we’ll see, it comes from factors having little to do with cognitive style. These findings suggest that it’s easier to make a liberal think like a conservative than the other way around.35 Or, stated in a familiar way, increasing cognitive load* should make people more conservative. This is precisely the case. The time pressure of snap judgments is a version of increased cognitive load. Likewise, people become more conservative when tired, in pain or distracted with a cognitive task, or when blood alcohol levels rise. Recall from chapter 3 that willpower takes metabolic power, thanks to the glucose demands of the frontal cortex.

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone, Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Albert Einstein, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Broken windows theory, cashless society, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, Credit Default Swap, Donald Trump, fake it until you make it, financial engineering, fudge factor, John Perry Barlow, new economy, operational security, Richard Feynman, Schrödinger's Cat, Shai Danziger, shareholder value, social contagion, Steve Jobs, Tragedy of the Commons, Walter Mischel

To reduce participants’ ability to think effectively, Baba and Sasha did not remove parts of their brains (as animal researchers sometimes do), nor did they use magnetic pulses to disrupt thinking (though there are machines that can do that). Instead, they decided to tax their participants’ ability to think by piling on what psychologists call cognitive load. Simply put, they wanted to find out whether having a lot on one’s mind would leave less cognitive room for resisting temptation and make people more likely to succumb to it. Baba and Sasha’s experiment went like this: they divided participants into two groups and asked members of one group to remember a two-digit number (something like, say, 35) and they asked members of the other group to remember a seven-digit number (say, 7581280).

…

., 246 cashless society, implications for dishonesty in, 34 Catch Me If You Can (Abagnale), 173 certificates for (false) achievements, 153–54 Chance, Zoë, 145, 264 charitable behavior, 23–24 cheating: aggressive cheaters and, 239 altruistic, 222–23, 225–26, 227–28, 232 being made blatantly aware of, 156–57 being watched and, 223–25, 227 collaborative, see collaborative cheating desire to benefit from, 12–14, 27, 29, 237 ego depletion, 104–6, 111–12 fake products’ impact on, 125–31 in golf, 55–65 honor codes and, 41–45 increasing creativity to increase level of, 184–87 as infection, 191–216; see also infectious nature of cheating infidelity and, 244–45 on IQ-like tests, self-deception and, 145–49, 151, 153–54, 156–57 reducing amount of, 39–51, 248–54 removing oneself from tempting situation and, 108–11 signing forms at top and, 46–51 Ten Commandments and, 39–40, 41, 44 what-the-hell effect and, 127–31, 136 see also dishonesty China, cheating in, 241–42 Chloé accessories, studies with, 123–34 Civil War veterans, 152 classes, infectious nature of cheating in, 195–97 Coca-Cola, stealing money vs., 32–33 cognitive dissonance, 81 cognitive load: ability to resist temptation and, 99–100 judges’ parole rulings and, 102–3 Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), 173–74 coin logic, 167–68 collaborative cheating, 217–35 altruism and, 222–23, 225–26, 227–28, 232 being watched or monitored and, 223–25, 227–28, 234–35 emphasis on working as group or team and, 217–18 infectious nature of cheating in relation to, 221–22 social utility and, 222–23 companies: being one step removed from money and, 34–37 irrationality of, 51 see also corporate dishonesty compliments, insincere, 159 conflicts of interest, 67–95, 238, 248 in academia, 82, 84–85 in dentistry, 67–71, 93, 94, 230 disclosure and, 88–92 dots task and, 129 eradication of, 92–95 exclusion of experimental data and, 86–88 expert witnesses and, 85–86 in financial services industry, 83–85, 93, 94 governmental lobbyists and, 77–78, 94 honesty threshold and, 130–31 inherent inclination to return favors and, 74–75 medical procedures and, 71–74, 92–94, 229 pharmaceutical companies’ influence in academia and, 82 pharma reps and, 78–82 what-the-hell effect and, 129–31 congressional staffers, cheating among, 243 Congress members, PAC money misused by, 208–10 contractors, 93 Conway, Alan, 150–51 Cooper, Cynthia, 215 Cornell University, 250–51 corpora callosa, 164–65 corporate dishonesty: cheating a little bit and, 239–40 Enron collapse and, 1–3, 192, 207, 215, 234 recent spread of, 192, 207–8 cost-benefit analysis, 4–5, 26–27, 237, 239 infectious nature of cheating and, 201–3, 205 see also Simple Model of Rational Crime counterfeits, see fake products creativity, 88, 163–89, 238 brain structure and, 164–65 dark side of, 187–89 fooling oneself and, 165–67 increasing, to increase level of cheating, 184–87 infidelity and, 244 intelligence vs., as predictor of dishonesty, 172–77 link between dishonesty and, 170–72, 186–89 logical-sounding rationales for choices and, 163–64 measures of, 171 moral flexibility and, 186–87 pathological liars and, 168–70 revenge and, 177–84 credit card companies, 239–40 crime, reducing, 52 cultural differences, 240–43 Danziger, Shai, 102 decision making: creating efficient process for, 167–68 effectiveness of group work in, 217–18 rationalization process and, 163–67 Denfield, George, 75 dentists: continuity of care and, 228–31 treating patients using equipment that they own, 67–68, 93–94 unnecessary work and, 67–71 depletion, see ego depletion dieting, 98, 109, 112–13, 114–15 what-the-hell effect and, 127, 130 “dine-and-dash,” 79 diplomas, lying about, 135–36, 153, 154 disabled person, author’s adoption of role of, 143–44 disclosure, 88–92, 248 study on impact of, 89–92 discounting, fixed vs. probabilistic, 194 dishonesty: causes of, 3–4, 5 collaborative, see collaborative cheating cultural differences and, 240–43 discouraging small and ubiquitous forms of, 239–40 importance of first act of, 137 infectious nature of, 191–216; see also infectious nature of cheating intelligence vs. creativity as predictor of, 172–77 link between creativity and, 170–72, 186–89 opportunities for, passed up by vast majority, 238 of others, fake products and assessing of, 131–34 rational and irrational forces in, 254 reducing amount of, 39–51, 248–54 society’s means for dealing with, 4–5 summary of forces that shape (figure), 245 when traveling, 183n see also cheating dissertation proposals and defenses, 101 distance factors, 238 in golf, 58–59 stealing Coca-Cola vs. money and, 32–33 token experiment and, 33–34 doctors: consulting for or investing in drug companies, 82, 93 continuity of care and, 228–29 lecturing about drugs, 81 pharma reps and, 78–82 treating or testing patients with equipment that they own, 92–94 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 234 dots task: conflict of interest and, 129 description of, 127–29 link between creativity and dishonesty and, 171–72, 185–86 what-the-hell effect and, 129–31 downloads, illegal, 137–39 dressing above one’s station, 120–21 Ebbers, Bernie, 13 ego depletion, 100–116, 238, 249 basic idea behind, 101 cheating and, 104–6 in everyday life, 112–16 removing oneself from tempting situations and, 108–11, 115–16 of Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, 103 sometimes succumbing to temptation and, 114–15 sudden deaths among students’ grandmothers at exam time and, 106–8 ego motivation, 27 England, cheating in, 242 Enron, 1–3, 192, 207, 215, 234 essay mills, 210–13 exams, sudden deaths among students’ grandmothers and, 106–8 exhaustion, 249 consumption of junk food and, 97–98 judges’ parole rulings and, 102–3 see also ego depletion experimental data, exclusion of, 86–88 expert witnesses, 85–86 explanations, logical-sounding, creation of, 163–65 external signaling, 120–22 dressing above one’s station and, 120–21 fake products and, 121–22 failures, tendency to turn blind eye to, 151 “fair,” determination of what is, 57 fake products, 119, 121–40, 238 illegal downloads and, 137–39 misrepresentation of academic credentials and, 135–36 rationalizations and, 134–35 self-signaling and, 123–26, 135 signaling value of authentic version diluted by, 121–22 suspiciousness of others and, 131–34 what-the-hell effect and, 127–31, 135 farmer’s market, benevolent behavior toward blind customer in, 23–24 fashion, 117–26 counterfeit goods and, 119, 121–22, 121–40, 123–26; see also fake products dressing above one’s station and, 120–21 external signaling and, 120–22 self-signaling and, 122–26 Fastow, Andrew, 2 favors, 74–82 aesthetic preferences and, 75–77 governmental lobbyists and, 77–78 inherent inclination to return, 74–75 pharma reps and, 78–82 see also conflicts of interest Fawal-Farah, Freeda, 117, 118 FBI, 215 Fedorikhin, Sasha, 99–100 Feynman, Richard, 165 financial crisis of 2008, 83–85, 192, 207, 234, 246–47 financial favors, aesthetic preferences and, 77 financial services industry: anonymous monitoring and, 234–35 cheating among politicians vs., 243 conflicts of interest in, 83–85, 93, 94 government regulation of, 234 fishing, lying about, 28 Frederick, Shane, 173 friends, invited to join in questionable behavior, 195 fudge factor theory, 27–29, 237 acceptable rate of lying and, 28–29, 91 distance between actions and money and, 34–37 getting people to cheat less and, 39–51 infidelity and, 244 rationalization of selfish desires and, 53 stealing Coca-Cola vs. money and, 32–33 Gazzaniga, Michael, 164–65 Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), 219–20 generous behavior, 23–24 Get Rich Cheating (Kreisler), 14 Gilovich, Tom, 250, 263–64 Gino, Francesca, 45, 104, 123, 127, 131, 145, 170, 184, 197, 225, 234–35, 242, 258–59 Glass, Ira, 6 Gneezy, Ayelet, 177, 257–58 golf, 55–65 cheating by “average golfer” vs. study participants and, 63–64 mistallying score in, 61–64 moving location of ball in, 58–59, 63 mulligans in, 60–61, 63–64 self-monitoring in, 56–57 survey on cheating in, 57–64 government regulations, 234 grandmothers, sudden deaths of, at exam time, 106–8 gray matter, 169–70 Green, Jennifer Wideman, 117 grocery shopping, ego depletion and, 109, 112–13 group or team work, 220–23 performance unaffected by, 233 possible benefits of, 223 predominance of, in professional lives, 217–18, 235 social utility and, 222–23 see also collaborative cheating Grüneisen, Aline, 210–11, 257 guilt, self-inflicted pain and, 250–52 Harford, Tim, 3–4 Harper’s Bazaar, 117–18 Harvard Medical School, 82 Harvey, Ann, 75 Henn, Steve, 209 heretics, external signaling of, 120 Hinduism, 25 honesty threshold, 130–31 honor codes, 41–45, 204 ideological organizations, 232n “I knew it all along” feeling, 149 illegal businesses, loyalty and care for customers in, 138–39 impulsive (or emotional) vs. rational (or deliberative) parts of ourselves, 97–106 cognitive load and, 99–100 ego depletion and, 100–106 exhaustion and, 97–98 Inbar, Yoel, 250, 264 infectious nature of cheating, 191–216, 249 bacterial infections compared to, 192–93 in class, 195–97 collaborative cheating in relation to, 221–22 Congress members’ misuse of PAC money and, 208–10 corporate dishonesty and, 192, 207–8 cost-benefit analysis and, 201–3, 205 essay mills and, 210–13 matrix task and, 197–204 positive side of moral contagion and, 215–16 regaining ethical health and, 214–15 slow and subtle process of accretion in, 193–94, 214–15 social norms and, 195, 201–3, 205–7, 209 social outsiders and, 205–7 vending machine experiment and, 194–95 infidelity, 244–45 “in good faith” notion, 219–20 Inside Job, 84–85 insurance claims, 49–51 intelligence: creativity vs., as predictor of dishonesty, 172–77 measures of, 173–75 IQ-like tests, cheating and self-deception on, 145–49 certificates emphasizing (false) achievement and, 153–54 increasing awareness of cheating and, 156–57 individuals’ tendency to turn a blind eye to their own failures and, 151 IRS, 47–49 Islam, 249 Israel, cheating in, 241 Italy, cheating in, 242 Jerome, Jerome K., 28 Jobs, Steve, 184 Jones, Bobby, 56 Jones, Marilee, 136 Judaism, 45, 249 judges, exhausted, parole decisions and, 102–3 junk food, exhaustion and consumption of, 97–98 Keiser, Kenneth, 135 Kelling, George, 214–15 John F.

…

., 243 conflicts of interest in, 83–85, 93, 94 government regulation of, 234 fishing, lying about, 28 Frederick, Shane, 173 friends, invited to join in questionable behavior, 195 fudge factor theory, 27–29, 237 acceptable rate of lying and, 28–29, 91 distance between actions and money and, 34–37 getting people to cheat less and, 39–51 infidelity and, 244 rationalization of selfish desires and, 53 stealing Coca-Cola vs. money and, 32–33 Gazzaniga, Michael, 164–65 Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), 219–20 generous behavior, 23–24 Get Rich Cheating (Kreisler), 14 Gilovich, Tom, 250, 263–64 Gino, Francesca, 45, 104, 123, 127, 131, 145, 170, 184, 197, 225, 234–35, 242, 258–59 Glass, Ira, 6 Gneezy, Ayelet, 177, 257–58 golf, 55–65 cheating by “average golfer” vs. study participants and, 63–64 mistallying score in, 61–64 moving location of ball in, 58–59, 63 mulligans in, 60–61, 63–64 self-monitoring in, 56–57 survey on cheating in, 57–64 government regulations, 234 grandmothers, sudden deaths of, at exam time, 106–8 gray matter, 169–70 Green, Jennifer Wideman, 117 grocery shopping, ego depletion and, 109, 112–13 group or team work, 220–23 performance unaffected by, 233 possible benefits of, 223 predominance of, in professional lives, 217–18, 235 social utility and, 222–23 see also collaborative cheating Grüneisen, Aline, 210–11, 257 guilt, self-inflicted pain and, 250–52 Harford, Tim, 3–4 Harper’s Bazaar, 117–18 Harvard Medical School, 82 Harvey, Ann, 75 Henn, Steve, 209 heretics, external signaling of, 120 Hinduism, 25 honesty threshold, 130–31 honor codes, 41–45, 204 ideological organizations, 232n “I knew it all along” feeling, 149 illegal businesses, loyalty and care for customers in, 138–39 impulsive (or emotional) vs. rational (or deliberative) parts of ourselves, 97–106 cognitive load and, 99–100 ego depletion and, 100–106 exhaustion and, 97–98 Inbar, Yoel, 250, 264 infectious nature of cheating, 191–216, 249 bacterial infections compared to, 192–93 in class, 195–97 collaborative cheating in relation to, 221–22 Congress members’ misuse of PAC money and, 208–10 corporate dishonesty and, 192, 207–8 cost-benefit analysis and, 201–3, 205 essay mills and, 210–13 matrix task and, 197–204 positive side of moral contagion and, 215–16 regaining ethical health and, 214–15 slow and subtle process of accretion in, 193–94, 214–15 social norms and, 195, 201–3, 205–7, 209 social outsiders and, 205–7 vending machine experiment and, 194–95 infidelity, 244–45 “in good faith” notion, 219–20 Inside Job, 84–85 insurance claims, 49–51 intelligence: creativity vs., as predictor of dishonesty, 172–77 measures of, 173–75 IQ-like tests, cheating and self-deception on, 145–49 certificates emphasizing (false) achievement and, 153–54 increasing awareness of cheating and, 156–57 individuals’ tendency to turn a blind eye to their own failures and, 151 IRS, 47–49 Islam, 249 Israel, cheating in, 241 Italy, cheating in, 242 Jerome, Jerome K., 28 Jobs, Steve, 184 Jones, Bobby, 56 Jones, Marilee, 136 Judaism, 45, 249 judges, exhausted, parole decisions and, 102–3 junk food, exhaustion and consumption of, 97–98 Keiser, Kenneth, 135 Kelling, George, 214–15 John F.

The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically by Peter Singer

Albert Einstein, clean water, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, David Brooks, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, Flynn Effect, hedonic treadmill, Large Hadron Collider, Nick Bostrom, Peter Singer: altruism, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, stem cell, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, trolley problem, William MacAskill, young professional

For example, in another study some subjects were asked, before they were presented with the moral dilemma, to memorize a string of letters, digits, and special characters, such as n63#m1Q, before each dilemma. They were told they would be asked to repeat the sequence after the experiment was over. This is known as cognitive loading—it puts a load on the parts of the brain associated with reasoning. When these subjects were then presented with the moral dilemmas, they were more likely than similar subjects who were not cognitively loaded to make judgments suggesting that some acts are just wrong, irrespective of their consequences. Remembering the sequence made it more difficult for them to reason adequately, and so they gave a more intuitive response.

…

Similarly, when subjects were shown a photo of the single individual who would be harmed if they did not choose to act so as to save the larger number of individuals, they were less likely to give a utilitarian response, presumably because the photo aroused their empathy with the victim. Other studies of cognitive loading have yielded similar results.9 Many other studies also support Greene’s dual-process theory of how we make moral judgments.10 These studies bolster as well the more specific claim that associates characteristically consequentialist judgments with greater use of conscious reasoning processes.

…

Cohen, “The Neural Bases of Cognitive Conflict and Control in Moral Judgment,” Neuron 44 (2004): 389–400. 9. Paul Conway and Bertram Gawronski, “Deontological and Utilitarian Inclinations in Moral Decision Making: A Process Dissociation Approach,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104 (2013): 216–35; see also J. Greene, S. A. Morelli, K. Lowenberg, L. E. Nystrom, and J. D. Cohen, “Cognitive Load Selectively Interferes with Utilitarian Moral Judgment,” Cognition 107 (2008): 1144–54. 10. For a summary of the evidence, see Joshua Greene, “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Why Cognitive (Neuro)Science Matters for Ethics,” Ethics 124 (2014): 695–726. 11. Holden Karnofsky, “Excited Altruism,” GiveWell blog, August 20, 2013, http://blog.givewell.org/2013/08/20/excited-altruism/. 12.

The Minimalist Way by Erica Layne

cognitive load, Inbox Zero, late fees, Mason jar, retail therapy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, solopreneur, TED Talk

Researchers have even given it a name: “decision fatigue.” No matter how inconsequential the decision seems, fewer decisions means a lighter cognitive load—and more clarity inside. In contrast, turning something into a habit means putting it on autopilot and freeing up that cognitive load. What can you put on autopilot by turning it into a habit? In your work life, habits could range from the time of day you check your email to the food you eat at lunch to fuel your afternoon. A lighter cognitive load leaves you more space to pursue your gifts. 6. OPTIMIZE YOUR WORKDAY BASED ON YOUR ENERGY Do you hit a wall after lunch?

Split-Second Persuasion: The Ancient Art and New Science of Changing Minds by Kevin Dutton

availability heuristic, Bernie Madoff, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, credit crunch, different worldview, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, equity premium, fundamental attribution error, haute couture, job satisfaction, Jon Ronson, loss aversion, Milgram experiment, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, trolley problem, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile

There’s a reason for it. Basking in sweet talk doesn’t come cheap. It’s an expensive brain state to maintain, and constitutes a far greater cognitive load – places far higher demands on our limited cognitive funds – than does its opposite number: reality checking. Which means, in turn, that when we’re lapping up the compliments we’re eating up the assets. Brain assets. So there’s less to invest in the business of critical thinking. 4The principle of ‘cognitive load’ – that the more operations our brain has to perform at any one time, the greater the drain on available resources – may be illustrated by a simple attention task, shown opposite.

…

Figure reproduced with permission from Pion Limited, London ©. 3 Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology … Langer, Ellen J., Blank, Arthur and Chanowitz, Benzion, ‘The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action: The Role of “Placebic” Information in Interpersonal Interaction.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36 (1978): 635–642. 4 The principle of ‘cognitive load’ … For a detailed and accessible account of cognitive load and visual search studies see Treisman, Anne M., ‘Features and Objects: The Fourteenth Bartlett Memorial Lecture.’ Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 40A (1988): 201–237. 5 Imagine that you’re working … Beyth-Marom Ruth and Dekel, Shlomith, An elementary approach to thinking under uncertainty (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1985). 6 Heuristics are pretty much … For further information on cognitive short-cuts see Kahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos, ‘On the Psychology of Prediction.’

…

(photo credit 3.4) Did you find it easier to find the bold X the first or the second time round? I bet it was the first time. And the reason? In the second display, the demands on the brain’s attentional resources are double what they are in the first. In the first, the brain only has to discriminate between contrast. In the second, between contrast and shape. Yet cognitive load can also work in our favour. Ironically (given that it’s a favourite device of conmen), putting the brain under a bit of pressure – increasing the amount of work that it has to do – can also be useful if we want to turn the tables: find out if someone is lying. Which, when you think about it, actually makes perfect sense.

Why Nudge?: The Politics of Libertarian Paternalism by Cass R. Sunstein

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Andrei Shleifer, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, clean water, cognitive load, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Edward Glaeser, endowment effect, energy security, framing effect, invisible hand, late fees, libertarian paternalism, loss aversion, nudge unit, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler

Greene, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Moral Judgment, in The Cognitive Neurosciences 987 (Michael S. Gazzaniga ed., 4th ed. 2009); Joshua D. Greene et al., Cognitive Load Selectively Interferes with Utilitarian Moral Judgment, 107 Cognition 1144 (2008). The latter paper states: “[O]ur theory associates utilitarian moral judgment (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences) with controlled cognitive processes and associates non-utilitarian moral judgment with automatic emotional responses. Consistent with this theory, we find that a cognitive load manipulation selectively interferes with utilitarian judgment. This interference effect provides direct evidence for the influence of controlled cognitive processes in moral judgment, and utilitarian moral judgment more specifically.”

