meta-analysis

321 results back to index


pages: 321 words: 97,661

How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence-Based Medicine by Trisha Greenhalgh

call centre, complexity theory, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, deskilling, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, New Journalism, p-value, personalized medicine, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, systematic bias, systems thinking, the scientific method

Dean Fergusson and colleagues of the Ottawa Health Research Institute published a cumulative meta-analysis of all randomised controlled trials carried out on the drug aprotinin in peri-operative bleeding during cardiac surgery [16]. They lined up the trials in the order they had been published, and worked out what a meta-analysis of ‘all trials done so far’ would have shown (had it been performed at the time). The resulting cumulative meta-analysis had shocking news for the research communities. The beneficial effect of aprotinin reached statistical significance after only 12 trials—that is, back in 1992. But because nobody did a meta-analysis at the time, a further 52 clinical trials were undertaken (and more may be ongoing).

A trial may be of high methodological quality and have a precise and numerically impressive result, but it may, for example, have been conducted on participants under the age of 60, and hence may not apply at all to people over 75 for good physiological reasons. The inclusion in systematic reviews of irrelevant studies is guaranteed to lead to absurdities and reduce the credibility of secondary research. Meta-analysis for the non-statistician If I had to pick one term that exemplifies the fear and loathing felt by so many students, clinicians and consumers towards EBM, that word would be ‘meta-analysis’. The meta-analysis, defined as a statistical synthesis of the numerical results of several trials that all addressed the same question, is the statisticians' chance to pull a double whammy on you. First, they frighten you with all the statistical tests in the individual papers, and then they use a whole new battery of tests to produce a new set of odds ratios, confidence intervals and values for significance.

As I confessed in Chapter 5, I too tend to go into panic mode at the sight of ratios, square root signs and half-forgotten Greek letters. But before you consign meta-analysis to the set of specialised techniques that you will never understand, remember two things. First, the meta-analyst may wear an anorak but he or she is on your side. A good meta-analysis is often easier for the non-statistician to understand than the stack of primary research papers from which it was derived, for reasons I am about to explain. Second, the underlying statistical principles used for meta-analysis are the same as the ones for any other data analysis—it's just that some of the numbers are bigger.


pages: 741 words: 199,502

Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class by Charles Murray

23andMe, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Asperger Syndrome, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, behavioural economics, bioinformatics, Cass Sunstein, correlation coefficient, CRISPR, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark triade / dark tetrad, domesticated silver fox, double helix, Drosophila, emotional labour, epigenetics, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, feminist movement, glass ceiling, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, Kenneth Arrow, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, meritocracy, meta-analysis, nudge theory, out of africa, p-value, phenotype, public intellectual, publication bias, quantitative hedge fund, randomized controlled trial, Recombinant DNA, replication crisis, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, school vouchers, Scientific racism, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social intelligence, Social Justice Warrior, statistical model, Steven Pinker, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, twin studies, universal basic income, working-age population

The exhaustive analysis of this question, presented alongside a comprehensive review of prior studies, was published in 2009 in the Psychological Bulletin by a team of psychologists at the University of Minnesota (first author was Paul Sackett). The authors presented results for a meta-analysis of College Board data, a meta-analysis of other studies using a composite measure of parental SES, and a reanalysis of major longitudinal datasets. A table summarizing the results is given in the note.[36] Boiling it down: After controlling for the admissions test score, the correlation of parental SES and college grades dropped from +.22 to –.01 in the SAT meta-analysis, from .09 to .00 in the meta-analysis of studies with composite SES measures, and from a mean of .06 to .01 among the longitudinal studies.

In “Gender Effects in Decoding Nonverbal Cues,” published in Psychological Bulletin in 1978, Hall reported mean effect sizes favoring females of +0.32 for visual cues, +0.18 for auditory cues, and a large effect of +1.02 for the seven studies that combined visual and auditory cues.47 Six years later, Hall extended her meta-analysis to include nine countries around the world. Subsequent work has yielded similar results.48 In 2014, psychologists Ashley Thompson and Daniel Voyer undertook a new meta-analysis. Hall’s reviews had included studies of accuracy in interpersonal perception of any kind. Thompson and Voyer focused on the ability to detect specific discrete emotions. As in other studies, the results showed a female advantage, but with a smaller effect size that had a lower bound effect size of +0.19 and an upper bound of +0.27.49 The Thompson meta-analysis also corroborated Hall’s findings that effect sizes are substantially increased when the subjects in the studies have access to a combination of visual and audio information—that is, when they could see both face and body language and also hear tone of voice.

SEX DIFFERENCES (D) IN VOCATIONAL INTERESTS AND OCCUPATIONS ACROSS DIFFERENT MEASURES AND SAMPLES RIASEC dimension: Realistic Meta-analysis of 503,188 scores on interest inventories: –0.84 Adult scores of SMPY cohorts 1, 2, 3, and 4: –0.92 Ratings of occupations held by Americans ages 25–54: –0.77 RIASEC dimension: Investigative Meta-analysis of 503,188 scores on interest inventories: –0.26 Adult scores of SMPY cohorts 1, 2, 3, and 4: –0.28 Ratings of occupations held by Americans ages 25–54: –0.08 RIASEC dimension: Conventional Meta-analysis of 503,188 scores on interest inventories: +0.33 Adult scores of SMPY cohorts 1, 2, 3, and 4: –0.47 Ratings of occupations held by Americans ages 25–54: +0.27 RIASEC dimension: Enterprising Meta-analysis of 503,188 scores on interest inventories: –0.04 Adult scores of SMPY cohorts 1, 2, 3, and 4: –0.50 Ratings of occupations held by Americans ages 25–54: +0.09 RIASEC dimension: Artistic Meta-analysis of 503,188 scores on interest inventories: +0.35 Adult scores of SMPY cohorts 1, 2, 3, and 4: +1.06 Ratings of occupations held by Americans ages 25–54: +0.22 RIASEC dimension: Social Meta-analysis of 503,188 scores on interest inventories: +0.68 Adult scores of SMPY cohorts 1, 2, 3, and 4: +0.88 Ratings of occupations held by Americans ages 25–54: +0.84 Source: Su, Rounds, and Armstrong (2009); Author’s analysis, combined ACS, 2011–15; Lubinski and Benbow (2006): Table 5.


pages: 357 words: 110,072

Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine by Edzard Ernst, Simon Singh

animal electricity, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Berlin Wall, correlation does not imply causation, disinformation, false memory syndrome, Florence Nightingale: pie chart, germ theory of disease, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, microdosing, placebo effect, profit motive, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Simon Singh, sugar pill, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method

The uncertainty associated with Shang’s estimate on the efficacy of homeopathy was such that his conclusion was wholly compatible with the judgement that homeopathy acted as nothing more than a placebo. In fact, the most sensible interpretation of the meta-analysis was that homeopathy was indeed nothing more than a placebo. This interpretation becomes more convincing if we bear in mind another aspect of his research. While conducting his meta-analysis on homeopathy, he also conducted a meta-analysis for a whole variety of new, conventional pharmaceuticals. These pharmaceuticals had been tested on the same illnesses that had been considered for the homeopathy meta-analysis. In this secondary meta-analysis, Shang scrupulously applied exactly the same selection criteria to these conventional drug trials as he had done in his homeopathy meta-analysis.

He and his colleagues decided to examine the considerable body of research into homeopathy in order to develop an over-arching conclusion that took into consideration each and every trial. This is known as a meta-analysis, which means an analysis of various analyses. In other words, each individual trial into homeopathy concluded with an analysis of its own data, and Linde was proposing to pool all these separate analyses in order to generate a new, more reliable, overall result. Meta-analysis can be considered as a particular type of systematic review, a concept that was introduced in the previous chapter. Like a systematic review, a meta-analysis attempts to draw an overall conclusion from several separate trials, except that a meta-analysis tends to involve a more mathematical approach.

Indeed, the majority of experiments (three out of five) imply a higher than expected hit rate, so one way to interpret these sets of data would be to conclude that, in general, the experiments support astrology. However, a meta-analysis would come to a different conclusion. The meta-analysis would start by pointing out that the number of attempts made by the astrologer in any one of the experiments was relatively small, and therefore the result of any single experiment could be explained by mere chance. In other words, the result of any one of these experiments is effectively meaningless. Next, the researcher doing the meta-analysis would combine all the data from the individual experiments as though they were part of one giant experiment.


Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie

Albert Einstein, anesthesia awareness, autism spectrum disorder, Bayesian statistics, Black Lives Matter, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citation needed, Climatic Research Unit, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, Helicobacter pylori, Higgs boson, hype cycle, Kenneth Rogoff, l'esprit de l'escalier, Large Hadron Collider, meta-analysis, microbiome, Milgram experiment, mouse model, New Journalism, ocean acidification, p-value, phenotype, placebo effect, profit motive, publication bias, publish or perish, quantum entanglement, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, replication crisis, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, Thomas Bayes, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, University of East Anglia, Wayback Machine

The impact a vaccine has on reducing mortality from a disease was the subject of the first ever medical meta-analysis, carried out by the statistician Karl Pearson in 1904 (the disease being typhoid) – though the technique hadn’t yet been named ‘meta-analysis’. Karl Pearson, ‘Report on Certain Enteric Fever Inoculation Statistics’, BMJ 2, no. 2288 (5 Nov. 1904): pp. 1243–46; https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.2.2288.1243. A useful history and summary of meta-analysis is provided in: Jessica Gurevitch et al., ‘Meta-Analysis and the Science of Research Synthesis’, Nature 555, no. 7695 (Mar. 2018): pp. 175–82; https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25753.

Boldt’s faked results made it look as if hydroxyethyl starch was safe for this purpose, a verdict bolstered by the fact that a ‘meta-analysis’ – a review study that pools together all the previous papers on the subject – reached the same conclusion. This was only true, however, because Boldt’s fraud hadn’t yet been revealed; the meta-analysis included his fake results as part of its review. When Boldt’s deception became known, and his papers were excluded from the meta-analysis, the results changed dramatically: patients who’d been given hydroxyethyl starch were, in fact, more likely to die.121 Boldt’s fraud had distorted the entire field of research, endangering patients whose surgeons, perfectly understandably, took the results at face value.122 Among the very worst scientific fraud cases was one that not only misled scientists and doctors, but also had an enormous impact on the public perception of a vitally important medical treatment.

Funnel plots from an imaginary meta-analysis, in two different scenarios. In scenario A, the distribution of the thirty studies is about what you’d expect if every study ever done on the topic had been published. In scenario B, the six studies from the bottom-left section (studies with small samples and small effects) are missing – a pattern that might signal publication bias. The vertical line in the middle of each graph is the overall effect size calculated by each meta-analysis. In the case of scenario B, it’s been shifted to the right, meaning that the meta-analysis is coming up with a bigger effect than it should.


pages: 382 words: 115,172

The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat by Tim Spector

biofilm, British Empire, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, Colonization of Mars, cuban missile crisis, David Strachan, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, Great Leap Forward, hygiene hypothesis, Kickstarter, life extension, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microbiome, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, satellite internet, Steve Jobs, twin studies

., BMJ (2014); 349 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g4745. Mass treatment with statins. 7 Harborne, Z., Open Heart (2015); 2: doi:10.1136/openhrt-2014-000196. Evidence from randomised controlled trials did not support the introduction of dietary fat guidelines in 1977 and 1983: a systematic review and meta-analysis. 8 Siri-Tarino, P.W., Am J Clin Nutr (2010); 91: 535–46. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. 9 Hjerpsted, J., Am J Clin Nutr (2011); 94: 1479–84. Cheese intake in large amounts lowers LDL-cholesterol concentrations compared with butter intake of equal fat content. 10 Rice, B.H., Curr Nutr Rep (15 Mar 2014); 3: 130–38.

Dietary sugars and body weight: systematic review and meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials and cohort studies. 31 Sievenpiper, J.L., Ann Intern Med (21 Feb 2012); 156: 291–304. Effect of fructose on body weight in controlled feeding trials: a systematic review and meta-analysis. 32 Kelishadi, R., Nutrition (May 2014); 30: 503–10. Association of fructose consumption and components of metabolic syndrome in human studies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. 11 Carbohydrates: Non-sugars 1 Claesson, M.J., Nature (9 Aug 2012); 488(7410): 178–84. Gut microbiota composition correlates with diet and health in the elderly. 2 van Tongeren, S., Appl. Environ.

., Am J Gastroenterol (Oct 2014); 109(10): 1650–2. Editorial: constipation and colorectal cancer risk: a continuing conundrum. 2 Threapleton, D.E., BMJ (19 Dec 2013); 347: f6879. Dietary fibre intake and risk of cardiovascular disease: systematic review and meta-analysis. 3 Kim, Y., Am J Epidemiol (15 Sep 2014);180(6): 565–73. Dietary fiber intake and total mortality: a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. 4 Thies, F., Br J Nutr (Oct 2014); 112 Suppl 2: S19–30. Oats and CVD risk markers: a systematic literature review. 5 Musilova, S., Benef Microbes (Sep 2014); 5(3): 273–83. Beneficial effects of human milk oligosaccharides on gut microbiota. 6 Ukhanova, M., Br J Nutr (28 Jun 2014); 111(12): 2146–52.


Hormone Repair Manual by Lara Briden

Columbine, crowdsourcing, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, Multics, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell, traumatic brain injury, ultra-processed food

.: H Cramer, W Peng & R Lauche, ‘Yoga for menopausal symptoms: a systematic review and meta-analysis’, Maturitas, 109, March 2018, pp13–25. 165: A 2010 meta-analysis concluded . . .: T Shams, MS Setia, R Hemmings et al, ‘Efficacy of black cohosh-containing preparations on menopausal symptoms: a meta-analysis’, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 16(1), January–February 2010, pp36–44. 165: There were early reports of liver toxicity . . .: B Naser, J Schnitker, MJ Minkin et al, ‘Suspected black cohosh hepatotoxicity: no evidence by meta-analysis of randomized controlled clinical trials for isopropanolic black cohosh extract’, Menopause, 18(4), April 2011, pp366–75. 168: The other mechanism by which progesterone improves sleep . . .: P Schüssler, M Kluge, A Yassouridis et al, ‘Progesterone reduces wakefulness in sleep EEG and has no effect on cognition in healthy postmenopausal women’, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 33(8), September 2008, pp1124–31; A Caufriez, R Leproult, M L’Hermite-Balériaux et al 2011, op. cit. 168: Medicinal cannabis contains cannabidiol . . .: S Shannon, N Lewis, H Lee & S Hughes, ‘Cannabidiol in anxiety and sleep: a large case series’, Permanente Journal, 23, 2019, article 18-041. 170: In a small clinical trial, older adults who took magnesium . . .: B Abbasi, M Kimiagar, K Sadeghniiat et al, ‘The effect of magnesium supplementation on primary insomnia in elderly: a double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial’, Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 17(12), December 2012, pp1161–9. 171: As a supplement, it can shorten . . .: W Yamadera, K Inagawa, S Chiba et al, ‘Glycine ingestion improves subjective sleep quality in human volunteers, correlating with polysomnographic changes’, Sleep and Biological Rhythms, 5, July 2016, pp126–31. 171: Glycine promotes sleep by . . .: N Kawai, N Sakai, M Okuro et al, ‘The sleep-promoting and hypothermic effects of glycine are mediated by NMDA receptors in the suprachiasmatic nucleus’, Neuropsychopharmacology, 40(6), May 2015, pp1405–16. 172: According to University of North California neurologist Dr Heidi Roth . . .

.: J Sarris, GI Papakostas, O Vitolo et al, ‘S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe) versus escitalopram and placebo in major depression RCT: efficacy and effects of histamine and carnitine as moderators of response’, Journal of Affective Disorders, 164, August 2014, pp76–81. 192: A recent meta-analysis concluded that . . .: YR Liu, YL Jiang, RQ Huang et al, ‘Hypericum perforatum L. preparations for menopause: a meta-analysis of efficacy and safety’, Climacteric, 17(4) August 2014, pp325–35. 193: Supplementation with EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) . . .: Y Liao, B Xie, H Zhang et al, ‘Efficacy of omega-3 PUFAs in depression: a meta-analysis’, Translational Psychiatry, 9(1), August 2019, article 190. 195: In fact, there’s growing evidence that abdominal weight gain . . .: H Kolb, M Stumvoll, W Kramer et al, ‘Insulin translates unfavourable lifestyle into obesity’, BMC Medicine, 16(1), December 2018, article 232. 196: Estrogen plus progesterone therapy can also help to . . .: I Bitoska, B Krstevska, T Milenkovic et al, ‘Effects of hormone replacement therapy on insulin resistance in postmenopausal diabetic women’, Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 4(1), March 2016, pp83–8. 197: When you restrict food, even for a relatively short time . . .: R de Cabo & MP Mattson, ‘Effects of intermittent fasting on health, aging, and disease’, New England Journal of Medicine, 381(26), December 2019, pp2541–51. 200: At a high dose, fructose promotes insulin resistance by . . .: C Jang, S Hui, W Lu et al, ‘The small intestine converts dietary fructose into glucose and organic acids’, Cell Metabolism, 27(2), February 2018, pp351–61, article e3. 200: According to Princeton researcher Joshua D.

Fish oil According to an authoritative new meta-analysis study, supplementation with EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) omega-3 is effective for reducing the risk of coronary heart disease. ‘Whatever patients are getting through the diet,’ said one of the lead authors, ‘they likely need more.’ How it works: Omega-3 helps to lower inflammation, blood pressure and triglcyerides. What else you need to know: I recommend a fish oil supplement that provides at least 720 mg of EPA, which usually equates to 2000 mg of total fish oil. Some of the studies in the meta-analysis used up to 5500 mg of fish oil.


The End of Pain: How Nutrition and Diet Can Fight Chronic Inflammatory Disease by Jacqueline Lagace

caloric restriction, caloric restriction, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, stem cell

Earlier studies had shown that chondroitin sulfate could be absorbed orally and then identified in synovial fluid and cartilage.60 Studies on the efficacy of chondroitin sulfate in relieving arthrosis symptoms have provided contradictory results. Among others, one meta-analysis based on five meta-analyses with controls indicates that chondroitin sulfate shows a weak-to-moderate efficiency in the symptomatic treatment of arthrosis and that it has an excellent safety profile and is therefore not harmful to health.61 Another meta-analysis was based on six studies involving 1,502 patients; two of these studies aimed at determining the effects of glucosamine sulfate, and the other four, the effects of chondroitin sulfate. This meta-analysis concluded that glucosamine sulfate was not more efficient than the control after the first year of treatment; meanwhile, after three years of treatment, it provided a weak or moderate protective effect for the knees (an analogous result was obtained after two years of treatment with chondroitin sulfate).62 It was suggested that chondroitin sulfate preparations from various M a i n t a i n i n g a P r o p e r P h y s i o l o g i c a l B a l a n c e < 1 2 9 producers and animal sources (that is, pigs and cows) could differ greatly and presented different modes of action.

A systematic review by A. Hróbjartsson and P. Gøtzsche of thirty-two clinical trials in a study including 3,795 patients, during which patients were randomly given either a placebo or no treatment, did not show any significant clinical effects of the placebo. In the second part of this review, a meta-analysis was also carried out involving eighty-two clinical trials and continuous followup of 4,730 patients. Placebos had some benefits, but these benefits diminished when the number of patients involved was much higher.2 The difference between placebo and no treatment at all was very significant when the issue being measured was subjective in nature (for example, self-reported pain, which is difficult to quantify) and was insignificant when the issue was objective (for example, the quantitative analysis of the presence of a certain substance in the blood).

In an analysis by Vase, Riley and Price of thirty-seven studies (a group of twenty-three studies using only placebo as a control condition, and another fourteen studies investigating placebo analgesic mechanisms), it was found that placebos had minimal benefits, corresponding to a reduction in pain intensity of 6.5 millimeters on 2 8 > t h e e n d o f pa i n a scale of 100 millimeters. (That is, researchers show patients a scale in millimeters calibrated from 0 mm to 100 mm and ask the patients to rate the intensity of their pain on this scale.) The authors concluded that there was little evidence that, in general, placebos have a significant clinical effect.3 In another meta-analysis based on fifty-two new studies on the placebo effect, Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche4 once again concluded that they did not find any evidence of a significant, generalized clinical effect due to placebos. They did, however, agree that there could be a very small effect on certain patients, especially as far as pain is concerned.


pages: 687 words: 165,457

Exercised: The Science of Physical Activity, Rest and Health by Daniel Lieberman

A. Roger Ekirch, active measures, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, clean water, clockwatching, Coronary heart disease and physical activity of work, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, death from overwork, Donald Trump, epigenetics, Exxon Valdez, George Santayana, hygiene hypothesis, impulse control, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, phenotype, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social distancing, Steven Pinker, twin studies, two and twenty, working poor

., et al. (2019), Aerobic exercise for adult patients with major depressive disorder in mental health services: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Depression and Anxiety 36:39–53; Stubbs, B., et al. (2017), An examination of the anxiolytic effects of exercise for people with anxiety and stress-related disorders: A meta-analysis, Psychiatry Research 249:102–8; Schuch, F. B., et al. (2016), Exercise as a treatment for depression: A meta-analysis adjusting for publication bias, Journal of Psychiatric Research 77:42–51; Josefsson, T., Lindwall, M., and Archer, T. (2014), Physical exercise intervention in depressive disorders: Meta-analysis and systematic review, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 24:259–72; Wegner, M., et al. (2014), Effects of exercise on anxiety and depression disorders: Review of meta-analyses and neurobiological mechanisms, CNS and Neurological Disorders—Drug Targets 13:1002–14; Asmundson, G.

., et al. (2011), Overuse injuries in high school runners: Lifetime prevalence and prevention strategies, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 3:125–31; Videbæk, S., et al. (2015), Incidence of running-related injuries per 1000 h of running in different types of runners: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Sports Medicine 45:1017–26. 41 Kluitenberg, B., et al. (2015), What are the differences in injury proportions between different populations of runners? A systematic review and meta-analysis, Sports Medicine 45:1143–61. 42 Daoud, A. I., et al. (2012), Foot strike and injury rates in endurance runners: A retrospective study, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 44:1325–34. 43 Buist, I., et al. (2010), Predictors of running-related injuries in novice runners enrolled in a systematic training program: A prospective cohort study, American Journal of Sports Medicine 38:273–80. 44 Alentorn-Geli, E., et al. (2017), The association of recreational and competitive running with hip and knee osteoarthritis: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy 47:373–90; Miller, R.

., et al. (2018), Increased insulin-stimulated glucose uptake in both leg and arm muscles after sprint interval and moderate intensity training in subjects with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports 28:77–87. 26 Strasser, B., Siebert, U., and Schobersberger, W. (2010), Resistance training in the treatment of the metabolic syndrome: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of resistance training on metabolic clustering in patients with abnormal glucose metabolism, Sports Medicine 40:397–415; Yang, Z., et al. (2014), Resistance exercise versus aerobic exercise for type 2 diabetes: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Sports Medicine 44:487–99. 27 Church, T. S., et al. (2010), Effects of aerobic and resistance training on hemoglobin A1c levels in patients with type 2 diabetes: A randomized controlled trial, Journal of the American Medical Association 304:2253–62. 28 Smith, G.


pages: 322 words: 107,576

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

Asperger Syndrome, classic study, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, disinformation, Edward Jenner, experimental subject, food desert, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, nocebo, offshore financial centre, p-value, placebo effect, public intellectual, publication bias, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sugar pill, systematic bias, the scientific method, urban planning

They died, even when there was enough information available to know what would save them, because that information had not been synthesised together, and analysed systematically, in a meta-analysis. Back to homeopathy (you can see why I find it trivial now). A landmark meta-analysis was published recently in the Lancet. It was accompanied by an editorial titled: ‘The End of Homeopathy?’ Shang et al. did a very thorough meta-analysis of a vast number of homeopathy trials, and they found, overall, adding them all up, that homeopathy performs no better than placebo. The homeopaths were up in arms. If you mention this meta-analysis, they will try to tell you that it was a stitch-up. What Shang et al. did, essentially, like all the previous negative meta-analyses of homeopathy, was to exclude the poorer-quality trials from their analysis.

In 1989 he published a famous meta-analysis of trials in a dermatology journal which found that his lead product, evening primrose oil, was effective in eczema. This meta-analysis excluded the one available large published trial (which was negative), but included the two oldest studies, and seven small positive studies sponsored by his own company (these were still unavailable at the last review I could find, in 2003). In 1990 two academics had their review of the data binned by the journal after Horrobin’s lawyers got involved. In 1995 the Department of Health commissioned a meta-analysis from a renowned epidemiologist.

But this is a curiosity and an aside. In the bigger picture it doesn’t matter, because overall, even including these suspicious studies, the ‘meta-analyses’ still show, overall, that homeopathy is no better than placebo. Meta-analyses? Meta-analysis This will be our last big idea for a while, and this is one that has saved the lives of more people than you will ever meet. A meta-analysis is a very simple thing to do, in some respects: you just collect all the results from all the trials on a given subject, bung them into one big spreadsheet, and do the maths on that, instead of relying on your own gestalt intuition about all the results from each of your little trials.


pages: 402 words: 107,908

Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health--And Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More by Christopher M. Palmer Md

Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Drosophila, epigenetics, impulse control, it's over 9,000, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, neurotypical, personalized medicine, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell, traumatic brain injury

“Association of Delirium with Long-Term Cognitive Decline: A Meta-analysis.” JAMA Neurol. Published online July 13, 2020. doi: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.2273. 37G. Naeije, I. Bachir, N. Gaspard, B. Legros, and T. Pepersack. “Epileptic Activities and Older People Delirium.” Geriatr Gerontol Int 14(2) (2014): 447–451. doi: 10.1111/ggi.12128. 38Jorge I. F. Salluh, Han Wang, Eric B. Schneider, Neeraja Nagaraja, Gayane Yenokyan, Abdulla Damluji, Rodrigo B. Serafim, and Robert D. Stevens. “Outcome of Delirium in Critically Ill Patients: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” BMJ 350 (2015). doi: 10.1136/bmj.h2538. 39Sharon K.

Twenty years later, 62 percent of those with schizophrenia and 50 percent of those with bipolar disorder were obese.5 The obesity rate at the time for all adults in New York State, where the study was conducted, was 27 percent. Children with autism are 40 percent more likely to be obese.6 One meta-analysis of 120 studies found that people with serious mental illness were three times more likely to be obese than people without a mental illness.7 Many people assume that our treatments are causing this obesity. While there’s no doubt that psychiatric medications are associated with weight gain—in fact it’s a common side effect of antidepressants and antipsychotics—treatments alone don’t provide the entire explanation.

These ongoing studies have looked at stressors early in life, such as physical and sexual abuse, neglect, household substance abuse, household mental illness, exposure to domestic violence, and parental divorce, and then determined if these early experiences were associated with later health outcomes. A 2017 meta-analysis of thirty-seven such studies looking at twenty-three health outcomes in more than 250,000 people found that they are.2 The more ACEs a child has, the more likely he or she will have poor health outcomes. ACEs increase the probability for physical inactivity, obesity, and diabetes by 25 to 52 percent.


How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

airport security, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, autism spectrum disorder, Drosophila, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, framing effect, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, Isaac Newton, language acquisition, longitudinal study, luminiferous ether, meta-analysis, nocebo, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Shai Danziger, Skype, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, systems thinking, TED Talk, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions

In other words, when studies distinguished anger from sadness from fear, they did not always replicate one another, implying that the instances of anger, sadness, and fear cultivated in one study were different from those cultivated in another.25 When faced with a large collection of diverse experiments like this, it’s hard to extract a consistent story. Fortunately, scientists have a technique to analyze all the data together and reach a unified conclusion. It’s called a “meta-analysis.” Scientists comb through large numbers of experiments conducted by different researchers, combining their results statistically. As a simple example, suppose you wanted to check if increased heart rate is part of the bodily fingerprint of happiness. Rather than run your own experiment, you could do a meta-analysis of other experiments that measured heart rate during happiness, even incidentally (e.g., the study could be about the relationship between sex and heart attacks and have nothing centrally to do with emotion).

When we peer into the brains of people who are experiencing emotion, or perceiving emotion in blinks, furrowed brows, muscle twitches, and the lilting voices of others, we see pretty clearly that key parts of these networks are hard at work. For starters, you might remember my lab’s meta-analysis that examined every published neuroimaging study of emotion, which we saw in chapter 1. We divided the entire brain into tiny cubes called “voxels” (akin to “pixels” of the brain), and then identified voxels that consistently showed a significant increase in activity for any of the emotion categories we studied. We could not localize a single emotion category to any brain region. This same meta-analysis also provided evidence for the theory of constructed emotion. We identified groups of voxels that activated together with high probability, like a network would.

These groups of voxels consistently fell within the interoceptive and control networks.11 When you consider that our meta-analysis, at the time it was conducted, covered over 150 diverse, independent studies by hundreds of scientists, in which subjects viewed faces, smelled scents, listened to music, watched movies, remembered past events, and performed many other emotion-evoking tasks, the emergence of these networks is particularly compelling. These findings are even more remarkable to me because the studies covered by the meta-analysis weren’t designed to test the theory of constructed emotion. Most were inspired by classical view theories and designed to localize each emotion to a different region of the brain.


Psychopathy: An Introduction to Biological Findings and Their Implications by Andrea L. Glenn, Adrian Raine

dark triade / dark tetrad, epigenetics, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), statistical model, theory of mind, trolley problem, twin studies

In response to the onset of a stimulus, the heart normally slows down for a brief period. This slowing is followed by a speeding of heart rate, termed an acceleratory response. Such responses are particularly common to aversive stimuli. Heart rate acceleration is thought to be a marker of affective arousal. In a meta-analysis of 17 studies, Lorber (2004) found no evidence of a relationship between psychopathy and resting heart rate or heart rate reactivity in adults, although lower resting heart rate was related to aggression more generally. However, in a later study of psychopathy, Serafim et al. (2009) found that, unlike controls and nonpsychopathic murderers, psychopathic murderers failed to show an increase in heart rate when viewing unpleasant, pleasant, or neutral pictures.

Variables such as age, sex, race, and stage of menstrual cycle, as well as environmental factors including temperature, humidity, time of day, day of week, and season, are found to affect skin conductance (Boucsein 1992) and therefore need to be considered as potential covariates in skin conductance data analyses. Skin conductance recordings have excellent temporal resolution. Resting The most basic skin conductance measure is resting levels of electrodermal activity. In a meta-analysis of studies, Lorber (2004) found that psychopathy was significantly associated with lower resting electrodermal activity across 18 studies, although the effect was small. Psychopathic adults have also been found to demonstrate fewer skin conductance fluctuations (Raine, Venables, and Williams 1996), or spontaneous changes in skin conductance, which are also thought to reflect arousal.

Psychopathic 70 << Psychophysiology individuals have been found to demonstrate reduced skin conductance responses to facial expressions of sadness and fear (Blair 1999, Blair et al. 1997), imagined threat scenes (Patrick, Cuthbert, and Lang 1994), anticipated threat (Hare 1965, 1982, Hare, Frazelle, and Cox 1978, Ogloff and Wong 1990), and emotionally evocative sounds (Verona et al. 2004). Overall, in a meta-analysis of 28 studies, Lorber (2004) found psychopathy to be associated with reduced skin conductance activity during tasks. Age was a significant moderator, with studies of adults yielding larger effects than studies of children and adolescents. The effect for negative stimuli was also larger than the effect for nonnegative stimuli.


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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

., “Leucocyte Telomere Length and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: New Prospective Cohort Study and Literature-Based Meta-analysis,” PLOS ONE 9, no. 11 (2014): e112483, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112483; D’Mello, M. J., et al., “Association Between Shortened Leukocyte Telomere Length and Cardiometabolic Outcomes: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics 8, no. 1 (February 2015): 82–90, doi:10.1161/CIRCGENET ICS.113.000485; Haycock, P. C., et al., “Leucocyte Telomere Length and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” BMJ 349 (2014): g4227, doi:10.1136/bmj.g4227; Zhang, C., et al., “The Association Between Telomere Length and Cancer Prognosis: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis,” PLOS ONE 10, no. 7 (2015): e0133174, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0133174; and Adnot, S., et al., “Telomere Dysfunction and Cell Senescence in Chronic Lung Diseases: Therapeutic Potential,” Pharmacology & Therapeutics 153 (September 2015): 125–34, doi:10.1016/j.pharmthera.2015.06.007. 6.

., “Investigating the Effect of Transcendental Meditation on Blood Pressure: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Journal of Human Hypertension 29, no. 11 (November 2015): 653–62. doi:10.1038/jhh.2015.6; and Cernes, R., and R. Zimlichman, “RESPeRATE: The Role of Paced Breathing in Hypertension Treatment,” Journal of the American Society of Hypertension 9, no. 1 (January 2015): 38–47, doi:10.1016/j.jash.2014.10.002. Master Tips for Renewal: Stress-Reducing Techniques Shown to Boost Telomere Maintenance 1. Morgan, N., M. R. Irwin, M. Chung, and C. Wang, “The Effects of Mind-Body Therapies on the Immune System: Meta-analysis,” PLOS ONE 9, no. 7 (2014): e100903, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100903. 2.

Brooks, “Yoga in the Management of Chronic Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Medical Care 53, no. 7 (July 2015): 653–61, doi:10.1097/MLR.0000000000000372. 10. Hartley, L., et al., “Yoga for the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease,” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 5 (May 13, 2014): CD010072, doi:10.1002/14651858.CD010072.pub2. 11. Lu, Y. H., B. Rosner, G. Chang, and L. M. Fishman, “Twelve-Minute Daily Yoga Regimen Reverses Osteoporotic Bone Loss,” Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation 32, no. 2 (April 2016): 81–87. 12. Liu, X., et al., “A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Effects of Qigong and Tai Chi for Depressive Symptoms,” Complementary Therapies in Medicine 23, no. 4 (August 2015): 516–34, doi:10.1016/j.ctim.2015.05.001. 13.


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The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 by Jonathon Sullivan, Andy Baker

An Inconvenient Truth, complexity theory, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental subject, Gary Taubes, indoor plumbing, junk bonds, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, moral panic, phenotype, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), the scientific method, Y Combinator

Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013; doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD004366.pub6 Cornelissen VA, Fagard RH, Coeckelberghs E, Vanhees L. Impact of resistance training on blood pressure and other cardiovascular risk factors: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Hypertension 2011;58:950-958. Cornellisen VA, Fagard RH. Effect of resistance training on resting blood pressure: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Hypertension 2005;23(2):251-259. Cotman CW, Berchtold NC, Christie LA. Exercise builds brain health: key roles of growth factor cascades and inflammation. Trends Neurosci 2007;30(9):464-472.

Insulin activates the PI3K-Akt survival pathway in vulnerable neurons following global brain ischemia. Neurol Res 2009;31(9):947-58. Sattar N, Preiss D, Murray HM, et al. Statins and risk of incident diabetes: a collaborative meta-analysis of randomized statin trials. Lancet 2010; 375(9716):735-742. Sattelmair J, Pertman J, Ding EL, et al. Dose-response between physical activity and risk of coronary heart disease: a meta-analysis. Circulation 2011;124:789-795. Savage P, Shaw AO, Miller MS, et al. Effect of resistance training on physical disability in chronic heart failure. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2011;43(8):1379-1386. Sawka MN, Burke LM, Eichner ER, et al.

Effect of vitamin supplementation on muscle strength: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Osteoporosis 2011;22:859-871. Storen O, Helgerud J, Stoa EM, Hoff J. Maximal strength training improves running economy in distance runners. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2008;40(6):1089-1094. Strasser B, Arvandi M, Siebert U. Resistance training, visceral obesity and inflammatory response: a review of the evidence. Obesity Rev 2012;13:578-591. Strasser B, Siebert U, Schobersberger W. Resistance training in the treatment of metabolic syndrome. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of resistance training on metabolic clustering in patients with abnormal glucose metabolism.


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Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine

"World Economic Forum" Davos, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, classic study, confounding variable, credit crunch, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Drosophila, epigenetics, experimental economics, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, helicopter parent, Jeremy Corbyn, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, phenotype, publication bias, risk tolerance, seminal paper

Kyklos, 61(3), 364–384. 51. Nelson (2014a), ibid. Quoted on p. 225. 52. Hönekopp, J., & Watson, S. (2010). Meta-analysis of digit ratio 2D:4D shows greater sex difference in the right hand. American Journal of Human Biology, 22, 619–630. 53. Voracek, M., Tran, U. S., & Dressler, S. G. (2010). Digit ratio (2D:4D) and sensation seeking: New data and meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(1), 72–77. Quoted on p. 76. 54. Herbert (2015), ibid. Quoted on p. 52. 55. Hönekopp, J., & Watson, S. (2011). Meta-analysis of the relationship between digit-ratio 2D:4D and aggression. Personality and Individual Differences, 51(4), 381–386.

A good starting point is a large meta-analysis that collated studies of female/male differences in risk taking across a variety of domains (like hypothetical choices, drinking, drugs, sexual activity, and driving), and across five different age groups from middle childhood to adulthood.22 This analysis did indeed lead to the conclusion that males are more risk taking than females, on average. But about half of the differences were very modest, and in 20 percent of cases they were even in the “wrong” direction (that is, there was greater female risk taking). The meta-analysis also revealed changeable patterns of difference depending on the age group and the kind of risk.

M. (2005). An integrated review of indirect, relational, and social aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Review 9(3), 212–230. Quoted on p. 212. 83. See, for example, the meta-analysis by Archer, J. (2004). Sex differences in aggression in real-world settings: A meta-analytic review. Review of General Psychology, 8(4), 291–322. 84. Su, R., Rounds, J., & Armstrong, P. I. (2009). Men and things, women and people: A meta-analysis of sex differences in interests. Psychological Bulletin, 135(6), 859–884. 85. Lippa, R. A., Preston, K., & Penner, J. (2014). Women’s representation in 60 occupations from 1972 to 2010: More women in high-status jobs, few women in things-oriented jobs.


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The Estrogen Fix: The Breakthrough Guide to Being Healthy, Energized, and Hormonally Balanced by Mache Seibel

longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), traumatic brain injury, women in the workforce, working poor, Yogi Berra

., “Body Mass Index and the Risk for Developing Invasive Breast Cancer among High-Risk Women in NSABP P-1 and STAR Breast Cancer Prevention Trials,” Cancer Prevention Research 5, no. 4 (April 2012): 583–92. 38W. Somboonporn, S. Panna, T. Temtanakitpaisan, et al., “Effects of the Levonorgestrel-Releasing Intrauterine System Plus Estrogen Therapy in Perimenopausal and Postmenopausal Women: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Menopause 18, no. 10 (October 2011): 1060—66. 39M. M. Gaudet et al., “Active Smoking and Breast Cancer Risk: Original Cohort Data and Meta-Analysis,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 105, no. 8 (April 17, 2013): 515–25. 40C. M. Friedenreich et al., “Effects of a High vs Moderate Volume of Aerobic Exercise on Adiposity Outcomes in Postmenopausal Women: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” JAMA Oncology 1, no. 6 (September 2015): 766–76. 41“Exercise,” Breastcancer.org, last modified January 30, 2015, breastcancer.org/tips/exercise. 42“Breast Cancer Prevention and Early Detection,” American Cancer Society, last modified October 20, 2015, cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/moreinformation/breastcancerearlydetection/index.

Id=2019. 18S. Gandini et al., “Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies of Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels and Colorectal, Breast and Prostate Cancer and Colorectal Adenoma,” International Journal of Cancer 128, no. 6 (2011): 1414–24. 19“Vitamin D and Cancer Prevention,” National Cancer Institute, last modified October 21, 2013, cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/vitamin-d-fact-sheet. 20A. R. Martineau, D. A. Jolliffe, R. L. Hooper, et al., “Vitamin D supplementation to Prevent Acute Respiratory Tract Infections: Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis of Individual Participant Data,” BMJ 356 (February 15, 2017): i6583; M.

., “Increased Risk of Cognitive Impairment or Dementia in Women Who Underwent Oophorectomy before Menopause,” Neurology 69, no. 11 (September 11, 2007): 1074–83. 13P. P. Zandi et al., “Hormone Replacement Therapy and Incidence of Alzheimer Disease in Older Women,” JAMA 288, no. 17 (2002): 2123–29. 14W. Xu et al., “Meta-Analysis of Modifiable Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry (2015). 15M. A. Fischer et al., “Primary Medication Non-Adherence: Analysis of 195,930 Electronic Prescriptions,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 25 (2010): 284–90. 16V. A. Ravnikar, “Compliance with Hormone Therapy,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 156, no. 5 (May 1987): 1332–34. 17“Female Sexual Dysfunction,” WebMD, accessed September 24, 2015, webmd.com/women/guide/sexual-dysfunction-women. 18E.


Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Advanced Guide to Building Muscle, Staying Lean, and Getting Strong by Michael Matthews

agricultural Revolution, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, fear of failure, G4S, Gary Taubes, meta-analysis, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial

“Increased consumption of fruit and vegetables is related to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease: meta-analysis of cohort studies.” Journal of human hypertension21, no. 9 (2007): 717-728. 234. He, Feng J., Caryl A. Nowson, and Graham A. MacGregor. “Fruit and vegetable consumption and stroke: meta-analysis of cohort studies.” The Lancet 367, no. 9507 (2006): 320-326. 235. Hamer, Mark, and Yoichi Chida. “Intake of fruit, vegetables, and antioxidants and risk of type 2 diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis.” Journal of hypertension 25, no. 12 (2007): 2361-2369. 236. Ramel, Alfons, J. Alfredo Martinez, Mairead Kiely, Narcisa M.

“Whole-grain intake and cancer: An expanded review and meta-analysis.”Nutrition and cancer 30, no. 2 (1998): 85-96. 257. http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/The_nutrients_that_are_lost_when_grain_is_refined.htm 258. Masters, Rachel C., Angela D. Liese, Steven M. Haffner, Lynne E. Wagenknecht, and Anthony J. Hanley. “Whole and refined grain intakes are related to inflammatory protein concentrations in human plasma.” The Journal of nutrition 140, no. 3 (2010): 587-594. 259. Bazzano, Lydia A., Angela M. Thompson, Michael T. Tees, Cuong H. Nguyen, and Donna M. Winham. “Non-soy legume consumption lowers cholesterol levels: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.”