…

Thaler & Shlomo Benartzi, Save More Tomorrow™: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving, 112 J. POL. ECON. S164, S168–69 (2004). In the context of poverty, see ABHIJIT BANERJEE & ESTHER DUFLO, POOR ECONOMICS: A RADICAL RETHINKING OF THE WAY TO FIGHT GLOBAL POVERTY 64–68 (2011). For an important, relevant discussion that involves not procrastination but cognitive load, see Anuj K. Shah, Sendhil Mullainathan & Elda Shafir, Some Consequences of Having Too Little, 338 SCIENCE 682 (2012). On that general theme, see SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN & ELDAR SHAFIR, SCARCITY: WHY HAVING TOO LITTLE MEANS SO MUCH (2013). 21. See, e.g., Jess Benhabib, Alberto Bisin & Andrew Schotter, Present-Bias, Quasi-Hyperbolic Discounting, and Fixed Costs, 69 Games & ECON.

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Francis de Véricourt

Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, autonomous vehicles, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, circular economy, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, DeepMind, defund the police, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, fiat currency, framing effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, game design, George Floyd, George Gilder, global pandemic, global village, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Higgs boson, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microaggression, Mustafa Suleyman, Neil Armstrong, nudge unit, OpenAI, packet switching, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

Dreaming with Constraints Frames help to do two tasks really well, which we outline in chapter 2. First, in novel situations or when circumstances change, our ability to choose a frame provides us with new options. Second, and at least as important, in situations that are familiar, frames focus our mind, thereby reducing our cognitive load. It’s an incredibly efficient way for us to reach a suitable decision. To do that successfully, three elements are in play: causal thinking, our aptitude to create counterfactuals, and our capacity to constrain and shape our imagination toward a particular goal. Consider each element in turn.

…

Also, we know that switching to an alternative frame within our repertoire is easiest, followed by looking to repurpose an existing frame from another field. Hence, it makes sense to start reframing by searching one’s repertoire or adjusting another mental model rather than trying to develop a new frame from scratch. That lowers the cognitive load and increases the chances for success. Counterintuitively, it is also better to reframe infrequently. There is a temptation to reframe swiftly and repeatedly. It’s the idea that if a reframe doesn’t work, one can quickly rectify the problem by reframing again, jumping from frame to frame until the right one is found.

…

See imagination Crick, Francis, 132 CRISPR, 137 Cuban missile crisis, 89–90 “cultural niche,” 58 Cuusoo, 165–166 “Cyclopedia of Puzzles,” 46 Dabiq, 213 Darwin, Charles, 7, 131 data, effect of frame applied to, 6 Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (Hedges and Sacco), 135 decision-making framing as fundamental to, 5, 8 influence of different characterizations of outcomes, 10 mental models reduce cognitive load by focusing mind, 11–12 values in, 39–40 “deep reinforcement learning,” 70 Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2), 69–70 Dennett, Daniel, 44–45 Descartes, René, 16 DeVore, Irven, 230 Diamond, Jared, 183–184 Dick, Philip K., 111 “diversity dividend,” 161–166 Donham, Wallace, 87, 156, 240 Doudna, Jennifer, 137 Earhart, Amelia, 160 Easy Solar, 203–204 Ebola, misframing of, 30–31, 32 economy.

User Friendly by Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant

A Pattern Language, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bill Atkinson, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business logic, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cognitive load, computer age, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, data science, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Elaine Herzberg, en.wikipedia.org, fake it until you make it, fake news, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, Google Glasses, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Dyson, John Markoff, Jony Ive, knowledge economy, Kodak vs Instagram, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, mobile money, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Norbert Wiener, Paradox of Choice, planned obsolescence, QWERTY keyboard, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, RFID, scientific management, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skinner box, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tacit knowledge, Tesla Model S, three-martini lunch, Tony Fadell, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Vannevar Bush, women in the workforce

Back in 1958, the cognitive psychologist George Miller was one of the first to document the concept of cognitive load, based on his studies of the limits of short-term memory. This led to the popularization of Miller’s law: The average person can keep only seven (plus or minus two) items in their working memory. There is some controversy as to whether seven is or is not a magic number. But most designers have an intuitive appreciation of the principle behind this law, and they “chunk” related options together to reduce cognitive load and reinforce a more coherent mental model. You probably wish this design strategy were more consistently applied to a number of bewildering products in your life, including remote controls, with their dizzying array of strangely labeled, shaped, and colored buttons.

…

The Honeywell thermostat later inspired the Nest smart thermostat. 1954: FITTS’S LAW, Paul Fitts With his eponymous law governing the relationship between button size and ease of use, Fitts helped invent the cross-disciplinary study of human-computer interaction. 1956: MILLER’S LAW, George Miller The cognitive psychologist George Miller was one of the first to document the concept of cognitive load, based on his studies of the limits of short-term memory. His research led to the widespread adoption of Miller’s law as a rule of thumb by designers to reduce complexity and resist the pressure to lard products with more features. 1959: PRINCESS PHONE, Henry Dreyfuss Dreyfuss’s Princess phone was an ergonomic design inspired by the way young girls would squirrel away in bed with their clunky AT&T phones.

…

., 195–96 Bateson, Gregory, 33 Bauhaus, 61, 62, 70, 148, 333, 334, 370n17 beauty, 158 Beauty and the Beast, 155; Be Our Guest restaurant, 217–19 Béhar, Yves, 107 behavior, 96, 108, 310, 344; culture and, 114; design dissolving into, 304; existing, building on, 314–17; long-term changes in, 358n13 behavioral economics, 95–96, 259 behaviorism, 81, 257 Behrens, Peter, 62, 333, 370n16 Bel Geddes, Norman, 58, 70, 88 Bell, Alexander Graham, 199, 205 Bell Model 500 telephone, 91, 93 Bigelow, Julian, 32–33 Big Four design firms, 88, 94 Big Tomorrow, 244 Blackberry, 145, 274 blind people, 203–205 blood sample testing, 183–84 Boas, Franz, 334 books, 41 Borges, Jorge Luis, 91–92 Bosnian War, 49–50, 54 bottle designs, 155–57 Bould, Fred, 344 brain, 96, 110, 257; metaphors and, 152–53; reward centers in, 254 “brain in a vat” thought experiment, 360n31 brands, 35 Braun, 46, 338, 343 Breuer, Marcel, 148 Brexit, 263 Brin, Sergey, 342 Broadway, 55–59, 66 Brown, John Seely, 341 Brown, Joshua, 119–22 Brown, Tim, 177, 179–80 Brownie camera, 332–33 buses, 280–86 Bush, Vannevar, 189 Bushmiller, Ernie, 272 buttons, 42, 43, 105–106, 117–18, 124, 268–69; Amazon one-click, 145–46, 342; Facebook Like, 35, 36, 146, 247–49, 262, 265–66, 274, 291, 292, 342, 344; Fitts’s law and, 337, 354n7; Ripple device (help button), 53–55, 80, 117, 204; shape of, 84 Cambridge Analytica, 264–67 Capital One chatbot, 211–12, 259, 268 Caplan, Ralph, 94 Carnival Cruise Line, 229–39, 245, 259, 324; Experience Innovation Center, 231–34; Ocean Medallion and Personal Genome, 233–39, 268, 296 Carnival Destiny, 230 Carr, Austin, 216 cars, 60, 65, 70, 80, 85, 104, 230, 370n10; cruise control in, 119, 321; doors of, 154; emotional design of, 157; fascia (grill and headlights) of, 157, 360n36; “horseless carriage” metaphor and, 318; hybrid, 135–39, 144, 343; steering wheels in, 147, 332, 359n24; tillers in, 147, 332, 359n24; transitioning from standard to electric, 322 cars, self-driving, 99–106, 108, 125, 272; Audi, 99–104, 106, 108, 111–13, 118–20, 126, 144; “autopilot” idea and, 119, 124, 346; dashboard and steering wheel in, 114–17; expectations and, 111; horse metaphor and, 116, 117, 118, 126, 144; pedestrians and, 101–102, 113–14, 125, 210–11; politeness and, 125, 126; Tesla, 102, 103, 114, 119–22, 346; “three plus one” design philosophy for, 105, 106; trust and, 114; Uber, 121; Volkswagen, 103–104, 113–14, 117; workspace metaphor and, 318 Carter, Jimmy, 275 Center for Humane Technology, 274 Centre Pompidou, 157–58 Cerf, Vint, 199, 205 Chadwick, Don, 341 chain saws, 172, 173, 178, 339 Chapanis, Alphonse, 83–87, 95, 103, 106, 124, 202, 257, 334; B-17 Flying Fortress controls, 83–84, 335–36 chatbots: Capital One, 211–12, 259, 268; Eliza, 337–38 Chhatpar, Ravi, 305 Chicago slaughterhouses, 60 China, 61, 191–93 China Syndrome, The, 29 Chipchase, Jan, 308, 334 choice, 287, 289, 310; paradox of, 231 Cigna, 288 Clancey, William, 167 Clark, Andy, 293–94 Clarke, Arthur C., 223 climate change, 34, 289 Clinton, Hillary, 262, 264 Clinton Foundation, 267 Clippy, 112 coach metaphor, 136–39 coffee-spilling principle, 106 cognitive load, 322 cognitive psychology, 95, 272, 323 Cold War, 201 Columbia University, 125 “Coming of Age of Calm Technology, The” (Weiser and Brown), 341 computers, 26, 80, 177, 208, 270, 295–96; desktop metaphor in, 139–40, 143, 144, 146–47; feelings about, 108–10, 112; graphical user interface and, 143, 145, 146, 148; GRID Compass, 175–76, 339; mode confusion and, 144; Mother of All Demos and, 187–90, 338; mouse for, 141, 169, 177, 182–83; as personal assistant, 189; programs and software, 6–7, 176, 177 computing, ubiquitous, 233, 296, 369n11 Connell, Derrick, 191, 193 consistency, 31, 105 consumer, average, 200 consumer demand, aesthetic appeal and, 64–65 consumer design, business incentives aligned with, 68–71 consumer desire, 93, 175 consumption as social progress, 55, 65, 90, 175, 290 convenience, 273 conversation, 111–13 Cooper, Alan, 178, 261–62, 274–75, 341, 361n22 cooperation, 111–12 Coppola, Sofia, 195 Cortana, 194, 208 Creative Engineering (Arnold), 167 crime, organized, 39 Crofton, Meg, 216, 225 Crowder, Harlan, 4–8, 43; at IBM, 5–8, 338; “user friendly” term and, 4, 7, 338 cruise ships, 229, 230; see also Carnival Cruise Line CVS MinuteClinic, 310 cybernetics, 336 DaimlerChrysler, 318 Dalberg Design, 130, 288, 305, 309, 315, 319, 325 Darwin, Charles, 90 deaf people, 199, 205–206 defibrillator, 139 Degani, Asaf, 105 de la Mare, Nick, 243–45, 250 de los Reyes, August, 196–99, 202–203, 205–206, 292 democracy, 61 Depression, Great, 65, 68–70, 86, 93 Descartes, René, 152–53, 360n31 design, 45–46, 174–75, 180, 183; ancestor thinking in, 274–75; beauty and, 158; disability and, 202–205, 294; emotions and, 155–57, 325–27; ethical weight of, 294; of existing products, 90; “good,” 304–305; human-centered, 72, 182, 184, 272, 288; mood boards and, 155; new thoughts and, 294; of new types of products, 90, 93; paradox of, 289; postmodern, 157–58; postwar boom in, 89, 90; seamless, 369n11; as social progress, 68–70, 271, 290; societal effects of, 290–91; understanding in, 42, 56, 68, 80, 289; see also industrial design; user-friendly design designer error, 83 Design for the Real World (Papanek), 290 Design in the USA (Meikle), 69 Design Lab, 23–24 Design of Everyday Things, The (Norman), 22, 312, 339, 340 design research, 72, 306–10 design thinking, 24, 163, 170, 182, 184, 232 Dewey, John, 301 Diffrient, Niels, 94 disability, 199–200, 202–205, 294 Disney, 215, 229, 231, 232, 234, 238, 323; Imagineers, 222, 226 Disney, Walt, 215, 220–22, 226, 233, 336 Disneyland, 220, 336 Disney World, 215–17, 232–33, 245; Be Our Guest restaurant, 217–19; MagicBand and MyMagic+, 217–29, 237, 243–44, 288, 304, 317, 345 Donald, Arnold, 229, 231, 232, 238 dopamine, 254, 259, 263 Dreyfuss, Doris Marks, 67, 70, 94–95, 172–74 Dreyfuss, Henry, 55–59, 65–72, 87– 95, 117, 154, 163–65, 177, 181, 207, 271, 273, 285–87, 290, 293, 302, 308, 310, 334, 352n12; Broadway work, 55–59, 66; death of, 94–95; Honeywell thermostat, 92, 93, 336, 343; industrial design and, 59, 67–68, 93; Joe and Josephine drawings, 88–89, 92, 174, 176, 178, 185, 337; Macy’s and, 66–67, 165; The Measure of Man, 92, 337, 340, 341; RKO theater and, 55–56, 92, 173–74, 335; tank cockpit chairs, 87–88; telephone designs, 91, 93, 337, 371n21; Toperator washing machine, 69, 87, 335 Dropbox, 351n32 DVDs, 230 DVRs, 163, 321 dyslexia, 205 Dyson, James, 157, 339 Dyson vacuum cleaners, 157, 158, 339 Eames, Ray and Charles, 90 Earlham College, 280, 284 Eastman, George, 332–33 Eastman Kodak, 332–33, 336 eBay, 34–35, 249 education, 244–45 elderly, 201; suit to augment muscles of, 107–108, 340 Eliza conversational bot, 337–38 email, 199, 205, 242, 274; in-box, 134 embodied cognition, 152–54, 294, 360n32 emojis, 249, 260, 326–27, 342 Emotional Design (Norman), 326, 340 emotions, 155–57, 325–27, 370n16, 371n20 empathy, 163, 184–85, 190, 199, 212, 245, 257, 327; with disability, 200; industrialized, 163–64, 170, 183, 185, 245, 273–75, 294 Engelbart, Doug, 142, 168, 243, 363n11; Mother of All Demos by, 187–90, 338 Enlightenment, 95 Eno (Capital One chatbot), 211–12, 259, 268 environmental concerns, 305; climate change, 34, 289 ergonomics, 86, 92, 95 Erickson, Thom, 369n7 errors, 86–87, 95, 173; blaming humans for, 122; designer, 83; pilot, 81, 83, 102–103, 335 Esalen, 168, 169 Esslinger, Hartmut, 326 ethnography, modern, 334 European Union (EU), 346–47 expectations, 110–11, 313 “experience,” origin of word, 369n3 Experience and Education (Dewey), 301 Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, 61–62 Eyal, Nir, 258–59 Fabricant, Richard, 319–20 Fabricant, Robert, 9, 96, 130, 288, 301–30 Facebook, 118, 131, 132, 239, 243, 247–48, 250, 251, 255, 258, 259, 261, 262, 267–69, 271, 274–76, 292–95; advertising on, 267; feedback and, 35, 36; in Kenya, 147–48; Like button, 35, 36, 146, 247–49, 262, 265–66, 274, 291, 292, 342, 344; misinformation spread on, 262, 263; News Feed, 247, 248, 318; tribalism fostered by, 245, 262–64 factories, 60, 63; accidents in, 82 Fadell, Tony, 342, 344 fake news and misinformation, 262, 263, 289 Farber, Sam and Betsey, 202–203, 341 Fast Company, 216 feedback, 7, 32–38, 42, 105, 112–13, 119, 269, 288, 305, 311, 313, 320, 327, 336; artificial intelligence and, 35–36; bus system and, 282; buyer/seller, 34–35; car dashboards and, 137–38; Facebook and, 35, 36; Instagram and, 36–37; Like button model of, 249, 291, 342, 344; Ripple device and, 55; and suit to augment muscles of the elderly, 108; Three Mile Island and, 28, 32, 40, 42; Wizard of Oz technique and, 193, 312 feminism, 63 Fernbach, Philip, 271 Filson, Ben, 344 Finland, 170, 182, 288–89, 345 Fisher, Helen, 370n10 Fitts, Paul, 80–83, 86–87, 106, 173, 337, 354n7 Flinchum, Russell, 71 flyswatter, 69 Fogg, B.

Clean Agile: Back to Basics by Robert C. Martin

Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Boeing 737 MAX, c2.com, cognitive load, continuous integration, DevOps, disinformation, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, Frederick Winslow Taylor, index card, iterative process, Kanban, Kubernetes, loose coupling, microservices, remote working, revision control, scientific management, Turing machine

Point 4 says that once we have removed all the duplication, we should strive to decrease the number of structural elements, such as classes, functions, variables, etc. The goal of Simple Design is to keep the design weight of the code as small as practicable. Design Weight The designs of a software system range from quite simple to extraordinarily complex. The more complex the design, the greater the cognitive load placed on the programmers. That cognitive load is Design Weight. The greater the weight of that design, the more time and effort are required for the programmers to understand and manipulate the system. Similarly, the complexity of the requirements also ranges from very small to very great. The greater the complexity of the requirements, the more time and effort are required to understand and manipulate the system.

…

See Technical Practices Pragmatic Programmers, at Snowbird meeting, 11 Process expert, becoming Agile expert, 156–157 Product Owner not feeling part of team, 172 Scrum, 94 Productivity expectation of stability, 46–49 staff additions and, 29 Profession contrasting with job, 178–179 uniqueness of programming as a profession, 114 Professionalism combining Craftsmanship with Agile, 181 community of professionals, 173 overview of, 38 software and its potential dangers, 42–43 for software extent and dependence, 39–42 Program evaluation and review technique (PERT), 65 Programmers. See also Developers burn out, 101 collaboration in Acceptance tests, 91–93 collaboration in choosing stories, 78–79 communication as value, 134–135 design weight as cognitive load, 127 expectation to not ship bad code, 43–45 ruling the contemporary world, 41–43 as subset of developers, 59 uniqueness of programming as a profession, 114 Programming, comparing XP with Agile, 180 Programming languages, core tools for Agile developers, 148 Project end. See Done Project management.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

affirmative action, Black Swan, classic study, cognitive bias, cognitive load, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, index card, invisible hand, lateral thinking, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, Necker cube, Nelson Mandela, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Philippa Foot, Plato's cave, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, social intelligence, social web, stem cell, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, Tony Hsieh, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game

In my first few years at UVA I conducted several experiments to test this dual-process model by asking people to make judgments under conditions that strengthened or weakened one of the processes. For example, social psychologists often ask people to perform tasks while carrying a heavy cognitive load, such as holding the number 7250475 in mind, or while carrying a light cognitive load, such as remembering just the number 7. If performance suffers while people are carrying the heavy load, then we can conclude that “controlled” thinking (such as conscious reasoning) is necessary for that particular task. But if people do fine on the task regardless of the load, then we can conclude that “automatic” processes (such as intuition and emotion) are sufficient for performing that task.

…

My early Jeffersonian dual-process model. Emotion and reasoning are separate paths to moral judgment, although moral judgment can sometimes lead to post hoc reasoning as well. My question was simple: Can people make moral judgments just as well when carrying a heavy cognitive load as when carrying a light one? The answer turned out to be yes. I found no difference between conditions, no effect of cognitive load. I tried it again with different stories and got the same outcome. I tried another manipulation: I used a computer program to force some people to answer quickly, before they had time to think, and I forced other people to wait ten seconds before offering their judgment.

…

“Reasoning-why,” in contrast, is the process “by which we describe how we think we reached a judgment, or how we think another person could reach that judgment.”34 “Reasoning-why” can occur only for creatures that have language and a need to explain themselves to other creatures. “Reasoning-why” is not automatic; it’s conscious, it sometimes feels like work, and it’s easily disrupted by cognitive load. Kohlberg had convinced moral psychologists to study “reasoning-why” and to neglect “seeing-that.”35 Margolis’s ideas were a perfect fit with everything I had seen in my studies: rapid intuitive judgment (“That’s just wrong!”) followed by slow and sometimes tortuous justifications (“Well, their two methods of birth control might fail, and the kids they produce might be deformed”).

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

Atul Gawande, Cal Newport, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, en.wikipedia.org, financial independence, Goodhart's law, invisible hand, Lao Tzu, late fees, meta-analysis, microaggression, Paul Graham, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, side hustle, survivorship bias, Walter Mischel, When a measure becomes a target

It can only pay attention to one problem at a time. As a result, your brain is always working to preserve your conscious attention for whatever task is most essential. Whenever possible, the conscious mind likes to pawn off tasks to the nonconscious mind to do automatically. This is precisely what happens when a habit is formed. Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks. Despite their efficiency, some people still wonder about the benefits of habits. The argument goes like this: “Will habits make my life dull? I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into a lifestyle I don’t enjoy. Doesn’t so much routine take away the vibrancy and spontaneity of life?”

…

.* The Japanese companies looked for every point of friction in the manufacturing process and eliminated it. As they subtracted wasted effort, they added customers and revenue. Similarly, when we remove the points of friction that sap our time and energy, we can achieve more with less effort. (This is one reason tidying up can feel so good: we are simultaneously moving forward and lightening the cognitive load our environment places on us.) If you look at the most habit-forming products, you’ll notice that one of the things these goods and services do best is remove little bits of friction from your life. Meal delivery services reduce the friction of shopping for groceries. Dating apps reduce the friction of making social introductions.

…

Lee, “Division of Attention: The Single-Channel Hypothesis Revisited,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A 41, no. 1 (1989), doi:10.1080/14640748908402350. the conscious mind likes to pawn off tasks: Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). Habits reduce cognitive load: John R. Anderson, “Acquisition of Cognitive Skill,” Psychological Review 89, no. 4 (1982), doi:10.1037/0033–295X.89.4.369. Feelings of pleasure and disappointment: Antonio R. Damasio, The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (New York: Pantheon Books, 2018); Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made (London: Pan Books, 2018).

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? by Pete Dyson, Rory Sutherland

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Swan, Boeing 747, BRICs, butterfly effect, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, cognitive bias, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, demand response, Diane Coyle, digital map, driverless car, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, fake news, functional fixedness, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Greta Thunberg, Gödel, Escher, Bach, high-speed rail, hive mind, Hyperloop, Induced demand, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low cost airline, Lyft, megaproject, meta-analysis, Network effects, nudge unit, Ocado, overview effect, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, pneumatic tube, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Rory Sutherland, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, selection bias, Skype, smart transportation, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Veblen good, When a measure becomes a target, yield management, zero-sum game

Be sympathetic to stressed travellers The map abstracts to reduce cognitive load (it simplifies), it appreciates that people have limited cognitive capacity (a traveller’s unfamiliarity with the terrain, for instance), and it embraces heuristics (by replacing ‘how far’ with ‘how many stops’). This makes travel a more welcoming, and inclusive, experience. Design is about what you leave out too The design of London’s Tube map is also significant in terms of what it leaves out. South London’s surface rail isn’t marked, for example. This is a value judgement that trades off the need to reduce cognitive load with the problem that it makes London, especially South London, seem more transport-poor than it actually is – at least to tourists and North Londoners.

…

This makes us more likely to cry, which may explain why we become deeply moved by profoundly unimpressive in-flight movies.10 Decision making To travel means to make decisions while we are stressed and uncertain. Taking a trip is expensive, time-pressured, crowded and often disorientating. Individuals must cooperate with one another and, under stress, observe the social norms that govern tasks like queueing.11 Habits We repeat past behaviour, often unconsciously. While this reduces the cognitive load required by our trip, it makes adapting and changing to alternatives much harder.12 New and better roads are therefore slow to fill up, and rail services struggle to make a profit for their first few years. Disability Across the world there are more than one billion people living with severe or moderate disabilities.

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time by Maria Konnikova

Abraham Maslow, attribution theory, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bluma Zeigarnik, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, coherent worldview, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark triade / dark tetrad, endowment effect, epigenetics, Higgs boson, higher-order functions, hindsight bias, lake wobegon effect, lateral thinking, libertarian paternalism, Milgram experiment, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, post-work, publish or perish, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, seminal paper, side project, Skype, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, the scientific method, tulip mania, Walter Mischel

“Cinnamon pita chips? Nah, I can’t help you.” By that point, Tyler was inside: his ploy to increase the bouncer’s cognitive load had succeeded. And it succeeded, in various guises, all the way through his college career. A rope that derives entirely from the argument’s presentation can still be amazingly effective. Derren Brown, one of Britain’s most famous magicians, had a field day with the same approach on a 2007 visit to New York. Except in his case it was to make the point that, with the right cognitive load, people won’t notice if you’re paying with paper. Stop one: a fishmonger’s. The goal: three filets of sole.

…

But the best liars are a difficult match for even the best truth-seers. Even then, it’s not a skill that can be easily learned. “I don’t think my ability is trainable,” Renée admits. “If we could, we’d be doing it already. I can give others tools, but they won’t be at the same level.” What’s more, Ekman says, cognitive load may come from many areas, not just deception. Even with microexpressions, there is no surefire way of knowing whether someone is actually being untruthful. We can read signs of extreme pressure, but we don’t know where that pressure necessarily comes from. We might be worried, nervous, or anxious about something else.

…

We might be worried, nervous, or anxious about something else. It’s one of the reasons lie detectors are also notoriously unreliable. Our physiology is just as subject to minute pressures as our physiognomy, not necessarily from the strain of deceiving. Sometimes this signals lying. Sometimes it signals other types of cognitive load, like stress, fatigue, or emotional distress. And in all cases it is impossible to be absolutely certain. With con artists, lie detection becomes even trickier. “A lie,” Ekman says, “is a deliberate choice to mislead a target without any notification.” Plus, the more you lie, the fewer identifying signs, even tiny ones, you display.

The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age by Robert Wachter

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Airbnb, Atul Gawande, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Checklist Manifesto, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, cognitive load, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Firefox, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, general purpose technology, Google Glasses, human-factors engineering, hype cycle, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Internet of things, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lifelogging, Marc Benioff, medical malpractice, medical residency, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, pets.com, pneumatic tube, Productivity paradox, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Hendricks, Robert Solow, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TED Talk, The future is already here, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Toyota Production System, Uber for X, US Airways Flight 1549, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Yogi Berra

Abundant research has demonstrated that the term multitasking is a misnomer— performance degrades rapidly when people try to do several things simultaneously, whether it’s your kids doing homework while texting or a pharmacist checking orders while answering the phone. Psychologists speak of the concept of “cognitive load”—the overall volume of things a mind is grappling with at a given time. While there are some individual differences in the ways we manage cognitive load, one thing is clear: none of us does this as well as we think we do. Studies of air traffic controllers have demonstrated that at busy times, professionals do their best to manage their cognitive loads by shedding tasks, falling back on automation, and focusing their attention on some things and away from others. But ultimately the brain begins to tire, and that’s when you see people cutting the wrong corner.

…

., 9–10, 11–12, 17 Bush, Jonathan, 89, 226–233 Carr, Nicholas, 275 case-mix adjustment, 40 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 67–68 CellScope, 240–241, 242 Cerner, 8, 86, 187, 222, 231 Chan, Benjamin, 139–141, 149–153, 155–157 Chang, Paul, 53, 62 the chart, 44–45 The Checklist Manifesto (Gawande), 121–122 Christensen, Clay, 12, 61, 217, 229 clinical research, 263–264 clinical trials, 33 clinicopathologic correlation, 31 Clinton, Hillary, 11 Clinton, William “Bill”, 9, 189 Code Blue, 2–4 Codman, Ernest, 36 cognitive computing, 146 cognitive load, 150–151 complementary innovations, 245 computer systems, replacing the physician’s brain, 93–104 computerized decision support for clinicians, 248, 251, 260 computerized provider order entry (CPOE), 130 “Connecting for Health” initiative, 10, 17 cookbook medicine, 120 Cramer, Jim, 233 creative destruction, 250–251 The Creative Destruction of Medicine (Topol), 250 CT scans, 50–51 quality of images, 52–53 stacking, 53 data.

Seeking SRE: Conversations About Running Production Systems at Scale by David N. Blank-Edelman

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, backpropagation, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, bounce rate, business continuity plan, business logic, business process, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, commoditize, continuous integration, Conway's law, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, database schema, Debian, deep learning, DeepMind, defense in depth, DevOps, digital rights, domain-specific language, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, exponential backoff, fail fast, fallacies of distributed computing, fault tolerance, fear of failure, friendly fire, game design, Grace Hopper, imposter syndrome, information retrieval, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, invisible hand, iterative process, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Kubernetes, loose coupling, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Maslow's hierarchy, microaggression, microservices, minimum viable product, MVC pattern, performance metric, platform as a service, pull request, RAND corporation, remote working, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, scientific management, search engine result page, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, single page application, Snapchat, software as a service, software is eating the world, source of truth, systems thinking, the long tail, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, traumatic brain injury, value engineering, vertical integration, web application, WebSocket, zero day

Since software and its ecosystem do not follow economies of scale, it becomes imperative for teams to specialize and focus, as an organization’s software and infrastructure grows with scale; that is where the probable transition from DevOps to SRE comes into play. For smaller businesses and organizations, DevOps culture reduces the impedance between development and operations resulting in rapid iterations and change. As an organization grows and scales it becomes imperative to standardize how software is developed and deployed to reduce the cognitive load and effort when it comes to understating and getting things done. Both DevOps and SRE roles can make contributions here, DevOps can focus more on developer productivity (e.g., tooling like build systems, trainings, better testing, etc.), while SREs focus on maintaining uptime, upkeep of production systems, and specialized tooling (e.g., distributed tracing infrastructure), both the roles become a full-time job with scale.

…

PE is not primary on-call for services we don’t own or build outright. We have a shared on-call model when we’re embedded with an SWE team and how that on-call rotation manifests itself is situational. In most cases, it’s a weekly rotation. There’s a software engineer on call for one week, then a PE on call the next week, and so forth. In some cases, due to cognitive load or because the infrastructure is currently harder to manage, some teams do shorter on-call rotations of a few days. We have only two scenarios where solely software engineers or production engineers are on call: A software engineering team that doesn’t have embedded production engineers. In this scenario, they have no choice because they have to be on call for their service.

…

But we need something more. If you’re not looking at creating and maintaining development frameworks for your organization that incorporate the production standards you want to maintain, you’re missing a great opportunity to extend SRE’s impact, increase the velocity of your development and launch processes, and reduce cognitive load, toil, and human errors. Frameworks can make certain that monitoring is compatible with existing production systems; that data layer calls are safe; that distributed deployment is balanced across maintenance zones; that global and local load balancing follow appropriate, familiar, and standardized patterns; and that nobody forgets to check the network class of service on that tertiary synchronization service cluster or comes out of a production review surprised to learn that they have three weeks’ worth of monitoring configurations to write and a month-long wait to provision redundant storage in Zone 7 before they’ll be able to launch because of a typo when they filled out the service template.22 Antipattern 11: Too Much Stick, Not Enough Carrot SRE is a pull function, not a push function.

Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners by Michael Erard

Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, cognitive load, complexity theory, European colonialism, language acquisition, machine translation, pattern recognition, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Skype, Steven Pinker, theory of mind

In south India the answer lies in social dynamics that are clearly organized along cognitive lines. One way that Indian brains are able to manage so many languages, according to the University of Chicago linguist and Tamil scholar E. Annamalai, is the Sprachbund. That overlap between languages is a result of generations of people trying to reduce the cognitive load of having to learn and remember so many of them. Another way to put it is that the Sprachbund is a cultural adaptation to two fixed constraints: a set of spoken entities whose boundaries will never blur, for cultural and political reasons, and the limits of the human brain. Something had to give.

…

One afternoon in the library at the Central Institute for Indian Languages, in the middle of reading various Indian scholars’ work on multilingualism, I jotted in my notebook that “the hyperpolyglot is the plurilingual individual in the West—the presence of language fluidity in the West.” There’s a truth to this, though I can’t shake the notion that they’re really doing something different from the Indian multilinguals whose lives I glimpsed. One difference is that individuals living in multilingual communities seem to settle on an optimal cognitive load. The hyperpolyglot possesses a similar patchwork of linguistic proficiencies. Yet he or she exceeds this optimum with a conspicuous consumption of brainpower. Another difference is how learning these languages ties a person to his or her community. For multilinguals, learning languages is an act of joining society.

…

Taking my lead from Dick Hudson, I began my project by identifying hyperpolyglots as people who knew more languages than they needed to merely “belong” or get along in their local communities. I would go further, however. Hyperpolyglots are people who have the multicompetence to belong to a real or imagined global community. In order to learn more languages, they borrow tricks and adaptations to lighten their cognitive load from people in multilingual settings: they keep their languages at different levels of proficiency; they read and write only in some of them; they develop receptive knowledge in some languages and tend to know other languages that share vocabulary and grammatical regularities. Sometimes they count languages that they long ago studied but no longer (or rarely) used.

The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data by Michael P. Lynch

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Mechanical Turk, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bitcoin, Cass Sunstein, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, data science, Edward Snowden, Firefox, Google Glasses, hive mind, income inequality, Internet of things, John von Neumann, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, patient HM, prediction markets, RFID, sharing economy, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Twitter Arab Spring, WikiLeaks

Writing is a technology, a tool. Yet its invention wasn’t just a change in how information and knowledge was distributed. It was a new way of knowing itself. Writing allows us to communicate across time—both with ourselves and with others. It allows us to outsource memory tasks and therefore lessen our cognitive load. Not long ago, for example, I discovered a note my father had written, taped to the back of an old chainsaw I had inherited from him. It was more than a note, really; it was a little essay, detailing good and bad practice with the saw. My dad’s house was peppered with such memos. He would write them as a reminder of how best to go about various tasks that one might do only irregularly—replacing the fuel filter on the lawn mower, shutting down the water heater.

…

But all of them do involve some level of insight. Having such an insight is part of why understanding is fundamentally a creative act. Coming to understand is a mental act in the same way that reflecting or deciding are mental acts. They are activities that your mind engages in. They take effort and increase the total cognitive load. Don’t confuse the state of understanding and the act of coming to understand. One can be in a state of understanding, just as one might be in a state of decision (or indecision, as the case may be), without doing anything in particular, or even being conscious of being in that state. Your understanding in such a case is tacit or implicit.

Re-Educated: Why It’s Never Too Late to Change Your Life by Lucy Kellaway

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Broken windows theory, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, fake news, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, lockdown, Martin Wolf, stakhanovite, wage slave

I am just in time for the last clammy pain au chocolat – leaving the people behind me with no choice but the frosted cinnamon swirls. 8am A slide on the giant screen in the auditorium reads: DO NOW: What is the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic cognitive load? I have a dim memory of an earlier training session with this detail in it, but my own cognitive load is so excessive right now the only thing that would relieve it would be some extra time to plan my Year 10 lesson. Instead we get a five-minute blast from an RE teacher whose title is ‘Excellent Teacher’ (the implication being that the rest of us are Rubbish Teachers) on how to break our explanations down to make them easier to understand.

The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall by Mark W. Moffett

affirmative action, Anthropocene, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, California gold rush, classic study, cognitive load, delayed gratification, demographic transition, Easter island, eurozone crisis, George Santayana, glass ceiling, Howard Rheingold, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, Kevin Kelly, labour mobility, land tenure, long peace, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Oklahoma City bombing, out of africa, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, the strength of weak ties, Timothy McVeigh, World Values Survey

While managing the markers of our society could have contributed to the enlargement of the forebrain of humans compared to other animals, it isn’t likely to be the primary cause. Sitting in a public place, you register the physical, cultural, and other traits of those around you without much thought, a minimal investment of effort. A psychologist would say that markers reduce the cognitive load of social surveillance, freeing you up to read this book or converse with friends at the café. Even small tribes like Kenya’s El Molo, with its handful of people, take advantage of the low cost of social surveillance made possible by their shared dress, language, and so on—they may know every other El Molo intimately, but the El Molo are still an anonymous society.

…

Alex Todorov, an exuberant Bulgarian with a dramatic mop of hair and an office near Hasson’s in Princeton’s psychology department, has shown that a face glimpsed for a tenth of a second, a span of time too short to enter our awareness, is subconsciously assessed in terms of the person’s emotional state, sex, race, and (Todorov assures me) ethnicity and society, too.38 Our nimbleness with markers must reduce our cognitive load—the conscious effort we expend. And as Solomon Asch, a pioneer of social psychology, recognized in the 1940s, we can no more prevent these impressions than refrain from hearing a melody.39 Should markers, even in aggregate, come up short, signs of identity have occasionally been forced on people.

…

Reflections on the history of European state-making. In C Tilly, ed. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. 3–83. Tincoff R, PW Jusczyk. 1999. Some beginnings of word comprehension in 6-month-olds. Psychol Sci 10:172–175. Tindale RS, S Sheffey. 2002. Shared information, cognitive load, and group memory. Group Process Intergr Relat 5:5–18. Tishkoff SA, et al. 2007. Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe. Nat Genet 39:31–40. Tobler R, et al. 2017. Aboriginal mitogenomes reveal 50,000 years of regionalism in Australia. Nature 544:180–184. Todorov A. 2017.

Designing Search: UX Strategies for Ecommerce Success by Greg Nudelman, Pabini Gabriel-Petit

access to a mobile phone, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, business intelligence, call centre, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, folksonomy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Neal Stephenson, Palm Treo, performance metric, QR code, recommendation engine, RFID, search costs, search engine result page, semantic web, Silicon Valley, social graph, social web, speech recognition, text mining, the long tail, the map is not the territory, The Wisdom of Crowds, web application, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Subjective Fickleness—How often the governing metaphor or paradigm changes as users move through an experience Simplicity/complexity—The degree to which the experience feels simple to grasp and operate, or is subtle and complex Forgiveness—The degree to which the experience invites exploration and guessing, or penalizes mistakes Grooviness—How much the experience allows users to get into a groove, forgetting about the mechanics of operating the system and becoming absorbed in the experience itself Wordiness—How much text users must read Cognitive load—How much users must think Using these measures (and any others you care to invent), it’s possible to characterize user experiences in a way that allows comparisons and goal-setting. You can measure whether an iteration of a design feels denser, flatter, or wordier than a previous one, and whether that’s enough to satisfy your users’ needs.

…

If a custom date range is desired, the customer can click the More link that opens a section with standard date boxes and calendar pickers allowing the customer to enter a custom date range instead. In many cases using this design pattern instead of a simple date range picker can save time and cognitive load on the person using the interface, while still allowing complete input flexibility with only a single extra click. In many cases, date ranges are orthogonal to the task at hand, yet many designers and engineers reach for the date picker as a kind of knee-jerk reaction. Instead, challenge yourself on your next project.

Principles of Web API Design: Delivering Value with APIs and Microservices by James Higginbotham

Amazon Web Services, anti-pattern, business intelligence, business logic, business process, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, collaborative editing, continuous integration, create, read, update, delete, database schema, DevOps, fallacies of distributed computing, fault tolerance, index card, Internet of things, inventory management, Kubernetes, linked data, loose coupling, machine readable, Metcalfe’s law, microservices, recommendation engine, semantic web, side project, single page application, Snapchat, software as a service, SQL injection, web application, WebSocket

Delivering an API design progressively, rather than all at once, allows teams to meet the principle of welcoming changing requirements and delivering working software frequently. It also helps teams avoid last-minute scrambles that can negatively impact API design. The “seek the simple” principle encourages teams to design in a simple way. Teams should design an API that avoids clever designs that require a higher cognitive load to understanding. Instead, designs should be intuitive based on the use cases it addresses and should use vocabulary that is appropriate for the solution domain. They should offer only the necessary information to support the use case. The Agility of API Design-First The goal of API design-first should be to gather sufficient details to limit the risk of a breaking change in the future.

…

Dashed lines represent traditional coursed-grained boundaries that are further decomposed to reduce the complexity of more course-grained services. Microservice adoption has typically been used to decompose highly complex systems into independently deployed components rather than containing the complexity within a single codebase. The cognitive load required to understand a single microservice is lowered compared to that of understanding a single codebase. Testing becomes more approachable as well as automated test suites become more focused on the single component. This is shown in Figure 10.3. Figure 10.3 Microservices decompose high complexity into smaller, independently-deployable components.

HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith

cognitive load, Firefox, machine readable, web application

You know the drill: you’re booking a flight or creating an event and you need to choose a date. Up pops a little calendar for you to choose a date from. These calendar widgets all do the same thing, but you’ll find that they’re implemented slightly differently on each site. A native calendar widget would smooth away the inconsistencies and reduce cognitive load during the date-picking process. HTML5 introduces a raft of input types specifically for dates and times: date is for a year, month, and day. datetime is for a year, month, and day in combination with hours, minutes, and seconds and time zone information. datetime-local is the same but without the time zone information.

The Irrational Bundle by Dan Ariely

accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Albert Einstein, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, business process, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, compensation consultant, computer vision, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, Donald Trump, end world poverty, endowment effect, Exxon Valdez, fake it until you make it, financial engineering, first-price auction, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fudge factor, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, IKEA effect, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, late fees, loss aversion, Murray Gell-Mann, name-letter effect, new economy, operational security, Pepsi Challenge, Peter Singer: altruism, placebo effect, price anchoring, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Saturday Night Live, Schrödinger's Cat, search costs, second-price auction, Shai Danziger, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Skype, social contagion, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, young professional

To reduce participants’ ability to think effectively, Baba and Sasha did not remove parts of their brains (as animal researchers sometimes do), nor did they use magnetic pulses to disrupt thinking (though there are machines that can do that). Instead, they decided to tax their participants’ ability to think by piling on what psychologists call cognitive load. Simply put, they wanted to find out whether having a lot on one’s mind would leave less cognitive room for resisting temptation and make people more likely to succumb to it. Baba and Sasha’s experiment went like this: they divided participants into two groups and asked members of one group to remember a two-digit number (something like, say, 35) and they asked members of the other group to remember a seven-digit number (say, 7581280).