“Insulin resistance accelerates muscle protein degradation: Activation of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway by defects in muscle cell signaling.” Endocrinology 147, no. 9 (2006): 4160-4168. 46. Wilson, Jacob M., Pedro J. Marin, Matthew R. Rhea, Stephanie MC Wilson, Jeremy P. Loenneke, and Jody C. Anderson. “Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises.” The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 26, no. 8 (2012): 2293-2307. 47. Marshall, Paul WM, Daniel A. Robbins, Anthony W. Wrightson, and Jason C. Siegler. “Acute neuromuscular and fatigue responses to the rest-pause method.” Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport 15, no. 2 (2012): 153-158. 48.


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Bad Pharma: How Medicine Is Broken, and How We Can Fix It by Ben Goldacre

behavioural economics, classic study, data acquisition, framing effect, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income per capita, meta-analysis, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Simon Singh, sugar pill, systematic bias, WikiLeaks

And you can see very clearly that overall, streptokinase saves lives. So what’s that on the right? It’s something called a cumulative meta-analysis. If you look at the list of studies on the left of the diagram, you can see that they are arranged in order of date. The cumulative meta-analysis on the right adds in each new trial’s results, as they arrived over history, to the previous trials’ results. This gives the best possible running estimate, each year, of how the evidence would have looked at that time, if anyone had bothered to do a meta-analysis on all the data available to them. From this cumulative blobbogram you can see that the horizontal lines, the ‘summary effects’, narrow over time as more and more data is collected, and the estimate of the overall benefit of this treatment becomes more accurate.

It would also allow cautious ‘subgroup analyses’, to see if a drug is particularly useful, or particularly useless, in particular types of patients. The biggest immediate benefit from data sharing is that combining individual patient data into a meta-analysis gives more accurate results than working with the crude summary results at the end of a paper. Let’s imagine that one paper reports survival at three years as the main outcome for a cancer drug, and another reports survival at seven years. To combine these two in a meta-analysis, you’d have a problem. But if you were doing the meta-analysis with access to individual patient data, with treatment details and death dates for all of them, you could do a clean combined calculation for three-year survival.

We will now see how deep this problem goes. Why we summarise data Missing data has been studied extensively in medicine. But before I lay out that evidence, we need to understand exactly why it matters, from a scientific perspective. And for that we need to understand systematic reviews and ‘meta-analysis’. Between them, these are two of the most powerful ideas in modern medicine. They are incredibly simple, but they were invented shockingly late. When we want to find out if something works or not, we do a trial. This is a very simple process, and the first recorded attempt at some kind of trial was in the Bible (Daniel 1:12, if you’re interested).


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

Chicago, IL:€University of Chicago Press. 20. Madigan, S., Bakers-Kranenburg, M., van Ijzendoorn,€M. et al. (2006). Unresolved states of mind, anomalous parent behaviour, and disorganized attachment:€A review and meta-analysis of a transmission gap. Attachment and Human Development, 8, 89–111. 21. van Ijzendoorn, M., Schuengel, C. and BakermansKranenburg, M. (1999). Disorganized attachment in early childhood:€Meta-analysis of precursors, concomitants, and sequelae. Development and Psychopathology, 11, 225–249. 22. Fish, E. W., Shahrock, D., Bagot, R. et al. (2004). Epigenetic programming of stress responses through variations in maternal care.

We also found that smaller left hippocampal volume was observed in women with depression and a history of childhood abuse, but not in depressed women without childhood abuse [64]. In a 2005 meta-analysis study [65], data were pooled from all the published studies on hippocampal volume. There were smaller hippocampal volumes for both the left and the right sides, equally in adult men and women with chronic PTSD, and no change in children. Another meta-analysis published the same year had similar findings [66]. One study showed that women with abuserelated PTSD had deficits in hippocampal activation while performing a verbal declarative memory task [63].

American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 2072–2080. 65. Kitayama, N., Vaccarino, V., Kutner, M., Weiss, P. and Bremner, J. D. (2005). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurement of hippocampal volume in posttraumatic stress disorder:€A meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 88, 79–86. 66. Smith, M. E. (2005). Bilateral hippocampal volume reduction in adults with post-traumatic stress disorder:€A meta-analysis of structural MRI studies. Hippocampus, 15(6), 798–807. 67. Vermetten, E., Vythilingam, M., Southwick, S. M., Charney, D. S. and Bremner, J. D. (2003). Long-term treatment with paroxetine increases verbal declarative memory and hippocampal volume in posttraumatic stress disorder.


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Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own by Garett Jones

behavioural economics, centre right, classic study, clean water, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, Flynn Effect, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, hive mind, invisible hand, Kenneth Arrow, law of one price, meta-analysis, prediction markets, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Saturday Night Live, social intelligence, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tyler Cowen, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game

The vast literature is too large to summarize here, but Hunt’s textbook (Human Intelligence) and Nisbett’s coauthored paper (Nisbett and others, “Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments”) both attempt to do so. The latter paper notes that a then-new meta-analysis reports “a conservative estimate that women’s math performance and Black students’ verbal performance are suppressed by about 0.2 [standard deviations]” although in some studies the effect is five times larger. Most would consider 0.2 standard deviations a small to moderate effect. A newer meta-analysis by Flore and Wicherts of studies of stereotype threat for females finds about the same effect size; see “Does Stereotype Threat Influence Performance of Girls in Stereotyped Domains?”

“Cooperation and Competition Between Twins: Findings from a Prisoner’s Dilemma Game.” Evolution and Human Behavior 20, no. 1 (1999): 29–51. Shamosh, Noah A., and Jeremy R. Gray. “Delay Discounting and Intelligence: A Meta-Analysis.” Intelligence 36, no. 4 (2008): 289–305. Sharma, Sudeep, William Bottom, and Hillary Anger Elfenbein. “On the Role of Personality, Cognitive Ability, and Emotional Intelligence in Predicting Negotiation Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis.” Organizational Psychology Review 3, no. 4 (2013): 293–336. Solon, Orville, Travis J. Riddell, Stella A. Quimbo, Elizabeth Butrick, Glen P. Aylward, Marife Lou Bacate, and John W.

There’s some evidence overall that higher-scoring individual players get a bigger slice of a fixed pie, but the more interesting and more robust evidence is that higher-scoring pairs bake a bigger pie in the first place. There have been enough of these studies—both the formal prisoner’s-dilemma-style games and the informal negotiation games—that one group of authors were able to perform a meta-analysis.17 They checked to see if, taken as whole, looking across many studies, IQ-type tests were good predictors of cooperative behavior. The answer: yes, higher standardized test scores tend to predict win-win behavior. Machiavelli and the Mind Such cooperative tendencies [among early humans] probably evolved in two main ways.


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Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery by Christie Aschwanden

An Inconvenient Truth, fake news, gamification, lifelogging, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, multilevel marketing, Nate Silver, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Silicon Valley, TED Talk, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

In August of 2018, Shona Halson left the Australian Institute of Sport to become an associate professor in the School of Behavioural and Health Sciences at Australian Catholic University. 16. J. Leeder, C. Gissane, K. van Someren, W. Gregson, and G. Howatson, “Cold Water Immersion and Recovery from Strenuous Exercise: A Meta-Analysis,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 46 (2012): 233–40, https://doi.10.1136/bjsports-2011-090061. 17. François Bieuzen, Chris M. Bleakley, and Joseph Thomas Costello, “Contrast Water Therapy and Exercise Induced Muscle Damage: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 4 (2013), https://doi.10.1371/journal.pone.0062356. 18. James R. Broatch, Aaron Petersen, and David J. Bishop, “Postexercise Cold Water Immersion Benefits Are Not Greater Than the Placebo Effect,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 46, no. 11 (2014): 2139–47, https://doi.10.1249/MSS.0000000000000348. 19.

Dorfman, and Deborah Riebe, “The Effects of Myofascial Release with Foam Rolling on Performance,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 20, no. 1 (2014), https://doi.10.1519/JSC.0b013e3182956569. 9. Jessica Hill, Glyn Howatson, Ken van Someren, Jonathan Leeder, and Charles Pedlar, “Compression Garments and Recovery from Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage: A Meta-Analysis,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 48, no. 18 (2014): 1340–46, https://doi.10.1136/bjsports-2013-092456. 10. Freddy Brown, Conor Gissane, and Glyn Howatson, “Compression Garments and Recovery from Exercise: A Meta-Analysis,” Sports Medicine 47, no. 11 (2017): 2245–67, https://doi.10.1007/s40279-017-0728-9. 11. Monèm Jemni, William A. Sands, Françoise Friemel, and Paul Delamarche, “Effect of Active and Passive Recovery on Blood Lactate and Performance during Simulated Competition in High Level Gymnasts,” Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology 28, no. 2 (2003): 240–56, https://doi.10.1139/h03-019; Egla-Irina D.

The Ultra Sports Science Foundation has published a set of guiding principles for hydration, directed at athletes who compete in long-distance events like ultramarathons or Ironman triathlons.33 Written by Martin Hoffman, an ultramarathoner and researcher at the University of California, Davis, the guidelines instruct athletes to drink to thirst and to expect some weight loss during exercise. “We did a meta-analysis of studies that have looked at drinking to thirst versus programmed drinking and the findings are that drinking to thirst does not impair performance relative to drinking more than that,” Hoffman told me. Losing some weight during a prolonged event like a 100-mile run or other ultra event is to be expected, he says.


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T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone That Dominates and Divides Us by Carole Hooven

British Empire, classic study, correlation does not imply causation, David Brooks, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, impulse control, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, moral panic, occupational segregation, phenotype, placebo effect, stem cell, Steven Pinker, zero-sum game

Handelsman and his collaborators surveyed the scientific literature and compiled a list of studies on testosterone levels in adults, all of which relied on mass spectrometry. This kind of study, a “meta-analysis,” is vital for understanding a body of scientific literature, and what science as a whole has to say about a particular question. Rather than providing one set of data from one study, which could be unreliable for a host of reasons, a meta-analysis consolidates, compares, and evaluates data from many different studies. Results that are consistent across studies provide strong evidence for support of a particular hypothesis.

Siebert, and Kim Wallen, “Sex Differences in Rhesus Monkey Toy Preferences Parallel Those of Children,” Hormones and Behavior 54, no. 3 (2008): 359–64; Beatrice Whiting and Carolyn Pope Edwards, “A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Sex Differences in the Behavior of Children Aged Three Through 11,” Journal of Social Psychology 91, no. 2 (1973): 171–88; and Jac T. M. Davis and Melissa Hines, “How Large Are Gender Differences in Toy Preferences? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Toy Preference Research,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 49, no. 2 (2020): 373–94. aggression, parenting, social hierarchies, and preferences: Rong Su, James Rounds, and Patrick Ian Armstrong, “Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests,” Psychological Bulletin 135, no. 6 (2009): 859–84. The “girls’ toys” included a cosmetics kit: Vickie L. Pasterski, Mitchell E. Geffner, Caroline Brain, Peter Hindmarsh, Charles Brook, and Melissa Hines, “Prenatal Hormones and Postnatal Socialization by Parents as Determinants of Male-Typical Toy Play in Girls with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia,” Child Development 76, no. 1 (2005): 264–78.

Unlike Jenny, Taman has testicles, testosterone, and working androgen receptors, but lacks the crucial enzyme, 5-alpha reductase, needed to convert testosterone into the more potent DHT (dihydrotestosterone). A substantial proportion of people with 5-ARD continue to live as women through and after puberty (and in some cases, their testicles never descend). And among elite athletes with DSDs who compete as women and have XY sex chromosomes and high testosterone, 5-ARD is common. Handelsman’s meta-analysis that confirmed the gender-binary in T levels was based on large numbers of typical and healthy adult males and females. But perhaps that binary would disappear when people with DSDs or common medical disorders were included in the analyses. To answer that question, another research team, led by Richard Clark, a member of the board of directors for the U.S.


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Sleepyhead: Narcolepsy, Neuroscience and the Search for a Good Night by Henry Nicholls

A. Roger Ekirch, confounding variable, Donald Trump, double helix, Drosophila, global pandemic, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mouse model, placebo effect, Saturday Night Live, stem cell, traumatic brain injury, web application, Yom Kippur War

Beall, ‘Confronting a Traumatic Event: Toward an Understanding of Inhibition and Disease’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95.3 (1986), 274–81 <https://doi.org/10.1037//0021-843X.95.3.274>. p. 219 physical and psychological health Pasquale G. Frisna, Joan C. Borod, and Stephen J. Lepore, ‘A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Written Emotional Disclosure on the Health Outcomes of Clinical Populations’, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 192.9 (2004), 629–34 <http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Fulltext/2004/09000/A_Meta_Analysis_of_the_Effects_of_Written.8.aspx> [accessed 28 January 2017]. p. 219 onset of slumber Allison G. Harvey and Clare Farrell, ‘The Efficacy of a Pennebaker-Like Writing Intervention for Poor Sleepers’, Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 1.2 (2003), 115–24 <https://doi.org/10.1207/S15402010BSM0102_4>.

Bootzin prescribed that insomniacs should only go to bed when they are sleepy and if sleep doesn’t come in 15 minutes or so, they should get up and leave the bedroom. ‘This is one of the most powerful techniques to combat insomnia,’ says O’Regan. The evidence that stimulus control works comes mainly from studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Combining almost 60 of these into a meta-analysis published in 1994, researchers found stimulus control is effective, reducing the time taken to fall asleep by tens of minutes and how long people subsequently lie awake. As the desperation intensifies, the insomniac will often begin to chase sleep, going to bed a little earlier and staying in bed a touch longer, hoping beyond hope that they will get some rest.

Pennebaker also found that although the act of writing about these painful experiences caused an immediate elevation in blood pressure and brought on negative moods, it was also associated with fewer visits to the doctor. Since then, Pennebaker’s idea has been put through and passed more rigorous testing, and a meta-analysis published in 2004 concluded that putting emotional concerns onto paper improved both physical and psychological health. With respect to sleep in particular, there’s evidence that it speeds up the onset of slumber. My favourite method for getting back to sleep though is the ‘THE’ method, also known as ‘articulatory suppression’.


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The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice by Fredrik Deboer

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, assortative mating, basic income, Bernie Sanders, collective bargaining, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, fiat currency, Flynn Effect, full employment, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, helicopter parent, income inequality, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, Own Your Own Home, phenotype, positional goods, profit motive, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Richard Florida, school choice, Scientific racism, selection bias, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Steven Pinker, survivorship bias, trade route, twin studies, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, winner-take-all economy, young professional, zero-sum game

Jens Dietrichson, Martin Bøg, Trine Filges, and Anne-Marie Klint Jørgensen, “Academic Interventions for Elementary and Middle School Students with Low Socioeconomic Status: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Review of Educational Research 87, no. 2 (2017): 243–282. 26. Kate Knibbs, “The LA School System’s $1.3 Billion iPad Fiasco Comes to a Sad End,” Gizmodo, September 29, 2015. SIX: THE WHIMS OF NATURE 1. Tinca J. C. Polderman, Beben Benyamin, Christiaan A. De Leeuw, Patrick F. Sullivan, Arjen Van Bochoven, Peter M. Visscher, and Danielle Posthuma, “Meta-Analysis of the Heritability of Human Traits Based on Fifty Years of Twin Studies,” Nature Genetics 47, no. 7 (2015): 702. 2.

To succeed academically, a child should be born to college-educated parents.19 Those parents should be from the middle class or, preferably, the upper class.20 The child should be brought to full term and be born at a healthy weight.21 The child should be free from developmental or cognitive disabilities.22 The child should be raised in a lead-free environment.23 The child should not be abused or neglected, particularly early in life.24 As you may have noticed, all of these conditions are ones that educators and policymakers have little or no control over. I would not say, though, that we should be completely nihilistic about the available academic interventions. I think that we should instead be realistic about what we control and who is responsible for outcomes. A high-quality meta-analysis (a type of study that aggregates the statistics of past studies for greater validity) was published in 2017 that compared various interventions and their impacts on students from poorer homes.25 Synthesizing data from more than a hundred studies published over a 15-year period, the authors attempted to ascertain the benefits of interventions such as afterschool programs, behavioral interventions, computer-assisted teaching, and more.

In this way the environment comes to match the genetic potential; we gravitate toward mental environments consistent with our underlying predispositions. Another interesting dynamic lies in the Flynn effect. Named for the pioneering intelligence researcher James Flynn, the Flynn effect refers to the striking growth in IQ across essentially every tested cohort in the twentieth century. A recent meta-analysis found that IQs grew at a rate of about 3 points per decade since at least the 1930s, both a statistically and practically significant figure.6 Both the causes and the consequences of the Flynn effect have been hotly debated for decades. Many believe that the increase stems from more cognitively demanding environments—that as we progress through modernity, the challenges and stimulation our brains experience cause us to become more intellectually nimble.


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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

Under those conditions, sustained intergroup contact generally decreases prejudices, often to a large extent and in a generalized, persistent manner. This was the conclusion of a 2006 meta-analysis of some five hundred studies comprising over 250,000 subjects from thirty-eight countries; beneficial effects were roughly equal for group differences in race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. As examples, a 1957 study concerning desegregation of the Merchant Marines showed that the more trips white seamen took with African Americans, the more positive their racial attitudes. Same for white cops as a function of time spent with African American partners.19 A more recent meta-analysis provides additional insights: (a) The beneficial effects typically involve both more knowledge about and more empathy for the Thems.

Meyer-Lindenberg, “MAOA and the Neurogenetic Architecture of Human Aggression,” TINS 31 (2008): 120. 46. J. Kim-Cohen et al., “MAOA, Maltreatment, and Gene Environment Interaction Predicting Children’s Mental Health: New Evidence and a Meta-analysis,” Mol Psychiatry 11 (2006): 903; A. Byrd and S. Manuck, “MAOA, Childhood Maltreatment and Antisocial Behavior: Meta-analysis of a Gene-Environment Interaction,” BP 75 (2013): 9; G. Frazzetto et al., “Early Trauma and Increased Risk for Physical Aggression During Adulthood: The Moderating Role of MAOA Genotype,” PLoS ONE 2 (2007): e486; C. Widom and L. Brzustowicz, “MAOA and the ‘Cycle of Violence’: Childhood Abuse and Neglect, MAOA Genotype, and Risk for Violent and Antisocial Behavior,” BP 60 (2006): 684; R.

., “Association of the Dopamine D4 Receptor (DRD4) Gene and Approach-Related Personality Traits: Meta-analysis and New Data,” BP 63 (2007): 197; R. Ebstein et al., “Dopamine D4 Receptor (D4DR) Exon III Polymorphism Associated with the Human Personality Trait of Novelty Seeking,” Nat Genetics 12 (1996): 78; J. Carpenter et al., “Dopamine Receptor Genes Predict Risk Preferences, Time Preferences, and Related Economic Choices,” J Risk and Uncertainty 42 (2011): 233; J. Garcia et al., “Associations Between Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene Variation with Both Infidelity and Sexual Promiscuity,” PLoS ONE 5 (2010): e14162; D. Li et al., “Meta-analysis Shows Significant Association Between Dopamine System Genes and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD),” Human Mol Genetics 15 (2006): 2276; L.


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Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America by Charles Murray

2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, centre right, correlation coefficient, critical race theory, Donald Trump, feminist movement, gentrification, George Floyd, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, invention of agriculture, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, publication bias, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, War on Poverty

Wicherts, “Does Stereotype Threat Influence Performance of Girls in Stereotyped Domains? A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of School Psychology (2015); and Oren Shewach, Paul R. Sackett, and Sander Quint, “Stereotype Threat Effects in Settings with Features Likely Versus Unlikely in Operational Test Settings: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology (2019). The former, coauthored by one the world’s most highly regarded quantitative social science methodologists (Jelte Wicherts), concluded that “based on the small average effect size in our meta-analysis, which is most likely inflated due to publication bias, we would not feel confident to proclaim that stereotype manipulations will harm mathematic performance of girls in a systematic way.”

Not surprisingly, recognition of that fact has led to an enormous amount of research about the relationship of cognitive ability to job productivity. The technical literature is so extensive that the chapter on cognitive abilities in the most recent edition of The Oxford Handbook of Personnel Assessment and Selection (2014) is not a meta-analysis of existing studies; it is a review of many meta-analyses. The consistent findings about cognitive ability and job performance that apply most directly to group differences in cognitive ability are these: Measures of cognitive ability and job performance are always positively correlated. The size of the correlation goes up as the job becomes more cognitively complex.

Given those two knowns, it is reasonable to expect that the literature on race and job performance will consistently show that race differences exist, and in fact this has been the case. The two most comprehensive meta-analyses are by Philip L. Roth, Allen Huffcutt, and Philip Bobko, “Ethnic Group Differences in Measures of Job Performance: A New Meta-Analysis,” published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (2003); and by Patrick F. McKay and Michael A. McDaniel, “A Reexamination of Black-White Mean Differences in Work Performance: More Data, More Moderators,” published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (2006). Their findings build on early synthetic analyses from the 1980s and 1990s and are consistent with each other.


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Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food by Chris van Tulleken

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", biofilm, carbon footprint, clean water, Columbian Exchange, conceptual framework, cotton gin, COVID-19, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, food desert, Gary Taubes, George Floyd, global supply chain, Helicobacter pylori, Kinder Surprise, longitudinal study, luminiferous ether, meta-analysis, microbiome, NOVA classification, parabiotic, Peter Thiel, phenotype, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stanford marshmallow experiment, twin studies, ultra-processed food, Vanguard fund, Walter Mischel, Wayback Machine

London: Pinter & Martin, 2019. 29 Sankar MJ, Sinha B, Chowdhury R, et al. Optimal breastfeeding practices and infant and child mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Acta Paediatrica 2015; 104: 3–13. 30 Horta BL, Loret de Mola C, Victora CG. Long-term consequences of breastfeeding on cholesterol, obesity, systolic blood pressure and type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Acta Paediatrica 2015; 104: 30–37. 31 Bowatte G, Tham R, Allen KJ, et al. Breastfeeding and childhood acute otitis media: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Acta Paediatrica 2015; 104: 85–95. 32 Victora CG, Bahl R, Barros AJD, et al. Breastfeeding in the 21st century: epidemiology, mechanisms, and lifelong effect.

Breastfeeding in the 21st century: epidemiology, mechanisms, and lifelong effect. Lancet 2017; 387: 475–90. 33 Lodge CJ, Tan DJ, Lau MXZ, et al. Breastfeeding and asthma and allergies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Acta Paediatrica 2015; 104: 38–53. 34 Thompson JMD, Tanabe K, Moon RY, et al. Duration of breastfeeding and risk of SIDS: an individual participant data meta-analysis. Pediatrics 2017; 140: e20171324. 35 Horta BL, Loret de Mola C, Victora CG. Breastfeeding and intelligence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Acta Paediatrica 2015; 104: 14–29. 36 Baker et al, 2016. 37 British Nutrition Foundation. What we do. 2022. Available from: https://www.nutrition.org.uk/our-work/what-we-do/. 38 British Nutrition Foundation.

Obesity 2013; 21: 957–59. 3 Hall KD, Ayuketah A, Brychta R, et al. Ultra-processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain: an inpatient randomized controlled trial of ad libitum food intake. Cellular Metabolism 2019; 30: 67–77. 4 Martini D, Godos J, Bonaccio M, et al. Ultra-processed foods and nutritional dietary profile: a meta-analysis of nationally representative samples. Nutrients 2021; 13: 3390. 5 October 28. Health inequalities and obesity. 2020. Available from: https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/health-inequalities-and-obesity. 6 Fiolet T, Srour B, Sellem L, et al. Consumption of ultra-processed foods and cancer risk: results from NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort.


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The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date by Samuel Arbesman

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, bioinformatics, British Empire, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, Clayton Christensen, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, data science, David Brooks, demographic transition, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, Galaxy Zoo, Gregor Mendel, guest worker program, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, index fund, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, John Harrison: Longitude, Kevin Kelly, language acquisition, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, National Debt Clock, Nicholas Carr, P = NP, p-value, Paul Erdős, Pluto: dwarf planet, power law, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Rodney Brooks, scientific worldview, SimCity, social contagion, social graph, social web, systematic bias, text mining, the long tail, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation

But how to decide which papers are relevant and which ones aren’t? Rather than be accused of subjectivity, or have to gain expertise in countless specific areas, Robinson and Goodman sidestepped these problems by doing something clever: They looked at meta-analyses. Meta-analysis is a well-known technique that can be used to extract more meaning from specific papers than could be gained from looking at each one alone. A meta-analysis combines the results of papers in a specific area in order to see if there is a consensus or if more precise results can be found. They are like the analyses of thermal conductivity for different elements mentioned in chapter 3, which use the results from lots of different articles to get a better picture of the shape of what we know about how these elements conduct heat.

While Don Swanson combined papers from scientific areas that should have overlapped but didn’t, Lau and his colleagues combined papers from very similar areas that had never been combined, looking at them more carefully than they had been examined up until then. By using cumulative meta-analysis, hidden knowledge could have been revealed fifteen years earlier than it actually was and helped improve the health of countless individuals. Modern technology is beginning to aid cumulative meta-analysis and its development, and we can even now use computational techniques to employ Swanson’s methods on a grand scale. . . . WE are not yet at the stage where we can loose computers upon the stores of human knowledge only to return a week later with discoveries that would supplant those of Einstein or Newton in our scientific pantheon.

They are like the analyses of thermal conductivity for different elements mentioned in chapter 3, which use the results from lots of different articles to get a better picture of the shape of what we know about how these elements conduct heat. Assuming the meta-analyses bring together all the relevant trials, Robinson and Goodman simply looked through all the studies examined in each meta-analysis to see how many of the studies cited in the meta-analyses were also mentioned in each of the newer studies being examined. What they found shouldn’t be surprising. Scientists cite fewer than 25 percent of the relevant trials when writing about their own research. The more papers in the field, the smaller the fraction of previous papers that were quoted in a new study.


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Randomistas: How Radical Researchers Changed Our World by Andrew Leigh

Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anton Chekhov, Atul Gawande, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, experimental economics, Flynn Effect, germ theory of disease, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Indoor air pollution, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, microcredit, Netflix Prize, nudge unit, offshore financial centre, p-value, Paradox of Choice, placebo effect, price mechanism, publication bias, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Sheryl Sandberg, statistical model, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, TED Talk, uber lyft, universal basic income, War on Poverty

., ‘Mortality in randomized trials of antioxidant supplements for primary and secondary prevention: Systematic review and meta-analysis’, Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 297, no. 8, 2007, pp. 842–57. For an informal discussion of the issue, see Norman Swan, ‘The health report’, ABC Radio National, 5 March 2007. The researchers were at pains to point out that their findings should not be extrapolated to foods that are rich in vitamins, such as fresh fruit and vegetables. 53H.C. Bucher, P. Hengstler, C. Schindler & G.Meier, ‘N-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in coronary heart disease: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials’, American Journal of Medicine, vol. 112, no. 4, 2002, pp. 298–304. 54E.C.

Some kinds of cases – such as family violence or fraud – aren’t suitable for restorative justice, but the experiments covered a wide range of other crimes, including assault, robbery and car theft. Combining the results of ten restorative justice experiments from around the world – a process known as meta-analysis – researchers concluded that it does cut crime.2 In the two years afterwards, offenders who went through the restorative justice process were significantly less likely to commit another crime. For society, the benefits more than covered the costs. In the London experiment, the gains from crime reduction were worth fourteen times more than the cost of running the restorative justice process.

A follow-up found death rates of 26 per cent for the treatment group and 22 per cent for the control group: CRASH Trial Collaborators, ‘Final results of MRC CRASH, a randomised placebo-controlled trial of intravenous corticosteroid in adults with head injury—outcomes at 6 months’, The Lancet, vol. 365, no. 9475, 2005, pp. 1957–9. 48Roger Chou, Rongwei Fu, John A. Carrino & Richard A. Deyo, ‘Imaging strategies for low-back pain: Systematic review and meta-analysis’, The Lancet, vol. 373, no. 9662, 2009, pp. 463–72; G. Michael Allan, G. Richard Spooner & Noah Ivers, ‘X-Ray scans for nonspecific low back pain: A nonspecific pain?’ Canadian Family Physician, vol. 58, no. 3, 2012, p. 275. 49Allan, Spooner & Ivers, ‘X-Ray scans’, p. 275. 50Peter C. Gøtzsche & Karsten Juhl Jørgensen, ‘Screening for breast cancer with mammography’, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2013, Issue 6, 2013, article no.


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The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van Der Kolk M. D.

anesthesia awareness, British Empire, classic study, conceptual framework, deskilling, different worldview, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, false memory syndrome, feminist movement, Great Leap Forward, impulse control, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, microbiome, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, phenotype, placebo effect, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social intelligence, sugar pill, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury, Yogi Berra

., “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Child FIRST: A Comprehensive Home-Based Intervention Translating Research into Early Childhood Practice,” Child Development 82, no. 1 (January/February 2011): 193–208; S. T. Harvey and J. E. Taylor, “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Psychotherapy with Sexually Abused Children and Adolescents, Clinical Psychology Review 30, no. 5 (July 2010): 517–35; J. E. Taylor and S. T. Harvey, “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Psychotherapy with Adults Sexually Abused in Childhood,” Clinical Psychology Review 30, no. 6 (August 2010): 749–67; Olds, Henderson, Chamberlin, & Tatelbaum, 1986; B. C. Stolbach, et al., “Complex Trauma Exposure and Symptoms in Urban Traumatized Children: A Preliminary Test of Proposed Criteria for Developmental Trauma Disorder,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 26, no. 4 (August 2013): 483–91.

., “Randomized Trial of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Adult Female Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 73, no. 3 (2005): 515–24; Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An Assessment of the Evidence (Washington: National Academies Press, 2008); and R. Bradley, et al., “A Multidimensional Meta-Analysis of Psychotherapy for PTSD,” American Journal of Psychiatry 162, no. 2 (2005): 214–27. 39. J. Bisson, et al., “Psychological Treatments for Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” British Journal of Psychiatry 190 (2007): 97–104. See also L. H. Jaycox, E. B. Foa, and A. R. Morrall, “Influence of Emotional Engagement and Habituation on Exposure Therapy for PTSD,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 66 (1998): 185–92. 40.

B. Sterman, L. R. Macdonald, and R. K. Stone, “Biofeedback Training of the Sensorimotor Electroencephalogram Rhythm in Man: Effects on Epilepsy,” Epilepsia 15, no. 3 (1974): 395–416. A recent meta-analysis of eighty-seven studies showed that neurofeedback led to a significant reduction in seizure frequency in approximately 80 percent of epileptics who received the training. Gabriel Tan, et al., “Meta-Analysis of EEG Biofeedback in Treating Epilepsy,” Clinical EEG and Neuroscience 40, no. 3 (2009): 173–79. 7. This is part of the same circuit of self-awareness that I described in chapter 5. Alvaro Pascual-Leone has shown how, when one temporarily knocks out the area above the medial prefrontal cortex with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), people can temporarily not identify whom they are looking at when they stare into the mirror.


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Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool

Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, deliberate practice, digital rights, iterative process, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, pattern recognition, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Rubik’s Cube, sensible shoes

As I was working on this book, a group of researchers published a meta-analysis—that is, an analysis of a large number of previously published studies—that concluded that structured practice (although they called it “deliberate practice”) explained relatively little of the difference in performance among individuals in various fields, including music, sports, education, and other professions. See Brooke N. Macnamara, David Z. Hambrick, and Frederick L. Oswald, “Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: A meta-analysis,” Psychological Science 25 (2014): 1608–1618. The major problem with this meta-analysis was that few of the studies the researchers examined were actually looking at the effects of the type of practice on performance that we had referred to as deliberate practice; instead, the researchers used very loose criteria to decide which studies to include in their meta-analysis, so they ended up examining a collection of studies that dealt mainly with various types of practice and training that did not meet the criteria of deliberate practice as we described it earlier in this chapter.

The major problem with this meta-analysis was that few of the studies the researchers examined were actually looking at the effects of the type of practice on performance that we had referred to as deliberate practice; instead, the researchers used very loose criteria to decide which studies to include in their meta-analysis, so they ended up examining a collection of studies that dealt mainly with various types of practice and training that did not meet the criteria of deliberate practice as we described it earlier in this chapter. I offer a detailed critique of their work in K. Anders Ericsson, “Challenges for the estimation of an upper-bound on relations between accumulated deliberate practice and the associated performance in domains of expertise: Comments on Macnamara, Hambrick, and Oswald’s (2014) published meta-analysis,” available on my website, https://psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.hp.html.

Soumerai, “Systematic review: The relationship between clinical experience and quality of health care,” Annals of Internal Medicine 142 (2005): 260–273. See also Paul M. Spengler and Lois A. Pilipis, “A comprehensive meta-analysis of the robustness of the experience-accuracy effect in clinical judgment,” Journal of Counseling Psychology 62, no. 3 (2015): 360–378. [>] Another study of decision-making accuracy: Paul M. Spengler, Michael J. White, Stefanía Ægisdóttir, Alan S. Maugherman, Linda A. Anderson, Robert S. Cook, Cassandra N. Nichols, Georgios K. Lampropoulos, Blain S. Walker, Genna R. Cohen, and Jeffrey D. Rush, “The meta-analysis of clinical judgment project: Effects of experience on judgment accuracy,” Counseling Psychology 20 (2009): 350–399. [>] experienced nurses do not: K.


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The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina Teicholz

Albert Einstein, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, Gary Taubes, Indoor air pollution, meta-analysis, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Robert Gordon, selection bias, TED Talk, the scientific method, Upton Sinclair

“Association of Dietary Intake of Fat and Fatty Acids with Risk of Breast Cancer.” Journal of the American Medical Association 281, no. 10 (March 10, 1999): 914–920. Hooper, Lee, Paul A. Kroon, Eric B. Rimm, et al. “Flavonoids, Flavonoid-Rich Foods, and Cardiovascular Risk: a Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 88, no. 1 (July 2008): 38–50. Hopkins, Paul N. “Effects of Dietary Cholesterol on Serum Cholesterol: A Meta-Analysis and Review.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 55, no. 6 (June 1992): 1060–1070. Hornstra, Gerard, and Anna Vendelmans-Starrenburg. “Induction of Experimental Arterial Occlusive Thrombi in Rats.”

Davis. “N-6 Fatty Acid-Specific and Mixed Polyunsaturate Dietary Interventions Have Different Effects on CHD Risk: A Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials.” British Journal of Nutrition 104, no. 11 (December 2010): 1586–1600. Ramsden, Christopher E., Daisy Zamora, Boonseng Leelarthaepin, et al. “Use of Dietary Linoleic Acid for Secondary Prevention of Coronary Heart Disease and Death: Evaluation of Recovered Data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and Updated Meta-Analysis.” British Medical Journal 346 (February 4, 2013): doi:10.1136/bmj.e8707. Rand, Margaret L., Adje A. Hennissen, and Gerard Hornstra.

., “Effects of Dietary Cholesterol on the Regulation of Total Body Cholesterol in Man,” Journal of Lipid Research 12, no. 2 (1971): 233–247; Paul J. Nestel and Andrea Poyser, “Changes in Cholesterol Synthesis and Excretion When Cholesterol Intake Is Increased,” Metabolism 25, no. 12 (1976): 1591–1599. one of the most comprehensive analyses: Paul N. Hopkins, “Effects of Dietary Cholesterol on Serum Cholesterol: A Meta-Analysis and Review,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 55, no. 6 (1992): 1060–1070. authorities in Britain and most other European nations: A. Stewart Truswell, “Evolution of Dietary Recommendations, Goals, and Guidelines,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 45, no. 5, suppl. (1987): 1068. The United States, however, has continued recommending: Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, prepared for the Agricultural Research Service, US Department of Agriculture and US Department of Health and Human Services, Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010.


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How to Survive a Pandemic by Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Anthropocene, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, double helix, Edward Jenner, friendly fire, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Helicobacter pylori, inventory management, Kickstarter, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, New Journalism, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, phenotype, profit motive, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, supply-chain management, the medium is the message, Westphalian system, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zoonotic diseases

Prevalence of comorbidities in the novel Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Infect Dis. [Epub ahead of print 2020 Mar 12; accessed 2020 Mar 31]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2020.03.017. 2714. Jain V, Yuan J-M. 2020 Mar 16. Systematic review and meta-analysis of predictive symptoms and comorbidities for severe COVID-19 infection. medRxiv.org. [accessed 2020 Mar 31]. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.15.20035360. 2715. Jain V, Yuan J-M. 2020 Mar 16. Systematic review and meta-analysis of predictive symptoms and comorbidities for severe COVID-19 infection. medRxiv.org.

The effectiveness of high dose zinc acetate lozenges on various common cold symptoms: a meta-analysis. BMC Fam Pract. 16:24. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-015-0237-6. 2786. Hemilä H. 2017. Zinc lozenges and the common cold: a meta-analysis comparing zinc acetate and zinc gluconate, and the role of zinc dosage. JRSM Open. 8(5):2054270417694291. https://doi.org/10.1177/2054270417694291. 2787. Singh M, Das RR. 2011. Zinc for the common cold. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2:CD001364. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD001364.pub3. 2788. Hemilä H. 2017. Zinc lozenges and the common cold: a meta-analysis comparing zinc acetate and zinc gluconate, and the role of zinc dosage.

Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 25(1):20–24. https://doi.org/10.1128/aac.25.1.20. 2782. Hemilä H. 2017. Zinc lozenges and the common cold: a meta-analysis comparing zinc acetate and zinc gluconate, and the role of zinc dosage. JRSM Open. 8(5):2054270417694291. https://doi.org/10.1177/2054270417694291. 2783. Singh M, Das RR. 2011. Zinc for the common cold. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2:CD001364. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD001364.pub3. 2784. Hemilä H, Petrus EJ, Fitzgerald JT, Prasad A. 2016. Zinc acetate lozenges for treating the common cold: an individual patient data meta-analysis. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 82(5):1393–1398. https://doi.org/10.1111/bcp.13057. 2785.


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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

Once children hear praise they interpret as meritless, they discount not just the insincere praise, but sincere praise as well. Excessive praise also distorts children’s motivation; they begin doing things merely to hear the praise, losing sight of intrinsic enjoyment. Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.”

Those admitted at kindergarten to private schools will stay through eighth grade. While the publishers of the tests aren’t trying to determine how well early intelligence tests predict later achievement, the academic researchers are. In 2003, Dr. Hoi Suen, Professor of Educational Psychology at Pennsylvania State University, published a meta-analysis of 44 studies, each of which looked at how well tests given in pre-K or in kindergarten predicted achievement test scores two years later. Most of the underlying 44 studies had been published in the mid-1970s to mid-1990s, and most looked at a single school or school district. Analyzing them together, Suen found that intelligence test scores before children start school, on average, had only a 40% correlation with later achievement test results.

One test, the MSCEIT, comes from the team that originally coined the term “emotional intelligence”—including Dr. Peter Salovey, Dean of Yale College. The other test, the EQ-i, comes from Dr. Reuven Bar-On, who coined the term “Emotional Quotient.” Researchers around the world have been using these scales, and the results have been a shock. In a meta-analysis of these studies, scholars concluded that the correlation between emotional intelligence and academic achievement was only 10 percent. Those studies were all done on adolescents and college students—not on kids—but one study of a prison population showed that inmates have high EQ. So much for the theory that emotionally intelligent people make better life choices.


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The Unpersuadables: Adventures With the Enemies of Science by Will Storr

Albert Einstein, Atul Gawande, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bread and circuses, British Empire, call centre, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Credit Default Swap, David Attenborough, David Brooks, death of newspapers, full employment, George Santayana, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jon Ronson, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Simon Singh, Stanford prison experiment, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, the scientific method, theory of mind, twin studies

A typical example is a 2004 paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry that found the rate of childhood abuse in adults suffering psychosis to be fifteen times greater than expected. He is currently preparing to submit a meta-analysis to ‘one of the world’s top medical journals’ which will compile ten years of large-scale studies into the environmental causes of psychosis. ‘Just to tell you what the meta-analysis will say – the odds ratio is three. That means that somebody who has been sexually abused has a three times greater chance of becoming psychotic than somebody who has had a healthy childhood.’ I ask Bentall what he thinks of Ron Coleman’s contention that there is no such thing as schizophrenia.

We had already shown he did not do that in the 30 trials, comparing long, medium and short, and there is no suggestion he was doing that in the randomised trials. But the control data show clearly that there was no such pattern. Wiseman simply ignores these data. You can see these in Fig. 5 of this paper: http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/animals/pdf/dog_video.pdf.’ 265 adding a meta-analysis that confirms his view: Dean Radin, ‘The Sense of Being Stared At: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 12, no.6 (2005), pp. 95–100. 266 Computer pioneer Alan Turing once said: John Horgan, ‘Brilliant Scientists are Open-Minded about Paranormal Stuff, So Why Not You?’, Scientific American, 20 July 2012. 266 New Scientist has reported: Robert Matthews, ‘Opposites Detract’, New Scientist, 13 March 2004. 266 As far back as 1951, pioneering neuroscientist Donald Hebb admitted: Montague Ullman, The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Vol. 3, 3rd edition, Chapter 56, Section 15, pp. 3235–45, 1980.

Some of these may well conclude that homeopathy works, but are they any good? This is exactly what ‘Shang et al.’, the famous paper that Tournier referenced, sought to discover. When different scientists tackle the same problem and produce conflicting results, one way of making sense of them all is to conduct a meta-analysis. You take the trials, use complex mathematical formulae to blend their data and end up with what you hope is an ultimate conclusion. That is what Professor Aijing Shang’s team, at the University of Berne in Switzerland, sought to do for homeopathy. It was an ambitious project and inevitably controversial.


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Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed With Early Achievement by Rich Karlgaard

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bob Noyce, book value, Brownian motion, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Sedaris, deliberate practice, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, financial independence, follow your passion, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Goodhart's law, hiring and firing, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, move fast and break things, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, power law, reality distortion field, Sand Hill Road, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, sunk-cost fallacy, tech worker, TED Talk, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, Toyota Production System, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor

first experience symptoms at age fourteen: Ibid. “The deaths are but the tip”: Bichell, “Suicide Rates Climb.” “It’s not an exaggeration”: Jean M. Twenge et al., “It’s Beyond My Control: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Increasing Externality in Locus of Control, 1960–2002,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 8 (2004): 308–19; J. Twenge et al., “Birth Cohort Increases in Psychopathology Among Young Americans, 1938–2007: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of the MMPI,” Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010): 145–54. For historical data on intrinsic and extrinsic values, see J. H. Pryor et al., The American Freshman: Forty-Year Trends, 1966–2006 (Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, 2007).