…

., 246 cashless society, implications for dishonesty in, 34 Catch Me If You Can (Abagnale), 173 certificates for (false) achievements, 153–54 Chance, Zoë, 145, 264 charitable behavior, 23–24 cheating: aggressive cheaters and, 239 altruistic, 222–23, 225–26, 227–28, 232 being made blatantly aware of, 156–57 being watched and, 223–25, 227 collaborative, see collaborative cheating desire to benefit from, 12–14, 27, 29, 237 ego depletion, 104–6, 111–12 fake products’ impact on, 125–31 in golf, 55–65 honor codes and, 41–45 increasing creativity to increase level of, 184–87 as infection, 191–216; see also infectious nature of cheating infidelity and, 244–45 on IQ-like tests, self-deception and, 145–49, 151, 153–54, 156–57 reducing amount of, 39–51, 248–54 removing oneself from tempting situation and, 108–11 signing forms at top and, 46–51 Ten Commandments and, 39–40, 41, 44 what-the-hell effect and, 127–31, 136 see also dishonesty China, cheating in, 241–42 Chloé accessories, studies with, 123–34 Civil War veterans, 152 classes, infectious nature of cheating in, 195–97 Coca-Cola, stealing money vs., 32–33 cognitive dissonance, 81 cognitive load: ability to resist temptation and, 99–100 judges’ parole rulings and, 102–3 Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), 173–74 coin logic, 167–68 collaborative cheating, 217–35 altruism and, 222–23, 225–26, 227–28, 232 being watched or monitored and, 223–25, 227–28, 234–35 emphasis on working as group or team and, 217–18 infectious nature of cheating in relation to, 221–22 social utility and, 222–23 companies: being one step removed from money and, 34–37 irrationality of, 51 see also corporate dishonesty compliments, insincere, 159 conflicts of interest, 67–95, 238, 248 in academia, 82, 84–85 in dentistry, 67–71, 93, 94, 230 disclosure and, 88–92 dots task and, 129 eradication of, 92–95 exclusion of experimental data and, 86–88 expert witnesses and, 85–86 in financial services industry, 83–85, 93, 94 governmental lobbyists and, 77–78, 94 honesty threshold and, 130–31 inherent inclination to return favors and, 74–75 medical procedures and, 71–74, 92–94, 229 pharmaceutical companies’ influence in academia and, 82 pharma reps and, 78–82 what-the-hell effect and, 129–31 congressional staffers, cheating among, 243 Congress members, PAC money misused by, 208–10 contractors, 93 Conway, Alan, 150–51 Cooper, Cynthia, 215 Cornell University, 250–51 corpora callosa, 164–65 corporate dishonesty: cheating a little bit and, 239–40 Enron collapse and, 1–3, 192, 207, 215, 234 recent spread of, 192, 207–8 cost-benefit analysis, 4–5, 26–27, 237, 239 infectious nature of cheating and, 201–3, 205 see also Simple Model of Rational Crime counterfeits, see fake products creativity, 88, 163–89, 238 brain structure and, 164–65 dark side of, 187–89 fooling oneself and, 165–67 increasing, to increase level of cheating, 184–87 infidelity and, 244 intelligence vs., as predictor of dishonesty, 172–77 link between dishonesty and, 170–72, 186–89 logical-sounding rationales for choices and, 163–64 measures of, 171 moral flexibility and, 186–87 pathological liars and, 168–70 revenge and, 177–84 credit card companies, 239–40 crime, reducing, 52 cultural differences, 240–43 Danziger, Shai, 102 decision making: creating efficient process for, 167–68 effectiveness of group work in, 217–18 rationalization process and, 163–67 Denfield, George, 75 dentists: continuity of care and, 228–31 treating patients using equipment that they own, 67–68, 93–94 unnecessary work and, 67–71 depletion, see ego depletion dieting, 98, 109, 112–13, 114–15 what-the-hell effect and, 127, 130 “dine-and-dash,” 79 diplomas, lying about, 135–36, 153, 154 disabled person, author’s adoption of role of, 143–44 disclosure, 88–92, 248 study on impact of, 89–92 discounting, fixed vs. probabilistic, 194 dishonesty: causes of, 3–4, 5 collaborative, see collaborative cheating cultural differences and, 240–43 discouraging small and ubiquitous forms of, 239–40 importance of first act of, 137 infectious nature of, 191–216; see also infectious nature of cheating intelligence vs. creativity as predictor of, 172–77 link between creativity and, 170–72, 186–89 opportunities for, passed up by vast majority, 238 of others, fake products and assessing of, 131–34 rational and irrational forces in, 254 reducing amount of, 39–51, 248–54 society’s means for dealing with, 4–5 summary of forces that shape (figure), 245 when traveling, 183n see also cheating dissertation proposals and defenses, 101 distance factors, 238 in golf, 58–59 stealing Coca-Cola vs. money and, 32–33 token experiment and, 33–34 doctors: consulting for or investing in drug companies, 82, 93 continuity of care and, 228–29 lecturing about drugs, 81 pharma reps and, 78–82 treating or testing patients with equipment that they own, 92–94 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 234 dots task: conflict of interest and, 129 description of, 127–29 link between creativity and dishonesty and, 171–72, 185–86 what-the-hell effect and, 129–31 downloads, illegal, 137–39 dressing above one’s station, 120–21 Ebbers, Bernie, 13 ego depletion, 100–116, 238, 249 basic idea behind, 101 cheating and, 104–6 in everyday life, 112–16 removing oneself from tempting situations and, 108–11, 115–16 of Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, 103 sometimes succumbing to temptation and, 114–15 sudden deaths among students’ grandmothers at exam time and, 106–8 ego motivation, 27 England, cheating in, 242 Enron, 1–3, 192, 207, 215, 234 essay mills, 210–13 exams, sudden deaths among students’ grandmothers and, 106–8 exhaustion, 249 consumption of junk food and, 97–98 judges’ parole rulings and, 102–3 see also ego depletion experimental data, exclusion of, 86–88 expert witnesses, 85–86 explanations, logical-sounding, creation of, 163–65 external signaling, 120–22 dressing above one’s station and, 120–21 fake products and, 121–22 failures, tendency to turn blind eye to, 151 “fair,” determination of what is, 57 fake products, 119, 121–40, 238 illegal downloads and, 137–39 misrepresentation of academic credentials and, 135–36 rationalizations and, 134–35 self-signaling and, 123–26, 135 signaling value of authentic version diluted by, 121–22 suspiciousness of others and, 131–34 what-the-hell effect and, 127–31, 135 farmer’s market, benevolent behavior toward blind customer in, 23–24 fashion, 117–26 counterfeit goods and, 119, 121–22, 121–40, 123–26; see also fake products dressing above one’s station and, 120–21 external signaling and, 120–22 self-signaling and, 122–26 Fastow, Andrew, 2 favors, 74–82 aesthetic preferences and, 75–77 governmental lobbyists and, 77–78 inherent inclination to return, 74–75 pharma reps and, 78–82 see also conflicts of interest Fawal-Farah, Freeda, 117, 118 FBI, 215 Fedorikhin, Sasha, 99–100 Feynman, Richard, 165 financial crisis of 2008, 83–85, 192, 207, 234, 246–47 financial favors, aesthetic preferences and, 77 financial services industry: anonymous monitoring and, 234–35 cheating among politicians vs., 243 conflicts of interest in, 83–85, 93, 94 government regulation of, 234 fishing, lying about, 28 Frederick, Shane, 173 friends, invited to join in questionable behavior, 195 fudge factor theory, 27–29, 237 acceptable rate of lying and, 28–29, 91 distance between actions and money and, 34–37 getting people to cheat less and, 39–51 infidelity and, 244 rationalization of selfish desires and, 53 stealing Coca-Cola vs. money and, 32–33 Gazzaniga, Michael, 164–65 Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), 219–20 generous behavior, 23–24 Get Rich Cheating (Kreisler), 14 Gilovich, Tom, 250, 263–64 Gino, Francesca, 45, 104, 123, 127, 131, 145, 170, 184, 197, 225, 234–35, 242, 258–59 Glass, Ira, 6 Gneezy, Ayelet, 177, 257–58 golf, 55–65 cheating by “average golfer” vs. study participants and, 63–64 mistallying score in, 61–64 moving location of ball in, 58–59, 63 mulligans in, 60–61, 63–64 self-monitoring in, 56–57 survey on cheating in, 57–64 government regulations, 234 grandmothers, sudden deaths of, at exam time, 106–8 gray matter, 169–70 Green, Jennifer Wideman, 117 grocery shopping, ego depletion and, 109, 112–13 group or team work, 220–23 performance unaffected by, 233 possible benefits of, 223 predominance of, in professional lives, 217–18, 235 social utility and, 222–23 see also collaborative cheating Grüneisen, Aline, 210–11, 257 guilt, self-inflicted pain and, 250–52 Harford, Tim, 3–4 Harper’s Bazaar, 117–18 Harvard Medical School, 82 Harvey, Ann, 75 Henn, Steve, 209 heretics, external signaling of, 120 Hinduism, 25 honesty threshold, 130–31 honor codes, 41–45, 204 ideological organizations, 232n “I knew it all along” feeling, 149 illegal businesses, loyalty and care for customers in, 138–39 impulsive (or emotional) vs. rational (or deliberative) parts of ourselves, 97–106 cognitive load and, 99–100 ego depletion and, 100–106 exhaustion and, 97–98 Inbar, Yoel, 250, 264 infectious nature of cheating, 191–216, 249 bacterial infections compared to, 192–93 in class, 195–97 collaborative cheating in relation to, 221–22 Congress members’ misuse of PAC money and, 208–10 corporate dishonesty and, 192, 207–8 cost-benefit analysis and, 201–3, 205 essay mills and, 210–13 matrix task and, 197–204 positive side of moral contagion and, 215–16 regaining ethical health and, 214–15 slow and subtle process of accretion in, 193–94, 214–15 social norms and, 195, 201–3, 205–7, 209 social outsiders and, 205–7 vending machine experiment and, 194–95 infidelity, 244–45 “in good faith” notion, 219–20 Inside Job, 84–85 insurance claims, 49–51 intelligence: creativity vs., as predictor of dishonesty, 172–77 measures of, 173–75 IQ-like tests, cheating and self-deception on, 145–49 certificates emphasizing (false) achievement and, 153–54 increasing awareness of cheating and, 156–57 individuals’ tendency to turn a blind eye to their own failures and, 151 IRS, 47–49 Islam, 249 Israel, cheating in, 241 Italy, cheating in, 242 Jerome, Jerome K., 28 Jobs, Steve, 184 Jones, Bobby, 56 Jones, Marilee, 136 Judaism, 45, 249 judges, exhausted, parole decisions and, 102–3 junk food, exhaustion and consumption of, 97–98 Keiser, Kenneth, 135 Kelling, George, 214–15 John F.

…

., 243 conflicts of interest in, 83–85, 93, 94 government regulation of, 234 fishing, lying about, 28 Frederick, Shane, 173 friends, invited to join in questionable behavior, 195 fudge factor theory, 27–29, 237 acceptable rate of lying and, 28–29, 91 distance between actions and money and, 34–37 getting people to cheat less and, 39–51 infidelity and, 244 rationalization of selfish desires and, 53 stealing Coca-Cola vs. money and, 32–33 Gazzaniga, Michael, 164–65 Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), 219–20 generous behavior, 23–24 Get Rich Cheating (Kreisler), 14 Gilovich, Tom, 250, 263–64 Gino, Francesca, 45, 104, 123, 127, 131, 145, 170, 184, 197, 225, 234–35, 242, 258–59 Glass, Ira, 6 Gneezy, Ayelet, 177, 257–58 golf, 55–65 cheating by “average golfer” vs. study participants and, 63–64 mistallying score in, 61–64 moving location of ball in, 58–59, 63 mulligans in, 60–61, 63–64 self-monitoring in, 56–57 survey on cheating in, 57–64 government regulations, 234 grandmothers, sudden deaths of, at exam time, 106–8 gray matter, 169–70 Green, Jennifer Wideman, 117 grocery shopping, ego depletion and, 109, 112–13 group or team work, 220–23 performance unaffected by, 233 possible benefits of, 223 predominance of, in professional lives, 217–18, 235 social utility and, 222–23 see also collaborative cheating Grüneisen, Aline, 210–11, 257 guilt, self-inflicted pain and, 250–52 Harford, Tim, 3–4 Harper’s Bazaar, 117–18 Harvard Medical School, 82 Harvey, Ann, 75 Henn, Steve, 209 heretics, external signaling of, 120 Hinduism, 25 honesty threshold, 130–31 honor codes, 41–45, 204 ideological organizations, 232n “I knew it all along” feeling, 149 illegal businesses, loyalty and care for customers in, 138–39 impulsive (or emotional) vs. rational (or deliberative) parts of ourselves, 97–106 cognitive load and, 99–100 ego depletion and, 100–106 exhaustion and, 97–98 Inbar, Yoel, 250, 264 infectious nature of cheating, 191–216, 249 bacterial infections compared to, 192–93 in class, 195–97 collaborative cheating in relation to, 221–22 Congress members’ misuse of PAC money and, 208–10 corporate dishonesty and, 192, 207–8 cost-benefit analysis and, 201–3, 205 essay mills and, 210–13 matrix task and, 197–204 positive side of moral contagion and, 215–16 regaining ethical health and, 214–15 slow and subtle process of accretion in, 193–94, 214–15 social norms and, 195, 201–3, 205–7, 209 social outsiders and, 205–7 vending machine experiment and, 194–95 infidelity, 244–45 “in good faith” notion, 219–20 Inside Job, 84–85 insurance claims, 49–51 intelligence: creativity vs., as predictor of dishonesty, 172–77 measures of, 173–75 IQ-like tests, cheating and self-deception on, 145–49 certificates emphasizing (false) achievement and, 153–54 increasing awareness of cheating and, 156–57 individuals’ tendency to turn a blind eye to their own failures and, 151 IRS, 47–49 Islam, 249 Israel, cheating in, 241 Italy, cheating in, 242 Jerome, Jerome K., 28 Jobs, Steve, 184 Jones, Bobby, 56 Jones, Marilee, 136 Judaism, 45, 249 judges, exhausted, parole decisions and, 102–3 junk food, exhaustion and consumption of, 97–98 Keiser, Kenneth, 135 Kelling, George, 214–15 John F.

The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr

Airbnb, Airbus A320, Andy Kessler, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, Bernard Ziegler, business process, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, cognitive load, computerized trading, David Brooks, deep learning, deliberate practice, deskilling, digital map, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gamification, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, High speed trading, human-factors engineering, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, Internet of things, Ivan Sutherland, Jacquard loom, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, turn-by-turn navigation, Tyler Cowen, US Airways Flight 1549, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, William Langewiesche

The biological processes that constitute “thinking” emerge not just from neural computations in the skull but from the actions and sensory perceptions of the entire body. “For example,” explains Andy Clark, a philosopher of mind at the University of Edinburgh who has written widely on embodied cognition, “there’s good evidence that the physical gestures we make while we speak actually reduce the ongoing cognitive load on the brain, and that the biomechanics of the muscle and tendon systems of the legs hugely simplify the problem of controlled walking.”53 The retina, recent research shows, isn’t a passive sensor sending raw data to the brain, as was once assumed; it actively shapes what we see. The eye has smarts of its own.54 Even our conceptual musings appear to involve the body’s systems for sensing and moving.

…

But the cost of accommodating the dilettante is a demeaning of expertise. Peter Merholz, a respected software-design consultant, counsels programmers to seek “frictionlessness” and “simplicity” in their products. Successful devices and applications, he says, hide their technical complexity behind user-friendly interfaces. They minimize the cognitive load they place on users: “Simple things don’t require a lot of thought. Choices are eliminated, recall is not required.”1 That’s a recipe for creating the kinds of applications that, as Christof van Nimwegen’s Cannibals and Missionaries experiment demonstrated, bypass the mental processes of learning, skill building, and memorization.

City 2.0: The Habitat of the Future and How to Get There by Ted Books

active transport: walking or cycling, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, big-box store, carbon footprint, clean tech, cognitive load, collaborative consumption, crowdsourcing, demand response, food desert, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Induced demand, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, jitney, Kibera, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, McMansion, megacity, New Urbanism, openstreetmap, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, walkable city, Zipcar

SnapGoods sells itself with the slogan “Own less, do more,” a nod to the idea that our culture increasingly values the accumulation of experiences over assets (if you don’t own a high-end camera with multiple lenses and tripods, maybe you can afford to take a trip to Yosemite as an amateur photographer with borrowed gear). “People don’t want the cognitive load associated with owning,” reasons Neal Gorenflo, the publisher of Shareable magazine. Stuff you own requires care. Strength in numbers All of these models — alongside many others such as co-working spaces and shared nannies — at the end of the day are about efficiency, even if they also speak to altruism.

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, assortative mating, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, business process, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, classic study, clean water, cognitive load, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, fake it until you make it, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial independence, Flynn Effect, George Akerlof, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, impulse control, invisible hand, Jeff Hawkins, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, language acquisition, longitudinal study, loss aversion, medical residency, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Monroe Doctrine, Paul Samuelson, power law, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school vouchers, six sigma, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Walter Mischel, young professional

The real engine of change, Harold believed, was a change in the cognitive load. Over the past few decades, technological and social revolution had put greater and greater demands on human cognition. People are now compelled to absorb and process a much more complicated array of information streams. They are compelled to navigate much more complicated social environments. This is happening in both localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening if you tore up every free-trade deal ever inked. The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the cognitive-load paradigm holds that the most important part of the journey is the last few inches—the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain.

…

Through what sort of lens does the individual perceive the information? Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? What emotions and ideas does the information set off? Are there cultural assumptions that distort or enhance the way it is understood? This change in the cognitive load has had many broad effects. It has changed the role of women, who are able to compete equally in the arena of mental skill. It has changed the nature of marriage, as men and women look for partners who can match and complement each other’s mental abilities. It has led to assortative mating, as highly educated people marry each other and less-educated people marry each other.

Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married by Abby Ellin

Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Burning Man, business intelligence, Charles Lindbergh, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, content marketing, dark triade / dark tetrad, Donald Trump, double helix, dumpster diving, East Village, fake news, feminist movement, forensic accounting, fudge factor, hiring and firing, Internet Archive, John Darwin disappearance case, longitudinal study, Lyft, mandatory minimum, meta-analysis, pink-collar, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, TED Talk, telemarketer, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions

MOST OF US have the capacity to manipulate. To some extent that’s a social skill. Still, there’s a difference between stage-managing a situation and being calculating and unscrupulous. I’d like to think that I couldn’t maintain an extended fabrication like Philby or Young, that the stress of it—the “work” or cognitive load—would cause crow’s feet, migraines, and ulcers. I’m pretty sure I’d have difficulty keeping my stories straight. Did I tell him I was anti-KGB, or pro-? Did I grow up in Omaha or Detroit? And what do I do for a living again? In extreme circumstances, like if I lived in Nazi Germany and my survival was at stake, I suspect I could do it.

…

For most of us, the truth comes flooding into our psyche, making us feel bad. But for the hypocrites, those who have the dams installed, the truth stays tucked away, allowing them to live the lie—until the dam breaks. It’s easier to get away with lying if we actually believe our own bullshit, because it “eliminates the costly cognitive load that is typically associated with deceiving,” said evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist Robert Trivers, whose 2012 book, Folly of Fools, is all about self-deception.34 Trivers, who was counted among Time magazine’s one hundred greatest thinkers and scientists of the twentieth century, believes that we must deceive ourselves in order to deceive others more easily.

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Apollo 13, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, blue-collar work, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, cognitive load, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, deskilling, digital divide, do well by doing good, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, employer provided health coverage, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, financial independence, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, fulfillment center, future of work, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, hiring and firing, ImageNet competition, independent contractor, industrial robot, informal economy, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge economy, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, machine translation, market friction, Mars Rover, natural language processing, new economy, operational security, passive income, pattern recognition, post-materialism, post-work, power law, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, scientific management, search costs, Second Machine Age, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, software as a service, speech recognition, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two-sided market, union organizing, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce, work culture , Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler

Ultimately, to be good at their jobs, workers desire, and arguably depend on, the social aspects of work—the gab, the gossip, the informal trading of tips and support. Ghost work relies on the kindness of strangers. Workers use collaboration to puzzle through, pragmatically, what to do in a setting that has little guidance.1 They also take comfort in the relief of others sharing the cognitive load of feeling lost, much like talking through a work frustration is, practically speaking, a way of moving work forward.2 Collaboration among on-demand workers lays bare the deeply social experiences and meanings that work produces in our lives.3 Workers’ penchant for collaboration also highlights how the presence and effort of people behind the scenes are the true currency and value of this labor market.

…

Sociologist Anselm Strauss called this articulation work, or the “overall process of putting all the work elements together and keeping them together.” See Anselm Strauss, “The Articulation of Project Work: An Organizational Process,” Sociological Quarterly 29, no. 2 (June 1, 1988): 163–78. [back] 2. Much as Susan Leigh Star anticipated, computer adoption, and with it assumptions that computational processes would take over the cognitive load of collaboration, made articulation work even more central, as it “manages the consequences of the distributed nature of the work” that are otherwise thought solved by technologies. See Susan Leigh Star and Anselm Strauss, “Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work,” Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 8, no. 1–2 (March 1, 1999): 9–30.

The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Dr. Elissa Epel

Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, cognitive load, epigenetics, impulse control, income inequality, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, meta-analysis, mouse model, persistent metabolic adaptation, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell, survivorship bias, The Spirit Level, twin studies

Ironic error may also be harmful to telomeres. We know that chronic stress can shorten telomeres—but if we try to manage our stressful thoughts by sinking the bad thoughts into the deepest waters of our subconscious, it may backfire. The chronically stressed brain’s resources are already taxed (we call this cognitive load), making it even harder to successfully suppress thoughts. Instead of less stress, we get more. A classic example of suppression’s dark power comes from people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), who—understandably—don’t want to remember events that have caused them terrible distress.

…

Or like Peter eating pound cake on his way to eat a healthy salad for lunch? Studies of obese people suggest a similar compulsive aspect of overeating, with dysregulation in the brain’s reward system. Dieting can create a semiaddictive state, and it’s also just plain stressful. Monitoring calories causes cognitive load, meaning that it uses up the brain’s limited attention and increases how much stress you feel.15 Think of Peter, spending years trying to eat fewer sweets and calories. Obesity researchers have a name for this kind of long-term dieting mentality: cognitive dietary restraint. Restrainers devote a lot of their time to wishing, wanting, and trying to eat less, but their actual caloric intake is no lower than people who are unrestrained.

Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly by Evy Poumpouras

British Empire, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cognitive load, cuban missile crisis, fear of failure, Lyft, Ronald Reagan, uber lyft, Y2K

The Hormetic Effect, however, isn’t just about physical adaptation; it’s about adapting mentally as well. Our Secret Service training was designed around this concept. Over the course of months, our instructors incrementally exposed us to greater and greater amounts of stress to the point where we could function highly, both mentally and physically, while under extreme cognitive loads. We needed to learn how to run AND shoot AND maneuver our way out of a burning building AND keep our protectee safe—all at the same time. That way, for example, when our presidential motorcade was assaulted by multiple adversaries from multiple directions, we were able to logically think, swiftly move, and effectively fight our way to safety without losing the life of our protectee.

…

If there is something in your speech that you don’t like, take note of it and try it differently. Identify those things that you wish to change. But do it one step at a time. For example, if you speak too fast, use lots of filler words, and have a high pitch, don’t try to fix everything at once. Resolving to change your voice actually makes for a huge cognitive load because most of these behaviors are instinctive or unconscious. You’ve also been probably doing them for a really long time. Instead, start with one. For instance, try slowing down your speech and spend one month focusing solely on that adjustment. It takes about twenty-eight days to change a habit, and that’s what we are trying to do here—change your paralinguistic habits.

Applied Artificial Intelligence: A Handbook for Business Leaders by Mariya Yao, Adelyn Zhou, Marlene Jia

Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, cognitive load, computer vision, conceptual framework, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, future of work, Geoffrey Hinton, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, natural language processing, new economy, OpenAI, pattern recognition, performance metric, price discrimination, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, robotic process automation, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, skunkworks, software is eating the world, source of truth, sparse data, speech recognition, statistical model, strong AI, subscription business, technological singularity, The future is already here

Don't do it unless you already have a defined plan of implementation, allies in the C-Suite to champion that plan, and mutually agreed-upon evaluation metrics at incremental deadlines. What AI Can Do for Enterprise Functions Current AI-based solutions are very good at streamlining processes and taking over rote tasks such as triggering a workflow. Automation frees up the cognitive load of your employees so that they can focus on more meaningful aspects of their jobs. For example, mundane tasks can take up to 75 percent of a recruiter's job. Handing off the responsibility of filtering resumés, which consists primarily of matching terms or looking for specific experiential phrases, to an AI-based solution can free up to half of the recruiter's day for other tasks.

Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems by Heather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Ana Oprea, Piotr Lewandowski, Adam Stubblefield

air gap, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, bash_history, behavioural economics, business continuity plan, business logic, business process, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive load, continuous integration, correlation does not imply causation, create, read, update, delete, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, database schema, Debian, defense in depth, DevOps, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, exponential backoff, fault tolerance, fear of failure, general-purpose programming language, Google Chrome, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, information security, Internet of things, Kubernetes, load shedding, margin call, microservices, MITM: man-in-the-middle, NSO Group, nudge theory, operational security, performance metric, pull request, ransomware, reproducible builds, revision control, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, self-driving car, single source of truth, Skype, slashdot, software as a service, source of truth, SQL injection, Stuxnet, the long tail, Turing test, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Valgrind, web application, Y2K, zero day

Minimum Acceptable Security Version Numbers Over time, deny lists become large and unwieldy as entries are appended. You can use a separate Security Version Number, written as Release[SVN], to drop older entries from the deny list, while still preventing them from being installed. As a result, you reduce the cognitive load on the humans responsible for the system. Keeping Release[SVN] independent of other version notions allows a compact and mathematically comparable way to logically follow large numbers of releases without requiring the overhead space a deny list needs. Whenever you apply a critical security fix and demonstrate its stability, you increment Release[SVN], marking a security milestone that you use to regulate rollback decisions.

…

As a result, organizational resilience to outages may improve. For example, at Google, we centralized on Chrome, its extensions, and any controls and tools associated with it as the single platform sufficient for remote access. Introducing an emergency mode into Chrome extensions allowed us to achieve the minimum possible increase in cognitive load up front, while retaining the option to integrate it into more extensions later. To ensure that your responders exercise emergency access practices regularly, introduce policies that integrate emergency access into the daily habits of on-call staff, and continuously validate the usability of the relevant systems.

…

You should also train engineers to create notes about their response activities, so they can later differentiate these activities from artifacts left by an attacker. Processes and Procedures By establishing a set of processes and procedures to follow before an incident occurs, you drastically reduce the response time and cognitive load for responders. For example, we recommend the following: Defining rapid procurement methods for hardware and software. You may need additional equipment or resources, such as servers, software, or fuel for generators, during emergencies. Establishing contract approval processes for outsourcing services.

Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion by Dean Burnett

airport security, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, call centre, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, COVID-19, double empathy problem, emotional labour, experimental economics, fake it until you make it, fake news, fear of failure, heat death of the universe, impulse control, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, mirror neurons, neurotypical, New Journalism, period drama, pre–internet, Snapchat, social distancing, theory of mind, TikTok, Wall-E

Sundrup, ‘Getting away from them all: managing exhaustion from social interaction with telework’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2017, 38(7): pp. 977–995. 10 Ross, S.A., ‘Compensation, incentives, and the duality of risk aversion and riskiness’, The Journal of Finance, 2004, 59(1): pp. 207–225. 11 Van Dillen, L.F. and H. van Steenbergen, ‘Tuning down the hedonic brain: cognitive load reduces neural responses to high-calorie food pictures in the nucleus accumbens’, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2018, 18(3): pp. 447–459. 12 Legault and Inzlicht, ‘Self-determination’. 13 Landhäußer, A. and J. Keller, ‘Flow and its affective, cognitive, and performance-related consequences’, in Advances in Flow Research, S.

…

absence of emotions: DB’s imagined scenario 1, 2, 3; negative consequences of 1; in science fiction 1, 2, 3, 4 acting work: actor/character relationship 1; emotional labour 1 action representation network (brain) 1 adolescence and early adulthood: brain development 1; crushes 1, 2; intense emotions 1; nightmare frequency 1, 2; safe exposure to negative emotions 1, 2; social media use 1 see also infancy and childhood affect: definition and components 1; versus basic emotions 1 airport security, facial recognition technology 1 altruism 1, 2 amygdala (brain region): and dreaming 1; and emotional regulation 1, 2; and emotions processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; gender differences 1; influence of testosterone 1; and memory formation 1; as part of olfactory system 1 AND model of nightmare production 1 anger: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; and colour red 1, 2; DB’s anger during grief 1, 2, 3; facial expression of 1, 2; as ‘masculine’ 1(fn); and motivation 1, 2 see also negative emotions angular gyrus (brain region) 1, 2 anosmia (inability to smell) 1 anterior cingulate cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 anterior olfactory nucleus (brain region) 1 anxiety: caused by work 1; performance anxiety 1; social anxiety 1, 2, 3; and status 1; vagus nerve stimulation treatment 1 see also negative emotions; stress apatheia (ultimate goal of Stoicism) 1 appraisal theory 1, 2 approach-attachment behaviour 1 approach versus avoid motivation 1, 2 arguments with romantic partner 1 arousal (component of affect) 1, 2, 3 asexuality 1 @AstroKatie (Katherine Mack) 1 attachment during early childhood 1, 2 see also parent emotional bond attention restoration, and colour green 1 auditory cortex (brain region) 1, 2(fn) auditory processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(fn) autism 1, 2 automated voices and announcements, annoyance caused by 1 avatar therapy 1 avoid versus approach motivation 1, 2 babies in the womb, playing music to 1, 2 baby-parent emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also attachment during early childhood Bain, Alexander 1 Baron-Cohen, Simon 1 Barrett, Lisa Feldman 1, 2 basal ganglia (brain region) 1 basic emotions theory 1, 2, 3, 4 BDSM (sexual practice) 1, 2 belief perseverance 1 Bell, Charles 1, 2 bias: confirmation bias 1, 2, 3; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; ingroup versus outgroup bias 1; negativity bias 1, 2 Blackmore, Chris 1, 2, 3 blinking, by cartoon characters 1 blood sugar, effect on emotions 1 blue colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 body, emotions experienced in see physiology-emotion connection body language: communicating emotion 1, 2, 3, 4; mimicry 1; missing from communication technologies 1 brain: body’s influence on 1; competing resource demands 1, 2, 3; development 1; distinguishing what is real/not real 1, 2; emotions as conscious or subconscious processes 1; gender differences (beliefs and experimental studies) 1; influence of oestrogen and testosterone 1; left brain/right brain facts and myths 1, 2, 3(fn), 4(fn); lobotomies 1; mirror neurons 1, 2, 3, 4; nervous and endocrine system regulation 1; neurotransmitters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; reward pathway and system 1, 2, 3, 4; somatic marker hypothesis 1; spindle cells 1; synapses 1, 2; triune model 1, 2 see also cognition (thinking); learning (of information); memory(ies) brain, functional regions: action representation 1; auditory processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(fn); cognition 1, 2, 3, 4; disgust 1; emotional regulation 1, 2; emotions (overview) 1, 2, 3; fear 1; imagination 1; intention processing 1; language processing 1; love 1, 2; lust 1, 2; memories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; motivation 1, 2; olfactory processing 1, 2; visual processing 1, 2, 3 see also specific brain regions brain scans, limitations for studying emotions 1 brainstem 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 breastfeeding 1, 2 Broca’s area (brain) 1 Brown, Thomas 1, 2 Buddhism 1 bullying online 1 burnout 1, 2 Bushman, B.J. 1 bystander effect 1 cancer awareness, role of news and media 1 canned laughter, annoyance caused by 1, 2 categories and types of emotion: basic emotions (theory) 1, 2, 3, 4; identified by James McCosh 1 see also identifying and defining ‘emotions’ cats and other pets, emotional attachment to 1 caudate nucleus (brain region) 1 celebrity endorsements 1, 2, 3, 4 cerebellum (brain region) 1, 2, 3 childbirth, role of oxytocin 1 childhood see infancy and childhood chilli, enjoyment of pain caused by 1 cigarette smoke, DB’s memories and associations 1, 2 cognition-emotion relationship see emotion-cognition relationship cognition (thinking): brain regions associated with 1, 2, 3, 4; effect of love on 1; executive control 1, 2, 3; ‘flow’ state 1; and intrusive thoughts 1; and motivation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and social relationships 1, 2 see also learning (of information) cognitive dissonance 1 colours: cultural associations 1; in DB’s friend’s home 1, 2; emotional response to 1; and visual processing 1, 2, 3 communicating and sharing emotions: machine detection of emotions 1, 2; nonverbal information 1, 2, 3; online versus in-person 1, 2; at work 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 see also emotional contagion; empathy; facial expressions and emotions communication technologies see phone calls; social media and online communication; therapeutic applications of technologies; video calls confirmation bias 1, 2, 3 conformity 1, 2, 3, 4 consciousness, evolution of 1 consolidation of memories 1, 2, 3, 4 conspiracy theories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 see also deception; misinformation and ‘fake news’ constructed emotions theory 1, 2 corpus callosum (brain region) 1 cortex/neocortex (brain region) (in general) 1 see also specific regions of the cortex cortisol 1 cross-race effect 1 crushes, in adolescence 1, 2 crying: DB’s (in)ability to cry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; gender differences 1; induced by TV and films 1; types and functions of tears 1 cuteness and cute aggression 1 cyberbullying 1 dancing 1 Darwin, Charles 1, 2 deception: automated voices and announcements 1; response to 1, 2; self-deception 1 see also manipulation of emotions; misinformation and ‘fake news’ defining ‘emotions’ 1, 2, 3, 4 deindividuation and ‘mob mentality’ 1 depression: caused by work 1, 2; gender differences 1; and gut microbiome 1; and memory 1; post-natal depression 1, 2; vagus nerve stimulation treatment 1 Diana, Princess of Wales, impact of death 1 digestive system, influence of 1, 2 disgust: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; brain region associated with 1; and colour green 1; facial expression of 1, 2; and horror 1; and memory 1; and suppressed motivation 1 see also negative emotions doctors, emotional aspects of work 1 dopamine 1 drama therapy 1 dreams and nightmares: AND model 1; bizarre nature of 1, 2; DB’s bad dreams 1, 2, 3; due to COVID-19 pandemic 1, 2; and emotion processing 1; Freud’s interpretations 1; and memory consolidation 1; and mental health 1; post-traumatic 1; prevalence of nightmares 1; recurring 1; threat simulation theory 1 Dunbar’s number (of social relationships) 1 dysgranular field (brain region) 1 dysphoria 1 see also depression e-learning, motivation in 1 earworms 1 Ekman, Paul 1, 2, 3, 4 Eleri, Carys 1 embarrassment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 see also negative emotions emojis and emoticons 1 emotion-cognition relationship: appraisal theory 1, 2; in attention and focus 1, 2, 3, 4; belief perseverance 1; cognitive dissonance 1; competition for brain’s resources 1, 2; confirmation bias 1, 2, 3; distinction recognised by Stoics 1; in effect of emotions experienced 1; in empathy 1; in ‘flow’ state 1; interrelatedness (in general) 1, 2, 3, 4; in learning and information processing 1, 2, 3; in love 1; motivated reasoning 1; in motivation 1, 2, 3; negativity bias 1, 2; role of imagination 1; shared evolutionary origin 1; in stage fright 1 emotion-memory relationship: appraisal theory 1, 2; emotions triggered by memories 1, 2, 3, 4; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; happy memories being more detailed 1; for implicit memories 1; later emotions changing memories 1, 2, 3; longevity and potency of emotional memories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; in memory consolidation 1, 2; in PTSD 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; role of nightmares 1; suppressing emotional memories 1 emotional contagion: dangers of ‘mob mentality’ 1; versus empathy 1; evolutionary importance 1; from groups of people 1, 2, 3; from music 1, 2, 3; neurological mechanism for 1; from social media 1 emotional detachment/suppression at work 1, 2, 3, 4 emotional manipulation see manipulation of emotions emotional processing 1, 2 emotional regulation, brain regions responsible for 1, 2 emotional relationships: attachment during early childhood 1, 2; friendships 1, 2; one-sided see parasocial (one-sided) relationships; parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3; role of neurotransmitters 1, 2; romantic see romantic relationships; see also social relationships emotions: causing change 1; as conscious/subconscious processes 1; historical study of 1; identifying and defining 1, 2, 3, 4; language of 1, 2 see also categories and types of emotion; communicating and sharing emotions; emotion relationship; emotion relationship; negative emotions; physiology connection; positive emotions; specific emotions empathy: and autism 1, 2; in babies 1; and body language mimicry 1; versus emotional contagion 1; evolutionary importance 1, 2, 3; influence of own emotions on 1; as ingrained 1, 2; ingroup versus outgroup bias 1; versus mentalising (theory of mind) 1; neurological mechanism for 1, 2, 3, 4; and physical pain 1; in romantic relationships 1; as selfish/unselfish 1 endocannabinoids 1 endocrine system 1 endorphins 1, 2 envy 1, 2 see also negative emotions episodic memories 1, 2, 3 evaluative conditioning 1 excitation transfer theory 1 executive control 1, 2, 3 see also cognition (thinking) existential dread, as a motivator 1 explicit memories 1 extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation 1 Facebook: DB’s use of 1, 2; research into emotional manipulation 1, 2, 3 see also social media and online communication faces, seeing in inanimate objects 1 facial colour changes 1 facial expressions and emotions: in artificial/CGI faces (uncanny valley) 1; automated emotion recognition 1; in cartoon characters (blinking) 1; cross-cultural similarities and differences 1, 2; difficulties distinguishing between emotions without context 1, 2, 3; early writings on 1; Ekman’s work 1, 2, 3, 4; ‘invisible’ emotions 1; involuntary nature of expressions 1, 2, 3, 4; online curation of emotions portrayed 1 facial paralysis, and empathy 1 facial recognition, cross-race effect 1 facial recognition technology 1 fading affect bias 1, 2, 3 ‘fake news’ see misinformation and ‘fake news’ fandom 1, 2 see also parasocial (one relationships fear: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; brain region associated with 1; enjoyment of 1, 2; facial expression and colour 1, 2; as first emotion 1; of flying 1; and horror 1; and imagination 1; and motivation 1, 2, 3; in PTSD 1; smell of (in sweat) 1 see also negative emotions films and TV causing negative emotions 1, 2, 3, 4 Firth-Godbehere, Richard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 flat Earth conspiracy theory 1, 2 ‘flow’ state 1 flying, fear of 1 football shirts, red colour’s competitive advantage 1 Freud, Sigmund 1, 2 friendships 1, 2 see also emotional relationships; social relationships frosty atmospheres, emotional contagion 1, 2 funerals: crying at 1; of DB’s father 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; emotional contagion at 1, 2; live streaming 1, 2 gender differences: adolescent crushes 1(fn); attitudes towards infidelity 1; in brains (beliefs and experimental studies) 1; in brains (DB’s impossible experiment) 1; in emotional regulation and expression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ‘maternal instinct’ 1; mental health problems 1; other physiological differences 1; societal influences 1 gender discrimination 1, 2, 3 goal distraction 1 green colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 grief: DB’s acceptance of emotions 1; DB’s anger 1, 2, 3; DB’s attempts to disguise grief 1; DB’s emotional confusion 1, 2, 3; DB’s (in)ability to cry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; DB’s motivation and productivity 1, 2; DB’s need to talk after funeral 1; at death of Princess Diana 1; emotional processing 1, 2; shared grieving 1; stages of 1 see also negative emotions guilt 1 see also negative emotions habituation 1, 2 ‘hangry’ behaviour 1 happiness 1 hippocampus (brain region): and dreaming 1; and emotional regulation 1; and emotions processing 1, 2, 3; and imagination 1; and memory 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and navigation 1 Holmes and Rahe stress scale 1, 2 Holmes, Sherlock (analogy for action representation) 1 hormones: cortisol 1; digestive 1, 2; effect of tears on 1; influence on the brain (and emotions) 1; oestrogen 1, 2; oxytocin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; testosterone 1, 2, 3; vasopressin 1, 2, 3 see also endocrine system horror (emotion) 1 horror movies 1, 2, 3 hypothalamus (brain region) 1, 2, 3 hysteria 1 Icke, David 1 identification, in parasocial relationships 1 identifying and defining ‘emotions’ 1, 2, 3, 4 imaginary friends 1 imagination and mental imagery 1, 2 imitation of observed actions 1 implicit memories 1 impression management 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 infancy and childhood: attachment with primary caregiver 1, 2; breastfeeding 1, 2; DB’s memories of 1, 2; emotional experiences 1; empathy in babies 1; imaginary friends 1; importance of sense of smell 1; learning from media characters 1; nightmare frequency 1, 2; oxytocin in newborns 1; parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also adolescence and early adulthood inferior frontal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 inferior parietal cortex (brain region) 1 infidelity, emotional versus sexual 1 insular cortex (insula) (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 intelligence, and brain anatomy 1 intention processing 1 intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation 1 intrusive thoughts 1 Izard, Carroll E. 1 jealousy 1 Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth 1 language of emotions 1, 2 language processing 1 learning (of information): from media characters 1; motivation 1, 2; from other people 1, 2; processing demands and information prioritisation 1, 2; from senses 1 LeDoux, Joseph 1 left brain/right brain facts and myths 1, 2, 3(fn), 4(fn) limbic system (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 lobotomies 1 Lomas, Tim 1 London taxi drivers, brain study 1 losing oneself in a book/film 1 love: brain regions associated with 1, 2; demands on the brain 1; effect on cognition 1; for family and friends 1, 2(fn); role of dopamine 1; romantic love 1, 2, 3 see also romantic relationships lust and sexual attraction: asexuality 1; brain regions associated with 1, 2; and romantic relationships 1, 2; Stoics’ rejection of 1, 2; suppression of 1 Mack, Katherine (@AstroKatie) 1 mammal brain (region) 1, 2, 3, 4 manipulation of emotions: by authorities 1; for marketing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; response to 1; by social media 1; by traditional news and media 1, 2, 3, 4 marketing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 McCosh, James 1 medical work, emotional aspects 1 memory(ies): brain regions associated with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; changeable nature of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; connections with objects 1, 2, 3, 4; consolidation 1, 2, 3, 4; DB’s memories of early childhood 1, 2; DB’s memories of his father 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; episodic memories 1, 2, 3; explicit memories 1; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; forgetting memories 1; and imagination 1; implicit memories 1; and music 1; procedural memories 1; reminiscence bump 1; retroactive memory enhancement 1; semantic memories 1; and sleep 1; and smell(s) 1, 2, 3, 4; suppression of 1; as synapses 1, 2; working memory 1; Zeigarnik effect 1 see also emotion relationship mental health/illness: and social media 1; and status 1; therapeutic applications of technologies 1 see also anxiety; depression; PTSD; schizophrenia mental imagery and imagination 1, 2 mentalising (theory of mind) 1, 2 mirror neurons 1, 2, 3, 4 mirroring body language 1 misinformation and ‘fake news’: about COVID-19 pandemic 1, 2; David Icke’s space lizards 1; flat Earth theory 1, 2; and social media/internet 1, 2, 3, 4; susceptibility to 1 see also deception ‘mob mentality’ (deindividuation) 1 Moebius syndrome (facial paralysis) 1 monkey experiments, mirror neurons 1 Morgan, Matt 1 motivated reasoning 1 motivation: approach-attachment behaviour 1; approach versus avoid motivation 1, 2; brain regions associated with 1, 2; and cognition 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; DB’s experiences during grief 1, 2; and emotions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation 1; and novelty 1, 2, 3, 4 motivational salience 1 music: dancing 1; DB’s emotional response to 1, 2, 3, 4; differentiating between voice and instruments 1; earworms 1; emotional contagion from 1, 2, 3; emotional response to 1, 2; evolutionary significance 1, 2; and memory 1 musical expectancy 1, 2 navigation, role of hippocampus 1 negative emotions: and attention/focus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and creativity 1; emotion processing 1, 2; feeling good whilst experiencing 1, 2, 3; induced by TV and films 1, 2, 3, 4; and intrusive thoughts 1; and memory 1, 2, 3; as more impactful than positive emotions 1; negativity bias 1, 2; and novelty 1; and performance 1 see also specific emotions negativity bias 1, 2 nervous systems: enteric (‘second brain’) 1; parasympathetic 1, 2, 3; regulation by brain 1; somatic and autonomic 1; sympathetic 1, 2, 3 neurotransmitters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 news and media (traditional): credibility 1, 2, 3, 4; emotional content 1, 2, 3, 4; precursors to 1 see also conspiracy theories; misinformation and ‘fake news’; social media and online communication nightmares see dreams and nightmares noises, emotional response to 1, 2, 3 see also music novelty 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 objects, and memories 1, 2, 3, 4 oestrogen 1, 2 olfactory bulb and cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3 olfactory system 1, 2, 3, 4 one-sided relationships see parasocial (one-sided) relationships online communication see social media and online communication online learning, motivation in 1 orbitofrontal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 oxytocin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 pain (physical): and empathy 1; enjoyment of 1, 2 paracingulate sulcus (brain region) 1 parasocial (one-sided) relationships: adolescent crushes 1, 2; benefits 1, 2; ending the relationship 1; with fictional characters 1, 2, 3, 4; identification with the object 1; with imaginary friends 1; losing oneself in a narrative 1; meeting the object 1; negative aspects 1; neurological mechanisms 1; with people you haven’t met 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 parasympathetic nervous system 1, 2, 3 Parch (TV drama), actor’s experiences 1 pareidolia 1 parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also attachment during early childhood ‘passions’ 1, 2, 3 pathos 1 performance anxiety (stage fright) 1 personality, influence of early experiences 1, 2 phone calls: DB’s last call to father 1; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1; walking around during 1 physiology-emotion connection: body influencing emotion 1; emotion influencing the body 1; somatic marker hypothesis 1 see also crying Pickle (DB’s cat) 1 Pixar movies 1, 2(fn), 3 positive emotions: and attention/focus 1, 2; and memory 1, 2 see also specific emotions ‘Positive Lexicography’ project 1 post-natal depression 1, 2 posterior parietal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 prefrontal cortex (brain region): cognitive functions 1, 2, 3; and emotional regulation 1, 2; and emotions processing 1, 2; and imagination 1; influence of testosterone 1; and memory 1; and mentalising (theory of mind) 1; and motivation 1, 2 pride 1 procedural memories 1 processing (negative) emotions 1, 2 Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time 1 psycho-emotional tears 1, 2 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 racism: cross-race effect 1; and oxytocin 1 rage see anger red colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 relationships see emotional relationships religious perspectives on emotions 1 reminiscence bump 1 reptile brain (region) 1 ‘resting bitch face’ 1 retroactive memory enhancement 1 reward, and motivation 1 reward pathways of brain 1, 2, 3, 4 Ridley, Rosalind 1 Rippon, Gina 1, 2, 3 romantic relationships: adolescent crushes as preparation for 1; attitudes towards infidelity 1; disagreements and disputes 1; emotional connection between partners 1, 2; empathy versus problem ‘fixing’ in 1; long-term relationships 1, 2; love in 1, 2, 3; negative emotions in 1; online versus in-person 1; and own identity 1, 2; physical attraction in 1, 2; role of oxytocin 1; stress associated with losing partner 1, 2; trumpeting on social media 1 see also emotional relationships sadness: as ‘basic’ emotion 1; and colour blue 1, 2; enjoyment of 1, 2, 3; facial expression of 1 schadenfreude 1, 2 schizophrenia 1 scientific method 1, 2 scientists: motivations 1, 2, 3; popular portrayal as lacking emotion 1 self-deception 1 semantic memories 1 Sesame Street (TV) show, learning from 1 sex differences see gender differences sexism see gender discrimination sexual activity, BDSM 1, 2 sexual attraction see lust and sexual attraction sharing emotions see communicating and sharing emotions Simpsons, The (TV show), blinking in 1(fn) Singer, Tania 1 sleep 1, 2, 3 see also dreams and nightmares smell(s): anosmia (inability to smell) 1; DB’s memories of cigarette smoke 1, 2; and emotions 1, 2; evolutionary importance 1, 2, 3; and memory 1, 2, 3, 4; olfactory system 1, 2, 3, 4 social anxiety 1, 2, 3 social media and online communication: adolescents 1; adults/older people 1; emojis and emoticons 1; and emotional contagion 1; impression management 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1, 2; live streaming funerals 1, 2; machine detection of emotions 1; negative aspects 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; online versus in-person emotions and personae 1; positive aspects 1, 2; versus real-world interactions, cognitive demands 1; and reward 1, 2, 3; and self-deception 1; and self-validation 1, 2, 3; and status 1, 2 see also conspiracy theories; Facebook; misinformation and ‘fake news’; news and media (traditional); video calls social relationships: cognitive load associated with 1, 2; Dunbar’s number 1; friendships 1, 2; one-sided see parasocial (one-sided) relationships; see also emotional relationships somatic marker hypothesis 1 spicy food, enjoyment of pain caused by 1 spindle cells 1 Spiner, Brent 1 sports kit, competitive advantage of wearing red 1 SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) programme 1 stage fright 1 stalkers 1 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV series): Data actor’s experience of fans 1; Data’s inability to choose ice-cream flavour 1 Star Trek (TV series): Stoicism of Vulcans 1, 2; universal use of English language 1 Starbucks (branding) 1 status: and emotions 1; and social media 1, 2; subjective status and mental health 1 Stoics and Stoicism 1, 2 stress: benefits of green environments for 1; caused by uncertainty 1; caused by work 1, 2; coping mechanisms 1; cortisol 1; Holmes and Rahe stress scale 1, 2; PTSD 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and status 1; Yerkes-Dodson curve 1 see also anxiety; negative emotions striatum (brain region) 1 study of emotions (historical) 1 suicide 1, 2 superior temporal cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 suppression of emotions: during disagreements with romantic partner 1; in learning and decision making (as impossible) 1; at work 1, 2, 3, 4 supramarginal gyrus (brain region) 1 surprise 1, 2 sympathetic nervous system 1, 2, 3 synapses (neuron connections) 1, 2 taxi drivers, brain study 1 tears, types and functions of 1 teenage years see adolescence and early adulthood temporal lobe (brain region) 1, 2 testosterone 1, 2, 3 thalamus (brain region) 1, 2, 3 theories of emotions see basic emotions theory; constructed emotions theory theory of mind (mentalising) 1, 2 thinking see cognition (thinking) threat simulation theory 1 transportation phenomenon 1 triune brain model 1, 2 TV and films causing negative emotions 1, 2, 3, 4 types of emotion see categories and types of emotion uncanny valley 1 uncertainty, unpleasant nature of 1 vagus nerve 1 valence (component of affect) 1, 2 vasopressin 1, 2, 3 video calls: DB’s call with friends after father’s funeral 1; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1 virtual reality (VR) 1 visual cortex (brain region) 1, 2 visual processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 see also colours voice characteristics, and communicating emotion 1 volcano/cupcake scenario (competing motivations) 1 wine tasting and appreciation 1 work and workplaces: communicating the wrong emotions at work 1; DB’s job embalming cadavers 1, 2, 3(fn); emotional aspects of medical work 1; emotional detachment/suppression 1, 2, 3, 4; emotional labour of acting work 1; mental health problems caused by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; performance appraisals 1, 2; wellbeing initiatives 1, 2 working memory 1 yawning, as contagious 1 Yerkes-Dodson curve 1 Zeigarnik effect (tendency to forget completed tasks) 1 ‘zone,’ state of being in 1 Zoom calls see video calls About the Author Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, blogger, sometimes-comedian and author.

Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Workflow by Dominica Degrandis, Tonianne Demaria

cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, DevOps, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Kanban, loose coupling, microservices, Parkinson's law, Sheryl Sandberg, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, TED Talk, transaction costs, two-pizza team

The resultant mental overload creates stress. Stress compounds the work we already have, essentially contributing to WIP, compromising the ability to focus, prioritize, make decisions, and complete work with quality, let alone complete work at all. The visualization and WIP-limiting strategies Dominica offers demystify our cognitive load; normalize expectations among team members; promote focus; situate work in its context, surfacing problems (and allowing for solutions to be made) in real time; and provide a clear path to completion with quality. Elegantly explained and deeply-insightful, the utility of the suggestions contained within cannot be overstated.

Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell

A Pattern Language, business intelligence, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, Firefox, longitudinal study, school vouchers, seminal paper, social software, social web, sorting algorithm, the long tail, Tony Hsieh, web application

But when a user is in the middle of a full-screen slideshow, she doesn’t want to see a complicated global navigation menu! She would rather just focus on the slideshow itself, so Back/Next controls and an Escape Hatch are all that’s necessary. The presence of full navigation options is not without cost: it takes up space, clutters the screen, incurs cognitive load, and signals to the user that leaving the page doesn’t matter. Third, all these mechanisms and patterns can be rendered on-screen in different ways. A complex site or app might use tabs, or menus, or a sidebar tree view to show the global navigation on each page—that’s something you don’t need to decide until you start laying out the page.

…

This tight integration has several advantages over other physical structures, such as two separate windows or One-Window Drilldown: It reduces physical effort. The user’s eyes don’t have to travel a long distance between the panels, and he can change the selection with a single mouse click or key press rather than first navigating between windows or pages (which can take an extra mouse click). It reduces visual cognitive load. When a window pops to the top, or when a page’s contents are completely changed (as happens with One-Window Drilldown), the user suddenly has to pay more attention to what he’s now looking at; when the window stays mostly stable, as in a Two-Panel Selector, the user can focus on the smaller area that did change.

Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations by Garr Reynolds

Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, business intelligence, business process, cloud computing, cognitive load, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Hans Rosling, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, off-the-grid, Paradox of Choice, Richard Feynman, Silicon Valley, TED Talk, women in the workforce, Yogi Berra

Since film was expensive—and I had to wait two weeks for the slides to return from the lab—I thought carefully about the story I wanted to tell and the types of images I needed to support my argument, make my case, and tell my story. Only after I did my research and completed the plan on paper, did I set out with my camera to find evidence of the problem, taking pictures of what society had to lose (the beauty) and evidence of the threats to it (the pollution). Long before I ever heard of concepts such as the cognitive load theory or the dual channels of cognition, like most students, I knew intuitively and through experience that quality images plus narration was better than narration plus a lot of text on a screen, even though I was years away from experiencing “death by PowerPoint.” These slides are from an updated version of that first multimedia presentation I did back in high school.

Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future by Cory Doctorow

AltaVista, AOL-Time Warner, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, cognitive load, drop ship, en.wikipedia.org, general purpose technology, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Law of Accelerating Returns, machine readable, Metcalfe's law, mirror neurons, Mitch Kapor, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, new economy, optical character recognition, PalmPilot, patent troll, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Sand Hill Road, Skype, slashdot, Snow Crash, social software, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, the long tail, Thomas Bayes, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Wayback Machine

Maybe it's evolutionary, some quirk of the neocortex dating from our evolution into social animals who gained advantage by dividing up the work of survival but acquired the tricky job of watching all the other monkeys so as to be sure that everyone was pulling their weight and not, e.g., napping in the treetops instead of watching for predators, emerging only to eat the fruit the rest of us have foraged. Keeping track of our social relationships is a serious piece of work that runs a heavy cognitive load. It's natural to seek out some neural prosthesis for assistance in this chore. My fiancee once proposed a "social scheduling" application that would watch your phone and email and IM to figure out who your pals were and give you a little alert if too much time passed without your reaching out to say hello and keep the coals of your relationship aglow.

Designing Web APIs: Building APIs That Developers Love by Brenda Jin, Saurabh Sahni, Amir Shevat

active measures, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, Big Tech, blockchain, business logic, business process, cognitive load, continuous integration, create, read, update, delete, exponential backoff, Google Hangouts, if you build it, they will come, Lyft, machine readable, MITM: man-in-the-middle, premature optimization, pull request, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software as a service, the market place, uber lyft, web application, WebSocket

Consistency generally means that there are a number of patterns and conventions repeated throughout your API, in such a way that developers can begin to predict how to use your API without seeing the documentation. That could include anything from data access patterns to error handling to naming. The reason consistency is important is that it reduces the cognitive load on developers who are trying to figure out your API. Consistency helps your existing devel‐ opers in adapting new features by reducing forks in their code, and it helps new developers hit the ground running with everything you’ve built on your API. In contrast, with less consistency, different developers will need to reimplement the same logic over and over again.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, Apollo 13, Blue Bottle Coffee, cognitive load, fake news, Gene Kranz, Google Earth, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Wall-E

Wall-mounted are best, but rolling whiteboards are good, too. Alternatives: IdeaPaint, Post-it easel pads, or butcher paper taped to the walls. Get two big whiteboards (or equivalent surface area). (p. 43) • Yellow 3-by-5 sticky notes. Stick with classic yellow, because the multicolored notes cause unnecessary cognitive load. Get fifteen pads. • Black whiteboard markers. Using a thick marker will keep your ideas pithy and easy for others to read. We prefer whiteboard markers over Sharpies because they’re more versatile, they smell less, and you don’t have to worry about accidentally putting a permanent mark on your whiteboard.

Long Game: How Long-Term Thinker Shorthb by Dorie Clark

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Blue Ocean Strategy, buy low sell high, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, fail fast, Google X / Alphabet X, hedonic treadmill, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, Lean Startup, lockdown, minimum viable product, passive income, pre–internet, rolodex, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, solopreneur, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Levy, the strength of weak ties, Walter Mischel, zero-sum game

But all that changes when heads-down mode rolls around. I’ll turn down all but the most urgent requests, and spend hours at a time immersed in deep work on projects like developing a new online course or writing a book. This approach enables me to focus when needed, cluster similar tasks (to lessen the cognitive load of multitasking), and stay refreshed by changing up my routines. In exercise, you’re not supposed to lift weights every day; your muscles need time to recover, heal, and grow back stronger. You’re more effective when you work in cycles than if you slog forward, repeating the same tasks every day.

API Design Patterns by Jj Geewax

Amazon Web Services, anti-pattern, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, cognitive load, continuous integration, COVID-19, database schema, en.wikipedia.org, exponential backoff, imposter syndrome, Internet of things, Kubernetes, lateral thinking, loose coupling, machine readable, microservices, natural language processing, Paradox of Choice, ride hailing / ride sharing, social graph, sorting algorithm

Listing 5.2 A function to add a chatbot to a room, if permitted function addChatbotToRoom(chatbot: Chatbot, roomId: number): void { let room = getChatRoomById(roomId); if (room.disallowChatbots === false) { ❶ chatbot.join(room.id); } } ❶ Here we can check whether chat bots are disallowed. If false, we can join the room. Is this impossible to follow? Probably not. Is it a bit more cognitive load than the much simpler version (if (room.allowChatbots) { ... })? For most of us, probably. Based on that alone, it’s almost always a good idea to go with positive Boolean flags. But there are scenarios when it might make sense to rely on negative flags, primarily when we consider the default or unset value of the field.

…

Additionally, we have an extra association resource to consider, which means a larger API surface as the API now has both one extra resource per association and up to seven additional methods to consider (five for the standard methods and two optional alias methods). Often these methods are easy to learn and understand and as a result are worth the additional cognitive load; however, it’s worth pointing out that there are simply more things to learn. 14.4.2 Separation of associations When using an association resource, even though we can provide alias methods to make it easier to ask questions about resource relationships, we still treat the association between the two resources as separate from the information about each resource.

The Techno-Human Condition by Braden R. Allenby, Daniel R. Sarewitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, airport security, Anthropocene, augmented reality, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, coherent worldview, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, different worldview, Edward Jenner, facts on the ground, friendly fire, Hans Moravec, industrial cluster, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, land tenure, Lewis Mumford, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, mutually assured destruction, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, Peter Singer: altruism, planetary scale, precautionary principle, prediction markets, radical life extension, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Silicon Valley, smart grid, source of truth, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

., the website of the Augmented Cognition International Society (www.augmentedcognition.org), which identifies the main driver for such technologies: the limited bandwidth of human consciousness-"The primary challenge with these systems is accurately predicting/assessing, from the incoming sensor information, the correct state of the user and having the computer select an appropriate strategy to assist the user at that time." (http://www.augmentedcognition.org) Augcog also has significant Level I uses in civil society. Many car companies, for example, are designing augcog into their future automobiles in recognition of the fact that, as populations age, more of the cognitive load of driving must be shifted from the aging driver to the car and transport infrastructure. See, e.g., N. Fleming, "Look, no hands: Cars that drive better than you;" at www.newscientist.com. 9. These examples are from Singer 2009. 10. There are three main branches of the laws of war: legal justification for engaging in war in the first place (jus ad bellum), legal conduct during war itself (jus in bello), and international agreements on military conduct and technology (such as the Geneva Conventions).

The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social by Steffen Mau

Airbnb, cognitive bias, cognitive load, collaborative consumption, connected car, crowdsourcing, digital capitalism, double entry bookkeeping, future of work, gamification, income inequality, informal economy, invisible hand, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, lifelogging, Mark Zuckerberg, meritocracy, mittelstand, moral hazard, personalized medicine, positional goods, principal–agent problem, profit motive, QR code, reserve currency, school choice, selection bias, sharing economy, smart cities, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, Uber for X, vertical integration, web of trust, Wolfgang Streeck

In our rapidly complexifying society, we are being swamped by a growing tide of information which is becoming increasingly hard to process. As a result, we inevitably resort to simplifying heuristics for guidance. We have to be economical with our attention (Franck 1998), and rankings serve to reduce cognitive load. They are a means of creating commensurability, which often translates confusing and complex differences into easily graspable inequalities, or hierarchies. All rankings establish a clear relationship between the evaluated objects. The incorporation of disparate entities into a league table is initially based on a supposition of commonality, but once such a table is published, a pecking order is established.

Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture by Designing the Mind, Ryan A Bush

Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cognitive bias, cognitive load, correlation does not imply causation, data science, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, drug harm reduction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fundamental attribution error, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, impulse control, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, Own Your Own Home, pattern recognition, price anchoring, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, Walter Mischel

doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.51.5.1058. Wilhelm Hofmann and Loran F. Nordgren, eds., The Psychology of Desire. Chapter 3 - Desire and Desire Regulation, Reprint edition (New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 2016). Lotte Dillen, Esther Papies, and Wilhelm Hofmann, “Turning a Blind Eye to Temptation: How Cognitive Load Can Facilitate Self-Regulation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104 (December 31, 2012), https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031262. “The Grateful Disposition: A Conceptual and Empirical Topography. - PsycNET,” accessed November 25, 2020, /doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.82.1.112. “Counting Blessings versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life. - PsycNET,” accessed November 25, 2020, /doiLanding?

Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems by Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, Niall Richard Murphy

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, Abraham Maslow, Air France Flight 447, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, business intelligence, business logic, business process, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, cognitive load, combinatorial explosion, continuous integration, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, database schema, defense in depth, DevOps, en.wikipedia.org, exponential backoff, fail fast, fault tolerance, Flash crash, George Santayana, Google Chrome, Google Earth, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, information asymmetry, job automation, job satisfaction, Kubernetes, linear programming, load shedding, loose coupling, machine readable, meta-analysis, microservices, minimum viable product, MVC pattern, no silver bullet, OSI model, performance metric, platform as a service, proprietary trading, reproducible builds, revision control, risk tolerance, side project, six sigma, the long tail, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, trickle-down economics, warehouse automation, web application, zero day

This pattern of distribution also informs how SRE teams tend to be organized. Because our raison d’être is bringing value through technical mastery, and technical mastery tends to be hard, we therefore try to find a way to have mastery over some related subset of systems or infrastructures, in order to decrease cognitive load. Specialization is one way of accomplishing this objective; i.e., team X works only on product Y. Specialization is good, because it leads to higher chances of improved technical mastery, but it’s also bad, because it leads to siloization and ignorance of the broader picture. We try to have a crisp team charter to define what a team will—and more importantly, won’t—support, but we don’t always succeed.

…

Another way, perhaps the best, is to short-circuit the process by which specially created systems with lots of individual variations end up “arriving” at SRE’s door. Provide product development with a platform of SRE-validated infrastructure, upon which they can build their systems. This platform will have the double benefit of being both reliable and scalable. This avoids certain classes of cognitive load problems entirely, and by addressing common infrastructure practices, allows product development teams to focus on innovation at the application layer, where it mostly belongs. In the following sections, we’ll spend some time looking at each of these models in turn, beginning with the “classic” one, the PRR-driven model.