Among college students: Sasha Zarins and Sara Konrath, “Changes over Time in Compassion-Related Variables in the United States,” in The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, ed. Emma M. Seppälä et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Sara H. Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 15, no. 2 (2011): 180–98. They show greater reflective thinking: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Kevin Rathunde, “The Psychology of Wisdom: An Evolutionary Interpretation,” in Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development, ed. Robert J. Sternberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); V.

Van Vonderen and William Kinnally, “Media Effects on Body Image: Examining Media Exposure in the Broader Context of Internal and Other Social Factors,” American Communication Journal 14, no. 2 (2012): 41–57; Rebecca Coleman, “The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Media Effects, and Body Image,” Feminist Media Studies 8, no. 2 (2008): 163–79; Shelly Grabe, L. Monique Ward, and Janet Shibley Hyde, “The Role of the Media in Body Image Concerns Among Women: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental and Correlational Studies,” Psychological Bulletin 134, no. 3 (2008): 460; Patti M. Valkenburg, Jochen Peter, and Joseph B. Walther, “Media Effects: Theory and Research,” Annual Review of Psychology 67 (2016): 315–38; Christopher P. Barlett, Christopher L. Vowels, and Donald A.


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How Medicine Works and When It Doesn't: Learning Who to Trust to Get and Stay Healthy by F. Perry Wilson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Barry Marshall: ulcers, cognitive bias, Comet Ping Pong, confounding variable, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, fake news, Helicobacter pylori, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Louis Pasteur, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, multilevel marketing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, p-value, personalized medicine, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, selection bias, statistical model, stem cell, sugar pill, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes

., “Early Goal-Directed Therapy in the Treatment of Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock,” New England Journal of Medicine 345, no. 19 (November 8, 2001): 1368–77, https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa010307. 2 In 2017, sixteen years after the Rivers: Protocolized Resuscitation in Sepsis Meta-analysis (PRISM) Investigators, “Early, Goal-Directed Therapy for Septic Shock—a Patient-Level Meta-Analysis,” New England Journal of Medicine 376, no. 23 (June 8, 2017): 2223–34, https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1701380. 3 In 2018, psychology professor Kristin Laurin published: Kristin Laurin, “Inaugurating Rationalization: Three Field Studies Find Increased Rationalization When Anticipated Realities Become Current,” Psychological Science 29, no. 4 (April 1, 2018): 483–95, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617738814. 4 First described in 1977, the effect: Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino, “Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity,” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16, no. 1 (February 1, 1977): 107–12, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(77)80012-1. 5 From April 2016 to October 2020: Search on Trump Twitter Archive, accessed June 14, 2022, www.thetrumparchive.com. 6 In the Institute of Medicine’s seminal: Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, ed.

I suspect that every single person reading this book understands how scrolling through pictures of your friends on a small phone in a dark room could make you feel completely, utterly lonely. Loneliness has a powerful effect on health. Research demonstrates that social isolation and feelings of loneliness lead to impaired executive function, worse sleep, and declines in mental and physical well-being. A large meta-analysis, combining results from seventy studies and three million participants, found that individuals who felt lonely died at a rate roughly 30 percent higher than those who did not. This makes social isolation and loneliness significant risk factors for death. What’s worse, the healthy way to cope with loneliness—reaching out to others—is not the most common way Americans deal with it.

Lowe, “Garlic and Cardiovascular Disease: A Critical Review,” Journal of Nutrition 136, no. 3 (March 1, 2006): 736S–740S, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/136.3.736S. 3 But even putting ethics aside: Monica Dinu et al., “Vegetarian, Vegan Diets and Multiple Health Outcomes: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies,” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 57, no. 17 (November 22, 2017): 3640–49, https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2016.1138447. 4 One of my favorite quantitative: Peter H. Ditto and David F. Lopez, “Motivated Skepticism: Use of Differential Decision Criteria for Preferred and Nonpreferred Conclusions,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63, no. 4 (1992): 568–84, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.568. 5 And interpretation, if you let it: Arthur L.


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Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It by Daniel Simons, Christopher Chabris

Abraham Wald, Airbnb, artificial general intelligence, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", blockchain, Boston Dynamics, butterfly effect, call centre, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, ChatGPT, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, financial thriller, forensic accounting, framing effect, George Akerlof, global pandemic, index fund, information asymmetry, information security, Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Jim Simons, John von Neumann, Keith Raniere, Kenneth Rogoff, London Whale, lone genius, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, multilevel marketing, Nelson Mandela, pattern recognition, Pershing Square Capital Management, pets.com, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, power law, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Bankman-Fried, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart transportation, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systematic bias, TED Talk, transcontinental railway, WikiLeaks, Y2K

Ivermectin studies were analyzed in detail on the blog Astral Codex Ten: “Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted to Know,” November 16, 2021 [https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-than-you-wanted]. Although “real-time meta-analysis” isn’t a thing, traditional meta-analyses combine all of the relevant work in a literature to give a quantitative estimate of the overall size of an effect. If all of the studies entering into that estimate are legitimate, the meta-analysis can serve as a basis for planning future research. If misleading or fraudulent studies are included, they can mislead other researchers into thinking effects are larger than they actually are.

Brainard, “‘Zombie Papers’ Just Won’t Die: Retracted Papers by Notorious Fraudster Still Cited Years Later,” Science, June 27, 2022 [https://www.science.org/content/article/zombie-papers-wont-die-retracted-papers-notorious-fraudster-still-cited-years-later], and a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of nudging included many of Brian Wansink’s faulty studies and thereby came to an incorrect conclusion; see S. Mertens, M. Herberz, U. J. J. Hahnel, and T. Brosch, “The Effectiveness of Nudging: A Meta-Analysis of Choice Architecture Interventions Across Behavioral Domains,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119 (2022): e2107346118 [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2107346118]; note that this paper has incorporated significant corrections since its initial publication. 20.

Ritchie, “How Growth Mindset Shrank,” Science Fictions, October 11, 2022 [https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/growth-mindset-decline]; S. Ritchie, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020). Meta-analysis: B. N. Macnamara and A. P. Burgoyne, “Do Growth Mindset Interventions Impact Students’ Academic Achievement? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis with Recommendations for Best Practices,” Psychological Bulletin (2022), advance online publication [https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000352]. 30. For an analysis of the differences between evaluating options separately or comparatively, see M.


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Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari

Adam Curtis, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, Berlin Wall, call centre, capitalist realism, correlation does not imply causation, Donald Trump, gig economy, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, John Snow's cholera map, Joi Ito, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, Occupy movement, open borders, placebo effect, precariat, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Rat Park, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Stephen Fry, sugar pill, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, Tipper Gore, twin studies, universal basic income, urban planning, zero-sum game

For this and the next chapter, I also drew on (amongst many other studies): Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein, “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo: A Meta-Analysis of Antidepressant Medication,” Prevention & Treatment 1, no. 2 (June 1998); Kirsch, “Anti-depressants and the Placebo Effect,” Z Psychol 222, no 3 (2014): 128–134, doi: 10.1027/2151-2604/a000176; Kirsch, “Challenging Received Wisdom: Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect,” MJM 11, no. 2 (2008): 219–222, PMCID: PMC2582668; Kirsch et al., “Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration,” http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045; Kirsch et al., “The emperor’s new drugs: An analysis of antidepressant medication data submitted to the U.S.

There’s a good graph of antidepressant prescriptions in relation to ACE scores too in Vincent Felitti, Chadwick’s Child Maltreatment, 208. In the years that followed, the study has been replicated many times For some meta-analyses, see for example: A. Danese and M. Tan, “Childhood maltreatment and obesity: systematic review and meta-analysis,” Molecular Psychiatry 19 (May 2014): 544–554; Nanni et al., “Childhood Maltreatment Predicts Unfavorable Course of Illness and Treatment Outcome in Depression: A Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Psychiatry 169, no. 2 (Feb. 2012): 141–151. There’s a house fire inside many of us George Brown and Tirril Harris did some interesting research with similar—but not identical—findings.

sid=86b4a57d-2323-41a5-ae9e-e6cbf406b142; http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6992/full/429589a.html; all as accessed January 3, 2017; Wayne Kondro and Barb Sibbald, “Drug company experts advised staff to withhold data about SSRI use in children,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 170, no. 5 (March 2004): 783. The journal concluded they shouldn’t be prescribed to teenagers any more. Andrea Cipriani et al., “Comparative efficacy and tolerability of antidepressants for major depressive disorder in children and adolescents: a network meta-analysis,” The Lancet 338, no. 10047 (Aug. 2016): 881–890, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30385-3, as accessed November 1, 2016. but they were going to carry on promoting it anyway To understand the wider context for how this could have happened, I’d recommend three really terrific books: Ben Goldacre, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients (London: Fourth Estate, 2012); Marcia Angell, The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What We Can Do About It (New York: Random House, 2004); Harriet A.


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Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again by Eric Topol

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Big Tech, bioinformatics, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, cognitive bias, Colonization of Mars, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital twin, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, fault tolerance, gamification, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Santayana, Google Glasses, ImageNet competition, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, move 37, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, performance metric, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, post-truth, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, techlash, TED Talk, text mining, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, War on Poverty, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population

Chief among these is to change patterns of maladaptive thinking or behavior—to “help people to identify and change negative, self-destructive thought patterns.”45 The digital version of CBT is more simply defined: talk therapy. It appears to have similar efficacy for treating depression (at least mild to moderate types) as the labor-intensive face-to-face visits with a mental health professional. There are plenty of CBT mobile apps including Lantern, Joyable, MoodGYM, and Ginger.io. A meta-analysis of eighteen randomized control trials of more than 3,400 patients using twenty-two smartphone apps for treating depression showed significant improvement, and those apps based on CBT were particularly effective.46 All those apps studied involve interactions with human beings, but not all apps rely on human interaction.

JAMA Surg, 2017. 152(12): pp. 1169–1170. 9. Brody, B., “Why I Almost Fired My Doctor,” New York Times. October 12, 2017. 10. Oaklander, M., “Doctors on Life Support,” Time. 2015. 11. Panagioti, M., et al., “Association Between Physician Burnout and Patient Safety, Professionalism, and Patient Satisfaction: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” JAMA Intern Med, 2018. 12. Wang, M. D., R. Khanna, and N. Najafi, “Characterizing the Source of Text in Electronic Health Record Progress Notes.” JAMA Intern Med, 2017. 177(8): pp. 1212–1213. 13. Jha, S., “To put this in perspective. Your ATM card works in Outer Mongolia, but your EHR can’t be used in a different hospital across the street.”

JAMA Intern Med, 2017. 177(8): pp. 1212–1213. 3. Bach, B., “Stanford-Google Digital-Scribe Pilot Study to Be Launched,” in Scope. 2017, Stanford Medicine. 4. Moja, L., et al., “Effectiveness of Computerized Decision Support Systems Linked to Electronic Health Records: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Am J Public Health, 2014. 104(12): pp. e12–22. 5. Horwitz, R. I., et al., “From Evidence Based Medicine to Medicine Based Evidence.” Am J Med, 2017. 130(11): pp. 1246–1250. 6. Lacy, M. E., et al., “Association of Sickle Cell Trait with Hemoglobin A1c in African Americans.” JAMA, 2017. 317(5): pp. 507–515. 7.


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Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old by Andrew Steele

Alfred Russel Wallace, assortative mating, bioinformatics, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clockwatching, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, CRISPR, dark matter, deep learning, discovery of penicillin, double helix, Easter island, epigenetics, Hans Rosling, Helicobacter pylori, life extension, lone genius, megastructure, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, parabiotic, Peter Thiel, phenotype, precautionary principle, radical life extension, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, stealth mode startup, stem cell, TED Talk, zero-sum game

DOI: 10.1378/chest.08-2288 ageless.link/hdjg9s Getting a balanced diet … lifespan Lukas Schwingshackl et al., ‘Food groups and risk of all-cause mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies’, Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 105, 1462–73 (2017). DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.117.153148 ageless.link/4bfurj The observational … of vegetarianism … Monica Dinu et al., ‘Vegetarian, vegan diets and multiple health outcomes: A systematic review with meta-analysis of observational studies’, Crit. Rev. Food Sci. Nutr. 57, 3640–49 (2017). DOI: 10.1080/10408398.2016.1138447 ageless.link/6htpi3 … fruit and vegetables … diversity of your microbiome Society for Applied Microbiology, 2019 ageless.link/enkq6q … our bodies overcompensate … making us healthier … Tae Gen Son, Simonetta Camandola and Mark P.

., ‘Sunburns and risk of cutaneous melanoma: does age matter? A comprehensive meta-analysis’, Ann. Epidemiol. 18, 614–27 (2008). DOI: 10.1016/j.annepidem.2008.04.006 ageless.link/yd4jxa 8. Monitor your heart rate and blood pressure Globally, around 40 per cent of people over the age of 25 suffer from it … ‘Raised blood pressure’ (World Health Organization Global Health Observatory, 2015) ageless.link/bzteab … every additional 20/10 roughly doubles the risk … Sarah Lewington et al., ‘Age-specific relevance of usual blood pressure to vascular mortality: a meta-analysis of individual data for one million adults in 61 prospective studies’, Lancet 360, 1903–13 (2002).

DOI: 10.1016/s0735-1097(97)00246-5 ageless.link/q34kh7 The Public Science Lab at NC State University is collating a database of heartbeat and lifespan data which currently includes over 300 animals: The Heart Project, The Public Science Lab, NC State University ageless.link/degeqy See also this excellent video on the topic: Rohin Francis, ‘Why do so many living things get the same number of heartbeats?’ (MedLife Crisis, YouTube, 2018) ageless.link/prbvyx … a higher resting heart rate … increased risk of death D. Aune et al., ‘Resting heart rate and the risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer, and all-cause mortality – a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies’, Nutr. Metab. Cardiovasc. Dis. 27, 504–17 (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.numecd.2017.04.004 ageless.link/eb3fr9 … it’s not clear how … a treatment … Though ultimately it concludes that the best approach to lower heart rate at present is diet and exercise, this paper makes an interesting case for thinking about reducing it medically: Gus Q.


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Fiber Fueled: The Plant-Based Gut Health Program for Losing Weight, Restoring Your Health, and Optimizing Your Microbiome by Will Bulsiewicz

autism spectrum disorder, David Strachan, epigenetics, Helicobacter pylori, hygiene hypothesis, Louis Pasteur, Mason jar, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, randomized controlled trial, traumatic brain injury, ultra-processed food, zero-sum game

I’ll give you more: In a meta-analysis of the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study they found that every daily serving of whole grains reduces your risk of death by 5 percent and your risk of death by cardiovascular cause by 9 percent. In another meta-analysis including nearly 250,000 people, those eating the most whole grains had a 14 percent lower risk of stroke than those eating the fewest. A 2011 meta-analysis of prospective studies found that there was a 20 percent reduction in the risk of colorectal cancer for every three servings of whole grains consumed per day, and the risk was even lower with higher intakes. Another meta-analysis, this time with fifteen studies and almost 120,000 people, found that eating three servings of whole grains daily was linked to lower body mass index and less belly fat.

And just to put the cherry on top, three major studies—a large 2017 meta-analysis, the prospective EPIC-Oxford study, and the Adventist Health Study—all reached the same conclusion when it comes to diet and cancer risk. A plant-centered, fiber fueled diet lowers your risk of developing cancer. Mic drop. Heart Disease, Stroke, Diabetes, and Weight Loss So SCFAs and fiber offer protection from cancer, the number two cause of death in the United States. How about heart disease and stroke—the number one and number five causes of death? In the same mega meta-analysis on dietary fiber published in The Lancet, Dr.

If you’re skeptical, allow me to share some of the research. In a systematic review and meta-analysis of forty-five studies, increasing your daily whole-grain consumption by just two pieces of whole-grain bread rewarded the participants with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and total cancer as well as a lower likelihood of death from all causes, respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes, and all non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes. Convinced yet? I’ll give you more: In a meta-analysis of the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study they found that every daily serving of whole grains reduces your risk of death by 5 percent and your risk of death by cardiovascular cause by 9 percent.


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The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige Harden

23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, Bayesian statistics, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, classic study, clean water, combinatorial explosion, coronavirus, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, desegregation, double helix, epigenetics, game design, George Floyd, Gregor Mendel, impulse control, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, Scientific racism, stochastic process, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, twin studies, War on Poverty, zero-sum game

The more different fraternal twins are in a particular trait, like height, in comparison to identical twins, the higher the heritability of that trait. FIGURE 6.3.  Identical and fraternal twin correlations for seven domains of inequality. Author’s analysis of data from Tinca J. C. Polderman et al., “Meta-Analysis of the Heritability of Human Traits Based on Fifty Years of Twin Studies,” Nature Genetics 47, no. 7 (July 2015): 702–9, https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3285. In 2015, a paper in the journal Nature Genetics summarized fifty years of twin research—over 2,000 scientific papers on over 17,000 traits measured in over 2 million twin pairs.4 From their paper, I pulled data on seven different life domains, which I’ve plotted in figure 6.3.

., “Relatedness Disequilibrium Regression Estimates Heritability without Environmental Bias,” Nature Genetics 50, no. 9 (September 2018): 1304–10, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0178-9, except for twin estimate of heritability for educational attainment, which is drawn from Amelia R. Branigan, Kenneth J. McCallum, and Jeremy Freese, “Variation in the Heritability of Educational Attainment: An International Meta-Analysis,” Social Forces 92, no. 1 (2013): 109–140; and twin estimate of heritability for age at first birth in women, which is drawn from Felix C. Tropf et al., “Genetic Influence on Age at First Birth of Female Twins Born in the UK, 1919–68,” Population Studies 69, no. 2 (May 4, 2015): 129–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2015.1056823.

The Question of Who: Genetic Effects Involve Interactions Among People As I described in point #2, genetic effects are apparent very early in life: genes identified in a GWAS of educational attainment are expressed as early as the prenatal period and are associated with performance on IQ tests as early as age 5. At the same time, we also observe a pattern that might seem unintuitive: genetic effects on cognitive abilities, in particular, only get stronger over time. One meta-analysis (a type of study that pulls together and summarizes data from lots of different individual studies) found that genetic effects on cognitive ability rapidly get stronger from birth until the end of childhood, around age 10.27 A similar increase in the strength of genetic effects on personality traits like orderliness and openness to new experiences is also evident, but over a longer period of time, with genetic effects increasing until people are around age 30.


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Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully by Kelly Starrett, Juliet Starrett

airport security, call centre, COVID-19, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microdosing, Minecraft, phenotype, place-making, randomized controlled trial, rewilding, Steve Jobs, TED Talk

There is, for one thing, the fact that the more hours you’re up, the more likely you are to get hungry and eat. In studies, sleep-deprived subjects often eat more at night than their well-rested counterparts. They also simply consume more calories overall: about 204 more calories a day, according to a 2021 meta-analysis of fifty-four sleep studies. This might not sound like much, but multiply it over weeks and months, and that’s a lot of extra calories. There’s some biochemistry at work here. As part of a fifteen-year sleep study in Wisconsin, researchers found that short sleepers (five hours a night) had different levels of appetite-related hormones than long sleepers (eight hours a night).

DOI: 10.1186/​s12889-017-4422-5. DiSalvo, David. “Using a Standing Desk Could Give Your Brain a Boost.” Forbes, January 18, 2016. Ekelund, Ulf, Jakob Tarp, Morten Fagerland, et al. “Joint Associations of Accelerometer-Measured Physical Activity and Sedentary Time with All-Cause Mortality: A Harmonised Meta-Analysis in More Than 44,000 Middle-Aged and Older Individuals.” British Journal of Sports Medicine 54 (December 2020): 1499–1506. DOI: 10.1136/​bjsports-2020-103270. GORUCK. “About GORUCK.” www.goruck.com. Heesch, Kristiann C., Yolanda R. van Gellecum, Nicola W. Burton, et al. “Physical Activity, Walking, and Quality of Life in Women with Depressive Symptoms.”

“Physical Activity, Walking, and Quality of Life in Women with Depressive Symptoms.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 48, no. 3 (March 2015): 281–91. DOI: 10.1016/​j.amepre.2014.09.030. Jayedi, Ahmad, Ali Gohari, and Sakineh Shab-Bidar. “Daily Step Count and All-Cause Mortality: A Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies.” Sports Medicine 52, no. 1 (2022): 89–99. DOI: 10.1007/​s40279-021-01536-4. McDowell, C. P., B. R. Gordon, K. L. Andrews, et al. “Associations of Physical Activity with Anxiety Symptoms and Status: Results from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing.” Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences 28, no. 4 (2019): 436–45.


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The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age by Claudia Hammond

Abraham Maslow, Anton Chekhov, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, Desert Island Discs, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, iterative process, Kickstarter, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral panic, overview effect, Stephen Hawking, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen

Over the years further research has followed and a meta-analysis gathering together and re-analysing sixteen more studies has confirmed that listening to Mozart does lead to a temporary improvement in the ability to mentally manipulate shapes.4 So listening to Mozart can enhance one very specific and – let’s face it – not very useful task, but if you like listening to Mozart anyway, then I guess an improvement in your skills at mental shape manipulation is a bonus. But what if you don’t like listening to Mozart? Well, don’t fret. A few years after the meta-analysis was published, it began to emerge that there was nothing special about Mozart’s music per se.

Once again music did improve the children’s ability to predict unfolded paper shapes, but this time it wasn’t a Mozart effect so much as a Blur boost. The children who listened to Mozart did well, but with the medley of pop music they did even better, perhaps because they preferred it.5 In 2010 a larger meta-analysis confirmed that listening to music only results in a small improvement in spatial skills, and that other types of music work just as well as Mozart. The authors of this study even named their paper ‘Mozart effect–Schmozart effect’.6 One study found that hearing a passage from a Stephen King novel read out loud improved your spatial skills just as much, provided you enjoyed it.

. & Davidson, R.J. (2017) The Science of Meditation: How to Change Your Brain, Mind and Body. London: Penguin 8 Baer, R.A. et al (2004). ‘Assessment of Mindfulness by Self-report: The Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills’. Assessment, 11 (3), 191–206 9 Giluk, T.L. (2015) ‘Mindfulness, Big Five Personality, and Affect: A Meta-analysis’. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 805–81 10 Gawrysiak, M.J. et al (2018) ‘The Many Facets of Mindfulness & the Prediction of Change Following MBSR’. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74 (4), 523–35 11 Shapiro, S.L. et al (2011) ‘The Moderation of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Effects by Trait Mindfulness: Results from a Randomised Controlled Trial’.


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This Book Could Fix Your Life: The Science of Self Help by New Scientist, Helen Thomson

Abraham Wald, Black Lives Matter, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, Flynn Effect, George Floyd, global pandemic, hedonic treadmill, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lock screen, lockdown, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, TED Talk, TikTok, ultra-processed food, Walter Mischel

F. et al. (2012), ‘Uncorking the Muse: Alcohol Intoxication Facilitates Creative Problem Solving’, Consciousness and Cognition 21, 1, 487–93. Chapter 12: How to Avoid Being Too Perfect 1. Curran, T. and Hill, A. P. (2019), ‘Perfectionism is Increasing Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences From 1989 to 2016’, American Psychological Association 145, 4, 410–29. 2. Limburg, K. et al. (2016), ‘The Relationship Between Perfectionism and Psychopathology: A Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Clinical Psychology 73, 10, 1301–26. 3. Corson, A. T. et al. (2018), ‘Perfectionism in Relation to Stress and Cardiovascular Disease Among Gifted Individuals and the Need for Affective Interventions’, Roeper Review 40, 1, 46–55. 4.

During the 1960s, the Norwegian government added two extra years of compulsory education to its curriculum and rolled out the change gradually, allowing comparisons between different regions. When researchers investigated IQ scores from tests taken by all Norwegian men as part of their compulsory military service, they concluded that the additional schooling added 3.7 IQ points per year. This pattern has been seen elsewhere. One meta-analysis concluded that each additional year of schooling boosted IQ by between 1 and 5 points.4 Why that should be so is up for debate. It might simply be that reading, studying arithmetic, and accruing general knowledge are good training for the kind of abstract thinking you need to perform well in IQ tests, or that schooling teaches children to maintain their concentration, or something else entirely.

Frings, D. et al. (2020), ‘Comparison of Allen Carr’s Easy Way Programme With a Specialist Behavioural and Pharmacological Smoking Cessation Support Service: A Randomized Controlled Trial’, Addiction 115, 5, 977–85. 11. Ma, Y. et al. (2015), ‘The Significant Association of Taq1A Genotypes in DRD2/ANKK1 with Smoking Cessation in a Large-Scale Meta-Analysis of Caucasian Populations’, Translational Psychiatry 5, e686. 12. Johnson, K. E. and Voight, B. F. (2018), ‘Patterns of Shared Signatures of Recent Positive Election Across Human Populations’, Nature Ecology and Evolution 2, 4, 713–20. Chapter 9: How to be Smarter 1. Deary, I. J. et al. (2007), ‘Intelligence and Educational Achievement’, Intelligence 35, 1, 13–21. 2.


Spite: The Upside of Your Dark Side by Simon McCarthy-Jones

affirmative action, Atul Gawande, Bernie Sanders, Brexit referendum, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark triade / dark tetrad, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, Extinction Rebellion, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, loss aversion, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, New Journalism, Nick Bostrom, p-value, profit maximization, rent-seeking, rewilding, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), shareholder value, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, WikiLeaks

Zettler, “The Dark Core of Personality,” Psychological Review 125, no. 5 (2018): 656–688. 63. M. Ridley, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (London: Fourth Estate, 2010), 86. 64. H. Oosterbeek, R. Sloof, and G. Van De Kuilen, “Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-analysis,” Experimental Economics 7, no. 2 (2004): 171–188. 2. Counterdominant Spite 1. C. Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2012). 2. Boehm, Moral Origins. 3. Again, more correctly, they will not tolerate men trying to dominate other men. 4.

,” Psychology Today, May 23, 2014, www.psychologytoday.com/ie/blog/the-dark-side-personality/201405/how-spiteful-are-you#comments_bottom. 31. E. Fehr and U. Fischbacher, “The Nature of Human Altruism,” Nature 425, no. 6960 (2003): 785–791. 32. D. Balliet, L. B. Mulder, and P. A. van Lange, “Reward, Punishment and Cooperation: A Meta-analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 137, no. 4 (2011): 594–615. 33. E. Fehr, U. Fischbacher, and S. Gächter, “Strong Reciprocity, Human Cooperation and the Enforcement of Social Norms,” Human Nature 13, no. 1 (2002): 1–25. 34. Guala, “Reciprocity: Weak or Strong?” 35. H. Gintis, “Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 206, no. 2 (2000): 169–179. 36.

Perc, “Probabilistic Sharing Solves the Problem of Costly Punishment,” New Journal of Physics 16, no. 8 (2014): 083016. 24. N. J. Raihani and R. Bshary, “Punishment: One Tool, Many Uses,” Evolutionary Human Sciences 1 (2019): e12. 25. Raihani and McAuliffe, “Human Punishment Is Motivated by Inequity Aversion.” 26. D. Balliet, L. B. Mulder, and P. A. van Lange, “Reward, Punishment and Cooperation: A Meta-analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 137, no. 4 (2011): 594–615. 27. Raihani and Bshary, “Punishment.” 28. A. Dreber et al., “Winners Don’t Punish,” Nature 452, no. 7185 (2008): 348–351. 29. D. G. Rand and M. A. Nowak, “The Evolution of Antisocial Punishment in Optional Public Goods Games,” Nature Communications 2, no. 1 (2011): 1–7. 30.


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The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It by Matthew Williams

3D printing, 4chan, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic bias, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, deep learning, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, European colonialism, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, gamification, George Floyd, global pandemic, illegal immigration, immigration reform, impulse control, income inequality, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microaggression, Milgram experiment, Oklahoma City bombing, OpenAI, Overton Window, power law, selection bias, Snapchat, statistical model, The Turner Diaries, theory of mind, TikTok, twin studies, white flight

They represent the state of the art on the subject at the time they were published and many have been replicated and verified in later work on new samples of participants using better analytical procedures. Those areas of study that have accumulated a large body of research, such as the Implicit Association Test of prejudice (IAT), Integrated Threat Theory of prejudice (ITT), Terror Management Theory (TMT), and the role of contact in reducing prejudice, have been subject to powerful meta-analysis. Meta-analysis brings together all the highest-quality studies from across the globe and comes to an overall conclusion – a form of cumulative science. Where available, these meta-analyses have been included in this book to provide a close to definitive answer on the utility of a theory for understanding hate.

.¶¶22 To grossly oversimply the brain process, when faced with a black suspect holding a phone, the fast-but-dumb ‘autopilot’ response to shoot is left uncontrolled by the weak prefrontal cortex signal, and it is allowed to rapidly engage the motor cortex – the officer’s finger squeezes the trigger. When faced with a white suspect holding a phone, the stronger prefrontal cortex signal forces ‘autopilot’ to stand down, resulting in the motor cortex being released from its command – the officer’s finger eases off the trigger. A meta-analysis of forty-two studies on decisions to shoot, involving just under 3,500 shooters, found all the evidence pointed in the same direction. Shooters were more likely and faster to pull the trigger on armed and unarmed black targets relative to white targets. Depressingly, shooters required less certainty that a black target was holding a gun to shoot them, compared to white targets.

Urland and T. A. Ito, ‘Event-Related Potentials and the Decision to Shoot: The Role of Threat Perception and Cognitive Control’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42 (2006), 120–8. 23. Y. Mekawi and K. Bresin, ‘Is the Evidence from Racial Bias Shooting Task Studies a Smoking Gun? Results from a Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 61 (2015), 120–30. 24. J. Correll et al., ‘The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (2002), 1314–29. 25. C. Forbes et al., ‘Negative Stereotype Activation Alters Interaction between Neural Correlates of Arousal, Inhibition and Cognitive Control’, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 7 (2011), 771. 26.


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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

., ‘The social psychology of privacy’, American Journal of Sociology, 1968, 73(6): pp. 741–752. 140 Giles, D.C., ‘Parasocial interaction: a review of the literature and a model for future research’, Media Psychology, 2002, 4(3): pp. 279–305. 141 Schiappa, E., M. Allen, and P.B. Gregg, ‘Parasocial relationships and television: a meta-analysis of the effects’, in Mass Media Effects Research: Advances Through Meta-analysis, R.W. Preiss et al. (eds) (Routledge, 2007), pp. 301–314. 142 Allen, P., et al., ‘The hallucinating brain: a review of structural and functional neuroimaging studies of hallucinations’, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2008, 32(1): pp. 175–191. 143 Blakemore, S.

., The Positive Lexicography, 2019. Available from: https://www.drtimlomas.com/lexicography. 53 McCarthy, G., et al., ‘Face-specific processing in the human fusiform gyrus’, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 1997, 9(5): pp. 605–610. 54 Gunnery, S.D. and M.A. Ruben, ‘Perceptions of Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles: a meta-analysis’, Cognition and Emotion, 2016, 30(3): pp. 501–515. 55 Kleinke, C.L., ‘Gaze and eye contact: a research review’, Psychological Bulletin, 1986, 100(1): p. 78. 56 Liu, J., et al., ‘Seeing Jesus in toast: neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia’, Cortex, 2014, 53: pp. 60–77. 57 Darwin and Prodger, The Expression of the Emotions. 58 Ekman, P., ‘Biological and cultural contributions to body and facial movement’, in The Anthropology of the Body, J.

., ‘Hemispheric dominance for emotions, empathy and social behaviour: evidence from right and left handers with frontotemporal dementia’, Neurocase, 2001, 7(2): pp. 145–160. 78 Davidson, R.J., ‘Hemispheric asymmetry and emotion’, Approaches to Emotion, 1984, 2: pp. 39–57. 79 Murphy, F.C., I. Nimmo-Smith, and A.D. Lawrence, ‘Functional neuroanatomy of emotions: a meta-analysis’, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 2003, 3(3): pp. 207–233. 80 Isaacson, R., The Limbic System (Springer Science & Business Media, 2013). 81 MacLean, P.D., The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (Springer Science & Business Media, 1990). 82 Nieuwenhuys, R., ‘The neocortex’, Anatomy and Embryology, 1994, 190(4): pp. 307–337. 83 Isaacson, The Limbic System. 84 MacLean, P.D., ‘The limbic system (visceral brain) and emotional behavior’, AMA Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry, 1955, 73(2): pp. 130–134. 85 Isaacson, The Limbic System. 86 Iturria-Medina, Y., et al., ‘Brain hemispheric structural efficiency and interconnectivity rightward asymmetry in human and nonhuman primates’, Cerebral Cortex, 2011, 21(1): pp. 56–67. 87 Morgane, P.J., J.R.


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The Art of Statistics: Learning From Data by David Spiegelhalter

Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Anthropocene, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, Bayesian statistics, Brexit referendum, Carmen Reinhart, Charles Babbage, complexity theory, computer vision, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Edmond Halley, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, government statistician, Gregor Mendel, Hans Rosling, Higgs boson, Kenneth Rogoff, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, Netflix Prize, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, p-value, placebo effect, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, replication crisis, self-driving car, seminal paper, sparse data, speech recognition, statistical model, sugar pill, systematic bias, TED Talk, The Design of Experiments, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, Two Sigma

Two final key points: Don’t rely on a single study: A single statin trial may tell us that the drug worked in a particular group in a particular place, but robust conclusions require multiple studies. Review the evidence systematically: When looking at multiple trials, make sure to include every study that has been done, and so create what is known as a systematic review. The results may then be formally combined in a meta-analysis. For example, a recent systematic review put together evidence from twenty-seven randomized trials of statins, which included more than 170,000 people at lower risk of cardiovascular disease.4 But rather than focusing on the difference between the groups allocated to taking statins and controls, they instead estimated the effect of reducing LDL.

We have ignored the possibility that any observed relationship is not causal at all, but simply the result of chance. Most drugs on the market have only moderate effects, and only help a minority of people who take them, and their overall benefit can only be reliably detected by large, meticulous, randomized trials. Statin trials are huge, especially when put together in a meta-analysis, which means that the results discussed here cannot be put down to chance variation. (We shall see how to check this in Chapter 10.) Is prayer effective? The list of principles for RCTs is not new: they were nearly all introduced in 1948 in what is generally considered the first proper clinical trial.

Think about cherry-picked results, missing information that would conflict with the story, and lack of independent comment. HOW TRUSTWORTHY IS THE INTERPRETATION? How does the claim fit with what else is known? Consider the context, appropriate comparators, including historical data, and what other studies have shown, ideally in a meta-analysis. What’s the claimed explanation for whatever has been seen? Vital issues are correlation v. causation, regression to the mean, inappropriate claim that a non-significant result means ‘no effect’, confounding, attribution, prosecutor’s fallacy. How relevant is the story to the audience? Think about generalizability, whether the people being studied are a special case, has there been an extrapolation from mice to people.


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SuperBetter by Jane McGonigal

autism spectrum disorder, data science, full employment, game design, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Minecraft, mirror neurons, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, social intelligence, space junk, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel

Jayne Gackenbach and Johnathan Bown, “Mindfulness and Video Game Play: A Preliminary Inquiry,” Mindfulness 2, no. 2 (2011): 114–22. 26. Paul Grossman et al., “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Health Benefits: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 57, no. 1 (2004): 35–43; Stefan G. Hofmann et al., “The Effect of Mindfulness-Based Therapy on Anxiety and Depression: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 78, no. 2 (2010): 169; and Alberto Chiesa and Alessandro Serretti, “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Stress Management in Healthy People: A Review and Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 15, no. 5 (2009): 593–600. 27. Jonathan R.

Someday soon it’s quite likely that psychologists or doctors will commonly write prescriptions for Angry Birds to reduce anxiety, or Peggle to treat depression, or Call of Duty for anger management. Indeed, I already frequently hear from therapists and counselors who do just that! And the science is increasingly on their side. A 2012 meta-analysis of thirty-eight randomized, controlled trials of video games published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found significant promise for video games to improve psychological health outcomes. (The article also encouraged researchers and the game industry to conduct trials of longer duration as a necessary next step for this emerging field of research.)24 Keep in mind that gameful prescriptions are not necessarily an alternative to traditional forms of therapy or medication.

It lets them discover concrete ways to give you support that will actually make a difference. This is especially important if you’re facing a huge obstacle or going through a really tough time. Your loved ones can feel powerless to help in the face of your challenge—even though they desperately want to. But it doesn’t have to be that way. A meta-analysis of seventy different psychology and medical studies revealed that when the friends and family members of someone going through an illness, injury, or tough crisis are given suggestions for improving communication and support with their loved one, the friends and family experience less stress and less anxiety, report happier moods, and have more physical energy.10 One SuperBetter player, Joe, a senior advertising executive who lives near Tampa, saw this benefit himself when he started a familywide SuperBetter game.


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Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow

3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, attribution theory, augmented reality, barriers to entry, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, fail fast, Fellow of the Royal Society, Filter Bubble, Ford Model T, Google X / Alphabet X, hive mind, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, popular electronics, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Ruby on Rails, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, social bookmarking, Steve Jobs, superconnector, vertical integration

“The Protege’s Perspective Regarding Negative Mentoring Experiences: The Development of a Taxonomy.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 57, no. 1 (2000): 1–21. Eby, Lillian T., Tammy D. Allen, Sarah C. Evans, Thomas Ng, and David L. DuBois. “Does Mentoring Matter? A Multidisciplinary Meta-Analysis Comparing Mentored and Non-Mentored Individuals.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 72, no. 2 (2008): 254–67. Ellington, Aimee J. “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Calculators on Students’ Achievement and Attitude Levels in Precollege Mathematics Classes.” Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 34, no. 5 (2003): 433–63. English, T. J. Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and Then Lost It to the Revolution.

Underhill, “The Effectiveness of Mentoring Programs in Corporate Settings: A Meta-analytical Review of the Literature,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 68 (2006): 292–307, shows that informal mentoring has a greater effect than formal mentoring. A later study found that formal and informal mentorship results in various activities (work, youth, academic) were small, but generally positive: Lillian T. Eby, Tammy D. Allen, Sarah C. Evans, Thomas Ng, and David L. DuBois, “Does Mentoring Matter? A Multidisciplinary Meta-Analysis Comparing Mentored and Non-mentored Individuals,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 72, no. 2 (2008): 254–67. 44 “Searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent”: Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013). 46 journey-focused mentorship and not just a focus on practice: Further research shows that when protégés open up to their mentors—what my friend and NextJump.com founder Charlie Kim calls “vulnerability”—they tend to achieve more positive results: Connie R.

Staats, KC Diwas, and Francesca Gino, “Learning from My Success and from Others’ Failure: Evidence from Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery,” Management Science 59, no. 11 (2013): 2435–49. 68 a hundred years of these studies: Kluger and DeNisi examine the “contradictory and seldom straight-forward” outcomes of feedback intervention studies over the decades in Avraham N. Kluger and Angelo DeNisi, “The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory,” Psychological Bulletin 119, no. 2 (1996): 254–84, and find that more than one-third of feedback decreases performance. “The results suggest that FI [feedback intervention] effectiveness decreases as attention moves up the hierarchy closer to the self and away from the task,” they write. 68 vastly preferred negative feedback: As people gain expertise, they shift from desiring positive feedback to desiring negative, write Stacey R.


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The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry by Gary Greenberg

addicted to oil, Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, back-to-the-land, David Brooks, Edward Jenner, impulse control, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, late capitalism, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, McMansion, meta-analysis, neurotypical, phenotype, placebo effect, random walk, selection bias, statistical model, theory of mind, Winter of Discontent

” “We put a lot of faith in meta-analysis,” Frances told me. Not that he expected to use meta-analysis to sort out the arguments, at least not very often. “You need lots of data from lots of sources for a meta-analysis,” he said. “And I knew that the literature didn’t have the data. I knew we couldn’t do a real meta-analysis of most of what would come up.” If someone brought up one of those off-the-cuff ideas in a meeting, or collared him with a pet proposal at dinner, Frances would just tell him to bring him the data, which he was pretty sure didn’t exist. Meta-analysis would protect the DSM-IV (not to mention Frances) from the pontificators, the profession from confusion, the common language from its own tenuousness.

Frances thought there was a way to protect the system from both instability and pontificating: meta-analysis, a statistical method that, thanks to advances in computer technology and statistical modeling, had recently allowed statisticians to compile results from large numbers of studies by combining disparate data into common terms. The result was a statistical synthesis by which many different research projects could be treated as one large study. “We needed something that would leave it up to the tables rather than the people,” he told me, and meta-analysis was perfect for the job. “The idea was you would have to present evidence in tabular form that would be so convincing it would jump up and grab people by the throats.”

“The strident debate and attacks have obfuscated the negative impact of eliminating industry from our offices,” he complained. As unjust as it might have been, however, the drug company purge seemed irreversible. The APA was going to have to make up that $10 million deficit somehow. The organization won’t say how much revenue it anticipates from a new DSM, but you don’t have to run a meta-analysis to figure out that a new book would be worth far more at its outset than the $6 million the DSM-IV generated in 2010. Leaders of the APA would not confirm the old suspicion that money was a driving force behind the revision (although one trustee did tell me that “it would be disastrous not to get that income”), but that looming bonanza had to be looking pretty good—if only they could get their hands on it.


Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann

Abraham Maslow, Abraham Wald, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, anti-pattern, Anton Chekhov, Apollo 13, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Broken windows theory, business process, butterfly effect, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark pattern, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, fake news, fear of failure, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, framing effect, friendly fire, fundamental attribution error, Goodhart's law, Gödel, Escher, Bach, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, housing crisis, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, incognito mode, income inequality, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, lateral thinking, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, LuLaRoe, Lyft, mail merge, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, nocebo, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, p-value, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, Potemkin village, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, premature optimization, price anchoring, principal–agent problem, publication bias, recommendation engine, remote working, replication crisis, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, school choice, Schrödinger's Cat, selection bias, Shai Danziger, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Streisand effect, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systems thinking, The future is already here, The last Blockbuster video rental store is in Bend, Oregon, The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, uber lyft, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, urban planning, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse robotics, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, When a measure becomes a target, wikimedia commons

As with fixed and growth mindsets, there is an ongoing debate on the strength of these effects across different circumstances. The original studies in classroom settings have also been criticized, but stronger effects have been shown in other settings, such as organizational leadership. For example, a meta-analysis in the October 2009 issue of Leadership Quarterly found the Pygmalion leadership style to be the most effective of the methods studied. This meta-analysis of two hundred different studies on leadership methods was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and compared Pygmalion leadership interventions with traditional methods (popular ideas from the 1970s and earlier) as well as newer techniques described variously as charismatic, inspirational, transformational, or visionary methods.

Any isolated experiment can result in a false positive or a false negative and can also be biased by myriad factors, most commonly selection bias, response bias, and survivorship bias. Replication increases confidence in results, so start by looking for a systematic review and/or meta-analysis when researching an area. Always keep in mind that when dealing with uncertainty, the values you see reported or calculate yourself are uncertain themselves, and that you should seek out and report values with error bars! 6 Decisions, Decisions IF YOU COULD KNOW HOW your decisions would turn out, decision making would be so easy!

They were then asked to give increasingly high electric shocks to “the learner” when they made a mistake. The shocks were fake, but the participant wasn’t told that at the time; the learner was really an actor who pretended to feel pain when the “shocks” were sent. This study has been replicated many times, and a meta-analysis (see Chapter 5) found that participants were willing to administer fatal voltages 28 percent to 91 percent of the time! In less dramatic settings, authority can still be powerful. Authority explains why celebrity endorsements work, though which types of celebrity endorsements are the most effective changes over time.


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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

New York, NY: Psychology Press. Linn, M. C., & Petersen, A. C. (1985). Emergence and characterization of sex differences in spatial ability: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 56(6), 1479–1498. Voyer, D. (2011). Time limits and gender differences on paper-and-pencil tests of mental rotation: A meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 18(2), 267–277. Voyer, D., Voyer, S., & Bryden, M. P. (1995). Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: A meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 250–270. Gender and object recognition Herlitz, A., & Lovén, J. (2013).

Psychiatry Research, 220, 803–810. New York Times. (2013, October 3). Can you read people’s emotions [blog post]. Retrieved from https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/well-quiz-the-mind-behind-the-eyes/ Warrier, V., Grasby, K. L., Uzefovsky, F., Toro, R., Smith, P., Chakrabarti, B.,… Baron-Cohen, S. (2018). Genome-wide meta-analysis of cognitive empathy: Heritability, and correlates with sex, neuropsychiatric conditions and cognition. Molecular Psychiatry, 23(6), 1402–1409. doi:10.1038/mp.2017.122 Eyes dominate mouths in interpreting emotion Lee, D. H., & Anderson, A. K. (2017). Reading what the mind thinks from what the eye sees.

Spontaneous gestures during mental rotation tasks: Insights into the microdevelopment of the motor strategy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(4), 706. Wexler, M., Kosslyn, S. M., & Berthoz, A. (1998). Motor processes in mental rotation. Cognition, 68(1), 77–94. Mental rotation activates motor cortex Zacks, J. M. (2008). Neuroimaging studies of mental rotation: A meta-analysis and review. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(1), 1–19. Mental rotation of one’s body Parsons, L. M. (1987). Imagined spatial transformation of one’s body. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 116(2), 172. Parsons, L. M. (1987). Imagined spatial transformations of one’s hands and feet.


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Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bluma Zeigarnik, business process, business process outsourcing, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dean Kamen, double helix, Elon Musk, emotional labour, fear of failure, Firefox, George Santayana, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, information security, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job satisfaction, job-hopping, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum viable product, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Wisdom of Crowds, women in the workforce

Kotter, Leading Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996). The mere exposure effect: Robert B. Zajonc, “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monographs 9 (1968): 1–27. the more familiar a face: Robert F. Bornstein, “Exposure and Affect: Overview and Meta-Analysis of Research, 1968–1987,” Psychological Bulletin 106 (1989): 265–89; Robert B. Zajonc, “Mere Exposure: A Gateway to the Subliminal,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 10 (2001): 224–28; Eddie Harmon-Jones and John J. B. Allen, “The Role of Affect in the Mere Exposure Effect: Evidence from Psychophysiological and Individual Differences Approaches,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27 (2001): 889–98.

Goncalo, “Squeezed in the Middle: The Middle Status Trade Creativity for Focus,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109, no. 4 (2015), 589–603. strong gender-role stereotypes: Anne M. Koenig, Alice H. Eagly, Abigail A. Mitchell, and Tiina Ristikari, “Are Leader Stereotypes Masculine? A Meta-Analysis of Three Research Paradigms,” Psychological Bulletin 127 (2011): 616–42. “labeled bossy”: Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (New York: Knopf, 2013). voicing new revenue-generating ideas: Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, “Speaking While Female,” New York Times, January 12, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/speaking-while-female.html; Adam M.

Demographic and Structural Status Cues in Voice Recognition,” Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming (2015). Sexual harassment, she concludes: Jennifer L. Berdahl, “The Sexual Harassment of Uppity Women,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (2007): 425–37. they’re being communal: Jens Mazei, Joachim Hüffmeier, Philipp Alexander Freund, Alice F. Stuhlmacher, Lena Bilke, and Guido Hertel, “A Meta-Analysis on Gender Differences in Negotiation Outcomes and Their Moderators,” Psychological Bulletin 141 (2015): 85–104; Emily T. Amanatullah and Michael W. Morris, “Negotiating Gender Roles: Gender Differences in Assertive Negotiating Are Mediated by Women’s Fear of Backlash and Attenuated When Negotiating on Behalf of Others,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98 (2010): 256–67; Hannah Riley Bowles, Linda Babcock, and Kathleen L.


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The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep by Dr. Guy Leschziner

23andMe, Berlin Wall, British Empire, impulse control, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, pattern recognition, phenotype, stem cell, twin studies

., ‘The Association Between Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Alzheimer’s Disease: A Meta-Analysis Perspective’, Front Aging Neurosci, 12 April 2016, 8(78). Yu, J., Zhou, Z., McEvoy, R. D., Anderson, C. S., Rodgers, A., Perkovic, V., Neal, B., ‘Association of Positive Airway Pressure With Cardiovascular Events and Death in Adults With Sleep Apnea: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis’, JAMA, 11 July 2017, 318(2): 156—66. Abuzaid, A. S., Al Ashry, H. S., Elbadawi, A., Ld, H., Saad, M., Elgendy, I. Y., Elgendy, A., Mahmoud, A. N., Mentias, A., Barakat, A., Lal, C., ‘Meta-Analysis of Cardiovascular Outcomes With Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Therapy in Patients With Obstructive Sleep Apnea’, Am J Cardiol, 15 August 2017, 120(4): 693—9.

., ‘Association between light at night, melatonin secretion, sleep deprivation, and the internal clock: Health impacts and mechanisms of circadian disruption’, Life Sci, 15 March 2017, 173: 94—106. doi: 10.1016/j.lfs.2017.02.008. Travis, R. C., Balkwill, A., Fensom, G. K., Appleby, P. N., Reeves, G. K., Wang, X. S., Roddam, A. W., Gathani, T., Peto, R., Green, J., Key, T. J., Beral, V., ‘Night Shift Work and Breast Cancer Incidence: Three Prospective Studies and Meta-analysis of Published Studies’, J Natl Cancer Inst, 6 October 2016, 108(12). Chapter 2: In the Still of the Night Bargiotas, P., Arnet, I., Frei, M., Baumann, C. R., Schindler, K., Bassetti, C. L., ‘Demographic, Clinical and Polysomnographic Characteristics of Childhood-and Adult-Onset Sleepwalking in Adults’, Eur Neurol, 2017, 78(5—6): 307—11.

., Stewart, A. F. R., Shah, S. H., Gieger, C., Peters, A., Rouleau, G. A., Berger, K., Oexle, K., Di Angelantonio, E., Hinds, D. A., Müller-Myhsok, B., Winkelmann, J., ‘Identification of novel risk loci for restless legs syndrome in genome-wide association studies in individuals of European ancestry: a meta-analysis’, 23andMe Research Team, DESIR study group, Lancet Neurol, November 2017, 16(11): 898—907. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(17)30327-7. Review. Winkelmann, J., Allen, R. P., Högl, B., Inoue, Y., Oertel, W., Salminen, A. V., Winkelman, J. W., Trenkwalder, C., Sampaio, C., ‘Treatment of restless legs syndrome: Evidence-based review and implications for clinical practice (Revised 2017)’, Mov Disord, 14 May 2018. doi: 10.1002/ mds.27260.


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Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Asperger Syndrome, Atul Gawande, autism spectrum disorder, classic study, Columbine, David Brooks, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Ferguson, Missouri, Great Leap Forward, impulse control, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Paul Erdős, period drama, Peter Singer: altruism, public intellectual, publication bias, Ralph Waldo Emerson, replication crisis, Ronald Reagan, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, Walter Mischel, Yogi Berra

Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality (Augusta, GA: Emily S. Cleckley, 1988), cited by Prinz, “Is Empathy Necessary.” A different concern is raised Skeem et al., “Psychopathic Personality.” 201 a meta-analysis summarized David D. Vachon, Donald R. Lynam, and Jarrod A. Johnson, “The (Non) Relation Between Empathy and Aggression: Surprising Results from a Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 140 (2014): 751–73. People with Asperger’s syndrome Ruth C. M. Philip et al., “A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the fMRI Investigation of Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012): 901–42. See also Simon Baron-Cohen, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (New York: Basic Books, 2012).

Individuals with low empathy don’t have such a force inhibiting them, so there should be some correlation between being low in empathy and being badly behaved. But here, at least, I’m giving empathy too much credit. A recent paper reviewed the findings from all available studies of the relationship between empathy and aggression. The results are summarized in the title: “The (Non)Relation between Empathy and Aggression: Surprising Results from a Meta-Analysis.” They report that only about 1 percent of the variation in aggression is accounted for by lack of empathy. This means that if you want to predict how aggressive a person is, and you have access to an enormous amount of information about that person, including psychiatric interviews, pen-and-paper tests, criminal records, and brain scans, the last thing you would bother to look at would be measures of the person’s empathy.

The Psychopathy Checklist is predictive of future bad behavior not because it assesses empathy and related sentiments but because, first, it contains items that assess criminal history and current antisocial behavior—questions about juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, parasitic lifestyle—and, second, it contains items that have to do with lack of inhibition and poor impulse control. This conclusion about psychopaths fits well with what we know about aggressive behavior in nonpsychopaths. As we discussed in an earlier chapter, a meta-analysis summarized the data from all studies that looked at the relationship between empathy and aggression, including verbal aggression, physical aggression, and sexual aggression. It turns out that the relationship is surprisingly low. So here’s what we can say about psychopaths and empathy: They do tend to be low in empathy.


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Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, Cambridge Analytica, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, data science, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, gender pay gap, gig economy, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, lifelogging, low skilled workers, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, phenotype, post-industrial society, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, speech recognition, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, tech bro, the built environment, urban planning, women in the workforce, work culture , zero-sum game

In 2011 the World Cancer Research Fund complained that only 50% of studies into the impact of diet on cancer that included both men and women disaggregated their data by sex, making it hard to establish dietary guidelines for cancer prevention that are valid for both sexes.82 Women, for example, should probably eat more protein than men as they age (because of muscle mass loss), but ‘the optimal dose per meal to support muscle protein synthesis in older women has not been determined’.83 The failure to sex-disaggregate when you’ve actually gone to the effort of including both sexes is baffling, not to mention, as Londa Schiebinger at Stanford University puts it, ‘money wasted [and] research that is lost to future meta-analysis’.84 And when female representation in trials is so low, the ability to conduct meta-analysis can mean the difference between life and death. In 2014 a review of the FDA database of a cardiac resynchronisation therapy device (CRT-D – essentially a more complicated kind of pacemaker) trials found that women made up about 20% of participants.85 The number of women included in each individual study was so low that separating out the data for men and women didn’t reveal anything statistically significant.

They aren’t a cure, but they prevent many early deaths, and if your heart takes 150 milliseconds or longer to complete a full electrical wave, you should have one implanted. If your heart completes a full circuit in under that time, you wouldn’t benefit from one. Unless, the meta-analysis found, you happened to be female. While the 150 milliseconds threshold worked for men, it was twenty milliseconds too high for women. This may not sound like much, but the meta-analysis found that women with an electrical wave of between 130-49 milliseconds had a 76% reduction in heart failure or death and a 76% reduction in death alone from having the advanced pacemaker implanted. But these women would not be given the device under the guidelines.

No wonder that by the time they’re filling out university evaluation forms, students are primed to see their female teachers as less qualified. Schools are also teaching brilliance bias to boys. As we saw in the introduction, following decades of ‘draw a scientist’ studies where children overwhelmingly drew men, a recent ‘draw a scientist’ meta-analysis was celebrated across the media as showing that finally we were becoming less sexist.44 Where in the 1960s only 1% of children drew female scientists, 28% do now. This is of course an improvement, but it is still far off reality. In the UK, women actually outnumber men in a huge range of science degrees: 86% of those studying polymers, 57% of those studying genetics, and 56% of those studying microbiology are female.45 And in any case, the results are actually more complicated than the headlines suggest and still provide damning evidence that data gaps in school curriculums are teaching children biases.


Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

Anthropocene, Apollo 11, biofilm, buy low sell high, carbon footprint, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, deep learning, discovery of penicillin, Easter island, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, late capitalism, low earth orbit, Mason jar, meta-analysis, microbiome, moral panic, NP-complete, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, TED Talk, the built environment, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, traveling salesman, two and twenty

There is a long tradition of Native American communities using the psychedelic cactus peyote as a treatment for alcoholism. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, a number of studies investigated the possibility that psilocybin and LSD could be used to treat drug addiction. Several reported positive effects. In 2012, a meta-analysis pooled the data from the most rigorously controlled trials. It reported that a single dose of LSD had a beneficial effect on alcohol misuse that lasted up to six months (Krebs and Johansen [2012]). In an online survey designed to investigate the “natural ecology” of the phenomenon, Matthew Johnson and his colleagues analyzed accounts from more than three hundred people who reported that they had reduced their tobacco intake or stopped entirely following an experience with psilocybin or LSD (Johnson et al. [2017]).

Delaux PM, Radhakrishnan GV, Jayaraman D, Cheema J, Malbreil M, Volkening JD, Sekimoto H, Nishiyama T, Melkonian M, Pokorny L, et al. 2015. Algal ancestor of land plants was preadapted for symbiosis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112: 13390–395. Delavaux CS, Smith-Ramesh L, Kuebbing SE. 2017. Beyond nutrients: a meta-analysis of the diverse effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on plants and soils. Ecology 98: 2111–119. Deleuze G, Guattari F. 2005. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. de los Ríos A, Sancho L, Grube M, Wierzchos J, Ascaso C. 2005.

“Experimentally Testing Effects of Mycorrhizal Networks on Plant-Plant Interactions and Distinguishing Among Mechanisms.” In Mycorrhizal Networks. Horton T, ed. Springer International Publishing, pp. 255–77. Hoeksema JD, Chaudhary VB, Gehring CA, Johnson NC, Karst J, Koide RT, Pringle A, Zabinski C, Bever JD, Moore JC, et al. 2010. A meta-analysis of context-dependency in plant response to inoculation with mycorrhizal fungi. Ecology Letters 13: 394–407. Hom EF, Murray AW. 2014. Niche engineering demonstrates a latent capacity for fungal-algal mutualism. Science 345: 94–98. Honegger R. 2000. Simon Schwendener (1829–1919) and the dual hypothesis of lichens.


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Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Airbnb, Anton Chekhov, basic income, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, Broken windows theory, call centre, data science, David Graeber, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, Easter island, experimental subject, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Garrett Hardin, Hans Rosling, invention of writing, invisible hand, knowledge economy, late fees, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, nocebo, placebo effect, Rutger Bregman, scientific management, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, tulip mania, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey

Or maybe there’s something special about the Dutch culture, or this neighbourhood in Amsterdam, or even these four men, that accounts for the anomaly? On the contrary. Though the bystander effect may still be taught in many textbooks, a meta-analysis published in 2011 has shed new light on what bystanders do in emergencies. Meta-analysis is research about research, meaning it analyses a large group of other studies. This meta-analysis reviewed the 105 most important studies on the bystander effect from the past fifty years, including that first experiment by Latané and Darley (with students in a room).18 Two insights came out of this study-of-studies.

., ‘Not Like Me = Bad: Infants Prefer Those Who Harm Dissimilar Others’, Psychological Science, Vol. 24, Issue 4 (2013). 22Karen Wynn said this on the CNN show Anderson Cooper 360 on 15 February 2014. 23Bloom, Just Babies, pp. 104–5. 24The first meta-analysis, which included twenty-six studies, concluded that babies’ preference for good guys is ‘a well-established empirical finding’. But not everyone is convinced. Some scientists who repeated Hamlin’s experiment saw the same effect, but others found no significant correlation. See Francesco Margoni and Luca Surian, ‘Infants’ Evaluation of Prosocial and Antisocial Agents: A Meta-Analysis’, Developmental Psychology, Vol. 54, Issue 8 (2018). 25Susan Seligson, ‘Felix Warneken Is Overturning Assumptions about the Nature of Altruism’, Radcliffe Magazine (Winter 2015). 26In Warneken’s TEDx Talk (titled: ‘Need Help?

We know, for instance, that the ‘innovative’ policing of William Bratton and his Brattonistas was not responsible for the drop in New York City’s crime rates at all. The decline set in earlier, and in other cities, too. Cities like San Diego, where the police left minor troublemakers alone. In 2015, a meta-analysis of thirty studies on broken windows theory revealed that there’s no evidence Bratton’s aggressive policing strategies did anything to reduce crime.33 Zip, zero, zilch. Neighbourhoods aren’t made safer by issuing parking tickets, just as you couldn’t have saved the Titanic by scrubbing the deck.


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Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

Psychological Science, 25, 1914–23. Twenge, J. M., Gentile, B., DeWall, C. N., Ma, D., Lacefield, K., et al. 2010. Birth cohort increases in psychopathology among young Americans, 1938–2007: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the MMPI. Clinical Psychology Review, 30, 145–54. Twenge, J. M., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. 2002. Age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, and birth cohort differences on the children’s depression inventory: A meta-analysis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 111, 578–88. Twenge, J. M., Sherman, R. A., & Lyubomirsky, S. 2016. More happiness for young people and less for mature adults: Time period differences in subjective well-being in the United States, 1972–2014.

We certainly find incremental improvements to celebrate, such as a decline in the death rate from cancer over the past twenty-five years of around a percentage point a year, saving a million lives in the United States alone.20 But we also are regularly disappointed by miracle drugs that work no better than the placebo, treatments with side effects worse than the disease, and trumpeted benefits that wash out in the meta-analysis. Medical progress today is more Sisyphus than Singularity. Lacking the gift of prophecy, no one can say whether scientists will ever find a cure for mortality. But evolution and entropy make it unlikely. Senescence is baked into our genome at every level of organization, because natural selection favors genes that make us vigorous when we are young over those that make us live as long as possible.

Eisner, together with the historian Randolph Roth, notes that crime often shoots up in decades in which people question their society and government, including the American Civil War, the 1960s, and post-Soviet Russia.33 Recent reviews of what does and doesn’t work in crime prevention back up Eisner’s advisory, particularly a massive meta-analysis by the sociologists Thomas Abt and Christopher Winship of 2,300 studies evaluating just about every policy, plan, program, project, initiative, intervention, nostrum, and gimmick that has been tried in recent decades.34 They concluded that the single most effective tactic for reducing violent crime is focused deterrence.


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Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Atul Gawande, autism spectrum disorder, equal pay for equal work, feminist movement, gender pay gap, Helicobacter pylori, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Joan Didion, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microaggression, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, phenotype, pre–internet, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sexual politics, Skype, stem cell, TED Talk, women in the workforce

Noel Bairey Merz et al., “Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs Regarding Cardiovascular Disease in Women,” Journal of the American College of Cardiology 70, no. 2 (July 2017), doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2017.05.024. Meanwhile, a 2015 meta-analysis . . . Aimee Galick, Elizabeth D’Arrigo-Patrick, and Carmen Knudson-Martin, “Can Anyone Hear Me? Does Anyone See Me? A Qualitative Meta-Analysis of Women’s Experiences of Heart Disease,” Qualitative Health Research 25, no. 8 (August 2015), doi:10.1177/1049732315584743. In a 2008 experiment . . . M. Bönte et al., “Women and Men with Coronary Heart Disease in Three Countries: Are They Treated Differently?”

Elizabeth N. Chapman, Anna Kaatz, and Molly Carnes, “Physicians and Implicit Bias: How Doctors May Unwittingly Perpetuate Health Care Disparities,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 28, no. 11 (November 2013), doi:10.1007/s11606-013-2441-1. A 2012 meta-analysis . . . Salimah H. Meghani, Eeeseung Byun, and Rollin M. Gallagher, “Time to Take Stock: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review of Analgesic Treatment Disparities for Pain in the United States,” Pain Medicine 13, no. 2 (February 2012), doi:10.1111/j.1526-4637.2011.01310.x. A 2015 study found that white children . . . Monika K. Goyal et al., “Racial Disparities in Pain Management of Children with Appendicitis in Emergency Departments,” JAMA Pediatrics 169, no. 11 (November 2015), doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1915.

Of course, the same counterargument to the exclusion of women applies here: if the results of the study do vary significantly due to fluctuations in ovarian hormones, that’s just all the more reason females need to be studied, no matter the cost. Interestingly, however, it seems that the long-standing assumption that their hormonal cycle makes female animals inherently more variable than males is just that: an assumption. A 2014 meta-analysis of nearly three hundred articles found that female mice weren’t more variable than their male counterparts on a range of behavioral, morphological, physiological, and molecular traits. And for several traits, it was the males that were more variable, perhaps, according to the researchers, largely because when male mice are housed together, they tend to fight among themselves for status, leading to differences in their levels of stress hormones and testosterone.


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Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization by Scott Barry Kaufman

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, classic study, dark triade / dark tetrad, David Brooks, desegregation, Donald Trump, fear of failure, Greta Thunberg, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, imposter syndrome, impulse control, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, Maslow's hierarchy, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, overview effect, Paradox of Choice, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, science of happiness, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social intelligence, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury

Severe obesity as a habituation syndrome: Evidence during a starvation study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 22(2), 120–127. 24. Swanson & Dinello, Severe obesity as a habituation syndrome, p. 124. 25. Orquin, J. L., & Kurzban, R. (2016). A meta-analysis of blood glucose effects on human decision making. Psychological Bulletin, 142(5), 546–567. 26. Nettle, Does hunger contribute to socioeconomic gradients in behavior?; Orquin & Kurzban, A meta-analysis of blood glucose effects on human decision making. 27. Nettle, Does hunger contribute to socioeconomic gradients in behavior? 28. Fessler, Pseudoparadoxical impulsivity in restrictive anorexia nervosa. 29.

From Vulnerability to Growth Vulnerable narcissism need not be a barrier to growth. Any of us, regardless of our levels of these characteristics, can take charge of our lives and start to build a coherent and stable sense of self. A key way of overcoming severe self-esteem uncertainty is to shed the perfectionistic self-presentation. As one meta-analysis of the literature found, vulnerable narcissism is significantly linked to an obsessive concern over whether one is coming across as imperfect to others, as well as perceiving others as demanding perfection of oneself.51 Worrying less about what everyone thinks of you, taking more risks (even if they may make you look bad), and really testing whether everyone demands such a high level of perfection from you can stabilize self-esteem.

We found that grandiose narcissism is also related to a black-and-white view of others, seen in the endorsement of statements such as “As far as I’m concerned, people are either good or bad,” as well as an extreme view of themselves, seeing themselves as fearless and bold. For example, we found a strong correlation between grandiose narcissism and the statement “I ignore danger as if I were Superman.” These overly inflated views of the self are linked to the high levels of perfectionism found among those who score high in grandiose narcissism.63 One meta-analysis found that those scoring high in grandiose narcissism are more likely to impose harshly perfectionistic demands on others, showing perpetual dissatisfaction with their perceived flaws.64 Grandiose narcissism was also correlated with perfectionistic self-promotion and fantasies of achieving perfection.


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Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? by David G. Blanchflower

90 percent rule, active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Clapham omnibus, collective bargaining, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, driverless car, estate planning, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Bercow, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nate Silver, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shock, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, p-value, Panamax, pension reform, Phillips curve, plutocrats, post-materialism, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, quantitative easing, rent control, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, urban planning, working poor, working-age population, yield curve

Subsequent mortality was inversely correlated with the number of occasions on which participants reported high enjoyment of life. Chida and Steptoe (2008) conducted a meta-analysis and found that positive psychological well-being was related to lower mortality. Joy, happiness, and energy, as well as life satisfaction, hopefulness, optimism, and a sense of humor, lowered the risk of mortality. Obesity is also correlated with depression, but the direction of causation is not obvious.21 Obesity makes people depressed, or depression makes people eat, which causes depression or possibly both in a downward spiral. Luppino et al. (2010) addressed this issue with a meta-analysis of studies using longitudinal data and examined whether depression is predictive of the development of overweight and obesity and, in turn, whether overweight and obesity are predictive of the development of depression.

Fourth, any local impact is likely to be diluted by adjustment processes, for example changes in the industrial composition and production technologies as well as capital flows” (109).29 A recent meta-analysis updated the list of papers estimating the effect of immigration on wages. 30 Of the 28 countries and studies reviewed, 13 find no significant effect, 7 find a small positive effect, and 8 find a small negative effect. A similar meta-analysis for employment has shown that a 1-percentage-point increase in the share of immigrants has an almost negligible impact on native employment, reducing it by 0.024 percent.31 Overall, only about half of studies found a downward effect on wages or employment that is statistically significant at the 10 percent level.

The impact of prolonged time spent in unemployment on depression symptoms appears to be explained by individual demographic factors in the sampled countries. 3) Unemployment increases susceptibility to malnutrition, illness, mental stress, and loss of selfesteem, leading to depression.32 There is evidence for the United States that being jobless injures self-esteem and fosters feelings of externality and helplessness among youths.33 The psychological imprint of joblessness persists. Paul and Moser (2009) in a meta-analysis of 237 cross-sectional and 87 longitudinal studies concluded that the unemployed exhibit more distress than the employed. A significant difference was found for several indicator variables of mental health including symptoms of distress, depression, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, subjective well-being, and self-esteem.


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Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking by Richard E. Nisbett

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, big-box store, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, cosmological constant, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, do well by doing good, Edward Jenner, endowment effect, experimental subject, feminist movement, fixed income, fundamental attribution error, Garrett Hardin, glass ceiling, Henri Poincaré, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, quantitative easing, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Shai Danziger, Socratic dialogue, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, William of Occam, Yitang Zhang, Zipcar

; Dijksterhuis, “Think Different: The Merits of Unconscious Thought in Preference Development and Decision Making”; Dijksterhuis and Nordgren, “A Theory of Unconscious Thought”; A. Dijksterhuis et al., “On Making the Right Choice: The Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect”; Gonzalo et al., “‘Save Angels Perhaps’: A Critical Examination of Unconscious Thought Theory and the Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect”; Strick et al., “A Meta-Analysis on Unconscious Thought Effects.” 11. Lewicki et al., “Nonconscious Acquisition of Information.” 12. Klarreich, “Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap.” 13. Ghiselin, ed. The Creative Process. 14. Maier, “Reasoning in Humans II: The Solution of a Problem and Its Appearance in Consciousness.” 15.

Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett, “Undermining Children’s Intrinsic Interest with Extrinsic Reward: A Test of the Overjustification Hypothesis.” PART III: CODING, COUNTING, CORRELATION, AND CAUSALITY 1. Lehman, Lempert, and Nisbett, “The Effects of Graduate Training on Reasoning: Formal Discipline and Thinking About Everyday Life Events.” 7. ODDS AND NS 1. Kuncel, Hezlett, and Ones, “A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of the Predictive Validity of the Graduate Record Examinations: Implications for Graduate Student Selection and Performance.” 2. Kunda and Nisbett, “The Psychometrics of Everyday Life.” 3. Rein and Rainwater, “How Large Is the Welfare Class?” 4. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. 8. LINKED UP 1.

LINKED UP 1. Smedslund, “The Concept of Correlation in Adults”; Ward and Jenkins, “The Display of Information and the Judgment of Contingency.” 2. Zagorsky, “Do You Have to Be Smart to Be Rich? The Impact of IQ on Wealth, Income and Financial Distress.” 3. Kuncel, Hezlett, and Ones, “A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of the Predictive Validity of the Graduate Record Examinations: Implications for Graduate Student Selection and Performance.” 4. Schnall et al., “The Relationship Between Religion and Cardiovascular Outcomes and All-Cause Mortality: The Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study (Electronic Version).” 5.


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The End of Illness by David B. Agus

confounding variable, Coronary heart disease and physical activity of work, Danny Hillis, discovery of penicillin, double helix, epigenetics, germ theory of disease, Google Earth, Gregor Mendel, impulse control, information retrieval, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, microbiome, Murray Gell-Mann, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, personalized medicine, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Salesforce, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, the scientific method

Thankfully, sound research from some of our most trusted purveyors of medical wisdom has tried to put this uncertainty to rest. Today, the growing body of evidence—and scientific opinion held—is changing the landscape for these molecules. For starters, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic attempted to clear up the confusion about supplement use by doing a meta-analysis—an overview study of the best-designed, largest studies of antioxidants. A meta-analysis is an excellent way to explore an idea because it allows investigators to combine the results of many studies, thereby allowing small benefits or harm to be seen that may not have been appreciated in any one study. The Cleveland group’s findings were published in 2003 in the British medical journal the Lancet.

The researchers analyzed results from seven large, randomized trials of vitamin E, alone or in combination with other antioxidants, and eight of beta-carotene, which is a precursor of vitamin A. The doses of vitamin E ranged from 50–800 international units (IU); for beta-carotene, the doses were 15–50 milligrams (mg). Overall, 81,788 patients were included in the vitamin E portion of the meta-analysis and 138,113 in the beta-carotene portion. The researchers looked for the effect of these antioxidant vitamins on death rates, either from cardiovascular disease or from any other cause, what’s referred to in scientific circles as “all-cause mortality.” Much to the their surprise, vitamin E did not provide any benefit in lowering mortality compared to control treatments, and it did not significantly decrease the risk of cardiovascular death or stroke (“cerebrovascular accident”).

The effects of travel on team performance in the Australian national netball competition. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 7, no. 1 (March 2004): 118–22. Bjelakovic, G., D. Nikolova, L.L. Gluud, R.G. Simonetti, and C. Gluud. Mortality in randomized trials of antioxidant supplements for primary and secondary prevention: systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Medical Association 297, no. 8 (February 28, 2007): 842–57. Blair, S.N. Physical inactivity: the biggest public health problem of the 21st century. British Journal of Sports Medicine 43, no. 1 (January 2009): 1–2. Blair, S.N., et al. A tribute to Professor Jeremiah Morris: the man who invented the field of physical activity epidemiology.


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Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann

4chan, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-communist, anti-globalists, augmented reality, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Chelsea Manning, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Brooks, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, immigration reform, imperial preference, income inequality, it's over 9,000, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberal capitalism, longitudinal study, Lyft, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microaggression, moral panic, Nate Silver, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, open borders, open immigration, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, phenotype, postnationalism / post nation state, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Social Justice Warrior, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, the built environment, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transcontinental railway, twin studies, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, white flight, working-age population, World Values Survey, young professional

Conservatism involves maintaining continuity with the past and resisting change.26 If the West was diverse and became more homogeneous – as occurred in Poland or Vienna after 1939 – the conservative instinct would be to wax nostalgic about past diversity. Ethnic change is the irritant, not levels of diversity, which is why a meta-analysis of the academic literature I helped conduct shows ethnic change nearly always predicts increased anti-immigration sentiment and populist-right voting.27 Psychological authoritarianism, by contrast, concerns the quest for order and security. Diversity, whether ethnic or ideological, however long its provenance, is problematic because it disrupts a sense of harmony and cohesion.

For instance, it is conceivable that the rate of ethnic change may taper but assimilation proceeds too slowly to prevent the stock of non-whites from continuing to rise. In this case, we should expect reduced conservative opposition to immigration in tandem with heightening authoritarian concern. In a meta-analysis of all academic articles published between 1995 and 2016 on the relationship between diversity and either opposition to immigration or support for populist-right parties in the West, Matthew Goodwin and I found that both ethnic change and raw minority levels counted at the national level – though minority change was a somewhat stronger predictor of white hostility than minority share.13 Needless to say, the survey and election data we have, much of which dates from the 1990s, makes it very difficult to disentangle the effect of levels from changes.

In addition, the effect size of anti-immigration attitudes was twice that of dissatisfaction with democracy in predicting whether an individual in a European country voted for the populist right.19 The same was true in the early 2000s, with cultural threats many times stronger than economic threats in some models.20 In a meta-analysis of the literature on the populist right between 1995 and 2016 that I conducted with Matthew Goodwin of the University of Kent, the effects of minority share on attitudes to immigration and on populist-right support were virtually identical, suggesting the two outcomes are closely linked. Populist-right support in a city, region or country was positively correlated with the share of minorities or immigrants in twenty-seven of thirty-five studies where a significant relationship was found.


Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers by David Perlmutter, Kristin Loberg

autism spectrum disorder, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, epigenetics, Gary Taubes, Gregor Mendel, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, phenotype, publication bias, Ralph Waldo Emerson, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell

., “Antidepressant Use and Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Morbidity and Mortality Among Postmenopausal Women in the Women’s Health Initiative Study,” Archives of Internal Medicine 169, no. 22 (December 14, 2009): 2128–39. 21. J. C. Fournier, et al., “Antidepressant Drug Effects and Depression Severity: A Patient-level Meta-analysis,” JAMA 303, no. 1 (January 6, 2010): 47–53. 22. J. Y. Shin, et al., “Are Cholesterol and Depression Inversely Related? A Meta-analysis of the Association Between Two Cardiac Risk Factors,” Annals of Behavioral Medicine 36, no. 1 (August 2008): 33–43. 23. http://www.naturalnews.com/032125_statins_memory_loss.html. 24. James Greenblatt, MD, “Low Cholesterol and Its Psychological Effects: Low Cholesterol Is Linked to Depression, Suicide, and Violence,” The Breakthrough Depression Solution (blog), Psychology Today, June 10, 2011, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-breakthrough-depression-solution/201106/low-cholesterol-and-its-psychological-effects. 25.

Weverling-Rijnsburger, et al., “Total Cholesterol and Risk of Mortality in the Oldest Old,” Lancet 350, no. 9085 (October 18, 1997): 1119–23. 13. L. Dupuis, et al., “Dyslipidemia Is a Protective Factor in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis,” Neurology 70, no. 13 (March 25, 2008): 1004–09. 14. P. W. Siri-Tarino, et al., “Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies Evaluating the Association of Saturated Fat with Cardiovascular Disease,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 91, no. 3 (March 2010): 535–46. 15. Michael I. Gurr, et al., Lipid Biochemistry: An Introduction, Fifth Edition (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 16.

., “Insulin Resistance in Cognitive Impairment: The InCHIANTI Study,” Archives of Neurology 62, no. 7 (2005): 1067–72. 18. M. Adamczak and A. Wiecek, “The Adipose Tissue as an Endocrine Organ,” Seminars in Nephrology 33, no. 1 (January 2013): 2–13. 19. E. L. de Hollander, et al., “The Association Between Waist Circumference and Risk of Mortality Considering Body Mass Index in 65-to 74-year-olds: A Meta-analysis of 29 Cohorts Involving More Than 58,000 Elderly Persons,” International Journal of Epidemiology 41, no. 3 (June 2012): 805–17. 20. F. Item and D. Konrad, “Visceral Fat and Metabolic Inflammation: The Portal Theory Revisited,” pt. 2, Obesity Reviews 13 (December 2012): S30–S39. 21. C. Geroldi, et al., “Insulin Resistance in Cognitive Impairment” (see chap. 4, n. 17). 22.


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The Art of Statistics: How to Learn From Data by David Spiegelhalter

Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, Bayesian statistics, Brexit referendum, Carmen Reinhart, Charles Babbage, complexity theory, computer vision, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Edmond Halley, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, government statistician, Gregor Mendel, Hans Rosling, Higgs boson, Kenneth Rogoff, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, Netflix Prize, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, p-value, placebo effect, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, replication crisis, self-driving car, seminal paper, sparse data, speech recognition, statistical model, sugar pill, systematic bias, TED Talk, The Design of Experiments, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, Two Sigma

Don’t rely on a single study: A single statin trial may tell us that the drug worked in a particular group in a particular place, but robust conclusions require multiple studies. 9. Review the evidence systematically: When looking at multiple trials, make sure to include every study that has been done, and so create what is known as a systematic review. The results may then be formally combined in a meta-analysis. For example, a recent systematic review put together evidence from twenty-seven randomized trials of statins, which included more than 170,000 people at lower risk of cardiovascular disease.4 But rather than focusing on the difference between the groups allocated to taking statins and controls, they instead estimated the effect of reducing LDL.

We have ignored the possibility that any observed relationship is not causal at all, but simply the result of chance. Most drugs on the market have only moderate effects, and only help a minority of people who take them, and their overall benefit can only be reliably detected by large, meticulous, randomized trials. Statin trials are huge, especially when put together in a meta-analysis, which means that the results discussed here cannot be put down to chance variation. (We shall see how to check this in Chapter 10.) Is prayer effective? The list of principles for RCTs is not new: they were nearly all introduced in 1948 in what is generally considered the first proper clinical trial.

Think about cherry-picked results, missing information that would conflict with the story, and lack of independent comment. HOW TRUSTWORTHY IS THE INTERPRETATION? 7. How does the claim fit with what else is known? Consider the context, appropriate comparators, including historical data, and what other studies have shown, ideally in a meta-analysis. 8. What’s the claimed explanation for whatever has been seen? Vital issues are correlation v. causation, regression to the mean, inappropriate claim that a non-significant result means ‘no effect’, confounding, attribution, prosecutor’s fallacy. 9. How relevant is the story to the audience?


The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention by Simon Baron-Cohen

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Asperger Syndrome, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, bioinformatics, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, discovery of penicillin, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Fellow of the Royal Society, Greta Thunberg, intentional community, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jim Simons, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, neurotypical, out of africa, pattern recognition, phenotype, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, theory of mind, twin studies, zero-sum game

Grice (1989), Studies in the way of words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press); and J. L. Austin (1962), How to do things with words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, ed. J. O. Urmson and M. Sbisà (Oxford: Clarendon Press). 53. See C. Colonnesi et al. (2010), “The relation between pointing and language development: A meta-analysis,” Developmental Review 30(4), 352–366; M. Tomasello (2006), “Why don’t apes point?,” in Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition, and interaction, ed. N. Enfield and S. Levinson (Oxford and New York: Berg); and A. Smet and R. Byrne (2013), “African elephants can use human pointing cues to find hidden food,” Current Biology 23(20), 2033–2037.

Baron-Cohen et al. (2001), “The ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42, 241–252. 24. On the genetic association with the Eyes test, see V. Warrier et al. (2018), “Genome-wide meta-analysis of cognitive empathy: Heritability, and correlates with sex, neuropsychiatric conditions and cognition,” Molecular Psychiatry 23, 1402–1409. Genome-wide association studies are currently the most powerful way to identify if scores on any trait measure are correlated with any common genetic variants.

Johannesson (1994), “Sexual selection on female size in a marine snail, Littorina littorea (L.),” Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 181, 145–157; A. Fargevieille et al. (2017), “Assortative mating by colored ornaments in blue tits: Space and time matter,” Ecology and Evolution 7(7), 2069–2078; G. Stulp et al. (2017), “Assortative mating for human height: A meta-analysis,” American Journal of Human Biology 29(1, January–February), e22917; K. Han, N. C. Weed, and J. N. Butcher (2003), “Butcher dyadic agreement on the MMPI-2,” Personality and Individual Differences 35, 603–615; and J. Glickson and H. Golan (2001), “Personality, cognitive style, and assortative mating,” Personality and Individual Differences 30, 1109–1209. 14.


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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

E. Marler, “Change Driven by Nature: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Proactive Personality,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 75, no. 3 (2009): 329–345. (A meta-analysis of 107 studies.) Jeffrey P. Thomas, Daniel S. Whitman, and Chockalingam Viswesvaran, “Employee Proactivity in Organizations: A Comparative Meta-Analysis of Emergent Proactive Constructs,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 83, no. 2 (2010): 275–300. (A meta-analysis of 103 samples.) 225. Wikipedia, “Poka-yoke,” last modified May 11, 2014, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poka-yoke. 226. Steven F. Venti and David A. Wise, “Choice, Chance, and Wealth Dispersion at Retirement,” in Aging Issues in the United States and Japan, eds.

Happily, the 2013 movie The Internship, about two washed-up watch salesmen who decide to become interns at Google, gave the answer to the blender question, so at least that one can’t be asked as an interview question anymore.xxii A century of science points the way to an answer In 1998, Frank Schmidt and John Hunter published a meta-analysis of eighty-five years of research on how well assessments predict performance.85 They looked at nineteen different assessment techniques and found that typical, unstructured job interviews were pretty bad at predicting how someone would perform once hired. Unstructured interviews have an r2 of 0.14, meaning that they can explain only 14 percent of an employee’s performance.xxiii This is somewhat ahead of reference checks (explaining 7 percent of performance), ahead of the number of years of work experience (3 percent), and well ahead of “graphology,” or handwriting analysis (0.04 percent), which I’m stunned that anyone actually uses.

Springbett of the University of Manitoba, published in 1958. Though using a very small sample of interviewers, he found that decisions were typically made within the first four minutes of an interview. Subsequent research includes: Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, “Thin Slices of Expressive Behavior as Predictors of Interpersonal Consequences: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 111, no. 2 (1992): 256–274 ; M. R. Barrick, B. W. Swider, and G. L. Stewart, “Initial Evaluations in the Interview: Relationships with Subsequent Interviewer Evaluations and Employment Offers,” Journal of Applied Psychology 95, no. 6 (2010): 1163–1172 ; M. R. Barrick, S.


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The Village Effect: How Face-To-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter by Susan Pinker

assortative mating, Atul Gawande, autism spectrum disorder, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, call centre, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, delayed gratification, digital divide, Edward Glaeser, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, estate planning, facts on the ground, fixed-gear, game design, happiness index / gross national happiness, indoor plumbing, intentional community, invisible hand, Kickstarter, language acquisition, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, neurotypical, Occupy movement, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), place-making, Ponzi scheme, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Ray Oldenburg, Silicon Valley, Skype, social contagion, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Great Good Place, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, tontine, Tony Hsieh, Twitter Arab Spring, urban planning, Yogi Berra

For more on why we’re so bad at predicting what will make us happy, read Harvard’s Dan Gilbert: Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Knopf, 2006). 63. Finkel et al., “Online Dating: A Critical Analysis from the Perspective of Psychological Science.” 64. Matching personality traits do not predict the longevity of a relationship, according to a meta-analysis of 313 studies: R. Matthew Montoya, Robert S. Horton, and Jeffrey Kirchner, “Is Actual Similarity Necessary for Attraction? A Meta-analysis of Actual and Perceived Similarity,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 25, no. 6 (2008). 65. The following assertion appeared on eHarmony’s website in August 2012: “Our compatibility matching models are based on 35 years of clinical experience and rigorous scientific research into which characteristics between spouses are consistently associated with the most successful relationships.”