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, Chris Wanstrath, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, demand response, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Flash crash, fulfillment center, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, linear programming, Live Aid, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, ocean acidification, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, planetary scale, power law, pull request, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Solyndra, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Transnistria, uber lyft, undersea cable, urban decay, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

They did not know what data to look at, so our challenge was [to] make sensor data easy for them to make sense of, so we don’t overwhelm them with too much data and just say ‘You figure it out.’ Our goal was, ‘We will give you information you can use.’” “The cognitive load is too much,” he added, “and technology has to reduce that cognitive load on the user. Everyone will need and everyone will have a personal assistant.” The maintenance team now feel more like building technicians, not just janitors. “They feel it is a step up,” said Tipirneni. “They got very excited about the interfaces.” And the best part, he added: “We had forty officials from four different cities in for a demo, and some of the maintenance people here presented it and they showed what they learned, and it struck a chord with the city officials.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Albert Einstein, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Black Swan, book value, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, classic study, cognitive bias, cognitive load, complexity theory, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, demand response, endowment effect, experimental economics, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, feminist movement, framing effect, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, index card, information asymmetry, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, libertarian paternalism, Linda problem, loss aversion, medical residency, mental accounting, meta-analysis, nudge unit, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, peak-end rule, precautionary principle, pre–internet, price anchoring, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Shai Danziger, sunk-cost fallacy, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, systematic bias, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, transaction costs, union organizing, Walter Mischel, Yom Kippur War

System 1 has more influence on behavior when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth. People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. Memorizing and repeating digits loosens the hold of System 2 on behavior, but of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. A few drinks have the same effect, as does a sleepless night. The self-control of morning people is impaired at night; the reverse is true of night people. Too much concern about how well one is doing in a task sometimes disrupts performance by loading short-term memory with pointless anxious thoughts.

…

They include: avoiding the thought of white bears inhibiting the emotional response to a stirring film making a series of choices that involve conflict trying to impress others responding kindly to a partner’s bad behavior interacting with a person of a different race (for prejudiced individuals) The list of indications of depletion is also highly diverse: deviating from one’s diet overspending on impulsive purchases reacting aggressively to provocation persisting less time in a handgrip task performing poorly in cognitive tasks and logical decision making The evidence is persuasive: activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation. After exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to. In several experiments, people were able to resist the effects of ego depletion when given a strong incentive to do so.

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Thomas Ramge

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, Apollo 11, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, banking crisis, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, inventory management, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land reform, Large Hadron Collider, lone genius, low cost airline, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market design, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, Parag Khanna, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price anchoring, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, random walk, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, statistical model, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, universal basic income, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

Money and price are the infrastructure, the conduits of information, that make the market work. But money and price do much more than streamline information flows; they also simplify transactional decision-making. If we have difficulty comparing and evaluating goods and services across many dimensions, the shift to a price—a simple figure—eases our cognitive load. Just imagine for a moment a world without money: say you want to purchase a loaf of bread, and one baker offers it to you in exchange for a pound of butter, whereas another wants a crate of apples. How would you go about comparing these two offers? In fact, how would you even have gotten the information on what the bakers want in exchange for their goods?

Vue.js 2 Cookbook by Andrea Passaglia

bitcoin, business logic, cognitive load, functional programming, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loose coupling, MVC pattern, node package manager, Silicon Valley, single page application, web application, WebSocket

Vuex implements a pattern that is popular in frontend frameworks and consists of dividing the different concerns to manage a big global application state. The mutations are the only things that can change the state, so you have only one place to look for that. Much of the logic, along with all the asynchronous logic, is contained in the actions; finally, getters and modules further help to spread the cognitive load when it comes to computing the derived state and splitting your code into different files. Along with recipes, you will find grains of wisdom that I found useful when developing real large applications; some have to do with naming conventions and others with little tricks to avoid bugs. If you complete all the recipes, you will be ready to develop big frontend applications with fewer bugs and seamless collaboration.

Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking by Matthew Syed

adjacent possible, agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic bias, behavioural economics, Bletchley Park, Boeing 747, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, cognitive load, computer age, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, delayed gratification, drone strike, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, Firefox, invention of writing, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, market bubble, mass immigration, microbiome, Mitch Kapor, persistent metabolic adaptation, Peter Thiel, post-truth, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stuart Kauffman, tech worker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, traveling salesman, vertical integration

In many ways Everest will prove an apt vehicle for this exploration. Weather conditions are inherently uncertain. No matter how much planning and preparation you have done, there are unexpected twists and turns. The number of moving parts as conditions morph make huge demands not merely on physical endurance, but cognitive load. Mountaineering is, in this sense, what theorists call a VUCA environment: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. II Psychologists and anthropologists don’t agree about much, but one thing they do agree upon is the significance of dominance hierarchies. Humans share hierarchies with other primates and, according to the psychologist Jordan Peterson, even lobsters.

What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People by Joe Navarro, Marvin Karlins

cognitive load, Columbine, margin call

The Critical Role of the Comfort/Discomfort Equation in Detecting Deception Those who are lying or are guilty and must carry the knowledge of their lies and/or crimes with them find it difficult to achieve comfort, and their tension and distress may be readily observed. Attempting to disguise their guilt or deception places a very distressing cognitive load on them as they struggle to fabricate answers to what would otherwise be simple questions (DePaulo et al., 1985, 323–370). The more comfortable a person is when speaking with us, the easier it will be to detect the critical nonverbals of discomfort associated with 210 W H A T E V E R Y B O D Y I S S A Y I N G deception.

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin

Abraham Maslow, airport security, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anton Chekhov, autism spectrum disorder, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, big-box store, business process, call centre, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, complexity theory, computer vision, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Exxon Valdez, framing effect, friendly fire, fundamental attribution error, Golden Gate Park, Google Glasses, GPS: selective availability, haute cuisine, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, human-factors engineering, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, impulse control, index card, indoor plumbing, information retrieval, information security, invention of writing, iterative process, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, language acquisition, Lewis Mumford, life extension, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, optical character recognition, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, phenotype, placebo effect, pre–internet, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, shared worldview, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, Snapchat, social intelligence, statistical model, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, traumatic brain injury, Turing test, Twitter Arab Spring, ultimatum game, Wayback Machine, zero-sum game

Or you could attribute his behavior to a situational factor—perhaps he was lost in thought or was late for a meeting or is angry at you. The science doesn’t say that Kevin rarely responds to situational factors, just that observers tend to discount them. Daniel Gilbert has gone on to show that this fundamental attribution error is produced by information overload. Specifically, the more cognitive load one is experiencing, the more likely one is to make errors in judgment about the causes of an individual’s behavior. Another way to contextualize the results of the Stanford experiment is that the participants drew a conclusion that was overly influenced by the outcome of the game, and made an outcome-bias-based inference.

…

Why is it so powerful if it is sometimes wrong? Here’s the twist. It’s because most of the time, the outcome has predictive value and operates as a simple inferential cue when we’re making judgments. Reliance on such primal unconscious cues is efficient, typically yielding accurate judgments with much less effort and cognitive load. In an era of information overload, sometimes outcome-based biases save time, but we need to be aware of them because sometimes they just make us wrong. On the Edge of Your Social World Another cognitive illusion that concerns social judgments is that we tend to have a very difficult time ignoring information that has been shown later to be false.

Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke

banking crisis, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Cass Sunstein, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, Filter Bubble, Herman Kahn, hindsight bias, Jean Tirole, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, loss aversion, market design, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, p-value, phenotype, prediction markets, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, systematic bias, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, urban planning, Walter Mischel, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Even when that information is clearly presented as being false, we are still likely to process it as true. In these experiments, subjects read a series of statements about a criminal defendant or a college student. These statements were color coded to make it clear whether they were true or false. Subjects under time pressure or who had their cognitive load increased by a minor distraction made more errors in recalling whether the statements were true or false. But the errors weren’t random. The subjects were not equally likely to ignore some statements labeled “true” as they were to rely on some statements labeled “false.” Rather, their errors went in one direction: under any sort of pressure, they presumed all the statements were true, regardless of their labeling.

Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-Bubbles – the Algorithms That Control Our Lives by David Sumpter

affirmative action, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Bernie Sanders, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, classic study, cognitive load, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, Filter Bubble, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, illegal immigration, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kenneth Arrow, Loebner Prize, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, p-value, post-truth, power law, prediction markets, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Mercer, selection bias, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social contagion, speech recognition, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, traveling salesman, Turing test

In Figures 9.1 (a) and (b) the radius of the circle next to the author is proportional to n i and the thickness of the link between the authors is c ij. 3 Lerman, K. and Hogg, T. 2010. ‘Using a model of social dynamics to predict popularity of news.’ Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World Wide Web, pp. 621–30. ACM. 4 Burghardt, K., Alsina, E. F., Girvan, M., Rand, W. and Lerman, K. 2017. ‘The myopia of crowds: Cognitive load and collective evaluation of answers on Stack Exchange.’ PloS one 12, no. : e0173610. 5 Salganik, M. J., Dodds, P. S. and Watts, D. J. 2006. ‘Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market.’ Science 311, no. 5762: 854–6. Salganik, M. J. and Watts, D. J. 2008.

Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power by Rose Hackman

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, cognitive load, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark triade / dark tetrad, David Graeber, demand response, do what you love, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, game design, glass ceiling, immigration reform, invisible hand, job automation, lockdown, mass incarceration, medical bankruptcy, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, performance metric, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

The harm that comes as a result of incarceration is something women have to take on as their own responsibility, Clayton-Johnson said—with a myriad of extra forms of emotional labor added on. Her organization, based out of Oakland, California, serves women who have loved ones on the inside. “For women with incarcerated loved ones, the cognitive load is more than figuring out kids’ preschool. For them, it is also getting that look from a loved one in a court or inside, saying, What should I do? Should I take the plea?” That half a million people sit in American jails every day without a conviction because of not being able to make bail means women on the outside are forced into making impossible choices.14 Paying rent or paying for a loved one’s bail was just one of many agonizing decisions women had to face, said Clayton-Johnson, whose organization is among those advocating an end to the cash bail system.

Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want by Nicholas Epley

affirmative action, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autism spectrum disorder, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, drone strike, friendly fire, invisible hand, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, payday loans, Peter Singer: altruism, pirate software, Richard Thaler, school choice, social intelligence, the scientific method, theory of mind

When what you type isn’t what they read: The perseverance of stereotypes and expectancies over email. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 41: 414–22. 17. Kring, A. M., and A. H. Gordon (1998). Sex differences in emotion: Expression, experience, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74: 686–703. Van Boven, L., and M. D. Robinson (2012). Boys don’t cry: Cognitive load and priming increase stereotypic sex differences in emotion memory. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48: 303–309. 18. Nelson, L. J., and D. T. Miller (1995). The distinctiveness effect in social categorization: You are what makes you unusual. Psychological Science 6: 246–49. 19. Riggs, L.

Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life by Colin Ellard

Apollo 11, augmented reality, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, classic study, cognitive load, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, Dunbar number, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Lewis Mumford, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, mass immigration, megastructure, mirror neurons, Mondo 2000, more computing power than Apollo, Oculus Rift, overview effect, Peter Eisenman, RFID, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, sentiment analysis, Skinner box, smart cities, starchitect, TED Talk, the built environment, theory of mind, time dilation, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen

Smartening Up the Built World For thousands of years, the conventional wall was a perfectly satisfactory way of influencing human behavior through design. Walls constrain movement and occlude views. They afford privacy and protection. Indeed, John Locke, in his book Eavesdropping: An Intimate History, has argued that the wall was designed to protect us from the cognitive load of having to keep track of the activities of strangers as we moved from tiny agrarian settlements to larger villages and, eventually, cities where it was too difficult to keep track of who was doing what to whom.12 Walls reinforce or perhaps even create social conventions and cultural norms. The invention of dedicated sleeping spaces in homes changed our views about sexuality.

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work by Alex Rosenblat

"Susan Fowler" uber, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic management, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, big-box store, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, business logic, call centre, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive load, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, death from overwork, digital divide, disinformation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, future of work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Google Chrome, Greyball, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, Lyft, marginal employment, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, performance metric, Peter Thiel, price discrimination, proprietary trading, Ralph Waldo Emerson, regulatory arbitrage, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, social software, SoftBank, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, Tim Cook: Apple, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, urban planning, Wolfgang Streeck, work culture , workplace surveillance , Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

The affective benefits, like the community you build with other drivers during down periods, continue.”2 Nevertheless, some of the drawbacks of algorithmic management center on information scarcity, rather than on discussions of employment benefits. Drivers don’t have an employee handbook when they start out: instead, they learn what the rules are over time through hundreds of text messages, emails, and in-app notifications. To manage the cognitive load of rapidly shifting terms and conditions in their employment, some drivers turn to information-sharing forums online. On these driver-led forums—on Facebook, on message boards, and on chat apps like WhatsApp, Zello, and WeChat—drivers are forging their own informal information networks, outside the algorithmically proscriptive realm of the ridehail apps.

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American ideology, big-box store, Cal Newport, call centre, cognitive load, collective bargaining, COVID-19, David Brooks, death from overwork, delayed gratification, do what you love, Donald Trump, financial independence, future of work, gamification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, helicopter parent, imposter syndrome, Inbox Zero, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Minecraft, move fast and break things, precariat, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, school choice, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TikTok, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Vanguard fund, work culture , working poor, workplace surveillance

A social worker once told me that he feels that American bureaucracy for aid is intentionally and endlessly tedious as a means to deter those who need it most. All the decisions and multitasking that are already hard to juggle when you’re well-nourished and have a safe and consistent place to live become immeasurably more difficult when you don’t have those elements in place. Researchers have found that poverty imposes a “cognitive load” on the poor—there’s so much mental energy devoted to finding and maintaining the basics of life that there’s little left over to, say, research, save, register, and attend night school, let alone find the energy to do the homework.24 Paying bills on time is a struggle for people who are middle class and burnt out; think of how much harder it is when you don’t have a computer or the extra money for a stamp.

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World by David Sax

Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, bread and circuses, Buckminster Fuller, Cal Newport, call centre, clean water, cognitive load, commoditize, contact tracing, contact tracing app, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Minecraft, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, retail therapy, RFID, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unemployed young men, urban planning, walkable city, Y2K, zero-sum game

Though the software worked remarkably well, each Zoom meeting (or its equivalent on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, or other videoconferencing platforms) seemed to take something visceral from its participants, the way a trip to Ikea sucked the love out of a young couple. Psychologists and other experts tried to pick apart its causes. Was it something to do with the imperceptible lag in response time on digital communications, or the speed of it, or the volume? Was the root cause a lack of genuine eye contact, an increase in our cognitive load, or the way that digital processing flattened audio signals? No one was sure, but whatever it was, the unease it imparted became harder to ignore. Even though I had worked remotely my entire career, I noticed it as well. I was busy writing articles, doing interviews, and even orchestrating half a dozen virtual book tour stops across the United States during that first, crazy pandemic spring.

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Black Swan, butterfly effect, buy and hold, cloud computing, cognitive load, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, desegregation, drone strike, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, forward guidance, Freestyle chess, fundamental attribution error, germ theory of disease, hindsight bias, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, index fund, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Arrow, Laplace demon, longitudinal study, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, operational security, pattern recognition, performance metric, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, placebo effect, precautionary principle, prediction markets, quantitative easing, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, Skype, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, tail risk, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

Ever watch a child struggling to sound out words and grasp the meaning of a sentence? That was you once. Fortunately, reading this sentence isn’t nearly so demanding for you now. So how long can superforecasters defy the laws of psychological gravity? The answer to that depends on how heavy their cognitive loads are. Turning a self-conscious System 2 correction into an unconscious System 1 operation may lighten the load considerably. So may the software tools some superforecasters have developed—like Doug Lorch’s new-source selection program designed to correct the System 1 bias in favor of the like-minded.

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman

affirmative action, classic study, cognitive load, Columbine, delayed gratification, desegregation, hedonic treadmill, impulse control, index card, job satisfaction, lake wobegon effect, language acquisition, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, social intelligence, Steven Pinker, telemarketer, theory of mind

The two are indeed connected, by the neural systems that regulate attention and cognitive control. Teenage drivers can score 100% on a paper test of the rules, but when driving, their reaction times are delayed because they have not yet internalized the grammar of driving—they have to think about it. This increases the cognitive load, and their ability to maintain attention is stressed to capacity. They are on the verge of making poor decisions. Put a friend in the car and the attention systems are easily overloaded—the driver’s brain no longer proactively anticipates what could happen, glancing seconds ahead and preloading the rules.

Chaos Engineering: System Resiliency in Practice by Casey Rosenthal, Nora Jones

Amazon Web Services, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, blockchain, business continuity plan, business intelligence, business logic, business process, cloud computing, cognitive load, complexity theory, continuous integration, cyber-physical system, database schema, DevOps, fail fast, fault tolerance, hindsight bias, human-factors engineering, information security, Kanban, Kubernetes, leftpad, linear programming, loose coupling, microservices, MITM: man-in-the-middle, no silver bullet, node package manager, operational security, OSI model, pull request, ransomware, risk tolerance, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, software as a service, statistical model, systems thinking, the scientific method, value engineering, WebSocket

It is considered a best practice in Chaos Engineering to not perform experiments during an active ongoing incident or outage. It’s not difficult to grasp that doing so will likely be disruptive to response team efforts but additionally it’s important to recognize that people operate differently during active incidents due to time pressure, cognitive load, stress, and other factors. An active incident situation is not an ideal learning environment, as the focus is typically on restoring business continuity instead of learning about what might have contributed to the adverse event. We execute SCE experiments in the absence of adverse events and outages when the system is thought to be running optimally.

The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker

butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, Douglas Hofstadter, feminist movement, functional fixedness, hindsight bias, illegal immigration, index card, invention of the printing press, invention of the telephone, language acquisition, lolcat, McMansion, meta-analysis, moral panic, Nelson Mandela, off-the-grid, profit maximization, quantitative easing, quantum entanglement, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Feynman, short selling, Steven Pinker, the market place, theory of mind, Turing machine

Take this excerpt from a 340-word soliloquy in a novel by Rebecca Goldstein.17 The speaker is a professor who has recently achieved professional and romantic fulfillment and is standing on a bridge on a cold, starry night trying to articulate his wonder at being alive: Here it is then: the sense that existence is just such a tremendous thing, one comes into it, astonishingly, here one is, formed by biology and history, genes and culture, in the midst of the contingency of the world, here one is, one doesn’t know how, one doesn’t know why, and suddenly one doesn’t know where one is either or who or what one is either, and all that one knows is that one is a part of it, a considered and conscious part of it, generated and sustained in existence in ways one can hardly comprehend, all the time conscious of it, though, of existence, the fullness of it, the reaching expanse and pulsing intricacy of it, and one wants to live in a way that at least begins to do justice to it, one wants to expand one’s reach of it as far as expansion is possible and even beyond that, to live one’s life in a way commensurate with the privilege of being a part of and conscious of the whole reeling glorious infinite sweep, a sweep that includes, so improbably, a psychologist of religion named Cass Seltzer, who, moved by powers beyond himself, did something more improbable than all the improbabilities constituting his improbable existence could have entailed, did something that won him someone else’s life, a better life, a more brilliant life, a life beyond all the ones he had wished for in the pounding obscurity of all his yearnings. For all its length and lexical exuberance, the sentence is easy to follow, because the reader never has to keep a phrase suspended in memory for long while new words pour in. The tree has been shaped to spread the cognitive load over time with the help of two kinds of topiary. One is a flat branching structure, in which a series of mostly uncomplicated clauses are concatenated side by side with and or with commas. The sixty-two words following the colon, for example, consist mainly of a very long clause which embraces seven self-contained clauses (shown as triangles) ranging from three to twenty words long: The longest of these embedded clauses, the third and the last, are also flattish trees, each composed of simpler phrases joined side by side with commas or with or.

The Smart Wife: Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot by Yolande Strengers, Jenny Kennedy

active measures, Amazon Robotics, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Boston Dynamics, cloud computing, cognitive load, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, cyber-physical system, data science, deepfake, Donald Trump, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, feminist movement, game design, gender pay gap, Grace Hopper, hive mind, Ian Bogost, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, Masayoshi Son, Milgram experiment, Minecraft, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, pattern recognition, planned obsolescence, precautionary principle, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, smart meter, social intelligence, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Turing test, Wall-E, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce

Yet as political science scholars Amy Schiller and John McMahon point out, voice-activated assistants designed for the home may further entrench the role of the household manager.72 Alexa and Google Home cannot delegate tasks to themselves (yet), despite the intention for smart assistants like Alexa to “reduce users’ cognitive load [and] reduce friction in their day-to-day activities.”73 These assistants rely on the managerial labor of their human users “to notice, inform, direct, administer, and supervise Alexa her/itself.”74 The French comic by artist Emma, titled You Should Have Asked, which went viral in 2017, brings this point home.75 The comic describes the burden placed on heterosexual women in coupled households where men insist that they will perform their fair share of domestic responsibilities, as long as they are “asked” to do specific tasks.

Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business by Arvid Kahl

business logic, business process, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cognitive load, content marketing, continuous integration, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, domain-specific language, financial independence, functional programming, Google Chrome, hockey-stick growth, if you build it, they will come, information asymmetry, information retrieval, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kanban, Kubernetes, machine readable, minimum viable product, Network effects, performance metric, post-work, premature optimization, risk tolerance, Ruby on Rails, sentiment analysis, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, software as a service, solopreneur, source of truth, statistical model, subscription business, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, the long tail, trickle-down economics, value engineering, web application

And they definitely don't want to learn anything new to be able to solve a problem they already had to learn a product or even a manual solution for in the past. Your product should be simpler, easier, and faster than anything they have encountered in the past. If it's not, getting to understand your product is a cognitive load that few are willing to take upon themselves. That's not to say that people won't learn your product ever. It just means that the simpler your product, the more prospects will play around with it to a point where they can see themselves using it in the future. How to Handle Audience Misalignment Here's the worst-case scenario: your product may just not be for them.

Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing by Rachel Plotnick

augmented reality, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Google Glasses, Internet Archive, invisible hand, means of production, Milgram experiment, Oculus Rift, scientific management, Shoshana Zuboff, software studies, Steve Jobs

These multiple states and functionalities create less clarity about what a button does because many buttons no longer provide a binary condition—on/off, start/stop, make/break—and instead offer users a bevy of choices that may not be visible at the original push. Of course, “hidden button states are not ideal,” as observers have noted, because they “add to the cognitive load of users and are vulnerable to operation errors.”44 Yet to call present-day virtual buttons inherently more confusing or complex than their mechanical predecessors at the turn of the twentieth century would overlook the complexities that have always accompanied buttons; the fallacy lies in assuming that buttons have ever provided a seamless experience for users.

Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference by David Halpern

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centre right, choice architecture, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, collaborative consumption, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, different worldview, endowment effect, gamification, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, IKEA effect, illegal immigration, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, language acquisition, libertarian paternalism, light touch regulation, longitudinal study, machine readable, market design, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, nudge unit, peer-to-peer lending, pension reform, precautionary principle, presumed consent, QR code, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Simon Kuznets, skunkworks, supply chain finance, the built environment, theory of mind, traffic fines, twin studies, World Values Survey

In a different body of work on adults, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir have shown how poverty has far more powerful cognitive effects than we were previously aware.9 Having money worries seems to preoccupy a chunk of our minds, even if we are not aware of it. The effect size on IQ is roughly equivalent to having had no sleep the night before, but on an ongoing basis. This gives useful clues to how welfare systems might be adapted, not just by throwing more money at them, but by avoiding systems and processes that factor in this unseen cognitive load. We have seen similar glimpses in our own work. The reworking of the interaction between jobseekers and advisers in UK jobcentres, by Rory Gallagher, Alex Gyani, Sam Hanes and others in BIT (with Department of Work and Pensions colleagues) showed that we could get the unemployed back to work significantly faster (see Chapter 8).

Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America by Cass R. Sunstein

active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airline deregulation, anti-communist, anti-globalists, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cognitive load, David Brooks, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Garrett Hardin, ghettoisation, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Isaac Newton, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Long Term Capital Management, microaggression, Nate Silver, Network effects, New Journalism, night-watchman state, nudge theory, obamacare, Paris climate accords, post-truth, Potemkin village, random walk, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Steve Bannon, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey

But as several decades of psychology and behavioral economics research has demonstrated (Ariely 2008; Gilovich, Griffin, and Kahneman 2002), it ignores what Daniel Kahneman calls “system 2” thinking (Kahneman 2011), which resides in our unconscious brains and can be influenced by, among other things, subtle details in the presentation of options (Thaler and Sunstein 2008)—e.g., default settings (Johnson and Goldstein 2003), cognitive loads imposed by background environmental stresses (Mullainathan and Shafir 2013), and implicit biases arising from cultural stereotypes and irrelevant personal experience (Banaji and Greenwald 2016). Complicating matters further is Marx’s famous observation “Men make their own history, but . . . they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances . . . transmitted from the past.”

The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World by Michael Marmot

active measures, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Atul Gawande, Bonfire of the Vanities, Broken windows theory, cakes and ale, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, centre right, clean water, cognitive load, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, Doha Development Round, epigenetics, financial independence, future of work, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, illegal immigration, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Kenneth Rogoff, Kibera, labour market flexibility, longitudinal study, lump of labour, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, New Urbanism, obamacare, paradox of thrift, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Simon Kuznets, Socratic dialogue, structural adjustment programs, the built environment, The Spirit Level, trickle-down economics, twin studies, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working poor

The implication of this effect of scarcity is that the poor need not only money – they do need money – but also the security of mind that allows a fuller range of mental functions to flourish. For example, if when Rachel was a single mother she could have had access to subsidised childcare, it would have reduced not only her financial burden but also her cognitive load as she juggled the tasks and the finances involved in being a single mother. In low-income countries, where employment and income are insecure and inconstant, short-term low-interest loans might be valuable in relieving intolerable mental burdens. My entrée into political philosophy was to help understand the links between social justice and health.

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris

Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, cognitive bias, cognitive load, end world poverty, endowment effect, energy security, experimental subject, framing effect, higher-order functions, hindsight bias, impulse control, John Nash: game theory, language acquisition, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Monty Hall problem, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, peak-end rule, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, public intellectual, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, scientific worldview, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, ultimatum game, World Values Survey

The contrasts—uncertainty minus belief and uncertainty minus disbelief—yielded signal in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This region of the brain has been widely implicated in error detection (Schall, Stuphorn, & Brown, 2002) and response conflict (Gehring & Fencsik, 2001), and it regularly responds to increases in cognitive load and interference (Bunge, Ochsner, Desmond, Glover, & Gabrieli, 2001). It has also been shown to play a role in the perception of pain (Coghill, McHaffie, & Yen, 2003). The opposite contrasts, belief minus uncertainty and disbelief minus uncertainty, showed increased signal in the caudate nucleus, which is part of the basal ganglia.

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking by Michael Bhaskar

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, call centre, carbon tax, charter city, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cognitive load, Columbian Exchange, coronavirus, cosmic microwave background, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cyber-physical system, dark matter, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, Eroom's law, fail fast, false flag, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, Haber-Bosch Process, hedonic treadmill, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, hive mind, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Watt: steam engine, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, liberation theology, lockdown, lone genius, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megacity, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Gell-Mann, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, nudge unit, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, post-truth, precautionary principle, public intellectual, publish or perish, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, skunkworks, Slavoj Žižek, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, techlash, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, total factor productivity, transcontinental railway, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, When a measure becomes a target, X Prize, Y Combinator

Over the next decades or centuries we should be able to sketch a detailed picture of how the brain's atoms, electrical activity and chemical reactions produce our minds. Existing prostheses – writing and ledgers to store information, all those telescopes and compasses building up to computers, the Internet and AI – could coalesce and transmogrify: tools from AI to virtual worlds that outsource the cognitive load; designer drugs that supercharge cognition and perception; and ultimately the fusion of organic and inorganic constructs to further evolve our intelligences and consciousness. The lines between brain and machine, artificial and biological ideas, crumble. It all sounds quite grandiose and alarming: it is.

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots by John Markoff

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, AI winter, airport security, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Atkinson, Bill Duvall, bioinformatics, Boston Dynamics, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, call centre, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Chris Urmson, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, collective bargaining, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data acquisition, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, deskilling, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, dual-use technology, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, General Magic , Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Gunnar Myrdal, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, haute couture, Herbert Marcuse, hive mind, hype cycle, hypertext link, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, Ivan Sutherland, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, John Conway, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, medical residency, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Philippa Foot, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Richard Stallman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, semantic web, Seymour Hersh, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, skunkworks, Skype, social software, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, strong AI, superintelligent machines, tech worker, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, telemarketer, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tenerife airport disaster, The Coming Technological Singularity, the medium is the message, Thorstein Veblen, Tony Fadell, trolley problem, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, zero-sum game

Aircraft designers had learned the hard way that until they considered the human-machine interaction as a single system, they built control systems that led to aircraft crashes. It simply wasn’t possible to account for all accidents by blaming pilot error. Aircraft cockpit design changed, however, when designers realized that the pilot was part of the system. Variables like attention span and cognitive load, which had been pioneered and popularized by psychologists, became an integral part first in avionics and, more recently, computer system design. Gruber thought hard about these issues while he designed the Intraspect query system. He imagined customers, often corporate salespeople, as aircraft pilots and tried to shape the program to avoid deluging them with information.

Work Rules!: Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock

Abraham Maslow, Abraham Wald, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Black Swan, book scanning, Burning Man, call centre, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, citizen journalism, clean water, cognitive load, company town, correlation coefficient, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, Fairchild Semiconductor, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, helicopter parent, immigration reform, Internet Archive, Kevin Roose, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, nudge unit, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, power law, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, random walk, Richard Thaler, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, six sigma, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, survivorship bias, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tony Hsieh, Turing machine, Wayback Machine, winner-take-all economy, Y2K

We first had to make sure the data was credible, so we included academic citations, results from internal studies, and the underlying data in the email. Googlers are, after all, data driven. We then had to make sure there were unambiguous steps the manager could take. Our people are smart but busy. It reduces cognitive load if we provide clear instructions rather than asking them to invent practices from scratch or internalize a new behavior, and this lowers the chance that an extra step might discourage them from taking action. Even the president of the United States limits the volume of things he needs to think about, so that he can focus on important issues, as he explained to Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair: “ ‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,’ [President Obama] said.

Cybersecurity: What Everyone Needs to Know by P. W. Singer, Allan Friedman

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, air gap, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blood diamond, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business continuity plan, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, do-ocracy, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, energy security, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fault tolerance, Free Software Foundation, global supply chain, Google Earth, information security, Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, M-Pesa, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, packet switching, Peace of Westphalia, pre–internet, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, SQL injection, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, Twitter Arab Spring, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day, zero-sum game

Finally, you can prove who you “are” through something recognizable. Since this often refers to one’s person, we call this a “biometric.” Biometrics can be as simple as another human recognizing your face or as sophisticated as a sensor that recognizes your eye’s retina. There are weaknesses with these proofs. Passwords can be guessed or broken and require a cognitive load (you have to memorize them). If they are reused across different contexts, then breaking one system allows an attacker into others. Things that you “have” can be stolen or forged. And even biometrics can be compromised. For instance, access readers that require supposedly unique fingerprints have been fooled by forged fingerprints pressed into Gummy Bear candy, or, much more gruesomely, pressing down an amputated finger onto the machine (Russian mobsters ironically don’t seem to like cute, bear-shaped candy).

Relevant Search: With Examples Using Elasticsearch and Solr by Doug Turnbull, John Berryman

business logic, cognitive load, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, domain-specific language, Dr. Strangelove, fail fast, finite state, fudge factor, full text search, heat death of the universe, information retrieval, machine readable, natural language processing, premature optimization, recommendation engine, sentiment analysis, the long tail

The breadcrumb UI component can make users aware of how their results are being filtered. It also gives them an obvious way to remove existing filters. Highlighted search results and details pages draw the users’ attention to why a particular item is deemed important. Result grouping and sorting can reduce user cognitive load by allowing users to focus on the most interesting results. Relevance feedback makes it easier for users to engage with search and find what they’re looking for. Chapter 9. Designing a relevance-focused search application This chapter covers Gathering information before building a new search application Designing and implementing a complete search application Designing a query as a composite of subqueries Balancing query parameters Deploying, monitoring, and improving search Knowing when further relevance tuning is no longer advantageous In the previous chapters, we laid out all the ingredients for good search: Extracting features from the text of the documents through proper tokenization Defining important signals and creating search fields to represent them Crafting queries that take into account both user needs and business requirements Providing feedback to users in order to guide them to more-relevant results Now, this chapter is the rest of the recipe—the set of instructions that organizes these ingredients and lays out the methodology for building a relevance-focused search application.

No Slack: The Financial Lives of Low-Income Americans by Michael S. Barr

active measures, asset allocation, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, cognitive load, conceptual framework, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, financial exclusion, financial innovation, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, information asymmetry, it's over 9,000, labor-force participation, late fees, London Interbank Offered Rate, loss aversion, low interest rates, machine readable, market friction, mental accounting, Milgram experiment, mobile money, money market fund, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, New Urbanism, p-value, payday loans, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, search costs, subprime mortgage crisis, the payments system, transaction costs, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked

Surveys show that less than one-fifth of investors (in stocks, bonds, funds, or other securities) can be considered financially literate (Alexander, Jones, and Nigro 1998), and similar findings describe the understanding shown by pension-plan participants (Schultz 1995). Indeed, even older beneficiaries often do not know what kind of pension they are set to receive or what mix of stocks and bonds are held in their retirement accounts (Lusardi, Mitchell, and Curto 2009). The amount of information people can and do attend to is limited. Moreover, cognitive load has been shown to affect performance in everyday tasks. To the extent that consumers find themselves in challenging situations that are unfamiliar, distracting, or tense, all of which consume cognitive resources, less focused attention will be available to process the information that is relevant to the decision at hand.

Engineering Security by Peter Gutmann

active measures, address space layout randomization, air gap, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, Asperger Syndrome, bank run, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Brian Krebs, business process, call centre, card file, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, combinatorial explosion, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Debian, domain-specific language, Donald Davies, Donald Knuth, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, false flag, fault tolerance, Firefox, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, GnuPG, Google Chrome, Hacker News, information security, iterative process, Jacob Appelbaum, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Conway, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, Laplace demon, linear programming, litecoin, load shedding, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Multics, Network effects, nocebo, operational security, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, post-materialism, QR code, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, random walk, recommendation engine, RFID, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, rolling blackouts, Ruby on Rails, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, semantic web, seminal paper, Skype, slashdot, smart meter, social intelligence, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain attack, telemarketer, text mining, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Market for Lemons, the payments system, Therac-25, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, Wayback Machine, web application, web of trust, x509 certificate, Y2K, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

In order to cope with the situational awareness problem the pilot load-sheds, and the result of this process is written up by the board of inquiry as “pilot error”. Mind you, you can sometimes use the load-shedding phenomenon to your advantage. If you suspect that someone’s lying to you, you can increase their cognitive load to the point where they can no longer both maintain the lie and deal with the extra load. One way of doing this is to get them to narrate their story in reverse, which is awkward because it runs counter to the natural sequence of events and increases the chances that the liar will trip themselves up [112].

…

This explains why no-one has ever seriously deployed threshold scheme-based key safeguarding outside of a few specialised crypto hardware modules where this may be mandated by FIPS requirements [617] where they’re used to protect one-off, highvalue keys like CA root keys in complex, carefully-choreographed ceremonies (this is the actual technical term for the procedure [618][619][620]) and the odd designedpurely-for-geeks application. The cognitive load imposed by this type of mechanism is so high that it’s virtually impossible to render it practical for users, with even the highly simplified “insert tab A in slot B” mechanisms employed by some crypto hardware vendors (which usually merely XOR two key parts together to recover the original rather than using a full threshold scheme) reportedly taxing users to their limits, to the extent that they’re little-used in practice.

…

Because matches are approximate (for example in one technique users are required to indicate certain memorised regions in an image) they typically have to be iterated in order to achieve the required level of certainty that’s normally provided by a straight true/false password match. While this level of cognitive load may work (barely) for a single site there’s no way that it can scale effectively beyond that (luckily non-graphical user identification methods such as administering personality tests or the use of stylometry or writing style analysis, requiring that users write a short novel in order to log on, have only been suggested in jest [18]).

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

4chan, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, anthropic principle, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, Boeing 747, Charles Babbage, cognitive load, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, constrained optimization, cosmological principle, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, David Sedaris, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, diversification, Donald Knuth, Donald Shoup, double helix, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, exponential backoff, fault tolerance, Fellow of the Royal Society, Firefox, first-price auction, Flash crash, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, Garrett Hardin, Geoffrey Hinton, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google Chrome, heat death of the universe, Henri Poincaré, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, knapsack problem, Lao Tzu, Leonard Kleinrock, level 1 cache, linear programming, martingale, multi-armed bandit, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, NP-complete, P = NP, packet switching, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, prediction markets, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Robert X Cringely, Sam Altman, scientific management, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, sorting algorithm, spectrum auction, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stochastic process, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, traveling salesman, Turing machine, urban planning, Vickrey auction, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

In such situations, computational kindness and conventional etiquette diverge. Politely withholding your preferences puts the computational problem of inferring them on the rest of the group. In contrast, politely asserting your preferences (“Personally, I’m inclined toward x. What do you think?”) helps shoulder the cognitive load of moving the group toward resolution. Alternatively, you can try to reduce, rather than maximize, the number of options that you give other people—say, offering a choice between two or three restaurants rather than ten. If each person in the group eliminates their least preferred option, that makes the task easier for everyone.

The Architecture of Open Source Applications by Amy Brown, Greg Wilson

8-hour work day, anti-pattern, bioinformatics, business logic, c2.com, cloud computing, cognitive load, collaborative editing, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, continuous integration, Conway's law, create, read, update, delete, David Heinemeier Hansson, Debian, domain-specific language, Donald Knuth, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, finite state, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, friendly fire, functional programming, Guido van Rossum, Ken Thompson, linked data, load shedding, locality of reference, loose coupling, Mars Rover, MITM: man-in-the-middle, MVC pattern, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), peer-to-peer, Perl 6, premature optimization, recommendation engine, revision control, Ruby on Rails, side project, Skype, slashdot, social web, speech recognition, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, web application, WebSocket

Dealing with the Combinatorial Explosion One of the first things that is apparent from a moment's thought about the wide range of browsers and languages that WebDriver supports is that unless care is taken it would quickly face an escalating cost of maintenance. With X browsers and Y languages, it would be very easy to fall into the trap of maintaining X×Y implementations. Reducing the number of languages that WebDriver supports would be one way to reduce this cost, but we don't want to go down this route for two reasons. Firstly, there's a cognitive load to be paid when switching from one language to another, so it's advantageous to users of the framework to be able to write their tests in the same language that they do the majority of their development work in. Secondly, mixing several languages on a single project is something that teams may not be comfortable with, and corporate coding standards and requirements often seem to demand a technology monoculture (although, pleasingly, I think that this second point is becoming less true over time), therefore reducing the number of supported languages isn't an available option.

Clojure Programming by Chas Emerick, Brian Carper, Christophe Grand

Amazon Web Services, Benoit Mandelbrot, cloud computing, cognitive load, continuous integration, database schema, domain-specific language, don't repeat yourself, drop ship, duck typing, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, finite state, Firefox, functional programming, game design, general-purpose programming language, Guido van Rossum, higher-order functions, Larry Wall, mandelbrot fractal, no silver bullet, Paul Graham, platform as a service, premature optimization, random walk, Ruby on Rails, Schrödinger's Cat, semantic web, software as a service, sorting algorithm, SQL injection, Turing complete, type inference, web application

We’ll see what this means in Homoiconicity, but the ramifications of it are manifold: homoiconicity enables the development and use of metaprogramming and domain-specific language constructs simply unavailable in any programming language that is not homoiconic. After getting through an initial period of unfamiliarity, you will very likely find that Clojure’s syntax reduces the cognitive load necessary to read and write code. Quick: is << (bit-shift left) in Java executed before or after & (bitwise and) in order of operations? Every time a programmer has to pause and think about this (or look it up in a manual), every time a programmer has to go back and add grouping parentheses “just in case,” a mental page fault has occurred.

The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease by Lanius, Ruth A.; Vermetten, Eric; Pain, Clare

autism spectrum disorder, classic study, cognitive load, conceptual framework, correlation coefficient, delayed gratification, epigenetics, false memory syndrome, Helicobacter pylori, impulse control, intermodal, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Mount Scopus, Nelson Mandela, p-value, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social intelligence, Socratic dialogue, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury, twin studies, yellow journalism

Indeed, several studies now point to interesting links between dissociation and attention performance, such that highly dissociative individuals (determined either by scores above the pathological cut point on a measure of dissociation or by diagnostic group) appear to perform better under divided attention [30,31] or greater cognitive load conditions [32], relative to other conditions. For example, DePrince and Freyd [30] reported that highly dissociative individuals exhibited more interference under standard selective attention demands and less interference under divided attention demands of a modified Stroop task relative to those with low dissociation, who showed the opposite pattern.

Masterminds of Programming: Conversations With the Creators of Major Programming Languages by Federico Biancuzzi, Shane Warden

Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), business intelligence, business logic, business process, cellular automata, cloud computing, cognitive load, commoditize, complexity theory, conceptual framework, continuous integration, data acquisition, Dennis Ritchie, domain-specific language, Douglas Hofstadter, Fellow of the Royal Society, finite state, Firefox, follow your passion, Frank Gehry, functional programming, general-purpose programming language, Guido van Rossum, higher-order functions, history of Unix, HyperCard, industrial research laboratory, information retrieval, information security, iterative process, Ivan Sutherland, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, linear programming, loose coupling, machine readable, machine translation, Mars Rover, millennium bug, Multics, NP-complete, Paul Graham, performance metric, Perl 6, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Renaissance Technologies, Ruby on Rails, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, slashdot, software as a service, software patent, sorting algorithm, SQL injection, Steve Jobs, traveling salesman, Turing complete, type inference, Valgrind, Von Neumann architecture, web application

You could see the false generalization right there in many programs; panicking users would backslash anything symbolic in a regex because they couldn’t remember which characters were actual metacharacters. In Perl 6, as we were refactoring the syntax of pattern matching we realized that the majority of the ASCII symbols were already metacharacters anyway, so we reserved all of the nonalphanumerics as metacharacters to simplify the cognitive load on the programmer. There’s no longer a list of metacharacters, and the syntax is much, much cleaner. One word that I use to describe Perl’s design is “syncretic.” You pick and choose good bits from other places and try to combine them in a coherent whole. How do you balance syncretism with the idea of generality of ideas and coherence between ideas and features?