The twenty-strong team of international researchers who conducted this study found that the increased rate of early breastfeeding in the experimental group led to fewer digestive and skin ailments in the babies in the short term, and also to a boosted verbal IQ score in the long term, when these children were tested six years later.9 Presumably every parent wants clever children, and an average increase of 7.5 IQ points is nothing to sneeze at. So impressed were they with the data showing enhanced health and intelligence in breastfed babies that officials at the World Health Organization based its international breastfeeding strategy on a meta-analysis of these studies. This leads us to an uncomfortable question. If the majority of women in the West are giving up the practice before their infants can hold up their heads, what are they missing? I asked this question of Michael Kramer, the McGill-based pediatric epidemiologist who is the Belarusian study’s lead author.

Meanwhile, research shows that face-to-face contact with a skilled teacher for even one year of a child’s life has more impact on the child’s learning than any laptop program has had so far.22 If policymakers want to use resources wisely, it is clear that you get a lot more from parent and teacher training programs than you do from investing in expensive—and highly perishable—classroom technology.23 To be sure, there are wonderful pieces of educational software on the market, and well-trained teachers who know how to use them to advantage—mostly to target specific skills.24 But among the most vulnerable kids, the ones who most need a leg-up to succeed—primarily lower-income children, those with ADHD, and impulsive boys—what boosts achievement the most are initiatives that help them develop self-discipline and what psychologists call executive function, namely the ability to plan, to hold key bits of information in memory, and to be cognitively flexible, all while inhibiting their impulses. So, what helps school-age kids master those skills? Adele Diamond and Kathleen Lee, two Canadian psychologists, asked that question in a recent meta-analysis published in Science. They discovered that even the best computer programs, which build in increasing challenges as the child gains competence, succeeded at training kids one skill at a time. But that one skill didn’t transfer well to other areas. In other words, a program that trained kids on short-term memory didn’t help them with other types of tasks, including ones that included memory skills.


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The No Need to Diet Book: Become a Diet Rebel and Make Friends With Food by Plantbased Pixie

Albert Einstein, confounding variable, David Attenborough, employer provided health coverage, fake news, food desert, meta-analysis, microaggression, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, sugar pill, ultra-processed food

Journal of Health Psychology, 31(4):521–524. 58. Havermans, R.C., Vancleef, L., Kalamatianos, A., Nederkoorn, C. (2015). ‘Eating and inflicting pain out of boredom’. Appetite, 85:52–57. 59. Cardi, V., Leppanen, J., Treasure, J. (2015). ‘The effects of negative and positive mood induction on eating behaviour: A meta-analysis of laboratory studies in the healthy population and eating and weight disorders’. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Review, 57:299–309. 60. White, B.A., Horwath, C.C, Conner, T.S. (2013). ‘Many apples a day keep the blues away:Daily experiences of negative and positive affect and food consumption in young adults’.

., Tylka, T.L. (2017). ‘Exposure to thin-ideal media affect most, but not all, women: Results from the perceived effects of media exposure scale and open-ended responses’. Body Image, 23:188–205. 111. Grabe, S., Ward, L.M., Hyde, J.S. (2008). ‘The role of the media in body image concerns among women: A meta-analysis of experimental and correlational studies’. Psychological Bulletin, 134(3):460–476. 112. Levine, M.P., Murnen, S.K. (2009). ‘“Everybody knows that mass media are/are not [pick one] a cause of eating disorders”: A critical review of evidence for a causal link between media, negative body image, and disordered eating in females’.

., Mykletun, A., Hotopf, M. (2018). ‘Exercise and the prevention of depression: Results of the HUNT cohort study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 175(1):28–36. 130. Anglin, R.E.S., Samaan, Z., Walter, S.D., McDonald, S.D. (2013). ‘Vitamin D deficiency and depression in adults: systematic review and meta-analysis’. British Journal of Psychiatry, 202(02):100–107. 131. Spence, J.C., McGannon, K.R, Poon P. (2005). ‘The effect of exercise on global self-esteem: A quantitative review’. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 27(3):311–334. 132. Hamer, M., Stamatakis, E., Steptoe, A. (2009). ‘Dose-response relationship between physical activity and mental health: The Scottish health survey’.


Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking by Cecilia Heyes

Asperger Syndrome, behavioural economics, classic study, complexity theory, epigenetics, Higgs boson, intermodal, language acquisition, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, neurotypical, phenotype, social intelligence, the built environment, theory of mind, twin studies

This section focuses on three topics—neural localization, sequence learning, and social shaping—which, although not wholly “new,” have been investigated with vigor in recent years, often with the intention of providing positive evidence in favor of the cultural account. Neural Localization In a meta-analysis of more than 450 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, Anderson (2008) found that activity during language processing was more widely scattered across the brain than during any other type of task. The spatial distribution of neural activity was greater for language than for reasoning, memory, visual perception, mental imagery, emotion, action, and attention. In a complementary way, Poldrack (2006) found in another meta-analysis of fMRI data, that Broca’s area, a region of the brain long famous for being a “language center,” was active in more studies involving cognitive tasks unrelated to language (199) than in studies of language processing (166).

New York: Oxford University Press, 49–61. Caselli, L., and Chelazzi, L. (2011). Does the macaque monkey provide a good model for studying human executive control? A comparative behavioral study of task switching. PLoS One, 6(6), e21489. Caspers, S., Zilles, K., Laird, A. R., and Eickhoff, S. B. (2010). ALE meta-analysis of action observation and imitation in the human brain. NeuroImage, 50(3),1148–1167. Catmur, C., Mars, R. B., Rushworth, M. F., and Heyes, C. (2011). Making mirrors: Premotor cortex stimulation enhances mirror and counter-mirror motor facilitation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(9), 2352–2362.

Statistical learning and language: An individual differences study. Language Learning, 62(1), 302–331. Moerk, E. L. (1991). Positive evidence for negative evidence. First Language, 11(32), 219–251. Molenberghs, P., Cunnington, R., and Mattingley, J. B. (2012). Brain regions with mirror properties: A meta-analysis of 125 human fMRI studies. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 36(1), 341–349. Moon, C., Cooper, R. P., and Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day-olds prefer their native language. Infant Behavior and Development, 16(4), 495–500. Moore, C., and Corkum, V. (1994). Social understanding at the end of the first year of life.


Know Thyself by Stephen M Fleming

Abraham Wald, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, backpropagation, citation needed, computer vision, confounding variable, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, global pandemic, higher-order functions, index card, Jeff Bezos, l'esprit de l'escalier, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, patient HM, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, recommendation engine, replication crisis, self-driving car, side project, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, statistical model, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, traumatic brain injury

Instead, to probe causality, we can use stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which uses strong magnetic pulses to temporarily disrupt normal neural activity in a particular region of cortex. When TMS is applied to the parietal midline, it selectively affects how quickly people can identify an adjective as being relevant to themselves, suggesting that the normal brain processes in this region are important for self-reflection.18 Medial surface activations obtained using the meta-analysis tool NeuroQuery in relation to the term “self-referential.” (https://neuroquery.org, accessed September 2020.) Damage to these networks can lead to isolated changes in self-awareness—we may literally lose the ability to know ourselves. The first hints that brain damage could lead to problems with metacognition came in the mid-1980s.

However, clear overlap between brain activations involved in metacognition and mindreading was observed in the ventral and anterior medial PFC. Thoughts about ourselves and others indeed seem to engage similar neural machinery, in line with a Rylean, second-order view of how we become self-aware.23 Brain activations obtained in a meta-analysis of metacognition compared to brain activations related to the term “mentalizing,” from Neurosynth. (Reproduced with permission from Vaccaro and Fleming, 2018.) Breakthrough Powers of Recursion We have already seen that animals share a range of precursors for self-awareness. The science of metacognition deals in shades of gray, rather than black or white.

“Why the Unskilled Are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight Among the Incompetent.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 105, no. 1 (2008): 98–121. Eichner, Carolin, and Fabrice Berna. “Acceptance and Efficacy of Metacognitive Training (MCT) on Positive Symptoms and Delusions in Patients with Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analysis Taking into Account Important Moderators.” Schizophrenia Bulletin 42, no. 4 (2016): 952–962. Ernst, Marc O., and Martin S. Banks. “Humans Integrate Visual and Haptic Information in a Statistically Optimal Fashion.” Nature 415, no. 6870 (2002): 429–433. Eskreis-Winkler, Lauren, Katherine L. Milkman, Dena M.


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The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century by Ronald Bailey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, biodiversity loss, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climatic Research Unit, commodity super cycle, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic transition, disinformation, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, double helix, energy security, failed state, financial independence, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Neolithic agricultural revolution, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, Peter Calthorpe, phenotype, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, rewilding, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, systematic bias, Tesla Model S, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, women in the workforce, yield curve

The Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis posits that environmental conditions initially deteriorate as economic growth takes off, but later improve when citizens with rising incomes demand better quality environmental amenities. There is still considerable debate over the empirical reality of this hypothesis, but a 2011 meta-analysis based on 878 observations from 103 empirical EKC studies (1992 to 2009) reports that its results “indicate the presence of an EKC-type relationship for landscape degradation, water pollution, agricultural wastes, municipal-related wastes, and several air pollution measures.” The best evidence backs the notion that increasing wealth from economic growth correlates with a cleaner natural environment—that is to say, richer becomes cleaner.

For example, zebra mussels are very effective filter feeders that have helped clear up the polluted waters of the Great Lakes enough to permit native lake grasses and other plants to flourish. A 2012 review article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution surveying the literature on the effects of introduced species on ecosystem functioning reported that a “meta-analysis of over 1000 field studies showing that, although regional native species richness has often declined, primary production and several ecosystem processes were usually maintained or enhanced as a result of species introductions.” The researchers further conclude, “What is clear is that ecological theory does not automatically imply that a global decline in species richness will result in impaired functioning of the world’s ecosystems.”

“The influence of innovation”: Harry Bloch and David Sapsford, “Innovation, Real Primary Commodity Prices, and the Business Cycles,” paper presented at the International Schumpeter Society Conference 2010 on Innovation, Organisation, Sustainability and Crises, Aalborg, June 2010, 10. presence of an EKC-type relationship: Bishwa Koirala et al., “Further Investigation of Environmental Kuznets Curve Studies Using Meta-Analysis.” International Journal of Ecological Economics and Statistics 22.S11 (2011). www.ceserp.com/cp-jour/index.php?journal=ijees&page=article&op=view&path[]=1014. globally, pollution: edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/news_docs/July%2019_v2.pdf, Version v4.1of the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), July 2010.


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The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Checklist Manifesto, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, delayed gratification, desegregation, game design, haute couture, impulse control, index card, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, patient HM, pattern recognition, power law, randomized controlled trial, rolodex, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, tacit knowledge, telemarketer, Tenerife airport disaster, the strength of weak ties, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, Walter Mischel

Bebbington, “The Efficacy of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Elusiveness of Hard Data,” British Journal of Psychiatry 128 (1976): 572–80. 3.20 “It’s not obvious from the way they’re written” Emrick et al., “Alcoholics Anonymous: What Is Currently Known?”; J. S. Tonigan, R. Toscova, and W. R. Miller, “Meta-analysis of the Literature on Alcoholics Anonymous: Sample and Study Characteristics Moderate Findings,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol 57 (1995): 65–72; J. S. Tonigan, W. R. Miller, and G. J. Connors, “Project MATCH Client Impressions About Alcoholics Anonymous: Measurement Issues and Relationship to Treatment Outcome,” Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 18 (2000): 25–41; J.

., “A Descriptive Study of Individuals Successful at Long-Term Maintenance of Substantial Weight Loss,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 66 (1997): 239–46; M. J. Mahoney, N. G. Moura, and T. C. Wade, “Relative Efficacy of Self-Reward, Self-Punishment, and Self-Monitoring Techniques for Weight Loss,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 40 (1973): 404–7; M. J. Franz et al., “Weight Loss Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Weight-Loss Clinical Trials with a Minimum 1-Year Follow-up,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 107 (2007): 1755–67; A. DelParigi et al., “Successful Dieters Have Increased Neural Activity in Cortical Areas Involved in the Control of Behavior,” International Journal of Obesity 31 (2007): 440–48. 4.26 researchers referred to as “grit” Jonah Lehrer, “The Truth About Grit,” The Boston Globe, August 2, 2009. 4.27 “despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress” A.

Tice, “Ego Depletion: A Resource Model of Volition, Self-Regulation, and Controlled Processing,” Social Cognition 74 (2000): 1252–65; Roy F. Baumeister and Mark Muraven, “Self-Regulation and Depletion of Limited Resources: Does Self-Control Resemble a Muscle?” Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 247–59; See also M. S. Hagger et al., “Ego Depletion and the Strength Model of Self-Control: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 136 (2010): 495–25; R. G. Baumeister, K. D. Vohs, and D. M. Tice, “The Strength Model of Self-Control,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16 (2007): 351–55; M. I. Posne and M. K. Rothbart, “Developing Mechanisms of Self-Regulation,” Development and Psychopathology 12 (2000): 427–41; Roy F.


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Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

behavioural economics, billion-dollar mistake, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Cass Sunstein, classic study, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, Great Leap Forward, hindsight bias, index fund, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, job satisfaction, Kevin Kelly, loss aversion, Max Levchin, medical residency, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, PalmPilot, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, young professional

Hayward and Hambrick also showed that when the CEOs paid a premium, they overpaid: Subsequent performance was measurably worse in situations where CEOs paid bigger premiums. 2 Alfred Sloan story. Peter F. Drucker (2006), The Effective Executive (New York: Harper Business), p. 148. 3 Meta-analysis of confirmation bias. William Hart, et al. (2009), “Feeling Validated Versus Being Correct: A Meta-analysis of Selected Exposure to Information,” Psychological Bulletin 135: 555–58. 4 Devil’s advocate. Discussion of the devil’s advocate and its role in the Catholic Church is from Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui (2008), Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last Twenty-Five Years (New York: Portfolio Books).

You search the restaurant’s reviews online, and the results show a handful of good reviews (four out of five stars) and a handful of poor ones (two stars). Which reviews would you read? Almost certainly, you’d read more of the positive reviews. You really want this restaurant to be great. A recent meta-analysis of the psychology literature illustrated how dramatic this effect is. In reviewing more than 91 studies of over 8,000 participants, the researchers concluded that we are more than twice as likely to favor confirming information than disconfirming information. (So, scientifically speaking, you’d probably read twice as many four-star reviews as two-star reviews.)

But the typical study has implicitly assumed that paralysis kicks in somewhere between 6 options and 20. Recently some researchers have argued that choice paralysis is not a serious problem even with the larger assortments. The initial demonstrations of choice paralysis attracted a lot of interest, so by 2010 a group of researchers was able to conduct a meta-analysis of over 50 published papers with more than 5,000 participants. They found that in the studies they reviewed, increasing the number of options did not reliably reduce satisfaction or motivation to choose. Indeed, in situations where people had expertise or well-developed preferences (e.g., common food categories like coffee), more choices tended to increase satisfaction.


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Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky

Andrew Keen, behavioural economics, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, citizen journalism, commons-based peer production, corporate social responsibility, Dean Kamen, experimental economics, experimental subject, fundamental attribution error, Great Leap Forward, invention of movable type, invention of the telegraph, Kevin Kelly, lolcat, means of production, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, seminal paper, social contagion, social software, Steve Ballmer, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, work culture , Yochai Benkler

In 1994, Judy Cameron and David Pierce of the University of Alberta analyzed the results of dozens of studies that had paid experimental subjects to perform various tasks. Their meta-analysis (as such studies of multiple experiments are called) denied the existence of any such crowding-out effect. Deci and research partner Richard Ryan responded in 1999, pointing out that Cameron and Pierce had included a large number of studies noting that people were more motivated to do uninteresting tasks if you paid them, a result no one disputed. What Deci had examined, rather, was intrinsic motivation for tasks a subject was interested in. Deci and Ryan’s own meta-analysis, which excluded boring tasks, again found a crowding-out effect.

Deci and Ryan’s own meta-analysis, which excluded boring tasks, again found a crowding-out effect. Cameron and Pierce’s second meta-analysis, in 2001, conceded that the crowding out of free choice can occur with the introduction of extrinsic motivations. Nevertheless, Cameron and Pierce remained skeptical that the crowding-out effect mattered much in the real world; their focus was on rewards offered in institutional settings, like schools and work-places. To them, the crowding-out effect seemed concentrated in areas where people had a high degree of freedom to choose their activity. Cameron and Pierce thus concluded that though the crowding-out effect was real, it was minor. After all, how many places are there where someone’s free choice of activities matters much to anyone but the individual?

(Zuerichbergstrasse, Zurich: Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, 1999), http://ideas.repec.org/s/zur/iewwpx.html. 73 this sort of crowding out can appear in children as young as fourteen months: Tomasello’s research on children and their view of how things should be, by some ethical compass (a trait called “normativity,” or the understanding and abiding by norms), was published as “The Sources of Normativity: Young Children’s Awareness of the Normative Structure of Games,” with his coauthors, H. Rakoczy and F. Wameken, in Developmental Psychology 44.3 (2008): 875-81. 74 dozens of studies that had paid experimental subjects: Judy Cameron and David Pierce, “Reinforcement, Reward, and Intrinsic Motivation: A Meta-Analysis,” Review of Educational Research 64.3 (1994): 363-423. 74 people were more motivated to do uninteresting tasks if you paid them: Edward L., Deci, Richard Koestner, and Richard Ryan, “A Meta-Analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 125.6 (1999): 627-68. 74 crowding out of free choice can occur with the introduction of extrinsic motivations: J.


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Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in LIfe by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

affirmative action, Airbnb, cognitive bias, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, digital map, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, General Magic , global pandemic, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Paul Graham, peak-end rule, randomized controlled trial, Renaissance Technologies, Sam Altman, science of happiness, selection bias, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, systematic bias, Tony Fadell, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, urban planning, Y Combinator

A careful randomized trial suggests that teaching kids cognitively demanding games, such as chess, doesn’t make them smarter in the long term. A careful meta-analysis of bilingual education finds that it only has small effects on various measures of a child’s cognitive performance, and the effects may be entirely due to a bias in favor of publishing positive results. Also, as it relates to the Emanuel/Fernsby debate about the merits of getting ballet lessons for boys, a meta-analysis found “limited evidence” that participation in dance programs may reduce anxiety; however, the authors suggest that this may be due to studies that are of “low methodological quality” and the results “should be treated with caution.”

., “Does teaching children how to play cognitively demanding games improve their educational attainment? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial of chess instruction in England,” Journal of Human Resources 53(4) (2018): 993–1021. careful meta-analysis of bilingual education: Hilde Lowell Gunnerud et al., “Is bilingualism related to a cognitive advantage in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 146(12) (2020): 1059. “limited evidence”: Jan Burkhardt and Cathy Brennan, “The effects of recreational dance interventions on the health and well-being of children and young people: A systematic review,” Arts & Health 4(2) (2012): 148–61.


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Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr. Julie Smith

Albert Einstein, COVID-19, fake news, fear of failure, meta-analysis, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, side hustle, TikTok

., & Nicholls, H. (2017), Third Wave CBT Integration for individuals and teams: Comprehend, cope and connect, London: Routledge. Colcombe, S., & Kramer, A. F. (2003), ‘Fitness effects on the cognitive function of older adults. A meta-analytic study’, Psychological Science, 14 (2), 125–30. Cregg, D. R., & Cheavens, J. S., ‘Gratitude Interventions: Effective Self-help? A Meta-analysis of the Impact on Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety’, Journal of Happiness Studies (2020), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00236-6 DiSalvo, D. (2013), Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain’s Power to Adapt Can Change Your Life, Dallas: BenBella Books. Feldman Barrett, L. (2017), How Emotions Are Made.

N. (2019), Brain Changer, London: Yellow Kite. Jacka, F. N., et al. (2017), ‘A randomized controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression (the ‘SMILES’ trial)’, BMC Medicine, 15 (1), 23. Josefsson, T., Lindwall, M., & Archer, T. (2013), ‘Physical Exercise Intervention in Depressive Disorders: Meta Analysis and Systemic Review’, Medicine and Science in Sports, 24 (2), 259–72. Joseph, N. T., Myers, H. F., et al. (2011), ‘Support and undermining in interpersonal relationships are associated with symptom improvement in a trial of antidepressant medication’, Psychiatry, 74 (3), 240–54. Kim, W., Lim, S.

., et al. (2009), ‘Emotion-related changes in heart rate and its variability during performance and perception of music’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169, 359–62. Olsen, C. M. (2011), ‘Natural Rewards, Neuroplasticity, and Non-Drug Addictions’, Neuropharmacology, 61 (7), 1109–22. Petruzzello, S. J., Landers, D. M., et al. (1991), ‘A meta-analysis on the anxiety-reducing effects of acute and chronic exercise. Outcomes and mechanisms’, Sports Medicine, 11 (3), 143–82. Raichlen, D. A., Foster, A. D., Seillier, A., Giuffrida, A., & Gerdeman, G. L. (2013), ‘Exercise-Induced Endocannabinoid Signaling Is Modulated by Intensity’, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 113 (4), 869–75.


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The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, assortative mating, behavioural economics, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, deliberate practice, deskilling, disruptive innovation, do what you love, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, experimental subject, fear of failure, Flynn Effect, future of work, George Akerlof, ghettoisation, hive mind, job satisfaction, Kenneth Arrow, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market bubble, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Peter Thiel, price discrimination, profit maximization, publication bias, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, school choice, selection bias, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Steven Pinker, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, trickle-down economics, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, yield curve, zero-sum game

“Effectiveness of Early Educational Intervention.” Science 333 (6045): 975–78 Barnett, Susan, and Stephen Ceci. 2002. “When and Where Do We Apply What We Learn? A Taxonomy for Far Transfer.” Psychological Bulletin 128 (4): 612–37. Barrick, Murray, and Michael Mount. 1991. “The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance: A Meta-analysis.” Personality Psychology 44 (1): 1–26. Barro, Robert, and John-Wha Lee. 2001. “International Data on Educational Attainment: Updates and Implications.” Oxford Economic Papers 53 (3): 541–63. ———. 2013. “A New Data Set of Educational Attainment in the World, 1950–2010.” Journal of Development Economics 104: 184–98.

“How to Get Really Smart: Modeling Retest and Training Effects in Ability Testing Using Computer-Generated Figural Matrix Items.” Intelligence 39 (4): 233–43. Friedman, Milton. 1982. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2003. “Letter to Richard Vedder.” September 12. Unpublished. Furnée, Carin, Wim Groot, and Henriëtte Maassen van Den Brink. 2008. “The Health Effects of Education: A Meta-analysis.” European Journal of Public Health 18 (4): 417–21. Ganzach, Yoav. 2003. “Intelligence, Education, and Facets of Job Satisfaction.” Work and Occupations 30 (1): 97–122. Garber, Steven, and Steven Klepper. 1980. “Extending the Classical Normal Errors-in-Variables Model.” Econometrica 48 (6): 1541–46.

In Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3C, edited by Orley Ashenfelter and David Card, 3573–630. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Grogger, Jeff. 1998. “Market Wages and Youth Crime.” Journal of Labor Economics 16 (4): 756–91. Groot, Wim, and Henriètte Van den Brink. 2000. “Overeducation in the Labor Market: A Meta-analysis.” Economics of Education Review 19 (2): 149–58. Gross, Neil, and Solon Simmons. 2007. “The Social and Political Views of American Professors.” Working Paper, Harvard University. Accessed November 15, 2015. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.147.6141&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Groves, Melissa. 2005.


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Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made by Vaclav Smil

8-hour work day, agricultural Revolution, AltaVista, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Boeing 747, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, complexity theory, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, energy transition, European colonialism, Extinction Rebellion, Ford Model T, garden city movement, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, peak oil, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, power law, precision agriculture, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Republic of Letters, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Singularitarianism, Skype, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, working-age population

A comprehensive assessment of people aged 65–91 found the respective prevalence of these conditions to be about 10%, 39%, 21% 11%, and 16% but the prevalence of pre-frailty (with limitations in one or two of the five of the previously mentioned characteristics) was 52% (Yuki et al. 2016). These findings correspond to 2015 populations of about three million frail people requiring care and of nearly 18 million people in the pre-frailty stage. And a systematic meta-analysis of the prevalence of frailty in Japan uncovered the extent of its inexorable rise with aging, from only about 2% among those between 65 and 69 years old to 4% for those between 70 and 74, 10% for those between 75 and 79, 20% for people in their early 80s, and 35% for people older than 85 years (Kojima et al. 2017).

Again, a reversal of former conclusions but one that also recognizes the complex nature of the exposure: heptadecanoic acid appears to be CVD- and stroke-protective but its long-term presence carries a potentially higher risk of non-CVD death. And another, more specific link between fatty acids and CVD is now in doubt. Higher intakes of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids from oily fish, as well as of alpha-linolenic acid from plants, were advocated to lower the risks of cardiovascular events. But the most extensive meta-analysis of relevant studies shows, with a high degree of confidence, that higher intakes of these acids have little or no effect on overall mortality as well as on cardiovascular events, and that they probably make little or no difference to cardiovascular death, coronary deaths, stroke, or heart irregularities (Abdelhamid et al. 2018).

A new dataset on infant mortality rates, 1816–2002. Journal of Peace Research 44:743–754. Abramovitz, M. 1956. Resource and output trends in the United States. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 46:5–23. Achten, W.M.J. and K. van Acker. 2015. EU-average impacts of wheat production: A meta-analysis of life cycle assessments. Journal of Industrial Ecology 20:132–144. Adams, J.M. and H. Faure. 1998. A new estimate of changing carbon storage on land since the last glacial maximum, based on global land ecosystem reconstruction. Global and Planetary Change 16–17:3–24. Adriaanse, A. et al. 1997.


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Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price

Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, David Graeber, defund the police, Donald Trump, emotional labour, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, impulse control, independent contractor, job satisfaction, meta-analysis, multilevel marketing, neurotypical, phenotype, QAnon, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Rubik’s Cube, seminal paper, theory of mind, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income

., & Gowen, E. (2020). “No way out except from external intervention”: First-hand accounts of autistic inertia. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6 Demetriou, E. A., Lampit, A., Quintana, D. S., Naismith, S. L., Song, Y. J. C., Pye, J. E.,…& Guastella, A. J. (2018). Autism spectrum disorders: meta-analysis of executive function. Molecular Psychiatry, 23(5), 1198–1204. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7 Some people who otherwise exhibit Autism spectrum traits and report Autistic cognitive challenges do not exhibit social or behavioral signs, due to camoflauging of symptoms: L. A. Livingston, B.

Autism and attachment difficulties: Overlap of symptoms, implications and innovative solutions. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 22(4), 632–648. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34 McElhanon, B. O., McCracken, C., Karpen, S., & Sharp, W. G. (2014). Gastrointestinal symptoms in autism spectrum disorder: A meta-analysis. Pediatrics, 133(5), 872–883. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35 Baeza-Velasco, C., Cohen, D., Hamonet, C., Vlamynck, E., Diaz, L., Cravero, C.,…& Guinchat, V. (2018). Autism, joint hypermobility–related disorders and pain. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9, 656. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36 Bolton, P.

Big Five model and trait emotional intelligence in camouflaging behaviours in autism. Personality and Individual Differences, 152, 109565. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 61 Fournier, K. A., Hass, C. J., Naik, S. K., Lodha, N., & Cauraugh, J. H. (2010). Motor coordination in autism spectrum disorders: A synthesis and meta-analysis. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(10), 1227–1240. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 62 Lane, A. E., Dennis, S. J., & Geraghty, M. E. (2011). Brief report: Further evidence of sensory subtypes in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 41(6), 826–831. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 63 Liu, Y., Cherkassky, V.


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The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich

agricultural Revolution, Bartolomé de las Casas, behavioural economics, British Empire, charter city, cognitive dissonance, Columbian Exchange, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, delayed gratification, discovery of the americas, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, epigenetics, European colonialism, experimental economics, financial innovation, Flynn Effect, fundamental attribution error, glass ceiling, income inequality, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, knowledge economy, land reform, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, New Urbanism, pattern recognition, Pearl River Delta, profit maximization, randomized controlled trial, Republic of Letters, rolodex, social contagion, social web, sparse data, spinning jenny, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Stanford marshmallow experiment, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, trade route, Tyler Cowen, ultimatum game, wikimedia commons, working-age population, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Working paper. Bai, Y., and Kung, J. K. S. (2015). Diffusing knowledge while spreading God’s message: Protestantism and economic prosperity in China, 1840–1920. Journal of the European Economic Association 13 (4), 669–98. Baier, C. J., and Wright, B. R. E. (2001). “If you love me, keep my commandments”: A meta-analysis of the effect of religion on crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38 (1), 3–21. Bailey, D. H., Hill, K. R., and Walker, R. S. (2014). Fitness consequences of spousal relatedness in 46 small-scale societies. Biology Letters 10 (5), 20140160. Bailey, D. H., Walker, R. S., Blomquist, G.

Economic experimental game results from the Sursurunga of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. In J. Ensminger and J. Henrich (eds.), Experimenting with Social Norms: Fairness and Punishment in Cross-Cultural Perspective (pp. 275–308). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Bond, R., and Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin 119 (1), 111–37. Bondarenko, D. M. (2014). On the nature and features of the (early) state: An anthropological reanalysis. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 139 (2), 215–32. Bondarenko, D. M., and Korotayev, A. V. (2003).

Men in committed, romantic relationships have lower testosterone. Hormones and Behavior 44 (2), 119–22. Burton, R., and Whiting, J. (1961). The absent father and cross-sex identity. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 7 (2), 85–95. Bus, A. G., Van Ijzendoorn, M. H., and Pellegrini, A. D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research 65 (1), 1–21. Bushman, B. J., Ridge, R. D., Das, E., Key, C. W., and Busath, G. L. (2007). When God sanctions killing: Effect of scriptural violence on aggression. Psychological Science 18 (3), 204–207. Buss, D. (2007).


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Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

Airbnb, AltaVista, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, dark pattern, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, framing effect, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Ian Bogost, IKEA effect, Inbox Zero, invention of the telephone, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Lean Startup, lock screen, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Oculus Rift, Paradox of Choice, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, Richard Thaler, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social bookmarking, TaskRabbit, telemarketer, the new new thing, Toyota Production System, Y Combinator

As part of a French study, researchers wanted to know if they could influence how much money people handed to a total stranger asking for bus fare by using just a few specially encoded words. They discovered a technique so simple and effective it doubled the amount people gave. The turn of phrase has not only proven to increase how much bus fare people give, but has also been effective in boosting charitable donations and participation in voluntary surveys. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of forty-two studies involving over twenty-two thousand participants concluded that these few words, placed at the end of a request, are a highly effective way to gain compliance, doubling the likelihood of people saying yes.24 The magic words the researchers discovered? The phrase “But you are free to accept or refuse.”

Below the verse a large blue button reads “Share Verse of the Day.” One click and the daily scripture is blasted to Facebook or Twitter. The drivers behind recently read scripture have not been widely studied. However, one reason may be the reward of portraying oneself in a positive light, also known as the humblebrag.4 A Harvard meta-analysis, “Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding,” found the act “engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward.”5 In fact, sharing feels so good that one study found “individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self.” There are many opportunities to share verse from within the Bible App, but one of Gruenewald’s most effective distribution channels is not online but in row—that is, the pews where churchgoers sit side by side every week.

Graham Cluley, “Creepy Quora Erodes Users’ Privacy, Reveals What You Have Read,” Naked Security (accessed Dec. 1, 2013), http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/08/09/creepy-quora-erodes-users-privacy-reveals-what-you-have-read. 23. Sandra Liu Huang, “Removing Feed Stories About Views,” Quora (accessed Nov. 12, 2013), http://www.quora.com/permalink/gG922bywy. 24. Christopher J. Carpenter, “A Meta-analysis of the Effectiveness of the ‘But You Are Free’ Compliance-Gaining Technique,” Communication Studies 64, no. 1 (2013): 6–17, doi:10.1080/10510974.2012.727941. 25. Juho Hamari, “Social Aspects Play an Important Role in Gamification,” Gamification Research Network (accessed Nov. 13, 2013), http://gamification-research.org/2013/07/social-aspects. 26.


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The Behavioral Investor by Daniel Crosby

affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, availability heuristic, backtesting, bank run, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, book value, buy and hold, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, compound rate of return, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, disinformation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Dunning–Kruger effect, endowment effect, equity risk premium, fake news, feminist movement, Flash crash, haute cuisine, hedonic treadmill, housing crisis, IKEA effect, impact investing, impulse control, index fund, Isaac Newton, Japanese asset price bubble, job automation, longitudinal study, loss aversion, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral panic, Murray Gell-Mann, Nate Silver, neurotypical, Nick Bostrom, passive investing, pattern recognition, Pepsi Challenge, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, science of happiness, Shai Danziger, short selling, South Sea Bubble, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, TED Talk, Thales of Miletus, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, tulip mania, Vanguard fund, When a measure becomes a target

Roy Baumeister, an admitted proponent of the theory, to meta-analyze the extant data on the subject. What followed was what Dr. Baumeister would go on to refer to as “the biggest disappointment of my career.” Of the 15,000 studies taken into consideration, a paltry .013% of them (that is, 200) met the rigorous standards for inclusion in the meta-analysis. To begin with, it became apparent that many of the theories about self-esteem that had impacted policy were simply junk science. What’s more, the studies that did pass muster didn’t have much good to say about the construct’s predictive power. Self-esteem did not predict academic or career achievement, nor did it predict drug usage or violent behavior.

The positive potential for applying such nuanced thinking to investment decision-making can hardly be overstated. Although it is a gross simplification, emotion in and around financial markets is often lumped into one of two categories: fear or greed. Meditation, it would seem, is well positioned to tame both. A meta-analysis of 47 trials and 3515 participants found that meditation decreased anxiety, lessened depression and decreased pain. Weaker, but still positive, evidence was found for reducing stress levels and improving overall quality of life.103 For those on the fear end of the fear and greed continuum, meditation is powerful medicine.

Not only did the simple model outperform the psychologists’ intuition head-to-head, but it also bested psychologists who were given access to the model.109 Models have also been shown to outperform human intuition in predicting the outcomes of Supreme Court decisions,110 Presidential elections (Nate Silver), movie preferences, prison recidivism, wine quality, marital satisfaction and military success, to name just a few of the over 45 domains in which they have demonstrated their superiority.111 A meta-analysis performed by William Grove, David Zald, Boyd Lebow, Beth Snitz and Chad Nelson found that models equal or beat expert decision-making a whopping 94.12% of the time, meaning that they are only defeated by human discretion 5.88% of the time.112 Moreover, many of the domains in which algorithms greatly outperformed had human behavior as a central component (as do financial markets).


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Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will by Geoff Colvin

Ada Lovelace, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, Black Swan, call centre, capital asset pricing model, commoditize, computer age, corporate governance, creative destruction, deskilling, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, flying shuttle, Freestyle chess, future of work, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, Hans Moravec, industrial cluster, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, job automation, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, Narrative Science, new economy, rising living standards, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

In a company with a giver culture, Grant says . . . These quotations are from Grant, “Givers Take All: The Hidden Dimension of Corporate Culture,” McKinsey Quarterly, April 2013. A giant meta-analysis of studies involving 51,000 people . . . Nathan P. Podsakoff, Steven W. Whiting, Philip M. Podsakoff, Brian D. Blume, “Individual- and Organizational-Level Consequences of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology 2009, vol. 94, no. 1, pp. 122–141, doi: 10.1037/a0013079. Grant reports how a firm called Appletree Answers . . . Grant, “Givers Take All.” In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks . . .

Employees help only when they expect the personal benefits to exceed the costs.” And is that not the very definition of economic rationality? Yet which culture do you think produces better results? We all know the answer. Extensive research shows that the answer is even more impressive than we suspect. A giant meta-analysis of studies involving 51,000 people in companies found that giver behaviors were associated with higher productivity, efficiency, and profit; lower costs, employee turnover, and absenteeism; and greater customer satisfaction. The giver culture works even in environments where employees needn’t interact much, as discovered in that petri dish of organizational research, the call center.

We’re built to function best on ten hours of sleep a night . . . James B. Maas, Power Sleep: How to Prepare Your Mind for Peak Performance (Villard, 1998), p. 6. A massive study of empathy in U.S. college students . . . Sara H. Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, Courtney Hsing, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Personal and Social Psychology Review 15(2), pp. 180–198, doi: 10.1177/1088868310377395. As you would expect, higher narcissism . . . Konrath et al., op. cit., p. 183. Over the past several decades people in developed countries . . . Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon and Schuster, 2000).


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Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

affirmative action, business process, Cass Sunstein, constrained optimization, experimental economics, fear of failure, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, old-boy network, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social graph, Susan Wojcicki, women in the workforce, work culture , young professional

For a discussion of these findings and issues, see Kathleen McCartney et al., “Testing a Series of Causal Propositions Relating Time in Child Care to Children’s Externalizing Behavior,” Development Psychology 46, no. 1 (2010): 1–17. For a meta-analysis of maternal employment and children’s achievement, see Wendy Goldberg et al., “Maternal Employment and Children’s Achievement in Context: A Meta-Analysis of Four Decades of Research,” Psychological Bulletin 134, no. 1 (2008): 77–108. Scholars have noted that while the preponderance of evidence shows that maternal employment has no adverse effect on young children’s development, maternal employment in the first year of life has been linked with lower cognitive development and behavior issues for some children.

For analysis of how structural position shapes aspirations, see Naomi Casserir and Barbara Reskin, “High Hopes: Organizational Position, Employment Experiences, and Women’s and Men’s Promotion Aspirations,” Work and Occupations 27, no. 4 (2000): 438–63; and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1993). 7. Alison M. Konrad et al., “Sex Differences and Similarities in Job Attribute Preferences: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 126, no. 4 (2000): 593–641; and Eccles, “Understanding Women’s Educational and Occupational Choices,” 585–609. A survey of highly qualified women found that only 15 percent of them selected “a powerful position” as an important career goal. See Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce, “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success,” Harvard Business Review 83, no. 3 (2005): 48.

Studies have found that people who are mentored and sponsored report having more career success (such as higher compensation, a greater number of promotions, greater career and job satisfaction, and more career commitment). See Tammy D. Allen et al., “Career Benefits Associated with Mentoring for Protégés: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Psychology 89, no. 1 (2004): 127–36. A study of several thousand white collar workers with at least a bachelor’s degree found that sponsorship seemed to encourage both men and women to ask for a stretch assignment and a pay increase. Among the men surveyed who had a sponsor, 56 percent were likely to ask for a stretch assignment and 49 percent were likely to ask for a pay raise.


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Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us by Will Storr

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, bitcoin, classic study, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, gamification, gig economy, greed is good, intentional community, invisible hand, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, Mother of all demos, Nixon shock, Peter Thiel, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, QWERTY keyboard, Rainbow Mansion, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, tech bro, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, twin studies, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

Why not put their interests together? Why not see if narcissism in America had changed along with the culture? It would be a while until the all necessary data became available. But eventually, in 2008, they published the details of what they’d discovered in the Journal of Personality. They’d completed a meta-analysis of eighty-five studies that included the narcissism data from an impressive 16,475 college students, stretching back to the early 1980s. These students had taken the Narcissism Personality Index, or ‘NPI’, a test used widely by psychologists to measure narcissistic traits. Their paper, ‘Egos Inflating Over Time’, suggested that, between 1982 and 1989, average NPI scores actually went down, from 15.55 out of a possible 40 to 14.99.

Meanwhile, the principle of free speech seems to be venerated less than ever: a 2015 Pew survey found 40 per cent of US millennials agreeing that the government should be able to prevent speech that’s offensive to minorities. For Generation X, that figure was 27 per cent, whilst for the boomers it was 24 per cent. The rise in individualism that studies have found also seems to have brought with it a dramatic decline in empathy. A meta-analysis by Dr Sara Konrath at the University of Michigan indicated that today’s college students are 40 per cent less empathetic than students in the 1980s. They’re less likely to agree with statements such as, ‘I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,’ and ‘I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.’

They’re also thought to experience synaesthesia: ‘Synesthesia: A new approach to understanding the development of perception’, Ferrinne Spector, Daphne Maurer, Developmental Psychology (January 2009), 45(1), pp. 175–89. These connections start dying off at a rate of up to 100,000 per second: The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood (Constable, 2011), p. 15. In a major study, researchers in Queensland collated the results of 2,748 papers: ‘Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies’, Tinca J. C. Polderman et al., Nature Genetics (May 2015), 47, pp. 702–9. Co-author Beben Benyamin added: ‘Are we products of nature or nurture? Science answers age-old question’, 19 May 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/­science/­2015/may/­19/­are-we-products-of-nature-or-nuture-science-answers-age-old-question.


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If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? by Raj Raghunathan

behavioural economics, Blue Ocean Strategy, Broken windows theory, business process, classic study, cognitive dissonance, deliberate practice, do well by doing good, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, fundamental attribution error, hedonic treadmill, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Phillip Zimbardo, placebo effect, science of happiness, Skype, sugar pill, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Thorstein Veblen, Tony Hsieh, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Happy employees earn more: See E. Diener and R. Biswas-Diener, “Will Money Increase Subjective Well-being?,” Social Indicators Research 57(2) (2002): 119–69; see also M. Pinquart and S. Sörensen, “Influences of Socioeconomic Status, Social Network, and Competence on Subjective Well-being in Later Life: A Meta-analysis,” Psychology and Aging 15(2) (2000): 187. Happier (optimistic) CEOs: J. B. Foster et al., “Setting the Tone for Organizational Success: The Impact of CEO Affect on Organizational Climate and Firm-Level Outcomes,” 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2004.

Edge, “‘They Are Happier and Having Better Lives than I Am’: The Impact of Using Facebook on Perceptions of Others’ Lives,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 15(2) (2012): 117–21. Facebook triggers more negative feelings: C. Huang, “Internet Use and Psychological Well-being: A Meta-analysis,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 13(3) (2010): 241–49. For a more reader-friendly review of the literature on the impact of exposure to social media on well-being, see www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-facebook-makes-us-unhappy. That said, however, social media may also have a positive impact on people’s moods.

Tesch-Römer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Psychological Review 100(3) (1993): 363. Note, however, that there are exceptions to this general rule; see B. N. Macnamara, D. Z. Hambrick, and F. L. Oswald, “Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-analysis,” Psychological Science 25(8) (2014): 1608–18. flow doesn’t . . . come at . . . cost of another’s: This reason was mentioned to me in the interview that I did with Professor Csikszentmihalyi, which can be accessed at https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness/lecture/hMLNh/week-2-video-7-why-flow-en hances-happiness.


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Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, airport security, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, basic income, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Community Supported Agriculture, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, fiat currency, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mason jar, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microbiome, Minecraft, moral hazard, open borders, pattern recognition, place-making, plant based meat, post-truth, QAnon, QR code, remote working, RFID, risk tolerance, School Strike for Climate, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, stem cell, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator

The COVID-19 pandemic has arguably been the single largest collective simultaneous experience of trauma in human history—whether it was the trauma of frontline work, social isolation, economic loss and hardship, prolonged anxiety, severe illness, long COVID, the loss of a loved one, or the grief of being abandoned and left unprotected by your own government. How common is trauma during a pandemic? On average, 22.6 percent of people experience symptoms of PTSD after any pandemic. Health care workers are most affected at 27 percent, followed by infected individuals at 24 percent, and the general public at 19 percent. This is according to a 2021 meta-analysis that looked at the results of eighty-eight different studies of PTSD after pandemics in the twenty-first century, including SARS, Ebola, Zika, Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and COVID-19.4 Even if we cut these percentages in half to allow for the disparity in individual and national experiences of the pandemic, that leaves nearly one billion people on earth experiencing post-pandemic trauma.

Bargh, “Incidental Haptic Sensations Influence Social Judgments and Decisions,” Science 328, no. 5986 (June 2010): 1712–15, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1189993. 2 David Stawarczyk and Arnaud D’Argembeau, “Neural Correlates of Personal Goal Processing during Episodic Future Thinking and Mind-Wandering: An ALE Meta-Analysis,” Human Brain Mapping 36, no. 8 (August 2015): 2928–47, https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22818. 3 Brittany M. Christian et al., “The Shape of Things to Come: Exploring Goal-Directed Prospection,” Consciousness and Cognition 22, no. 2 (March 2013): 471–78, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.02.002; Pennington and Roese, “Regulatory Focus and Temporal Distance,” 563–76. 4 Emily A.

Holmes and Andrew Mathews, “Mental Imagery in Emotion and Emotional Disorders,” Clinical Psychology Review 30, no. 3 (April 2010): 349–62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.01.001; Janie Busby Grant and Neil Wilson, “Manipulating the Valence of Future Thought: The Effect on Affect,” Psychological Reports 124, no. 1 (February 2020): 227–39, https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294119900346; Torben Schubert et al., “How Imagining Personal Future Scenarios Influences Affect: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Clinical Psychology Review 75 (February 2020): 101811, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2019.101811. 5 According to a timebound Google Scholar search for scientific papers with the terms “episode future thinking” (4,310) and “episodic foresight” (831), over the period 2000–21. 6 Andrew K. MacLeod, “Prospection, Well-Being and Memory,” Memory Studies 9, no. 3 (June 2016): 266–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698016645233; Beyon Miloyan, Nancy A.


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Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman

Asperger Syndrome, Berlin Wall, Charles Lindbergh, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, Edward Glaeser, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, FedEx blackjack story, Ford Model T, game design, industrial cluster, Jean Tirole, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, phenotype, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, school choice, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Steve Jobs, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, work culture , zero-sum game

., Javier García, Sebastian Feu, Alberto Lorenzo, & Jaime Sampaio, “Effects of Consecutive Basketball Games on the Game-Related Statistics that Discriminate Winner and Losing Teams,” Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, vol. 8(3), pp. 458–462 (2009) Jamieson, Jeremy P., “The Home Field Advantage in Athletics: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 40(7), pp. 1819–1848 (2010) Jansen, Friederike, Rebecca S. Heiming, Vanessa Kloke, Sylvia Kaiser, Rupert Palme, Klaus-Peter Lesch, & Norbert Sachser, “Away Game or Home Match: The Influence of Venue and Serotonin Transporter Genotype on the Display of Offensive Aggression,” Behavioural Brain Research, vol. 219(2), pp. 291–301 (2011) Jones, Marshall B., “Home Advantage in the NBA as a Game-Long Process,” Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, vol. 3(4), art. 2 (2007) Koning, Ruud H., “Home Advantage in Speed Skating: Evidence from Individual Data,” Journal of Sports Sciences, vol. 23(4), pp. 417–427 (2005) Koyama, Mark, & J.

Someone with two methionine (“met”) instructions—the slower enzyme—would be “met-met.” Having two valine (“val”), and thus the faster enzyme processing, would be “val-val.” And val-met is naturally someone with one of each. Barnett, J. H., P. B. Jones, T. W. Robbins, & U. Müller, “Effects of the Catechol-O-Methyltransferase Val 158Met Polymorphism on Executive Function: A Meta-Analysis of the Wisconsin Card Sort Test in Schizophrenia and Healthy Controls,” Molecular Psychiatry, vol. 12(5), pp. 502–509 (2007) Barnett, Jennifer H., Jon Heron, Susan M. Ring, Jean Golding, David Goldman, Ke Xu, & Peter B. Jones, “Gender-Specific Effects of the Catechol-O-Methyltransferase Val108/158Met Polymorphism on Cognitive Function in Children,” American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 164(1), pp. 142–149 (2007) Blasi, Giuseppe, Venkata S.

., Honus Wagner: The Life of Baseball’s “Flying Dutchman,” Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. (1996) Mendelson, Abby, “Honus Wagner,” Pittsburgh Pirates, http://atmlb.com/PDax1p (2012) Society for American Baseball Research, The SABR Baseball List & Record Book: Baseball’s Most Fascinating Records, New York: Simon & Schuster (2007) “Statistics,” Major League Baseball, MLB.com, http://atmlb.com/Q65Z1w (2012) “Stealing Second → Stealing Third → Stealing Home,” Baseball Almanac, http://bit.ly/q2BoIm (2012) Sulloway, Frank J., Born to Rebel, New York: Vintage (1997) Sulloway, Frank, Interview with Author (2011) Sulloway, Frank J., & Richard L. Zweigenhaft, “Birth Order and Risk Taking in Athletics: A Meta-Analysis and Study of Major League Baseball,” Personality & Social Psychology Review, vol. 14(4), pp. 402–416 (2010) 4. Sibling Conflict: We dedicated an entire chapter of our book, NurtureShock, to sibling conflict. We invite you to look there for a fuller discussion of the nature of sibling arguments, research on how to respond to sibling quarreling, et cetera.


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Who’s Raising the Kids?: Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children by Susan Linn

Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, cashless society, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, delayed gratification, digital divide, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, gamification, George Floyd, Howard Zinn, impulse control, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, language acquisition, late fees, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, meta-analysis, Minecraft, neurotypical, new economy, Nicholas Carr, planned obsolescence, plant based meat, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, techlash, theory of mind, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple

Roberts, “Linkages Between Materialism and Young People’s Television and Advertising Exposure in a US Sample,” Journal of Children and Media 5, no. 2 (April 15, 2011): 181–93, doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2011.558272.   8.  For a meta-analysis on the links between materialism and environmental degradation see Megan Hurst et al., “The Relationship Between Materialistic Values and Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 36 (2013): 257–69.   9.  Judith Stephenson et al., “Population, Development, and Climate Change: Links and Effects on Human Health,” Lancet 382, no. 9905 (November 16, 2013): 1665–73, doi.org/10.1016/S0140−6736(13)61460-9. 10.  

Bushman, “Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Prosocial Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature,” Psychological Science 12, no. 5 (September 2001): 353–59; Anna T. Prescott, James D. Sargent, and Jay G. Hull, “Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Violent Video Game Play and Physical Aggression over Time,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 40 (October 2018): 9882–988. 24.  Both Consuming Kids and The Case for Make Believe have a chapter devoted to sexualization. Also see Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne, So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do About It (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009); Peggy Ornstein, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (New York: HarperCollins, 2011); Sharon Lamb and Lynn Mikkel Brown, Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes (New York: St.

Create a Healthy Technology Environment for Your Baby to Thrive,” American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, 2020, screentimenetwork.org/sites/default/files/resources/Be%20Tech%20Wise%20With%20Baby%20final%20Engish.pdf. 31.  Jenny Radesky et al., “Maternal Mobile Device Use During a Structured Parent–Child Interaction Task,” Academic Pediatrics 15, no. 2 (March 1, 2015): 238–44. 32.  Sherry Madigan et al., “Associations Between Screen Use and Child Language Skills: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” JAMA Pediatrics 174, no. 7 (March 23, 2020): 665-75, doi/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.0327. 33.  Cortney A. Evans, Amy B. Jordan, and Jennifer Horner, “Only Two Hours? A Qualitative Study of the Challenges Parents Perceive in Restricting Child Television Time,” Journal of Family Issues 32, no. 9 (March 2011): 1223–44. 34.  


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The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis by Julie Holland

benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Burning Man, confounding variable, drug harm reduction, intentional community, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, mandatory minimum, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, pattern recognition, phenotype, placebo effect, profit motive, publication bias, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Stephen Hawking, traumatic brain injury, University of East Anglia, zero-sum game

However, as we found in our review of acute effects, the most consistent chronic effects of cannabis on cognition relate to learning and memory. Grant and colleagues (2003) conducted a meta-analysis of eleven studies investigating the long-term effects of cannabis on cognition and found effect sizes suggesting decrements in participants’ ability to learn and remember information. However, the meta-analysis revealed no consistent effects in all other neuropsychological domains examined, including verbal/language, perceptual/ motor, abstraction/executive, and attention. It should be noted that the inclusion criteria used in this meta-analysis were relatively strict, requiring that studies included a group of “cannabis only” users as well as appropriate controls.

By contrast, prospective cohort studies do not support a role for cannabis use in causing anxiety disorders, as reviewed in a meta-analysis (Moore et al. 2007); only two of seven studies found an association of anxiety disorder with previous cannabis use when potential confounding factors were adjusted for. Also, several studies had high dropout rates. If healthier individuals are more likely to drop out, whereas the anxious individuals are more likely to return, this could lead to an apparent association of cannabis use with anxiety that would be false. CAN CANNABIS LEAD TO DEPRESSION? Ten cohort studies of cannabis use and depression diagnosis were identified in the Lancet meta-analysis and review (Moore et al. 2007).

We have obtained support for licensing Craker from forty-five congressional representatives and Senators Kerry and Kennedy, but that hasn’t been enough yet to pressure the DEA to approve the license.*26 MAPS is also sponsoring research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy (Ecstasy-assisted psychotherapy) for subjects with treatment-resistant PTSD. We have concluded two pilot studies, one in the United States and one in Switzerland, with a meta-analysis generating statistically and clinically significant reductions in PTSD symptoms in our full-dose MDMA group. We have just obtained FDA approval for a new MDMA/PTSD pilot study entirely comprised of U.S. veterans with chronic PTSD. We also have started an MDMA/PTSD pilot study in Israel and are close to starting additional MDMA/PTSD pilot studies in Jordan, Canada, and Spain.


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The Hidden Half: How the World Conceals Its Secrets by Michael Blastland

air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, banking crisis, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Brexit referendum, central bank independence, cognitive bias, complexity theory, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, epigenetics, experimental subject, full employment, George Santayana, hindsight bias, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, nudge unit, oil shock, p-value, personalized medicine, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, Richard Thaler, selection bias, the map is not the territory, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, twin studies

Supporters of the strategy say it took time to build up and was tweaked so that it began to bite precisely when the numbers began to fall sharply. Perhaps, though this would have been an extraordinarily powerful and well-calibrated tweak. But a meta-analysis of sex education across countries by a group of respected researchers known as the Cochrane Collaboration found that this element alone didn’t seem to make much difference.4 However, another meta-analysis by another group of Cochrane researchers found that a combination of education and contraceptive promotion did seem to make a difference.5 So maybe both, but not one. Or the right kind of each in the right combination.

The habit is careless at best, in the worst cases deceitful or incompetent, and it is miserably persistent. Probabilities (such as risks) that make big headlines frequently turn out to be the kind of ‘big’ knowledge I could easily have lived and died without, and often simply ignore. The most recent example I came across was a meta-analysis to suggest there was no safe level of alcohol consumption, and people should consider abstention. Again, the risk boiled down to a question of probabilities. But the study failed to add – contrary to the guidelines of the journal in which it was published – what unsafe meant for low levels of drinking in human terms.

There’s very seldom going to be the case that there is the one factor that you could remove and everything else would work pretty much as it does except that this causeway would be blocked and the outcome wouldn’t happen.’ In the end, the answer to what caused this extraordinary change in teenage sexual behaviour is that we can’t say. We don’t know. Big and sudden it may be, clear it isn’t. Every method used to try to find out (from logistic regression to meta-analysis and personal experience) has its potential flaws. Every piece of evidence is qualified or contradicted by others, or simply raises other questions. It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of looking for the cause. First, this distracts us from problems of interaction, which can be monstrously complicated and unstable.


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A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies by Matt Simon

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anthropocene, biofilm, carbon footprint, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, decarbonisation, Easter island, epigenetics, food desert, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, ocean acidification, precautionary principle, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, South China Sea, the built environment

“The M/V X-Press Pearl Nurdle Spill: Contamination of Burnt Plastic and Unburnt Nurdles along Sri Lanka’s Beaches.” ACS Environmental Au. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenvironau.1c00031. Erni-Cassola, Gabriel, Vinko Zadjelovic, Matthew I. Gibson, and Joseph A. Christie-Oleza. 2019. “Distribution of Plastic Polymer Types in the Marine Environment: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Hazardous Materials 369:691–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.02.067. 179 180 notes 55. The Great Nurdle Hunt. n.d. “The Problem.” https://www.nurdlehunt .org.uk/the-problem.html. 56. Lozano, Rebeca Lopez, and John Mouat. 2009. “Marine Litter in the North-East Atlantic Region: Assessment and Priorities for Response.”

“Synthetic and Semi-Synthetic Microplastic Ingestion by Mesopelagic Fishes from Tristan da Cunha and St Helena, South Atlantic.” Frontiers in Marine Science 8:78. https://doi.org/10.3389 /fmars.2021.633478. notes 51. Miller, Michaela E., Mark Hamann, and Frederieke J. Kroon. 2020.“Bioaccumulation and Biomagnification of Microplastics in Marine Organisms: A Review and Meta-Analysis of Current Data.” PLoS ONE 15 (10): e0240792. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal .pone.0240792. 52. University of Leicester. 2015. “Failing Phytoplankton, Failing Oxygen: Global Warming Disaster Could Suffocate Life on Planet Earth.” ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151201 094120.htm. 53.

Miller, Marvin Rades, Patrick Schubert, Maren Ziegler, and Thomas Wilke. 2021. “Reef-Building Corals Act as Long-Term Sink for Microplastic.” Global Change Biology 28 (1): 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1111 /gcb.15920. 109. Foley, Carolyn J., Zachary S. Feiner, Timothy D. Malinich, and Tomas O. Höök. 2018. “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Exposure to Microplastics on Fish and Aquatic Invertebrates.” Science of the Total Environment 631–32:550–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.03.046. 110. Hou, Loren, Caleb D. McMahan, Rae E. McNeish, Keenan Munno, Chelsea M. Rochman, and Timothy J. Hoellein. 2021. “A Fish Tale: A Century of Museum Specimens Reveal Increasing Microplastic Concentrations in Freshwater Fish.”


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Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

8-hour work day, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, AOL-Time Warner, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, call centre, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, emotional labour, game design, hive mind, index card, indoor plumbing, Isaac Newton, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, new economy, popular electronics, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, telemarketer, The Wisdom of Crowds, traveling salesman, twin studies, Walter Mischel, web application, white flight

In fact, a wholly separate survey, this one using the Eysenck Personality Inventory and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire rather than the Myers-Briggs test, indicates that extraversion scores have increased over time (from 1966 to 1993) for both men and women: see Jean M. Twenge, “Birth Cohort Changes in Extraversion: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis, 1966–1993,” Personality and Individual Differences 30 (2001): 735–48. 14. United States is among the most extroverted of nations: This has been noted in two studies: (1) Juri Allik and Robert R. McCrae, “Toward a Geography of Personality Traits: Patterns of Profiles Across 36 Cultures,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 35 (2004): 13–28; and (2) Robert R.

MacKinnon, “The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent” (Walter Van Dyke Bingham Lecture given at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, April 11, 1962). See also MacKinnon, “Personality and the Realization of Creative Potential,” Presidential Address presented at Western Psychological Association, Portland, Oregon, April 1964. 4. One of the most interesting findings: See, for example, (1) Gregory J. Feist, “A Meta-Analysis of Personality in Scientific and Artistic Creativity,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 2, no. 4 (1998): 290–309; (2) Feist, “Autonomy and Independence,” Encyclopedia of Creativity, vol. 1 (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1999), 157–63; and (3) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996), 65–68.

(Note also that the link between the short allele of the SERT gene and depression in humans is well discussed but somewhat controversial.) 38. thought to be associated with high reactivity and introversion: Seth J. Gillihan et al., “Association Between Serotonin Transporter Genotype and Extraversion,” Psychiatric Genetics 17, no. 6 (2007): 351–54. See also M. R. Munafo et al., “Genetic Polymorphisms and Personality in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Molecular Psychiatry 8 (2003): 471–84. And see Cecilie L. Licht et al., “Association Between Sensory Processing Sensitivity and the 5-HTTLPR Short/Short Genotype.” 39. has speculated that these high-reactive monkeys: Dobbs, “The Science of Success.” 40. adolescent girls with the short allele of the SERT gene … less anxiety on calm days: Belsky et al., “Vulnerability Genes or Plasticity Genes?”


Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To by David A. Sinclair, Matthew D. Laplante

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Atul Gawande, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biofilm, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, creative destruction, CRISPR, dark matter, dematerialisation, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, Easter island, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, helicopter parent, income inequality, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, life extension, Louis Pasteur, McMansion, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Paul Samuelson, personalized medicine, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, plutocrats, power law, quantum entanglement, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, seminal paper, Skype, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, union organizing, universal basic income, WeWork, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

., “Effects of Individual Branched-Chain Amino Acids Ceprivation on Insulin Sensitivity and Glucose Metabolism in Mice,” Metabolism 63, no. 6 (June 2014): 841–50, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24684822/. 30. There are certainly other lifestyle factors at play. But a meta-analysis of seven studies including nearly 125,000 participants, published in 2012 in Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, is compelling evidence. Among vegetarians, the researchers who conducted the study observed a 16 percent lower mortality from circulatory diseases and a 12 percent lower mortality from cerebrovascular disease. T. Huang, B. Yang, J. Zheng, et al., “Cardiovascular Disease Mortality and Cancer Incidence in Vegetarians: A Meta-analysis and Systematic Review,” Annals of Nutrition & Metabolism 4, no. 60 (June 1, 2012): 233–40, https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/337301. 31.

Sinclair, “MSN2 and MSN4 Link Calorie Restriction and TOR to Sirtuin-Mediated Lifespan Extension in Saccharomyces cerevisiae,” PLOS Biology, October 2, 2007, http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050261. 39. The authors found convincing evidence linking FOXO3 and longevity in humans. L. Sun, C. Hu, C. Zheng, et al., “FOXO3 Variants Are Beneficial for Longevity in Southern Chinese Living in the Red River Basin: A Case-Control Study and Meta-analysis,” Nature Scientific Reports, April 27, 2015, https://www.nature.com/articles/srep09852. 40. H. Bae, A. Gurinovich, A. Malovini, et al., “Effects of FOXO3 Polymorphisms on Survival to Extreme Longevity in Four Centenarian Studies,” Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences 73, no. 11 (October 8, 2018): 1437–47, https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/73/11/1439/3872296. 41.

Other results included less cancer and less cardiovascular disease in those being treated with metformin. J. M. Campbell, S. M. Bellman, M. D. Stephenson, and K. Lisy, “Metformin Reduces All-Cause Mortality and Diseases of Ageing Independent of Its Effect on Diabetes Control: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Ageing Research Reviews 40 (November 2017): 31–44, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568163717301472. 17. R. A. DeFronzo, N. Barzilai, and D. C. Simonson, “Mechanism of Metformin Action in Obese and Lean Noninsulin-Dependent Diabetic Subjects,” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 73, no. 6 (December 1991): 1294–301, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1955512. 18.


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Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries by Peter Sims

Alan Greenspan, Amazon Web Services, Black Swan, Clayton Christensen, complexity theory, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, discovery of penicillin, endowment effect, fail fast, fear of failure, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, PageRank, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, scientific management, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, systems thinking, TED Talk, theory of mind, Toyota Production System, urban planning, Wall-E

All of this implied that when students were valued for their intelligence, failures would be taken more personally, even as being disgraceful. Dweck’s findings about praise counter broadly held beliefs about developing self-esteem and confidence, but her work has received relatively little criticism. Followup studies, including a meta-analysis of 150 praise studies by scholars at Stanford and Reed College, supported the core findings: Praising ability alone reduces persistence, while praising effort or the processes a person goes through to learn leads to growth mind-set behaviors. Dweck has found this to apply regardless of age. Once again, Pixar is a great example; the company’s management philosophy is thoroughly premised on having a growth mind-set.

“Caution: Praise Can Be Dangerous,” American Educator, Spring 1999. “Children’s Implicit Personality Theories as Predictors of Their Social Judgments,” by Cynthia A. Erdley and Carol Dweck, Child Development, 1993, 64, 863–878. “The Effects of Praise on Children’s Intrinsic Motivation: A Review and Synthesis,” (a meta-analysis) by Jennifer Henderlong and Mark R. Lepper, Psychological Bulletin, 2002, vol. 128, 5, 774–795. “The Perils and Promises of Praise,” by Carol Dweck, Early Intervention at Every Age, vol. 65, 2, 34–39. For a good general overview of Dweck’s research and related reactions: “How Not to Talk to Your Kids,” by Po Bronson, New York Magazine, February 11, 2007, which can be found at: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/.

Additional detail on Pixar creative process from interviews with Pixar employees, including Pete Docter, director of Monsters Inc. and Up, including John Lasseter quote about films not ever being finished, just released. Pixar website also has some good additional details at: http://www.pixar.com/artistscorner. Effects of humor and laughter: Selection of insights taken from meta-analysis of psychology research: “Humor and Group Effectiveness,” by Eric Romero and Anthony Pescosolido, Human Relations, March 2008, 395–418. Correlations between humor and trust: “The Relationship between Humor and Trust,” by W. P. Hampes, Humor, 1999, 12, 253–9. “Relation between Humor and Empathic Concern,” by W.


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Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, automated trading system, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, business process, call centre, choice architecture, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, fake news, fault tolerance, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Freestyle chess, future of work, Future Shock, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Google Hangouts, GPT-3, hiring and firing, hustle culture, hype cycle, income inequality, industrial robot, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, lockdown, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Narrative Science, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, OpenAI, pattern recognition, planetary scale, plutocrats, Productivity paradox, QAnon, recommendation engine, remote working, risk tolerance, robotic process automation, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture

And I’d like to believe that no matter how good a machine gets at a given task, there will always be some unquantifiable X factor that human experts can bring to the table. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be true. In study after study, researchers have found that, after reaching a certain performance threshold, AI tends to outperform not only humans, but human-AI teams. One study, a 2019 preprint meta-analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Washington and Microsoft Research, looked at a number of previous studies in which decisions made by AI systems alone were assessed against “AI-assisted” decisions made by humans. In every case, they found that the AI operating on its own performed better than the AI-human team.

Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019). In China, “data labeling” companies Li Yuan, “How Cheap Labor Drives China’s A.I. Ambitions,” New York Times, November 25, 2018. One study, a 2019 preprint meta-analysis Gagan Bansal et al., “Does the Whole Exceed Its Parts? The Effect of AI Explanations on Complementary Team Performance,” ArXiv, June 2020. A 2014 study led by researchers at the University of Buffalo Kenneth W. Regan et al., “Human and Computer Preferences at Chess,” MPREF@AAAI, 2014. Accenture, the consulting firm, surveyed one thousand H.

Jones, Mark Greenberg, and Max Crowley, “Early Social-Emotional Functioning and Public Health: The Relationship Between Kindergarten Social Competence and Future Wellness,” American Journal of Public Health (2015). Another study in 2017 found that kids who participated Rebecca D. Taylor, Eva Oberle, Joseph A. Durlak, and Roger P. Weissberg, “Promoting Positive Youth Development Through School-Based Social and Emotional Learning Interventions: A Meta-Analysis of Follow-Up Effects,” Child Development (2017). Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter The Daily podcast, “Jack Dorsey on Twitter’s Mistakes,” New York Times, August 7, 2020. In Canada, when you graduate from engineering school Erin Hudson, “An Inside Look at the ‘Not Secretive but Modestly Discrete’ Iron Ring Ritual for Canadian Trained-Engineers,” The Sheaf, January 10, 2013.


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Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, delayed gratification, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Future Shock, Hacker News, high batting average, hive mind, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, hype cycle, Hyperloop, impulse control, independent contractor, informal economy, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microdosing, military-industrial complex, mirror neurons, music of the spheres, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, science of happiness, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, TED Talk, time dilation, Tony Hsieh, urban planning, Virgin Galactic

In 2013 we were invited to participate in the Red Bull Hacking Creativity project,35 a joint effort involving scientists at the MIT Media Lab, a group of TED Fellows, and the namesake energy drink company. Conceived by Dr. Andy Walshe, Red Bull’s director of high performance (and a member of Flow Genome Project’s advisory board), the project was the largest meta-analysis of creativity research ever conducted, reviewing more than thirty thousand research papers and interviewing hundreds of other subject-matter experts, from break dancers and circus performers to poets and rock stars. “It was an impossible goal,” Walshe explained, “but I figured if we could crack something as hard to pin down as creativity, we could figure out almost anything after that.”

For a solid overview see John Ratey and Eric Hagerman, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (New York: Little, Brown, 2013). 26. get some natural sunshine: Michael Holick, “Vitamin D Deficiency,” New England Journal of Medicine 357 (2007): 266–81. 27. practice meditation for fifteen minutes: Jennifer Haythornthwaite et al., “Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” JAMA Internal Medicine 174, no. 3 (2014): 357–68. 28. Tibetan monks can shut off: Judson Brewer et al., “Meditation Experience Is Associated with Difference in Default Mode Network Activity and Connectivity,” PNAS 108, no. 50 (December 13, 2011): 20254–59. 29. SEAL snipers tune their brainwaves to the alpha frequency: This comes from work done by Chris Berka and her team at Advanced Brain Monitoring.

At Harvard, Professor Tal Ben Shahar’s: Craig Lambert, ’The Science of Happiness,” Harvard Magazine, January–February 2007. 43. By college, many Millennials have reached: Pfaffenberger, ed., The Postconventional Personality, p. 60. 44. researchers began finding the practice did everything: N. P. Gothe and E. McAuley, “Yoga and Cognition: A Meta-Analysis of Chronic and Acute Effects,” Psychosomatic Medicine 77, no. 7 (September 2015): 784–97; N. R. Okonta, “Does Yoga Therapy Reduce Blood Pressure in Patients with Hypertension? An integrative Review,” Holistic Nursing Practitioner 26, no. 3 (May–June 2012): 137–41. 45. As of 2015, some 36 million Americans: Marlynn Wei, “New Survey Reveals the Rapid Rise of Yoga—and Why Some People Still Haven’t Tried It,” Harvard Health Publication, June 15, 2016. 46. more popular, in terms of participation, than football: 2016 Yoga in America Study, Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance, http://www.yogajournal.com/yogainamericastudy/. 47.


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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

One sample in Spain showed results in the same direction, but it was not statistically significant. Overall, the gender differences were large and consistent. None are in the opposite direction. 23. Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist 60: 581–92. Hyde’s main evidence is based on a meta-analysis of as many published reports of studies that tallied results by gender as she could find, assessing gender effects across several different categories: cognitive variables (math, memory, overall intelligence, spatial skills), verbal and nonverbal communication (talkativeness, language ability, smiling), social and personality variables (physical and verbal aggression, leadership style and skill, extroversion), psychological well-being (happiness, anxiety, self-esteem, depression), and motor skills (throwing velocity and distance, running speed, activity level).

Gilbert, D. T., B. W. Pelham, and D. S. Krull (1988). On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54: 733–40. 23. Steblay, N., et al. (2006). The impact on juror verdicts of judicial instruction to disregard inadmissible evidence: A meta-analysis. Law and Human Behavior 30: 469–92. 24. Kassin, S. M., and H. Sukel (1997). Coerced confessions and the jury: An experimental test of the “harmless error” rule. Law and Human Behavior 21: 27–46; Kassin, S. M., D. Bogart, and J. Kerner (2012). Confessions that corrupt: Evidence from the DNA exoneration case files.

Emotion 7: 438–46; Reinhard, M. A., et al. (2011). Listening, not watching: Situational familiarity and the ability to detect deception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101: 467–84. 5. Blanch-Hartigan, D., S. A. Andrzejewski, and K. M. Hill (2012). The effectiveness of training to improve person perception: A meta-analysis. Basic and Applied Social Psychology 34: 483–98. 6. Lopata, C., et al. (2008). Effectiveness of a manualized summer social treatment program for high-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 38: 890–904; McKenzie, K., et al. (2000). Impact of group training on emotion recognition in individuals with a learning disability.


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Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, call centre, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, demand response, Donald Trump, emotional labour, fake news, financial independence, Firefox, gamification, gig economy, Google Chrome, helicopter parent, impulse control, Jean Tirole, job automation, job satisfaction, Lyft, meta-analysis, Minecraft, New Journalism, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, working poor

Carolin Mogk, Sebastian Otte, Bettina Reinhold-Hurley, and Birgit Kröner-Herwig, “Health Effects of Expressive Writing on Stressful or Traumatic Experiences: A Meta-Analysis,” Psycho-Social Medicine 3 (2006): Doc06. 40. Pennebaker, Writing to Heal. 41. Eva-Maria Gortner, Stephanie S. Rude, and James W. Pennebaker, “Benefits of Expressive Writing in Lowering Rumination and Depressive Symptoms,” Behavior Therapy 37, no. 3 (September 2006): 292–303. 42. James W. Anderson, Chunxu Liu, and Richard J. Kryscio, “Blood Pressure Response to Transcendental Meditation: A Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Hypertension 21, no. 3 (March 2008): 310–16. 43. David S. Black and George M.

Auth, “Loneliness and Depression in Independent Living Retirement Communities: Risk and Resilience Factors,” Aging & Mental Health 8, no. 6 (November 2004): 475–85. 9. Nicole K. Valtorta, Mona Kanaan, Simon Gilbody, Sara Ronzi, and Barbara Hanratty, “Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Observational Studies,” BMJ Heart 102, no. 13 (2016): 1009–16. 10. Betty Onyura, John Bohnen, Don Wasylenki, Anna Jarvis, Barney Giblon, Robert Hyland, Ivan Silver, and Karen Leslie, “Reimagining the Self at Late-Career Transitions: How Identity Threat Influences Academic Physicians’ Retirement Considerations,” Academic Medicine 90, no. 6 (June 2015): 794–801. 11.

Jennifer L. Smith and Linda Hollinger-Smith, “Savoring, Resilience, and Psychological Well-Being in Older Adults,” Aging & Mental Health 19, no. 3 (2015): 192–200. 12. Paul Grossman, Ludger Niemann, Stefan Schmidt, and Harald Walach, “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Health Benefits: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 57, no. 1 (July 2004): 35–43. 13. Anthony D. Ong, Daniel K. Mroczek, and Catherine Riffin, “The Health Significance of Positive Emotions in Adulthood and Later Life,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 5, no. 8 (August 2011): 538–51. 14. Jordi Quoidbach, Elizabeth V.


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Practical Manual of Thyroid and Parathyroid Disease by Asit Arora, Neil Tolley, R. Michael Tuttle

Drosophila, epigenetics, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mouse model, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, selection bias

Much of the evidence of this chapter has been taken from the most recent national guidelines. Where appropriate within the text, references have been classified into the definition of types of evidence based on Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (1992). MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS Level Type of evidence Ia Evidence obtained from meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials Evidence obtained from at least one randomized controlled trial Evidence obtained from at least one well-designed controlled study without randomization Evidence obtained from at least on other type of well-designed quasi-experimental study Evidence obtained from well designed nonexperimental descriptive studies Evidence obtained from expert committee reports or opinions and/or clinical experience of respected authorities Ib IIa IIb III IV REFERENCES 1.

However, in the treatment of hypothyroidism following surgery for differentiated thyroid carcinoma, the thyroxine dose is suppressive to ensure an undetectable TSH. There is anecdotal evidence that some hypothyroid patients have neuropsychological symptoms which persist despite a normalized TSH. Some of these patients appear to benefit from a combination of T3 replacement in addition to T4 replacement therapy. However, a recent 63 meta-analysis study showed that combined T4 and T3 therapy has no clear advantage over T4 monotherapy for improving thyroid function, quality of life, mood and psychometric parameters.10 T3 monotherapy is well established in the management of thyroid cancer to minimize the period of hypothyroidism prior to therapeutic radioiodine treatment.

A radiation absorbed dose to the thyroid remnant greater than 300 Gy did not result in a higher ablation rate.7 Successful ablation was achieved in 77% of thyroid remnants with the lower dose of 1.85 GBq. Maxon et al. used dosimetry to individualize administered activity to deliver a radiation dose of 300 Gy to the thyroid remnant.8 They reported an 81% successful ablation rate with no advantage associated with administration of a dose greater than 300 Gy. However, one meta-analysis found that a single administered activity of 1110 MBq was less likely to ablate thyroid remnants successfully compared with higher activities of 2775–3700 MBq.9 A recent comprehensive systematic review of all published literature concluded it was not possible to determine reliably whether ablation success rates using 1.1 GBq were similar to that using 3.7 GBq.10 The HiLo trial (Cancer Research UK) is the first prospective multicentre randomized trial of thyroid cancer to be conducted in the UK.


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Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, backpropagation, basic income, behavioural economics, belling the cat, Black Lives Matter, butterfly effect, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, classic study, clean water, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Attenborough, deep learning, defund the police, delayed gratification, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Easter island, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, Erdős number, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, feminist movement, framing effect, George Akerlof, George Floyd, germ theory of disease, high batting average, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, index card, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, libertarian paternalism, Linda problem, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, Monty Hall problem, Nash equilibrium, New Journalism, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, Peter Singer: altruism, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, post-truth, power law, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, Richard Thaler, scientific worldview, selection bias, social discount rate, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, twin studies, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, Walter Mischel, yellow journalism, zero-sum game

Nineteen file their null results in a drawer, and the one who is lucky (or unlucky) enough to make the Type I error publishes his “finding.”22 In an XKCD cartoon, a pair of scientists test for a correlation between jelly beans and acne separately for each of twenty colors, and become famous for linking green jellybeans to acne at p < .05.23 Scientists have finally gotten the joke, are getting into the habit of publishing null results, and have developed techniques to compensate for the file drawer problem when reviewing the literature in a meta-analysis, a study of studies. Null results are conspicuous by their absence, and the analyst can detect the nothing that is not there as well as the nothing that is.24 The scandalous misunderstanding of significance testing bespeaks a human yearning. Philosophers since Hume have noted that induction—drawing a generalization from observations—is an inherently uncertain kind of inference.25 An infinite number of curves can be drawn through any finite set of points; an unlimited number of theories are logically consistent with any body of data.

This time the numerate Republicans earned the dunce caps while the Democrats were the Einsteins. In a control condition, the team picked an issue that triggered neither Democrats nor Republicans: whether a skin cream was effective at treating a rash. With neither faction having a dog in the fight, the numerate Republicans and numerate Democrats performed the same. A recent meta-analysis of fifty studies by the psychologist Peter Ditto and his colleagues confirms the pattern. In study after study, liberals and conservatives accept or reject the same scientific conclusion depending on whether or not it supports their talking points, and they endorse or oppose the same policy depending on whether it was proposed by a Democratic or a Republican politician.26 Politically motivated numeracy and other forms of biased evaluation show that people reason their way into or out of a conclusion even when it offers them no personal advantage.

There is a Bayesian argument that one ought to weigh new evidence against the totality of one’s prior beliefs rather than taking every new study at face value. If liberalism has proven itself to be correct, then a study that appears to support a conservative position should not be allowed to overturn one’s beliefs. Not surprisingly, this was the response of several liberal academics to Ditto’s meta-analysis suggesting that political bias is bipartisan.35 Nothing guarantees that the favorite positions of the left and right at any historical moment will be aligned with the truth 50–50. Even if both sides interpret reality through their own beliefs, the side whose beliefs are warranted will be acting rationally.


Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom, Molyn Leszcz

cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, confounding variable, delayed gratification, deskilling, epigenetics, experimental subject, impulse control, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, TED Talk, the scientific method, traveling salesman, unbiased observer

Hoag, “Comparative Efficacy of Individual and Group Psychotherapy: A Meta-Analytic Perspective,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (1998): 101–117. M. Smith, G. Glass, and T. Miller, The Benefits of Psychotherapy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980). L. Tillitski, “A Meta-Analysis of Estimated Effect Sizes for Group Versus Individual Versus Control Treatments,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy 40 (1990): 215–24. G. Burlingame, K. MacKenzie, and B. Strauss, “Small-Group Treatment: Evidence for Effectiveness and Mechanisms of Change,” in Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, 5th ed., ed.

CHAPTER 3 1 C. McRoberts, G. Burlingame, and M. Hoag, “Comparative Efficacy of Individual and Group Psychotherapy: A Meta-analytic Perspective,” Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 2 (1998): 101–17. W. McDermut, I. Miller, and R. Brown, “The Efficacy of Group Psychotherapy for Depression: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Empirical Research,” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 8 (2001): 98–116. G. Burlingame, K. MacKenzie, and B. Strauss, “Small-Group Treatment: Evidence for Effectiveness and Mechanisms of Change,” in Bergin and Garfield’s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change, 5th ed., ed.

Lambert, “The Evaluation of Therapeutic Outcomes,” in Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavioral Change: An Empirical Analysis, 2nd ed., ed. S. Garfield and A. Bergin (New York: Wiley, 1978), 139–83. R. Bednar and T. Kaul, “Experiential Group Research: Can the Canon Fire?” in Garfield and Bergin, Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavioral Change, 4th ed., 631–63. C. Tillitski, “A Meta-Analysis of Estimated Effect Sizes for Group Versus Individual Versus Control Treatments,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy 40 (1990): 215–24. R. Toseland and M. Siporin, “When to Recommend Group Therapy: A Review of the Clinical and Research Literature,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy 36 (1986): 171–201. 2 W.


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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

Mechanisms by which childhood personality traits influence adult health status: Educational attainment and healthy behaviors. Health Psychology, 26(1), 121–125, p. 121. criteria related to career success Barrick, M. R., & Mount, M. K. (1991). The big five personality dimensions and job performance: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 44(1), 1–26. and, Roberts, B. W., Chernyshenko, O. S., Stark, S., & Goldberg, L. R. (2005). The structure of conscientiousness: An empirical investigation based on seven major personality questionnaires. Personnel Psychology, 58(1), 103–139. better recovery outcomes following surgery Kamran, F. (2013).

The Journal of Social Psychology, 5(1), 128–129. and, Smith, S. M. (1979). Remembering in and out of context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5(5), 460–471, p. 460. and, Smith, S. M., & Vela, E. (2001). Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(2), 203–220. brain simply wasn’t designed I’m using the term designed loosely; the brain wasn’t designed, it evolved as a collection of special-purpose processing modules. 1941 by the Oxford Filing Supply Company Jonas, F. D. (1942). U.S. Patent No. 2305710 A.

Intimacy, love, and passion . . . belong to completely different, multidimensional constructs Acker, M., & Davis, M. H. (1992). Intimacy, passion and commitment in adult romantic relationships: A test of the triangular theory of love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 9(1), 21–50. and, Graham, J. M. (2011). Measuring love in romantic relationships: A meta-analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28(6), 748–771. and, Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119. Just like our chimpanzee cousins Hare, B., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Chimpanzees deceive a human competitor by hiding. Cognition, 101(3), 495–514.


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The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future by Noreena Hertz

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, Asian financial crisis, autism spectrum disorder, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Broken windows theory, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, Cass Sunstein, centre right, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, dark matter, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, future of work, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, illegal immigration, independent contractor, industrial robot, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Pepto Bismol, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, rent control, RFID, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Great Good Place, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Wall-E, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, WeWork, work culture , working poor, workplace surveillance

Cacioppo, ‘Myeloid differentiation architecture of leukocyte transcriptome dynamics in perceived social isolation’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 49 (December 2015), 15142–47, https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2015/11/18/1514249112.full.pdf; for a layman-friendly read, see ‘Loneliness triggers cellular changes that can cause illness, study shows’, University of Chicago, 23 November 2015, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151123201925.htm. 6 ‘Stress Weakens the Immune System’, American Psychological Association, 23 February 2006, https://www.apa.org/research/action/immune. 7 This is from a meta-analysis that looked at twenty-three different studies; ‘Measures of social relationships met inclusion criteria for loneliness if they were consistent with its definition as a subjective negative feeling associated with someone’s perception that their relationships with others are deficient’. Because it is a meta-study there are many different definitions of loneliness that were used in the sub-studies, some of which were chronic. N.K. Valtorta et al., ‘Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for coronary heart disease and stroke: systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal observational studies’, BMJ Journals: Heart 102, no. 13 (2016), 1009–16, http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/heartjnl-2015-308790; J.H.

., ‘Feelings of loneliness, but not social isolation, predict dementia onset: results from the Amsterdam Study of the Elderly (AMSTEL)’, Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry (2012), doi: 10.1136/jnnp-2012-302755. 8 J. Holt-Lunstad et al., ‘Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: a meta-analytic review’. This is also a meta-analysis, so loneliness is defined in different ways. One meta-analysis might look at the data and results from potentially hundreds of studies on the same or very similar subjects, seeking patterns and drawing broad conclusions – an immensely useful way of combining insights across thousands of data points. In summarising loneliness research, however, this poses a slight challenge because each of the hundreds of ‘source studies’ might have had a slightly different definition of loneliness, or measured loneliness over a certain period of time.

Whilst this study uses the language of insufficient social relationships or poor social relationships versus adequate ones, and finds that those with adequate social relationships have a 50% greater likelihood of survival compared to those with poor or insufficient social relationships, the studies incorporated in this analysis do not themselves all use this language; some look at social isolation, others loneliness, others lack of social support. In a follow-up 2015 study which included more than double the number of studies and ten times the number of participants compared with the previous meta-analysis, and also attempted to disaggregate the research on social isolation and that on loneliness, the authors found that social isolation and loneliness have a similarly negative impact on our risk of death. See Julianne Holt-Lunstad et al., ‘Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, no. 2 (2015).


Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, Asperger Syndrome, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, clean tech, clean water, climate anxiety, Corn Laws, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, Garrett Hardin, Gary Taubes, gentleman farmer, global value chain, Google Earth, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, index fund, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, land tenure, Live Aid, LNG terminal, long peace, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microplastics / micro fibres, Murray Bookchin, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, renewable energy transition, Rupert Read, School Strike for Climate, Solyndra, Stephen Fry, Steven Pinker, supervolcano, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, WikiLeaks, Y2K

Mi Ah Han, Dena Zeraatkar, Gordon H. Guyatt et al., “Reduction of Red and Processed Meat Intake and Cancer Mortality and Incidence: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Cohort Studies,” Annals of Internal Medicine 171, no. 10 (October 2019): 711–20, https://doi.org/10.7326/M19-0699. Dena Zeraatkar, Mi Ah Han, Gordon H. Guyatt et al., “Red and Processed Meat Consumption and Risk for All-Cause Mortality and Cardiometabolic Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Cohort Studies,” Annals of Internal Medicine 171, no. 10 (October 2019): 703–10, https://doi.org/10.7326/M19-0655. 74. Aaron E. Carroll, “The Real Problem with Beef,” New York Times, October 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com. 75.

., https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1111287183497789440. 26. Lisa Linowes (executive director, Wind Action Group) in conversation with the author, November 1, 2019. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. John van Zalk and Paul Behrens, “The Spatial Extent of Renewable and Non-renewable Power Generation: A Review and Meta-analysis of Power Densities and Their Application in the U.S.,” Energy Policy 123 (December 2018): 83–91, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.08.023. 30. Lisa Linowes (executive director, Wind Action Group) in conversation with the author, November 1, 2019. 31. Ibid. 32. Paul M. Cryan, “Wind Turbines as Landscape Impediments to the Migratory Connectivity of Bats,” Journal of Environmental Law 41 (May 2011): 355–70, https://www.lclark.edu/live/files/8520-412cryan. 33.

In 2017, U.S. cropland totaled 396 million acres. The amount of land needed to replace all gasoline with pure ethanol would be 653.3 million acres, an increase of 51 percent. 96. John van Zalk and Paul Behrens, “The spatial extent of renewable and non-renewable power generation: A review and meta-analysis of power densities and their application in the US,” Energy Policy 123 (2018): 83–91, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.08.023. 97. Ibid., 83–91. 98. Jesse Jenkins, Mark Moro, Ted Nordhaus et al., Beyond Boom & Bust: Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence, Breakthrough Institute, April 2012, https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/uploads.thebreakthrough.org/articles/beyond-boom-and-bust-report-overview/Beyond_Boom_and_Bust.pdf, 18. 99.


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The Intelligence Trap: Revolutionise Your Thinking and Make Wiser Decisions by David Robson

active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Atul Gawande, autism spectrum disorder, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, classic study, cognitive bias, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, deep learning, deliberate practice, dematerialisation, Donald Trump, Dunning–Kruger effect, fake news, Flynn Effect, framing effect, fundamental attribution error, illegal immigration, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lone genius, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, post-truth, price anchoring, reality distortion field, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, the scientific method, theory of mind, traveling salesman, ultimatum game, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

., Yeager, D.S. and Dweck, C.S. (2015), ‘Mind-set Interventions Are a Scalable Treatment for Academic Underachievement’, Psychological Science, 26(6), 784?93. For further evidence of the power of interventions, see the following meta-analysis: Lazowski, R.A. and Hulleman, C.S. (2016), ‘Motivation Interventions in Education: A Meta-Analytic Review’, Review of Educational Research, 86(2), 602?40. 35 See, for instance, the following meta-analysis, which found a small but significant effect: Sisk, V.F., Burgoyne, A.P., Sun, J., Butler, J.L., Macnamara, B.N. (2018), ‘To What Extent and Under Which Circumstances Are Growth Mind-Sets Important to Academic Achievement?

., Moreno, A. M., Tangen, J. M., & Reinhard, J. (2013), ‘Honeybees can discriminate between Monet and Picasso paintings’, Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 199(1), 45–55. Carlström, M., & Larsson, S. C. (2018). ‘Coffee consumption and reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes: a systematic review with meta-analysis’, Nutrition Reviews, 76(6), 395–417. Olszewski, M., & Ortolano, R. (2011). ‘Knuckle cracking and hand osteoarthritis’, The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 24(2), 169–174. 12 Newman, E.J., Garry, M. and Bernstein, D.M., et al. (2012), ‘Nonprobative Words (or Photographs) Inflate Truthiness’, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 19(5), 969?

A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Model’, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1(2), 75?86. 27 Claro, S., Paunesku, D. and Dweck, C.S. (2016), ‘Growth Mindset Tempers the Effects of Poverty on Academic Achievement’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(31), 8664?8. 28 For evidence of the benefits of mindset, see the following meta-analysis, examining 113 studies: Burnette, J.L., O’Boyle, E.H., VanEpps, E.M., Pollack, J.M. and Finkel, E.J. (2013), ‘Mind-sets Matter: A Meta-Analytic Review of Implicit Theories and Self-regulation’, Psychological Bulletin, 139(3), 655?701. 29 Quoted in Roberts, R. and Kreuz, R. (2015), Becoming Fluent: How Cognitive Science Can Help Adults Learn a Foreign Language, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 26–7. 30 See, for example, Rustin, S. (10 May 2016), ‘New Test for “Growth Mindset”, the Theory That Anyone Who Tries Can Succeed’, Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/10/growth-mindset-research-uk-schools-sats. 31 Brummelman, E., Thomaes, S., Orobio de Castro, B., Overbeek, G. and Bushman, B.J. (2014), ‘ “That’s Not Just Beautiful ?


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Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad---And Surprising Good---About Feeling Special by Dr. Craig Malkin

Bernie Madoff, dark triade / dark tetrad, greed is good, helicopter parent, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Ronald Reagan, TED Talk, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, work culture

Marchisio. Narcissism in organizational contexts. Human Resource Management Review, 2011, vol. 21(4), pp. 268–84. DuBrin, A. J. Narcissism in the Workplace: Research, opinion, and practice. Edward Elgar, 2012. Grijalva, E., and D. A. Newman. Narcissism and Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB): Meta-analysis and consideration of collectivist culture, Big Five personality, and narcissism’s facet structure. Applied Psychology, 2014, in press. Harvey, P., and M. J. Martinko. An empirical examination of the role of attributions in psychological entitlement and its outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2009, vol. 30(4), pp. 459–76.

Sourcebooks, 2009. Nevicka, B., A. H. De Hoogh, A. E. Van Vianen, B. Beersma, and D. McIlwain. All I need is a stage to shine: Narcissists’ leader emergence and performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 2011, vol. 22(5), pp. 910–25. O’Boyle Jr., E. H., D. R. Forsyth, G. C. Banks, and M. A. McDaniel. A meta-analysis of the dark triad and work behavior: A social exchange perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2012, vol. 97(3), p. 557. Padilla, A., R. Hogan and R. B. Kaiser. The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 2007, vol. 18(3), pp. 176–94.

Mirror or megaphone?: How relationships between narcissism and social networking site use differ on Facebook and Twitter. Computers in Human Behavior, 2013, vol. 29(5), pp. 2004–12. Song, H., A. Zmyslinski-Seelig, J. Kim, A. Drent, A. Victor, K. Omori, and M. Allen. Does Facebook make you lonely?: A meta analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 2014, vol. 36, pp. 446–52. Weiser, E. B. The functions of Internet use and their social and psychological consequences. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 2001, vol. 4(6), pp. 723–43. Wilson, R. E., S. D. Gosling, and L. T. Graham. A review of Facebook research in the social sciences.


pages: 235 words: 62,862

Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek by Rutger Bregman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Bartolomé de las Casas, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Branko Milanovic, cognitive dissonance, computer age, conceptual framework, credit crunch, David Graeber, Diane Coyle, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, full employment, George Gilder, George Santayana, happiness index / gross national happiness, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, income inequality, invention of gunpowder, James Watt: steam engine, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, low skilled workers, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, microcredit, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, precariat, public intellectual, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, stem cell, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, wage slave, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey

Kids who grow up poor end up with two years’ less educational attainment, work 450 fewer hours per year, and run three times the risk of all-round bad health than those raised in families that are well off. Investments in education won’t really help these kids, the researchers say.16 They have to get above the poverty line first. A recent meta-analysis of 201 studies on the effectiveness of financial education came to a similar conclusion: Such education makes almost no difference at all.17 This is not to say no one learns anything – poor people can come out wiser, for sure. But it’s not enough. “It’s like teaching a person to swim and then throwing them in a stormy sea,” laments Professor Shafir.

Landrigan et al., “Effect of Reducing Interns’ Work Hours on Serious Medical Errors in Intensive Care Units.” The New England Journal of Medicine (October 2004). http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa041406 There is also a mountain of research attesting that working too hard is bad for health. See the meta-analysis: Kate Sparks et al., “The Effects of Hours of Work on Health: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology (August 2011). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8325.1997.tb00656.x/abstract 42. Jon C. Messenger and Naj Ghosheh, “Work Sharing during the Great Recession” (International Labour Organization). http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_187627.pdf 43.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Speech on Welfare Reform” (September 16, 1995) http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/politics/danielpatrickmoynihansspee.html 31. Beyond this, Nixon’s plan, once implemented, would have been difficult to repeal as it would have rapidly garnered widespread support. “New policies create new politics,” writes Steensland (p. 220). 32. Steensland, p. 226. 33. Steensland, p. x. 34. In a large meta-analysis of 93 European programs, no or negative effects were found in at least half. See: Frans den Butter and Emil Mihaylov, “Activerend arbeidsmarktbeleid is vaak niet effectief,” ESB (April 2008). http://personal.vu.nl/f.a.g.den.butter/activerendarbmarktbeleid2008.pdf 35. Stephen Kastoryano and Bas van der Klaauw, “Dynamic Evaluation of Job Search Assistance,” IZA Discussion Papers (June 15, 2011). http://www.roa.nl/seminars/pdf2012/BasvanderKlaauw.pdf 36.


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How Cycling Can Save the World by Peter Walker

active transport: walking or cycling, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, car-free, correlation does not imply causation, Crossrail, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Enrique Peñalosa, fixed-gear, gentrification, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, meta-analysis, New Journalism, New Urbanism, post-work, publication bias, safety bicycle, Sidewalk Labs, Stop de Kindermoord, TED Talk, the built environment, traffic fines, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, transit-oriented development, urban planning

CHAPTER 7 1 Michael Polhamus, “Bill Would Require Neon Clothes, Government ID for Cyclists,” Jackson Hole News and Guide, January 30, 2015, http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/jackson_hole_daily/local/bill-would-require-neon-clothes-government-id-for-cyclists/article_d53b9712-2e93-517d-9e33-8f13d693ba21.html. 2 Wes Johnson, “Missouri Bill Requires Bicyclists to Fly 15-Foot Flag on Country Roads,” Springfield News-Leader, January 14, 2016. 3 “School Pupils Encouraged to Wear Hi-Vis Vests in Road Safety Scheme,” Grimsby Telegraph, January 23, 2012, http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/school-pupils-encouraged-wear-hi-vis-vests-road/story-15010565-detail/story.html. 4 Chris Boardman, “Why I Didn’t Wear a Helmet on BBC Breakfast,” BritishCycling.org, November 3, 2014, https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/campaigning/article/20141103-campaigning-news-Boardman--Why-I-didn-t-wear-a-helmet-on-BBC-Breakfast-0. 5 Nick Hussey, “Why My Cycling Clothing Company Uses Models without Helmets,” The Guardian, February 4, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2016/feb/04/vulpine-bike-clothing-company-models-without-helmets-dont-hate-us. 6 Peter Jacobsen and Harry Rutter, “Cycling Safety,” in Pucher and Buehler, City Cycling, ch. 7. 7 “Helmets for Pedal Cyclists and for Users of Skateboards and Roller Skates,” European Committee for Standardization, 1997, http://www.mrtn.ch/pdf/en_1078.pdf. 8 R.G. Attewell, K. Glase, and M. McFadden, “Bicycle Helmet Efficacy: A Meta-Analysis,” Accident Analysis and Prevention 33 (2001). 9 Rune Elvik, “Publication bias and time-trend bias in meta-analysis of bicycle helmet efficacy: A re-analysis of Attewell, Glase and McFadden,” Accident Analysis and Prevention 43 (2011):1245–51. 10 E-mail exchange with the author. 11 Davis, Death on the Streets. 12 1985 Durbin-Harvey report, commissioned by UK Department of Transport from two professors of statistics. 13 Ian Walker, “Drivers Overtaking Bicyclists: Objective Data on the Effects of Riding Position, Helmet Use, Vehicle Type and Apparent Gender,” Accident Analysis and Prevention 39 (2007):417–25. 14 “Wearing a Helmet Puts Cyclists at Risk, Suggests Research,” University of Bath, September 11, 2016, http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/articles/archive/overtaking110906.html. 15 Tim Gamble and Ian Walker, “Wearing a Bicycle Helmet Can Increase Risk Taking and Sensation Seeking in Adults,” Psychological Science, 2016. 16 “Helmet Wearing Increases Risk Taking and Sensation Seeking,” University of Bath, January 25, 2016, http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/2016/01/25/helmet-wearing-risk-taking. 17 Fishman et al., “Barriers and Facilitators to Public Bicycle Scheme Use: A Qualitative Approach,” Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour 15, Vol. 6 (2012):686–98. 18 Interview with the author. 19 N.C.

NOTES INTRODUCTION 1 Department for Transport, National Travel Survey: England 2015, 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/551437/national-travel-survey-2015.pdf. 2 Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, Cycling in the Netherlands, 2009, http://www.fietsberaad.nl/library/repository/bestanden/CyclingintheNetherlands2009.pdf. 3 United Nations, “World’s Population Increasingly Urban with More Than Half Living in Urban Areas,” July 10, 2014, http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html. CHAPTER 1 1 Royal College of Physicians, “National Review of Asthma Deaths,” 2015, https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/projects/national-review-asthma-deaths. 2 Daniela Schmid and Michael F. Leitzmann, “Television Viewing and Time Spent Sedentary in Relation to Cancer Risk: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 106, Vol. 7 (2014), http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/106/7/dju098.full.pdf+html. 3 Interview with the author. 4 John Pucher and Ralph Buehler, “At the Frontiers of Cycling: Policy Innovations in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany,” World Transport Policy and Practice (December 2007), https://ralphbu.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/frontiers.pdf. 5 Jeroen Johan de Hartog, Hanna Boogaard, Hans Nijland, and Gerard Hoek, “Do the Health Benefits of Cycling Outweigh the Risks?”


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Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease by Gary Taubes

Albert Einstein, California gold rush, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, cognitive dissonance, collaborative editing, Drosophila, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental subject, Gary Taubes, invention of agriculture, John Snow's cholera map, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, phenotype, placebo effect, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, selection bias, seminal paper, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, twin studies, unbiased observer, Upton Sinclair

One other method can be employed to judge the validity of the hypotheses that dietary fat or saturated fat causes heart disease, and that cholesterol-lowering diets prevent it. This is a technique known as meta-analysis, viewed as a kind of last epidemiological resort in these kinds of medical and public-health controversies: if the existing studies give ambiguous results, the true size of a benefit or harm may be assessed by pooling the data from all the studies in such a way as to gain what’s known as statistical power. Meta-analysis is controversial in its own right. Investigators can choose, for instance, which studies to include in their meta-analysis, either consciously or subconsciously, based on which ones are most likely to give them the desired result.

The founders, led by Iain Chalmers of Oxford University, believed that meta-analyses could be so easily biased by researchers’ prejudices that they needed a standardized methodology to minimize the influence of such prejudice, and they needed a venue that would allow for the publication of impartial reviews. The Cochrane Collaboration methodology makes it effectively impossible for researchers to influence a meta-analysis by the criteria they use to include or exclude studies. Cochrane Collaboration reviews must include all studies that fit a prespecified set of criteria, and they must exclude all that don’t. In 2001, the Cochrane Collaboration published a review of “reduced or modified dietary fat for preventing cardiovascular disease.”

Most striking result: Ibid. The NHLBI workshop: Jacobs et al. 1992. Footnote. Hulley et al. 1992. Rifkind’s interpretation: Interview, Basil Rifkind. Cf. Jacobs et al. 1992. “Questions should be pursued…”: Jacobs et al. 1992. Feynman’s lectures: Feynman 1967 (“…if your bias…” and “…absolutely sure…,” 147).83 Meta-analysis: Mann 1990 provides a good review. Cochrane Collaboration: Taubes 1996; the Cochrane Collaboration Web site (www.cochrane.org). “reduced or modified…”: Hooper et al. 2001. “A major lesson…”: Keys 1975. “The pooled effects suggest…”: Ebrahim et al. 2006. Evidence indeed suggested: Malmros 1950; Schornagel 1953; Vartiainen and Kanerva 1947.


Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities by Vaclav Smil

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon tax, circular economy, colonial rule, complexity theory, coronavirus, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Easter island, endogenous growth, energy transition, epigenetics, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, general purpose technology, Gregor Mendel, happiness index / gross national happiness, Helicobacter pylori, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, hydrogen economy, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, knowledge economy, Kondratiev cycle, labor-force participation, Law of Accelerating Returns, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, meta-analysis, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, optical character recognition, out of africa, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Republic of Letters, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, South China Sea, synthetic biology, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, three-masted sailing ship, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, trade route, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, yield curve

Genetically modified soybeans, rapeseed (and cotton) had followed soon afterward, but the adoption of transgenic crops has encountered a great deal of consumer as well as regulatory resistance (particularly in the EU). As a result, there is still no large-scale cultivation of transgenic wheat or rice. But the opposition is not based on solid scientific foundations. Klümper and Qaim (2014) examined all principal factors that influence outcomes of genetically modified cropping and their meta-analysis provided robust evidence of benefits for producers in both affluent and low-income countries. On average, the adoption of transgenic crops has reduced pesticide use by 37% while it increased crop yields by 22% and profits by 68%, and yield gains were larger for insect-resistant than for herbicide-tolerant crops, and they have been higher in low-income countries.

Killen et al. (2010) found the full range of intraspecific allometries in teleost fishes between 0.38 and 1.29. Boukal et al. (2014) confirmed a wide variability of the exponent within various taxa. Additional meta-analyses will confirm the findings just cited, but at least ever since White et al. (2007) published a meta-analysis of 127 interspecific allometric exponents there should have been no doubts about the absence of any universal metabolic allometry. The effect of body mass on metabolic rate is significantly heterogeneous and in general it is stronger for endotherms than for ectotherms, with observed mean exponents of 0.804 for ectotherms and 0.704 for endotherms.

Improved nutrition—above all the increased supply of high-quality animal protein in general and of dairy products in particular—and a reduced burden of childhood and adolescent diseases have clearly been the two key drivers of the modern growth of average stature. The effect of dairy products on stature is evident from national comparisons and it has been quantified by meta-analysis of modern controlled trials (de Beer 2012). The most likely result of dairy product supplementation is 0.4 cm of additional growth per year per 245 mL (US cup is about 237 mL) of daily intake. The nationwide effect is clearly seen by diverging US and Dutch height trends. American milk consumption was stable during the first half of the 20th century and steadily declined afterwards, while Dutch consumption was increasing until the 1960s and, despite its subsequent decline, is still above the US level; Dutch males, smaller than Americans before WWII, surpassed their American peers after 1950.


The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy, a Nd My Life by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

back-to-the-land, epigenetics, index card, longitudinal study, medical residency, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, mouse model, place-making, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, stem cell

A few days earlier I had a conversation with Srijan Sen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School, who recently analyzed over fifty studies to better understand the relationship between seratonin gene variants and increased or decreased risk of depression and illness as adults. “His meta-analysis showed that the orchid gene variant is correlated with higher rates of depression,” I explain to Rowland-Seymour. “But what’s really intriguing is that the orchid gene is more likely to be correlated with depression in adults when stressful circumstances occurred in childhood rather than when severe stress hits once they’re already adults.”

A few days earlier I had a conversation with Srijan Sen, MD, PhD: In this study, Srijan Sen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School, and his colleagues examined fifty-four studies done between 2001 and 2010 looking at 41,000 individuals—the largest analysis ever done of the relationship between individuals’ serotonin genetic make-up and how well they were able to bounce back from adversity. Karg K, Burmeister M, Shedden K, et al. The serotonin transporter promoter variant (5-HTTLPR), stress, and depression meta-analysis revisited: Evidence of genetic moderation. Arch Gen Psych. 2011 May;68(5):444–54. In individuals with the short-short gene variant: Hariri AR, Mattay VS, Tessitore A, et al. Serotonin transporter genetic variation and the response of the human amygdala. Science. 2002 Jul 19;297(5580):400–403. We already know that children with a history of ACEs: Aguilera M, Arias B, Wichers M, et al.

The experience of persons with allergic respiratory symptoms: Practicing yoga as a self-healing modality. Holist Nurs Pract. 2011 Mar–Apr;25(2):63–70. Cancer patients who practice yoga report: Lin KY, Hu YT, Chang KJ,Lin HF, et al. Effects of yoga on psychological health, quality of life, and physical health of patients with cancer: A meta-analysis. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2011;2011:659876. Epub 2011 Mar 9. And the thing that makes the brain decide one way or the other: Butler D, Moseley L. Explain pain (Adelaide, South Australia: Noigroup Publications, 2003). In this book, Butler and Moseley discuss new findings that our level of perceived pain is based on how much the brain perceives us to be under threat.


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The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery by George Johnson

Apollo 11, Arthur D. Levinson, Atul Gawande, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Cepheid variable, Columbine, dark matter, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, Gary Taubes, Gregor Mendel, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Helicobacter pylori, Isaac Newton, Magellanic Cloud, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, Murray Gell-Mann, phenotype, profit motive, seminal paper, stem cell

Sanjoaquin et al., “Folate Intake and Colorectal Cancer Risk: A Meta-analytical Approach,” International Journal of Cancer 113, no. 5 (February 20, 2005): 825–28 [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15499620]; Susanna C. Larsson, Edward Giovannucci, and Alicja Wolk, “Folate and Risk of Breast Cancer: A Meta-analysis,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 99, no. 1 (January 3, 2007): 64–76 [http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/1/64.abstract]; and Jane C. Figueiredo et al., “Folic Acid and Risk of Prostate Cancer: Results from a Randomized Clinical Trial,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 101, no. 6 (March 18, 2009): 432–35.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6351251] 23. eating a lot of red meat: The calculation is for a fifty-year-old. See Teresa Norat et al., “Meat, Fish, and Colorectal Cancer Risk,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 97, no. 12 (June 15, 2005): 906–16; [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15956652] and Doris S. M. Chan et al., “Red and Processed Meat and Colorectal Cancer Incidence: Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies,” PLOS ONE 6, no. 6 (June 6, 2011). [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108955] 24. from 1.28 percent to 1.7 percent: Norat et al., “Meat, Fish, and Colorectal Cancer Risk.” 25. fish, fish oils, and colon cancer prevention: For evidence that eating fish discourages cancer by encouraging apoptosis and impeding cellular proliferation, see Youngmi Cho et al., “A Chemoprotective Fish Oil- and Pectin-Containing Diet Temporally Alters Gene Expression Profiles in Exfoliated Rat Colonocytes Throughout Oncogenesis,” Journal of Nutrition 141, no. 6 (June 1, 2011): 1029–35.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1622634] 41. oral contraceptives may slightly raise the odds: “Oral Contraceptives and Cancer Risk,” National Cancer Institute, reviewed March 21, 2012. 42. Alcohol … with digestive cancers: The evidence for esophageal, liver, and other cancers is examined in Vincenzo Bagnardi et al., “Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Cancer: A Meta-Analysis,” Alcohol Research and Health: The Journal of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism 25, no. 4 (2001): 263–70. [http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-4/263-270.htm] 43. the risk from hepatitis viruses: Heather M. Colvin and Abigail E. Mitchell, eds., Hepatitis and Liver Cancer (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010), 29–30.


Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society by Nicholas A. Christakis

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, Cass Sunstein, classic study, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, deep learning, different worldview, disruptive innovation, domesticated silver fox, double helix, driverless car, Easter island, epigenetics, experimental economics, experimental subject, Garrett Hardin, intentional community, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, invention of writing, iterative process, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, joint-stock company, land tenure, language acquisition, Laplace demon, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, means of production, mental accounting, meta-analysis, microbiome, out of africa, overview effect, phenotype, Philippa Foot, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, replication crisis, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social intelligence, social web, stem cell, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, twin studies, ultimatum game, zero-sum game

Buss, “Sex Differences in Human Mate Preferences: Evolutionary Hypotheses Testing in 37 Cultures,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (1989): 1–49. 26. E. Turkheimer, “Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 9 (2000): 160–164. 27. T. J. C. Polderman et al., “Meta-Analysis of the Heritability of Human Traits Based on Fifty Years of Twin Studies,” Nature Genetics 47 (2015): 702–729. 28. J. Wu, H. Xiao, H. Sun, L. Zou, and L. Q. Zhu, “Role of Dopamine Receptors in ADHD: A Systematic Meta-Analysis,” Molecular Neurobiology 45 (2012): 605–620; C. Chen, M. Burton, E. Greenberger, and J. Dmitrieva, “Population Migration and the Variation of Dopamine D4 Receptor (DRD4) Allele Frequencies Around the Globe,” Evolution and Human Behavior 20 (1999): 309–324; R.

Hamer, “Population and Familial Association Between the D4 Dopamine Receptor Gene and Measures of Novelty Seeking,” Nature Genetics 12 (1996): 81–84; M. R. Munafo, B. Yalcin, S. A. Willis-Owen, and J. Flint, “Association of the Dopamine D4 Receptor (DRD4) Gene and Approach-Related Personality Traits: Meta-Analysis and New Data,” Biological Psychiatry 63 (2008): 197–206. 29. See, for example, J. N. Rosenquist, S. F. Lehrer, A. J. O’Malley, A. M. Zaslavsky, J. W. Smoller, and N. A. Christakis, “Cohort of Birth Modifies the Association Between FTO Genotype and BMI,” PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (2015): 354–359. 30.

Black, “HLA and Mate Selection: No Evidence in South Amerindians,” American Journal of Human Genetics 61 (1997): 505–511. 61. T. Bereczkei, P. Gyuris, and G. E. Weiseld, “Sexual Imprinting in Human Mate Choice,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 271 (2004): 1129–1134. 62. T. J. C. Polderman et al., “Meta-Analysis of the Heritability of Human Traits Based on Fifty Years of Twin Studies,” Nature Genetics 47 (2015): 702–709. 63. R. S. Herz and M. Inzlicht, “Sex Differences in Response to Physical and Social Factors Involved in Human Mate Selection: The Importance of Smell for Women,” Evolution and Human Behavior 23 (2002): 359–364. 64.


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Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead Us Into Temptation by Chris Nodder

4chan, affirmative action, Amazon Mechanical Turk, cognitive dissonance, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Donald Trump, drop ship, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, game design, gamification, haute couture, Ian Bogost, jimmy wales, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, late fees, lolcat, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Monty Hall problem, Netflix Prize, Nick Leeson, Occupy movement, Paradox of Choice, pets.com, price anchoring, recommendation engine, Rory Sutherland, Silicon Valley, Stanford prison experiment, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tim Cook: Apple, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile

Herbst, Lowell Gaertner, and Chester A. Insko. “My head says yes but my heart says no: Cognitive and affective attraction as a function of similarity to the ideal self.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84.6 (2003): 1206. Dating meta-analysis: Alan Feingold. “Matching for attractiveness in romantic partners and same-sex friends: A meta-analysis and theoretical critique.” Psychological Bulletin 104.2 (1988): 226. OkCupid statistics on male reaction to beauty, described as game theory: Christian Rudder. “The mathematics of beauty.” OKTrends (blog.okcupid.com). January 10, 2011. Retrieved March 2013.

Retrieved January 2013. Real-time chats are more balanced: Antonios Garas, David Garcia, Marcin Skowron, and Frank Schweitzer. “Emotional persistence in online chatting communities.”Scientific Reports 2.402 (2012). Situational norms: Tom Postmes and Russell Spears. “Deindividuation and antinormative behavior: A meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 123.3 (1998): 238–259. Give people permission Milgram’s experiment: Stanley Milgram. “Behavioral Study of Obedience.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67.4 (1963): 371–378. Milgram quotes: Stanley Milgram. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. p. 6.


Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions by Temple Grandin, Ph.D.

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, air gap, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, Apple II, ASML, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, defense in depth, Drosophila, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, GPT-3, Gregor Mendel, Greta Thunberg, hallucination problem, helicopter parent, income inequality, industrial robot, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Jony Ive, language acquisition, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, neurotypical, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, phenotype, ransomware, replication crisis, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Robert X Cringely, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, space junk, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, TaskRabbit, theory of mind, TikTok, twin studies, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, US Airways Flight 1549, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, web application, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

Singapore: Springer, 2020. doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4250-3_9. Mathewson, J. H. “Visual-Spatial Thinking: An Aspect of Science Overlooked by Educators.” Science Education 83, no. 1 (1999): 33–54. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1098-237X(199901)83:1%3C33::AID-SCE2%3E3.0.CO;2-Z. Mazard, A., et al. “A PET Meta-Analysis of Object and Spatial Mental Imagery.” Cognitive Psychology 16 (2004): 673–95. McFarland, M. “Why Shades of Asperger’s Syndrome Are the Secret to Building a Great Tech Company.” Washington Post, April 3, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/04/03/why-shades-of-aspergers-syndrome-are-the-secret-to-building-a-great-tech-company/.

“Detection of Malignant Melanoma Using Artificial Intelligence: An Observational Study of Diagnostic Accuracy.” Dermatology Practical & Conceptual 10, no. 1 (2020): e2020011. doi.org/10.5826/dpc.1001a11. Pidgeon, L. M., et al. “Functional Neuroimaging of Visual Creativity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Brain and Behavior 6, no. 10 (2016). doi.org/10.1002/brb3.540. Pinker, S. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: William Morrow, 1994. Putt, S., et al. “The Role of Verbal Interaction during Experimental Bifacial Stone Tool Manufacture.” Lithic Technology 39, no. 2 (2014): 96–112.

Soares, J. M., et al. “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.” Frontiers in Neuroscience (2016). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2016.00515/full. Spagna, A., et al. “Visual Mental Imagery Engages the Left Fusiform Gyrus, but Not the Early Visual Cortex: A Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Evidence.” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews (2020). doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.029. Sperry, R. W. “Lateral Specialization of Cerebral Function in the Surgically Separated Hemispheres.” In The Psychophysiology of Thinking, ed. F. J. McGuigan and R. A. Schoonover, chap. 6.


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Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brené Brown

Black Lives Matter, desegregation, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, false flag, meta-analysis, pattern recognition, place-making, Sheryl Sandberg, TED Talk

Numerous studies confirm that it’s not the quantity of friends but the quality of a few relationships that actually matters. If you’re anything like me, and you find yourself questioning the idea that starvation and loneliness are equally life-threatening, let me share the study that really brought all of this together for me. In a meta-analysis of studies on loneliness, researchers Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, and J. Bradley Layton found the following: Living with air pollution increases your odds of dying early by 5 percent. Living with obesity, 20 percent. Excessive drinking, 30 percent. And living with loneliness? It increases our odds of dying early by 45 percent.

the brain’s self-protection mode often ramps up the stories we tell ourselves: Brown, Rising Strong, p. 124. not the quantity of friends but the quality of a few relationships: Susan Pinker, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2014). a meta-analysis of studies on loneliness: J. Holt-Lunstad, M. Baker, T. Harris, D. Stephenson, and T. B. Smith, “Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 10(2), 2015, 227–37, doi:10.1177/1745691614568352. one of my favorite high lonesome songs: Townes Van Zandt, “If I Needed You,” on the album The Late Great Townes Van Zandt (New York: Tomato Records, 1972).


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Extreme Teams: Why Pixar, Netflix, AirBnB, and Other Cutting-Edge Companies Succeed Where Most Fail by Robert Bruce Shaw, James Foster, Brilliance Audio

Airbnb, augmented reality, benefit corporation, Blitzscaling, call centre, cloud computing, data science, deliberate practice, Elon Musk, emotional labour, financial engineering, future of work, holacracy, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Jony Ive, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, loose coupling, meta-analysis, nuclear winter, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, Peter Thiel, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, Tony Fadell, Tony Hsieh, work culture

Fortune, March 8, 2013. 36Ian Parker, “How an Industrial Designer Became Apple’s Greatest Product,” February 23, 2015. 37Jay Yarow, “Jony Ive: This Is the Most Important Thing I Learned from Steve Jobs,” Business Insider, October 10, 2014. 38Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001). 39There is a great deal of research on the impact of social cohesion on performance. See D. J. Beal et al., “Cohesion and Performance in Groups: A Meta-Analytic Clarification of Construct Relation,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88 (2003), 989–1004; S. M. Gully, D. J. Devine, and D. J. Whitney, “A Meta-Analysis of Cohesion and Performance: Effects of Level of Analysis and Task Interdependence,” Small Group Research 26 (1995): 497–520; M. A. Hogg, The Social Psychology of Group Cohesiveness (New York: New York University Press, 1993). 40Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Forces of War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 41An important caveat: The authors found the camaraderie exerted this level of influence only when the soldiers saw others in their troop as similar to themselves—in their place of birth, ethnicity, social standing, and age.

., August 1, 1992. 60Adam Waytz, “The Limits of Empathy,” Harvard Business Review January-February (2016). 61Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant, “Collaborative Overload,” Harvard Business Review, January-February (2016); Radostina K. Purvanova and John P. Muros, “Gender Differences in Burnout: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Vocational Behavior 77 (2010), 168–85. Madeline E. Heilman and Julie J. Chen, “Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions to Men’s and Women’s Altruistic Citizenship Behavior,” Journal of Applied Psychology 90 (2005), 431–41. 62The quote is from Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg, “Madam C.E.O., Get Me a Coffee,” New York Times, February 16, 2016. 63Barry Johnson, Polarity Management, HRD PRess; 2014. 64Robert Bruce Shaw interview. 65Ed Catmull, CEO of Pixar, notes the downside of moving too quickly on underperformers on those who remain: “It makes them think, ‘oh, if I screw up, they’re going to remove me.’

That said, fit is also important in the satisfaction of those who work in a company or group. Research indicates an employee’s fit with a firm’s culture is a strong predictor of organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and retention. See Amy L. Kristof-Brown and Erin C. Johnson, “Consequences of Individuals’ Fit at Work: A Meta-Analysis of Person-Job, Person-Organization, Person-Group and Person-Supervisor Fit,” Personnel Psychology 58 (2005), 281–342. 9Patagonia’s founder notes, “Not everyone wants to change the world, but we want a company to feel like home for those who do. Employees who are drawn to Chouinard Equipment, and later to Patagonia, either shared those values or did not mind working among those who held them.”


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Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong-And the New Research That's Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini

Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, classic study, demographic transition, Drosophila, feminist movement, gender pay gap, Large Hadron Collider, meta-analysis, mouse model, out of africa, place-making, scientific mainstream, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, women in the workforce

“Beyond Newborn Survival: The World You Are Born into Determines Your Risk of Disability-Free Survival.” Pediatric Research 74, no. S1 (2013): 1–3. Peacock, Janet L., et al. “Neonatal and Infant Outcome in Boys and Girls Born Very Prematurely.” Pediatric Research 71, no. 3 (2012): 305–10 Buckberry, Sam, et al. “Integrative Transcriptome Meta-Analysis Reveals Widespread Sex-Biased Gene Expression at the Human Fetal–Maternal Interface.” Molecular Human Reproduction 20, no. 8 (2014): 810–19. Austad, Steven N. “Why Women Live Longer Than Men: Sex Differences in Longevity.” Gender Medicine 3, no. 2 (2006): 79–92. Austad, Steven N., and Andrzej Bartke.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Davis, Shannon N., and Barbara J. Risman. “Feminists Wrestle with Testosterone: Hormones, Socialization and Cultural Interactionism as Predictors of Women’s Gendered Selves.” Social Science Research 49 (2015): 110–25. Ruigroka, Amber N. V., et al. “A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Human Brain Structure.” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 39 (2014): 34–50. Chapter 4: The Missing Five Ounces of the Female Brain Gardener, Helen H. Facts and Fictions of Life, Boston: Arena, 1893. ——. “Sex and Brain Weight.” Letter to the editor. Popular Science Monthly 31, no. 10 (June 1887): 266–68.

“On the Mis-Presentation and Misinterpretation of Gender-Related Data: The Case of Ingalhalikar’s Human Connectome Study.” PNAS 111, no. 6 (February 11, 2014), https://www.pnas.org/content/111/6/E637.full?keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&ijkey=4183bcb77bcb8782c9324a9abf711223af7bbe9f. Tan, Anh, et al. “The Human Hippocampus Is Not Sexually-Dimorphic: Meta-Analysis of Structural MRI Volumes.” NeuroImage 124 (2016): 350–66. Cahill, Larry. “Equal ≠ The Same: Sex Differences in the Human Brain.” Cerebrum, April 2014. ——. “A Half-Truth Is a Whole Lie: On the Necessity of Investigating Sex Influences on the Brain.” Endocrinology 153, no. 6 (2012): 2541–43. Short, Nigel.


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Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference by William MacAskill

barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Cal Newport, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, clean water, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, experimental subject, follow your passion, food miles, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job automation, job satisfaction, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nate Silver, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, self-driving car, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, William MacAskill, women in the workforce

(For a sanity check, remember that even the very poorest people in the world live on sixty cents per day; if it cost ten dollars to save a life, then we’d have to suppose that they or their family members couldn’t save up for a few weeks, or take out a loan, in order to pay for the lifesaving product.) Claims of a program’s effectiveness are more reliable when grounded in academic studies. If there’s been a meta-analysis—a study of the studies—that’s even better. Even then, there can be cause for concern because the program that a charity implements might be subtly different from the programs that were studied in the meta-analysis. Knowing that, it’s even better if the charity has done its own independently audited or peer-reviewed randomized controlled evaluations of its programs. Robustness of evidence is very important for the simple reason that many programs don’t work, and it’s hard to distinguish the programs that don’t work from the programs that do.

Economic Letters, 2013; Glewwe and Kremer, “Schools, Teachers, and Education Outcomes in Developing Countries,” in Eric A. Hanushek and F. Welch (eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, vol. 2, (New York: Elsevier, 2006), 945–1017; Patrick McEwan, “Improving Learning in Primary Schools of Developing Countries: A Meta-Analysis of Randomised Experiments,” unpublished paper. The American Cancer Society spends: American Cancer Society, “Stewardship Report,” 2013, 44, http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@corporatecommunications/documents/document/acspc-041227.pdf. The ALS Association (of ice-bucket-challenge fame) spends: ALS Association, “Annual Report,” 2014, 3, http://www.alsa.org/assets/pdfs/annual_report_fy2014.pdf.


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In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's by Joseph Jebelli

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, CRISPR, double helix, Easter island, Edward Jenner, epigenetics, global pandemic, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, parabiotic, phenotype, placebo effect, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Skype, stem cell, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, traumatic brain injury

At the time of writing, Alzheimer’s overtook heart disease in England and Wales; it is now the leading cause of death. Office for National Statistics, Statistical Bulletin. 3. Reagan, Handwritten letter courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library. 4. Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies, p.39. 5. Lambert, Ibrahim-Verbaas, et al., ‘Meta-analysis of 74,046 individuals identifies 11 new susceptibility loci for Alzheimer’s disease’. 6. Fraser, Consulting report, July 2015. Chapter 1: The Psychiatrist with a Microscope 1. World Health Organization (WHO), ‘Dementia: Fact Sheet’. 2. Deuteronomy 28:28. 3. Jameson, Essays on the Changes of the Human Body, at its Different Ages, p.138. 4.

., ‘Modeling Alzheimer’s disease with iPSCs reveals stress phenotypes associated with intracellular Abeta and differential drug responsiveness’, Cell Stem Cell, 12 (4), 2013, 487–96 Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago Press, 2012 Lambert, J. C., Ibrahim-Verbaas, C. A., Harold, D., Naj, A. C., Sims, R., Bellenguez, C.,… Amouyel, P., ‘Meta-analysis of 74,046 individuals identifies 11 new susceptibility loci for Alzheimer’s disease’, Nature Genetics, 45 (12), 2013, 1452–8 Lane, N., Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, Oxford University Press, 2006 Lapillonne, H., Kobari, L., Mazurier, C., Tropel, P., Giarratana, M.

., ‘Serum SNTF increases in concussed professional ice hockey players and relates to the severity of postconcussion symptoms’, Journal of Neurotrauma, 32 (17), 2015, 1294–300 Singh, B., Parsaik, A. K., Mielke, M. M., Erwin, P. J., Knopman, D. S., Petersen, R. C., Roberts, R. O., ‘Association of Mediterranean diet with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis’, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 39 (2), 2014, 271–82 Sinha, M., Jang, Y. C., Oh, J., Khong, D., Wu, E. Y., Manohar, R.,… Wagers, A. J., ‘Restoring systemic GDF11 levels reverses age-related dysfunction in mouse skeletal muscle’, Science, 344 (6184), 2014, 649–52 Small, G. W., Ercoli, L. M., Silverman, D.


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Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck

A Pattern Language, active transport: walking or cycling, benefit corporation, bike sharing, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, congestion charging, congestion pricing, David Brooks, Donald Shoup, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Enrique Peñalosa, food miles, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, if you build it, they will come, Induced demand, intermodal, invisible hand, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, meta-analysis, New Urbanism, parking minimums, peak oil, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Florida, skinny streets, smart cities, starchitect, Stewart Brand, tech worker, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, transit-oriented development, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, walkable city, white flight, white picket fence, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

We talked about this phenomenon at length in Suburban Nation in 2000, and the seminal text, The Elephant in the Bedroom: Automobile Dependence and Denial, was published by Hart and Spivak in 1993. For this reason, I will not take the time here to address its causes, which are multifold and fascinating. Since these books were published, however, there have been additional reports, all essentially confirming what we knew then. In 2004, a meta-analysis of dozens of previous studies found that “on average, a 10 percent increase in lane miles induces an immediate 4 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled, which climbs to 10 percent—the entire new capacity—in a few years.”14 The most comprehensive effort remains the one completed in 1998 by the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which looked at fully seventy different metropolitan areas over fifteen years.

USA Today, June 3, 2011. Erlanger, Steven, and Maïa de la Baume. “French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality.” The New York Times, October 30, 2009. Eversley, Melanie. “Many Cities Changing One-Way Streets Back.” USA Today, December 20, 2006. Ewing, Reid, and Robert Cervero. “Travel and the Built Environment: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of the American Planning Association 76, no. 3 (2010): 11. Ewing, Reid, and Eric Dumbaugh. “The Built Environment and Traffic Safety: A Review of Empirical Evidence.” Journal of Planning Literature 23, no. 4 (2009): 347–67. Fallows, James. “Fifty-Nine and a Half Minutes of Brilliance, Thirty Seconds of Hauteur.” theatlantic.com, July 3, 2009.

They found that “those living in more walkable neighborhoods trusted their neighbors more; participated in community projects, clubs and volunteering more; and described television as their major form of entertainment less than survey participants living in less walkable neighborhoods” (Rogers et al., “Examining Walkability,” 201–203). ●The Blue Zones, 220. It’s worth noting that Lesson Four is “buy a case of high-quality red wine,” which certainly adds to the book’s appeal (240). ■The Blue Zones, 223. According to The New York Times, “a recent meta-analysis of studies about exercise and mortality showed that, in general, a sedentary person’s risk of dying prematurely from any cause plummeted by nearly 20 percent if he or she began brisk walking (or the equivalent) for 30 minutes five times a week” (Gretchen Reynolds, “What’s the Single Best Exercise?”).


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Busy by Tony Crabbe

airport security, Bluma Zeigarnik, British Empire, business process, classic study, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, death from overwork, fear of failure, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gamification, haute cuisine, informal economy, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, loss aversion, low cost airline, machine readable, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Paradox of Choice, placebo effect, Richard Feynman, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, scientific management, Shai Danziger, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, the long tail, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple

A prevention focus is all about avoiding negative outcomes, and promotion focus is all about positive outcomes: striving to achieve goals that are important to us. In 2012, researchers at Michigan State University carried out a thorough review of all the studies into self-regulation.13 Using a clever statistical technique called meta-analysis, they analyzed studies involving over 25,000 people. Their interest lay in the relationship between regulatory focus and performance. What they found was that a promotion focus was strongly related to task and job performance. It was also positively related to other good things like openness, innovation, helpfulness, job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Vohs, “Everyday Temptations: An Experience Sampling Study of Desire, Conflict, and Self-Control,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102, no. 6 (2012): 1318–35. 5. D. T. de Ridder, G. Lensvelt-Mulders, C. Finkenauer, F. M. Stok, and R. F. Baumeister, “Taking Stock of Self-Control: A Meta-Analysis of How Trait Self-Control Relates to a Wide Range of Behaviors,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 16, no. 1 (2012): 76–99. 6. Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007). 7.

Amy Arnsten cited in David Rock, Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long (New York: HarperBusiness, 2009). 12. Edward Tory Higgins, “Beyond Pleasure and Pain,” American Psychologist 52, no. 12 (December 1997): 1280–1300. 13. K. Lanaj, C. H. Chang, and R. E. Johnson, “Regulatory Focus and Work-Related Outcomes: A Review and Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 138, no. 5 (September 2012): 998–1034. 14. Steve Peters, The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2011). 15. James Gross, “Emotion Regulation: Affective, Cognitive, and Social Consequences,” Psychophysiology 39, no. 3 (May 2002): 281–91. 16.


pages: 280 words: 82,393

Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes by Ian Leslie

Atul Gawande, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, call centre, data science, different worldview, double helix, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Isaac Newton, longitudinal study, low cost airline, Mark Zuckerberg, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, Paul Graham, Silicon Valley, Socratic dialogue, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, work culture , zero-sum game

., ‘Conflict Styles and High–Low Context Cultures, A Cross-Cultural Extension’, Communication Research Reports, 29 (1), 2012 Cusk, Rachel, Coventry: Essays, Faber & Faber, 2019 De Dreu, K. W., and Weingart, L. R., ‘Task Versus Relationship Conflict, Team Performance, and Team Member Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 88 (4), 2003 DeSteno, David, et al., ‘Prejudice from thin air: the effect of emotion on automatic intergroup attitudes’, Psychological Science, 15 (5), June 2004 De Wit, Frank R. C., et al., ‘The paradox of intragroup conflict: a meta-analysis’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 97 (2), 2012 Docherty, Jayne, Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring Their Gods to the Negotiation Table, Syracuse University Press, 2001 ———, interview retrieved from https://www.beyondintractability.org/audiodisplay/docherty-j Donohue, W.

The conversation between Penny and her husband is recorded in Sillars et al., ‘Stepping into the stream of thought: Cognition during marital conflict’. My conversation with Alan Sillars was important to everything I say in this chapter, including the distinction between relationship and content. For the section on workplace conflict I drew on the meta-analysis by Carsten et al., as well as De Wit. ‘Both male and female senior execs were expected to conform to dominant norms’ is from Martin and Meyerson. 3. How Conflict Makes Us Smarter ‘Psychologists have now established beyond doubt that people are more likely to notice and consider evidence that confirms what they believe . . .’


pages: 295 words: 87,204

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

The State Secretary was Kjell-Olof Feldt, who said this at a seminar at Chalmers. 24. Hannah Ritchie, ‘Where does the plastic in our oceans come from?’, Our World in Data, 1 May 2021. 25. Wendling et al 2020, p.39. 26. Ibid. 27. Bishwa S. Koirala, Hui Li, Robert P. Berrens, ‘Further investigation of Environmental Kuznets Curve studies using meta-analysis’, International Journal of Ecological Economics and Statistics, no.S11, vol.22, 2011. 28. Thomas van Goethem & Jan Luiten van Zanden, ‘Biodiversity trends in a historical perspective’ How Was Life? Volume II: New Perspectives on Well-Being and Global Inequality Since 1820, OECD, 2021. 29. Hannah Ritchie, ‘You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food?

Caspian Rehbinder, ‘Ensamheten är mindre där friheten är större’, Smedjan, 18 February 2020. 20. Hannah Ritchie, ‘Global mental health: Five key insights which emerge from the data’, Our World in Data, 16 May 2018. 21. Dirk Richter, Abbie Wall, Ashley Bruen & Richard Whittington, ‘Is the global prevalence rate of adult mental illness increasing? Systematic review and meta-analysis’, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, vol.140, August 2019. 22. Mohsen Naghavi, ‘Global, regional, and national burden of suicide mortality 1990 to 2016: Systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016’, BMJ, 2019. 23. Christian Rück, Olyckliga i paradiset: Varför mår vi så dåligt när allt är så bra?

Teague, Virgil Henry Storr & Rosemarie Fike, ‘Economic freedom and materialism: an empirical analysis’, Constitutional Political Economy, vol.31, 2020. 32. Mingliang Yuan, Giuliana Spadaro, Shuxian Jin, Junhui Wu, Yu Kou, Paul A. M. Van Lange, and Daniel Balliet, ‘Did cooperation among strangers decline in the United States? A cross-temporal meta-analysis of social dilemmas (1956–2017)’, Psychological Bulletin, vol.148, no.3–4, 2022. 33. Interview with Ruut Venhoven, 23 April 2007. 34. Daniel Kahneman, ‘The sad tale of the aspiration treadmill’, Edge, 2008. 35. Johan Norberg, Den eviga matchen om lyckan, Natur och Kultur, 2009. Esteban Ortiz-Ospina & Max Roser, Happiness and life satisfaction, Our World in Data, May 2017.


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I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That by Ben Goldacre

Aaron Swartz, call centre, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, Desert Island Discs, Dr. Strangelove, drug harm reduction, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, Firefox, Flynn Effect, Helicobacter pylori, jimmy wales, John Snow's cholera map, Loebner Prize, meta-analysis, moral panic, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), seminal paper, Simon Singh, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Fry, sugar pill, the scientific method, Turing test, two and twenty, WikiLeaks

This is in many ways an updated version of Rolleston’s rationale from 1926. However, the policy of prescribing methadone may be criticised from many different angles, and to the best of my knowledge these criticisms have never been comprehensively considered in one article. Certainly there is no convenient meta-analysis of methadone programmes. I shall consider each criticism in detail, and later compare the use of methadone to the maintenance prescription of heroin, which still continues on a small scale in the UK, and has recently been reassessed in Switzerland and Australia. Firstly, it is important to recognise that methadone is not a pleasant drug to take, causing nausea and vomiting, weight gain, profuse sweating, dysphoria and tooth decay.

It’s not a perfect study – I don’t like subgroup analyses for a start, and it only followed up participants for seven days – but it’s not alone. An earlier study from 2009 randomly assigned a hundred students either to a control group or to a couple of forms of imagery, picturing themselves choosing a healthy snack over an unhealthy one. The imagery group went on to have more healthy snacks. Meanwhile, a meta-analysis from 2006 collectively analyses the results of ninety-four studies and finds that ‘implementation intentions’ (‘If I am in situation X, I will do Y’) had a positive effect overall on goal achievement. So there’s probably something there, and this research tells us some interesting things about science.

ned=uk&hl=en&ncl=d0-fIEkn R_72tGMiU0uORy7OgGBTM&cf=all Don’t talk about that: http://www.badscience.net/2007/04/this-ageing-breadhead-guy-is-totally-angry-with-me/ pharmaceutical companies before it: http://www.badscience.net/2008/04/cliff-richard-gloria-hunniford-carole-caplin-the-60bn-food-supplement-industry-and-the-quantum-xrroid-dude-refute-a-cochrane-meta-analysis/ example from its press release: http://www.soilassociation.org/News/NewsItem/tabid/91/smid/463/ArticleID/97/reftab/57/t/Soil-Association-response-to-the-Food-Standards-Agency-s-Organic-Review/Default.aspx www.qlif.org: http://www.qlif.org/ list of 120 papers: http://orgprints.org/view/projects/eu_qlif.html immune parameters in rat: http://orgprints.org/12653/ Salmonella Infection Level: http://orgprints.org/13728/ As Far as I Understand Thinktanks … As Far as I: http://www.badscience.net/2008/06/707/ Meaningful Debates Need Clear Information Meaningful Debates: http://www.badscience.net/2007/10/557/ in the Independent: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3084306.ece and the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?


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Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by John Abramson

disinformation, germ theory of disease, Herbert Marcuse, Louis Pasteur, medical malpractice, medical residency, meta-analysis, p-value, placebo effect, profit maximization, profit motive, publication bias, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell, tacit knowledge, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions

The patients in these studies all had heart attacks, but ejection fraction or the incidence of congestive heart failure is not reported, precluding direct comparison with the defibrillator study. K. Wilson, N. Gibson, A. Willan, and D. Cook, “Effect of Smoking Cessation on Mortality After Myocardial Infarction: Meta-Analysis of Cohort Studies,” Archives of Internal Medicine 160:939–944, 2000. 101 the acid-blocking drug Prilosec: Organic molecules of identical chemical composition can occur in two forms that are mirror images of each other. Prilosec is a mix of both forms. Nexium is composed of only one form. 102 “head-to-head” studies between Prilosec and Nexium: J.

II-32. 140 The table mentioned cites nine references: NCEP Full Report, p. II-5. 141 average age was 51: The Upjohn study was the only one that was difficult to find, having been completed in 1978, nine years before the first statin came on the market. S. B. Manuck, A. B. Mendelsohn, J. R. Kaplan, and S. H. Belle, “Cholesterol Reduction and Non-Illness Mortality: Meta-Analysis of Randomized Clinical Trials,” British Medical Journal 322:11–15, 2001. 141 “The relationship between serum cholesterol: NCEP Full Report, p. II-34. 141 total cholesterol is not significantly related to mortality: Framingham Heart Study reported in 1993. See Kronmal, Cain, Ye, and Omenn, op. cit. 141 not even an increase in the risk of heart attack: B.

., “Pravastatin in Elderly Individual at Risk of Vascular Disease (PROSPER): A Randomized Controlled Trial,” The Lancet 360:1623–1630, 2002. 145 “There is no evidence: NCEP Full Report p. I–44. 145 “Carcinogenicity of Lipid-Lowering Drugs”: Newman T. B., Hulley S. B., “Carcinogenicity of Lipid-Lowering Drugs,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 275:55-60, 1996. 146 could take many years: Bjerre L.M., LeLorier J., “Do Statins Cause Cancer? A Meta-Analysis of Large Randomized Clinical Trials,” American Journal of Medicine,: 110:716–723, 2001. 147 Dr. Scott Grundy: Quoted in Thomas M. Burton and Chris Adams, “New Government Cholesterol Standards Would Triple Number of Prescriptions,” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2001. 147 Dr. Walter Willett: Naomi Aoki, “Drug Makers Influence Pondered Eye on U.S.


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Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis by Robert D. Putnam

assortative mating, business cycle, classic study, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, deindustrialization, demographic transition, desegregation, digital divide, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, full employment, George Akerlof, helicopter parent, impulse control, income inequality, index card, jobless men, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, machine readable, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, Occupy movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, school choice, selection bias, Socratic dialogue, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the built environment, the strength of weak ties, upwardly mobile, Walter Mischel, white flight, working poor

Other recent overviews of the vast literature on the effects of parental engagement include William H. Jeynes, “The Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Urban Secondary School Student Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis,” Urban Education 42 (January 2007): 82–110; Nancy E. Hill and Diana F. Tyson, “Parental Involvement in Middle School: A Meta-Analytic Assessment of the Strategies That Promote Achievement,” Developmental Psychology 45 (May 2009): 740–63; William Jeynes, “A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Different Types of Parental Involvement Programs for Urban Students,” Urban Education 47 (July 2004): 706–42; Frances L. Van Voorhis, Michelle F.

Logan, Elisabeta Minca, and Sinem Adar, “The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools,” Sociology of Education 85 (July 2012): 287–301; and for a comprehensive recent overview, Gregory J. Palardy, “High School Socioeconomic Segregation and Student Attainment,” American Educational Research Journal 50 (August 2013): 714–54. Reyn van Ewijk and Peter Sleegers, “The Effect of Peer Socioeconomic Status on Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis,” Educational Research Review 5 (June 2010): 134–50, found that the effect of the socioeconomic composition of a child’s classroom on his or her test scores is twice as large as the effect of the socioeconomic composition of his or her school. This entire line of research was stimulated in the 1960s by concerns about the effects of racial segregation, and in that era class segregation heavily overlapped with racial segregation.

Ferguson, “Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century” (report for the Pathways to Prosperity project, Harvard School of Graduate Education, 2011); Ben Olinsky and Sarah Ayres, “Training for Success: A Policy to Expand Apprenticeships in the United States” (report for the Center for American Progress, December 2013), accessed October 12, 2014, http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/apprenticeship_report.pdf; Robert I. Lerman, “Expanding Apprenticeship Opportunities in the United States” (report for the Hamilton Project, Brookings Institution, 2014); David Card, Jochen Kluve and Andrea Weber, “Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis,” Economic Journal 120 (November 2010): F452–F477; Katherine S. Newman and Hella Winston, Learning to Labor in the 21st Century: Building the Next Generation of Skilled Workers (New York: Metropolitan, forthcoming 2015). YouthBuild has shown positive results in nonexperimental research; see, for example, Wally Abrazaldo et al., “Evaluation of the YouthBuild Youth Offender Grants: Final Report,” Social Policy Research Associates (May 2009).


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The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation by Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, business cycle, buttonwood tree, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, defund the police, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discovery of penicillin, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Elisha Otis, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, future of work, Future Shock, gentrification, George Floyd, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, global village, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Honoré de Balzac, income inequality, industrial cluster, James Hargreaves, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, job automation, jobless men, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, knowledge worker, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, place-making, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Richard Florida, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, Socratic dialogue, spinning jenny, superstar cities, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech baron, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, union organizing, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, working poor, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

However, the public cost of imprisoning a person is large, about $35,000 per person per year, and that’s not including the more onerous burden borne by the prisoner. As a result, when they compare costs and benefits, they find that every crime avoided costs almost $150,000 in additional jail spending. Other estimates suggest a social benefit of $34,000 per crime avoided. A meta-analysis of prison sentencing studies (funded by Open Philanthropy, a foundation dedicated to prison reform) “calls even those mild estimates into question.” The deterrence impact of longer sentences seems only moderately beneficial at best. The case is stronger for the connection between incapacitation and crime.

The police department claimed that Operation Impact was “integral” to their “unprecedented achievements.” In practice, stop and frisk meant millions of body searches of unarmed African Americans and Latinos. The scientific literature generally agrees that targeting police resources toward high-crime areas reduces crime. A recent meta-analysis concludes that “hot spots policing is an effective crime prevention strategy.” A study conducted by John MacDonald of the University of Pennsylvania, Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia, and Amanda Geller of NYU finds that “impact zones were significantly associated with reductions in total reported crimes, assaults, burglaries, drug violations, misdemeanor crimes, felony property crimes, robberies, and felony violent crimes,” as well as “increases in total reported arrests, arrests for burglary, arrests for weapons, arrests for misdemeanor crimes, and arrests for property felony crimes.”

Hispanics were at higher risk: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Risk for COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, and Death by Race/Ethnicity.” people of Asian and Caribbean heritage: Platt and Warwick, Are Some Ethnic Groups More Vulnerable to COVID-19 Than Others? not all of which: Sze et al., “Ethnicity and Clinical Outcomes in COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” in Massachusetts in 2020: Commonwealth of Massachusetts. “Weekly COVID-19 Public Health Report.” Close living quarters: “More Than One-Third of U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Linked to Nursing Homes,” The New York Times. Health-related choices: American Medical Association, Issue Brief: Reports of Increases in Opioid- and Other Drug-related Overdose and Other Concerns during COVID Pandemic.


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Generations: the Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future by Jean M. Twenge

1960s counterculture, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, airport security, An Inconvenient Truth, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, critical race theory, David Brooks, delayed gratification, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, green new deal, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, job automation, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McJob, meta-analysis, microaggression, Neil Armstrong, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, QAnon, Ralph Nader, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, superstar cities, tech baron, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, TikTok, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

This was also useful because yearly data allowed a more precise look at exactly when narcissism peaked and when it fell. Both campuses had trends similar to the nationwide data: Narcissism rose until 2008, and then fell like Lehman Brothers afterward (see Figure 5.11). Figure 5.10: Narcissistic Personality Inventory scores of U.S. college students, 1982–2016 Source: National meta-analysis, Twenge et al. (2021) Notes: Millennials dominate the age group in the shaded years (particularly between 1999 and 2013). Scores range between 0 and 40. Figure 5.11: Narcissistic Personality Inventory scores of University of South Alabama and University of California, Davis, college students, 1994–2016 Source: Within-campus samples, Twenge et al. (2021) Notes: Millennials dominate the age group in the shaded years.

the first item that sold on the site was a broken laser pointer: Marco della Cava, “eBay’s 20th Made Possible by Canadian Retiree,” USA Today, September 11, 2015. for Gen Xers “There is only one question”: Susan Gregory Thomas, “The Divorce Generation,” Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2011. Boomers started having sex in college: Brooke E. Wells and Jean M. Twenge, “Changes in Young People’s Sexual Behavior and Attitudes, 1943–1999: A Cross-Temporal Meta-analysis,” Review of General Psychology 9, no. 3 (September 2005): 249–61. Women’s median age at reproductive milestones, 1960–2021: Lawrence B. Finer and Jesse M. Philbin, “Trends in Ages at Key Reproductive Transitions in the United States, 1951–2010,” Women’s Health Issues 24, no. 3 (May–June 2014): 271–79.

Manning and Bart Stykes, Twenty-Five Years of Change in Cohabitation in the U.S., 1987–2013 (Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research, 2015). As a graduate student, I gathered the scores of 65,965 college students: Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, “Age and Birth Cohort Differences in Self-Esteem: A Cross-Temporal Meta-analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 5, no. 4 (November 2001): 321–44. In the early 1950s, only 12% of teens agreed: Cassandra Rutledge Newsom, Robert P. Archer, Susan Trumbetta, and Irving I. Gottesman, “Changes in Adolescent Response Patterns on the MMPI/MMPI-A across Four Decades,” Journal of Personality Assessment 81, no. 1 (2003): 74–84.


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Overcoming Adrenal Fatigue: How to Restore Hormonal Balance and Feel Renewed, Energized, and Stress Free by Kathryn Simpson

impulse control, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meta-analysis, phenotype, randomized controlled trial

Zalinkevicius, and A. J. Prange. 1999. Effects of thyroxine as compared with thyroxine plus triiodothyronine in patients with hypothyroidism. New England Journal of Medicine 340(6):424-429. Burke, H. M., M. C. Davis, C. Otte, and D. C. Mohr. 2005. Depression and cortisol responses to psychological stress: A meta-analysis. Psychoneuroendocrinology 30(9):846-856. Burton, J. M., S. Kimball, R. Vieth, et al. 2010. A phase I/II dose-escalation trial of vitamin D3 and calcium in multiple sclerosis. Neurology 74(23):1852-1859. Catena, C., G. Colussi, E. Nadalini, et al. 2008. Cardiovascular outcomes in patients with primary aldosteronism after treatment.

Journal of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Biochemistry 22(11):717-721. Gordon, G. G., and A. L. Southren. 1977. Thyroid hormone effects on steroid hormone metabolism. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 53(3):241-259. Gorham, E. D., C. F. Garland, F. C. Garland, et al. 2007. Optimal vitamin D status for colorectal cancer prevention: A quantitative meta analysis. American Journal of Preventative Medicine 32(3):210-216. Gotoh, S., N. Nishimura, O. Takahashi, et al. 2008. Adrenal function in patients with community-acquired pneumonia. European Respiratory Journal 31(6):1268-1273. Grootveld, M., C. Silwood, P. Claxson, B. Serra, and M. Viana. 2001. Health effects of oxidized heated oils.


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The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands by Eric Topol

23andMe, 3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anne Wojcicki, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, Big Tech, bioinformatics, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, conceptual framework, connected car, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, digital divide, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Firefox, gamification, global village, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, job automation, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, lifelogging, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, microbiome, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, Snapchat, social graph, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, traumatic brain injury, Turing test, Uber for X, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, X Prize

., “Screening Pelvic Examinations in Asymptomatic, Average-Risk Adult Women: An Evidence Report for a Clinical Practice Guideline from the American College of Physicians,” Annals of Internal Medicine 161 (2014): 46–53. 56. L. T. Krogsbøll et al., “General Health Checks in Adults for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Disease: Cochrane Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” British Medical Journal 345 (2012): e7191. 57. C. Lane, “The NIMH Withdraws Support for DSM-5,” Psychology Today, May 4, 2013, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-nimh-withdraws-support-dsm-5. 58. D. W. Bianchi et al., “DNA Sequencing versus Standard Prenatal Aneuploidy Screening,” New England Journal of Medicine 370, no. 9 (2014): 799–808. 59.

M. Rao and D. C. Levin, “The Overuse of Diagnostic Imaging and the Choosing Wisely Initiative,” Annals of Internal Medicine 157, no. 8 (2012): 574–577. 71. L. T. Krogsbøll et al., “General Health Checks in Adults for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Disease: Cochrane Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” British Medical Journal 345 (2012): e7191. 72. S. R. Johnson, “Reducing Wasteful Care,” Modern Healthcare, August 24, 2013, http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20130824/MAGAZINE/308249974. 73. L. M. Schwartz and S. Woloshin, “Endless Screenings Don’t Bring Everlasting Health,” New York Times, April 17, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/health/views/endless-screenings-dont-bring-everlasting-health.html. 74.

Mannino, “Do You Really Need an Annual Physical?,” Fox Business, August 24, 2012, http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/08/24/do-really-need-annual-physical/. 60. L. T. Krogsbøll et al., “General Health Checks in Adults for Reducing Morbidity and Mortality from Disease: Cochrane Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” British Medical Journal 345 (2012): e7191. 61. E. Klein, “The Two Most Important Numbers in American Health Care,” Washington Post, September 19, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/19/the-two-most-important-numbers-in-american-health-care/?print=1. 62. S. Lohr, “Salesforce Takes Its Cloud Model to Health Care,” New York Times, June 26, 2014, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/salesforce-takes-its-cloud-model-to-health-care/. 63.


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The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health by David B. Agus

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, autism spectrum disorder, butterfly effect, clean water, cognitive dissonance, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, fake news, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Marc Benioff, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, microcredit, mouse model, Murray Gell-Mann, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, nocebo, parabiotic, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, publish or perish, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Salesforce, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Thomas Malthus, wikimedia commons

Benjamin Radford, “Forty Percent of Overweight Women Don’t Know It,” Discovery News, December 10, 2010, http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/40-of-overweight-women-dont-know-it-101210.htm, accessed August 7, 2015. 5. A. Lundahl, K. M. Kidwell, and T. D. Nelson, “Parental Underestimates of Child Weight: A Meta-analysis,” Pediatrics 133, no. 3 (March 2014): E689–703, doi:10.1542/peds.2013-2690, Epub February 2, 2014. See also H. Y. Chen et al., “Personal and Parental Weight Misperception and Self-Reported Attempted Weight Loss in US Children and Adolescents, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007–2008 and 2009–2010,” Preventing Chronic Disease 11 (July 31, 2014): E132, doi:10.5888/pcd11.140123.

., “Meat Consumption in Relation to Mortality from Cardiovascular Disease Among Japanese Men and Women,” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 66, no. 6 (June 2012): 687–93. doi:10.1038/ejcn.2012.6, Epub February 15, 2012. 12. R. Micha, S. K. Wallace, and D. Mozaffarian, “Red and Processed Meat Consumption and Risk of Incident Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke, and Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Circulation 121, no. 21 (June 1, 2010): 2271–83, doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.109.924977, Epub May 17, 2010. 13. The debate about the risk factors related to the consumption of red meat was well explained by Patrick J. Skerrett, “Study Urges Moderation in Red Meat Intake,” Harvard Health (blog), March 13, 2012, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/study-urges-moderation-in-red-meat-intake-201203134490. 14.

Jeffrey Beall, “List of Predatory Publishers,” Scholarly Open Access blog, last modified January 2, 2014, http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/01/02/list-of-predatory-publishers-2014/. 23. P. Autier, “Vitamin D Status and Ill Health: A Systematic Review,” Lancet Diabetes Endocrinology 2, no. 1 (January 2014): 76–89, doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(13)70165-7, Epub December 6, 2013. 24. I. R. Reid, “Effects of Vitamin D Supplements on Bone Mineral Density: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Lancet 383, no. 9912 (January 11, 2014): 146–55, doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)61647-5, Epub October 11, 2013. 25. E. S. LeBlanc et al., “Screening for Vitamin D Deficiency: Systematic Review for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force,” Annals of Internal Medicine 162, no. 2 (January 20, 2015): 109–22, doi:10.7326/M14-1659. 26.


Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century by James R. Flynn

confounding variable, Flynn Effect, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, out of africa, popular electronics, traumatic brain injury, twin studies

School attendance from the Argentine census. Unpublished. In re Mathis, 483 F.3d 395 (5th Cir.) April 2, 2007. In re Salazar, 443 F.3d 430, 433 (5th Cir.) March 17, 2006. Irwing, P., & Lynn, R. (2005). Sex differences in means and variability on the Progressive Matrices in university students: A meta-analysis. British Journal of Psychology, 96: 505–524. Japan Reference (2011). The origins of the Japanese people. Accessed August 26, 2011. Jensen, A. R. (1973). Educability and Group Differences. London: Methuen. (1980). Bias in Mental Testing. London: Methuen. (1998). The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability.

A study of intelligence in Estonia. Psychological Reports, 91: 1022–1026. 296 References (2002b). Sex differences on the Progressive Matrices among adolescents: Some data for Estonia. Personality and Individual Differences, 34: 669–679. Lynn, R., & Irwing, P. (2004). Sex differences on the Progressive Matrices: A meta-analysis. Intelligence, 32: 481–498. Lynn, R., & Kazlauskaite, V. (2002). A study of IQ in Lithuania. Psychological Reports, 95: 611–612. Lynn, R., & Vanhanen, T. (2002). IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Westport, CT: Praeger. (2006). IQ and Global Inequality. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit. Mackintosh, N.

Personality and Individual Differences, 13: 149–160. People v. Superior Court of Tulare County, 21 Cal.Rptr.3d 542 (Cal. Ct.App.) December 6, 2004. People v. Superior Court of Tulare County, 155 P.3d 259 (Cal.) April 12, 2007. Pietschnig, J., Voracek, M., & Formann, A. K. (2010). Pervasiveness of the IQ rise: A cross-temporal meta-analysis. PLoS ONE, 5: e14406. PISA (2006). Science Competencies for the Modern World. Paris: OECD – Programme for International Science Assessment. Raven, J. (1986). Manual for Raven’s Progressive Matrices and Vocabulary Scales (research supplement No. 3). London: H. K. Lewis. Raven, J., & Court, J. H. (1989).


pages: 302 words: 92,546

Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health by H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa M. Schwartz, Steven Woloshin

23andMe, classic study, do well by doing good, double helix, Google Earth, Gregor Mendel, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, life extension, longitudinal study, mandelbrot fractal, medical residency, meta-analysis, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, sugar pill, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

If I accounted for this it would only increase the estimate of overdiagnosis.)[back] A. Ghidini, “Amniocentesis: Technique and Complications,” in D. S. Basow, ed., UpToDate (Waltham, MA: UpToDate, 2009).[back] R. Smith-Bindman, W. Hosmer, V. A. Feldstein, et al., “Second-trimester Ultrasound to Detect Fetuses with Down Syndrome: A Meta-analysis,” Journal of the American Medical Association 285 (2001): 1044–55.[back] Natalie Angier, “Ultrasound and Fury: One Mother’s Ordeal,” New York Times, November 26, 1996, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=E07E2D9103DF935A15752C1A960958260&sec=&spon=.[back] See http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001451.html and http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab000182.html.

So while the penetrance of the so-called severe genotypes is virtually 100 percent for pancreatic insufficiency (which inhibits digestion), penetrance can be lower for other problems, such as meconium ileus (or intestinal obstruction), liver disease, and diabetes. See R. Dorfman and J. Zielenski, “Genotype-Phenotype Correlations in Cystic Fibrosis,” in A. Bush, E. W. F. W. Alton, J. C. Davies, et al., eds., Cystic Fibrosis in the 21st Century (Basel, Switzerland: S. Karger, AG, 2006), 61–68.[back] See S. Chen and G. Parmigiani, “Meta-analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 Penetrance,” Journal of Clinical Oncology 25 (2007): 1329–33. [back] See J. Peto, N. Collins, R. Barfoot, et al., “Prevalence of BRCA1 and BRCA2 Gene Mutations in Patients with Early-onset Breast Cancer,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute 91 (1999): 943–49.[back] There are a number of risk factors that have been associated with increased breast cancer risk, including older age, family history, early age of menarche, no children, and late age of first childbirth.

Conveying the underlying absolute risks is more complex: it requires more numbers (because there are two absolute risks underlying each relative risk); these numbers are often very small (decimals are often needed, or the numbers have to be expressed per 1,000 or per 10,000 people); and a complete statement requires a time frame (for example, per year or over ten years).[back] As you might imagine, I’m rounding here to make the math easy. The relative risk reduction estimated by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in its meta-analysis of all nine trials is 16 percent. See “Effectiveness of Mammography in Reducing Breast Cancer Mortality” at http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/3rduspstf/breastcancer/bcscrnsum1.htm#results. [back] Again, I’m rounding. The actual estimate by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is that 1,224 women need to be screened for an average of fourteen years for one to benefit.


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Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do by Jeremy Bailenson

Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, computer vision, deliberate practice, experimental subject, fake news, game design, Google Glasses, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), iterative process, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Oculus Rift, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, overview effect, pill mill, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skinner box, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, telepresence, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury

In the earthquake demo, we were tracking body position in X, Y, Z space, and the subject’s head rotation. In other words, if he walked forward a step (positive on Z), we measured that displacement in his body position. If he looked left (negative on yaw), we measured this rotation. We recently published what is called a meta-analysis—a study that combines the summary data from every paper we could find that has ever been published (and many that haven’t) in an area. The meta-analysis was designed to understand the relationship to all of the features that make VR special—the affordances—and psychological presence. We wanted to understand what the relative benefits of technological immersion were on psychological engagement.

Josh Weinfuss, “Cardinals’ use of virtual reality technology yields record season,” ESPN, January 13, 2016, http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/195755/cardinals-use-of-virtual-reality-technology-yields-record-season. 5. M. Lombard and T. Ditton, “At the Heart of it All: The Concept of Presence,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3, no. 2 (1997). 6. James J. Cummings and Jeremy N. Bailenson, “How Immersive Is Enough? A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Immersive Technology on User Presence,” Media Psychology 19 (2016): 1–38. 7. “Link, Edwin Albert,” The National Aviation Hall of Fame, http://www.nationalaviation.org/our-enshrinees/link-edwin/. 8. National Academy of Engineering, Memorial Tributes: National Academy of Engineering, Volume 2 (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1984), 174. 9.


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Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning by Tom Vanderbilt

AlphaGo, crowdsourcing, DeepMind, deliberate practice, Downton Abbey, Dunning–Kruger effect, fake it until you make it, functional fixedness, future of work, G4S, global supply chain, IKEA effect, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, performance metric, personalized medicine, quantum entanglement, randomized controlled trial, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, Socratic dialogue, spaced repetition, Steve Jobs, zero-sum game

tangible positives: Maybe chess was just a sort of placebo whose benefits could be obtained by other activities in which kids were spurred on by closely watching adults. Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet make this suggestion in their article “Do the Benefits of Chess Instruction Transfer to Academic and Cognitive Skills? A Meta-analysis,” Educational Research Review 18 (May 2016): 46–57. “as a way to teach thinking”: Dianne Horgan, “Chess as a Way to Teach Thinking,” Article No. 11 (1987), United States Chess Federation Scholastic Department. Male players’ ratings: See, for example, Lisa Zyga, “Why Men Rank Higher Than Women at Chess (It’s Not Biological),” PhysOrg.com, Jan. 12, 2009, phys.org.

Stebbins, “The Amateur: Two Sociological Definitions,” Pacific Sociological Review 20, no. 4 (1977): 582–606. “who loves the rituals”: See George Leonard, Mastery (New York: Plume, 1992), 19–20. self-reported perfectionism: See Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill, “Perfectionism Is Increasing over Time: A Meta-analysis of Birth Cohort Differences from 1989 to 2016,” Psychological Bulletin 145, no. 4 (2019): 410–29, dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000138. We “overvalue performance”: See D. E. Hamachek, “Psychodynamics of Normal and Neurotic Perfectionism,” Psychology 15, no. 1 (1978): 27–33. just okay at things: As the legal scholar and writer Tim Wu has argued, we have so internalized the endgame of results, in our “intensely public, performative age,” that our leisure pursuits “have become too serious, too demanding, too much an occasion to become anxious about whether you are really the person you claim to be.”

an analysis of high school choirs: The study notes, “The research literature has not settled on a commonly accepted cause for the ‘missing males’ in choral music.” See K. Elpus, “National Estimates of Male and Female Enrolment in American High School Choirs, Bands, and Orchestras,” Music Education Research 17, no. 1 (2015): 88–102. “Social facilitation”: For a good roundup, see Charles F. Bond et al., “Social Facilitation: A Meta-analysis of 241 Studies,” Psychological Bulletin 94, no. 2 (1983): 265–92. “Social loafing”: See S. J. Karau, “Social Loafing (and Facilitation),” in Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2012), 486–92. “more Americans engage”: See Cindy Bell, “Update on Community Choirs and Singing in the United States,” International Journal of Research in Choral Singing 2, no. 1 (2004).


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Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business by Julie Battilana, Tiziana Casciaro

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, benefit corporation, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, different worldview, digital rights, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, feminist movement, fundamental attribution error, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mega-rich, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, School Strike for Climate, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tacit knowledge, tech worker, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, zero-sum game

Lee, “ ‘I’ Value Freedom, but ‘We’ Value Relationships: Self-Construal Priming Mirrors Cultural Differences in Judgement,” Psychological Science 10, no. 4 (1999): 321–6. 40 For an overview of influential psychological models of ego-development, from Jean Piaget’s to Lawrence Kolhberg’s and Robert Kegan’s, see Lene Rachel Anderson and Tomas Björkman, The Nordic Secret: A European Story of Beauty and Freedom (Stockholm: Fri Tanke, 2017). 41 Matthieu Ricard, Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, translated ed. (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2015); Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). 42 Analayo, Satipatthana Meditation: A Practice Guide (Cambridge, UK: Windhorse Publications, 2018). 43 See Peter Sedlmeier et al., “The Psychological Effects of Meditation: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 138, no. 6 (2012): 1139–71. 44 Martin Luther King Jr., “A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” December 24, 1967. 45 Cem Çakmaklı, Selva Demiralp, Ṣebnem Kalemli-Özcan, Sevcan Yeşiltaş, and Muhammed A. Yıldırım, “The Economic Case for Global Vaccinations: An Epidemiological Model with International Production Networks,” w28395, National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2021. 46 John Vidal and Ensia, “Destroyed Habitat Creates the Perfect Conditions for Coronavirus to Emerge,” Scientific American, March 18, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/destroyed-habitat-creates-the-perfect-conditions-for-coronavirus-to-emerge/. 47 Karin Brulliard, “The Next Pandemic Is Already Coming, Unless Humans Change How We Interact with Wildlife, Scientists Say,” Washington Post, April 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/04/03/coronavirus-wildlife-environment/. 48 Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009). 49 While this image has long been a staple in popular consciousness, the evidence for it is less clear, and contradictions between different sources and interpretations abound.

Antoine-Claire Thibaudeau, Mémoires sur le Consulat 1799 à 1804 (Paris: Chez Ponthieu et Cie, 1827), 83–84. 31 Aruna Ranganathan, “The Artisan and His Audience: Identification with Work and Price Setting in a Handicraft Cluster in Southern India,” Administrative Science Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2018): 637–67. 32 For an overview of the positive association between socioeconomic status and self-esteem, see Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, “Self-Esteem and Socioeconomic Status: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 6, no. 1 (February 2002): 59–71. The meta-analysis shows that the positive correlation between socioeconomic status and self-esteem is stronger for occupation and education than for income. Social rank therefore feeds our sense of worth more than economic status. 33 While this theory on the relationship between foot-binding and suitability for marriage is popular, it is not without its skeptics.

Dawes, “The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision-Making,” American Psychologist 34, no. 7 (1979): 571–82. 23 Batya Friedman and Helen Nissenbaum, “Bias in Computer Systems,” ACM Transactions on Information Systems 14, no. 3 (1996): 330–47; also discussed in Agrawal, Gans, and Goldfarb, Prediction Machines, and in Marco Ianstiti and Karim Lakhani, Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). 24 Tom Simonite, “The Best Algorithms Still Struggle to Recognize Black Faces,” Wired, Conde Nast, July 22, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/best-algorithms-struggle-recognize-black-faces-equally/. For more on algorithmic recognition bias see Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru, “Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification,” in Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency, PMLR (2018): 77–91; Yui Man Lui et al., “A Meta-Analysis of Face Recognition Covariates,” in 2009 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications, and Systems (2009): 1–8. 25 Joy Buolamwini, “How I’m Fighting Bias in Algorithms,” TEDxBeaconStreet, November 2016, https://www.ted.com/talks/joy_buolamwini_how_i_m_fighting_bias_in_algorithms. 26 Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (New York: Picador, 2019); Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2019). 27 Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (Westminster, UK: Penguin Books, 2017); Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: New York University Press, 2018). 28 Cathy O’Neil, “The Era of Blind Faith in Big Data Must End,” TED, April 2017, https://www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_faith_in_big_data_must_end. 29 Emily Chang, Brotopia: Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2019). 30 In the eighteenth century, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed an influential prison system, the “panopticon.”


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The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now by Sergey Young

23andMe, 3D printing, Albert Einstein, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, brain emulation, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, digital twin, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Easter island, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, European colonialism, game design, Gavin Belson, George Floyd, global pandemic, hockey-stick growth, impulse control, Internet of things, late capitalism, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, moral hazard, mouse model, natural language processing, personalized medicine, plant based meat, precision agriculture, radical life extension, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, TED Talk, uber lyft, ultra-processed food, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Vision Fund, X Prize

., “A Prospective Study of Sleep Duration and Coronary Heart Disease in Women,” Archives of Internal Medicine 163, no. 2 (2003), https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.163.2.205; European Society of Cardiology, “Sleeping 5 hours or less a night associated with doubled risk of cardiovascular disease,” EurekAlert, last modified August 26, 2018, https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/esoc-sfh082318.php; European Society of Cardiology, “Short and fragmented sleep linked to hardened arteries,” EurekAlert, last modified August 26, 2018, https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/esoc-saf082318.php; Francesco P. Cappuccio et al., “Meta-analysis of short sleep duration and obesity in children and adults,” Sleep 31, no. 5 (2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/31.5.619. 39Matt Walker, “Sleep is your superpower,” TED, last modified June 3, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MuIMqhT8DM; Michael Irwin et al., “Partial sleep deprivation reduces natural killer cell activity in humans,” Psychosomatic medicine 56, no. 6 (1994), https://doi.org/10.1097/00006842-199411000-00004; Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, “Night work may put women’s health at risk,” ScienceDaily, last modified June 19, 2012, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120619112907.htm; Walker, Why we sleep, 148. 40Francesco P.

., “Partial sleep deprivation reduces natural killer cell activity in humans,” Psychosomatic medicine 56, no. 6 (1994), https://doi.org/10.1097/00006842-199411000-00004; Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, “Night work may put women’s health at risk,” ScienceDaily, last modified June 19, 2012, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120619112907.htm; Walker, Why we sleep, 148. 40Francesco P. Cappuccio et al., “Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies,” Sleep 33, no. 5 (2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/33.5.585. 41Bob Morris, “Arianna Huffington’s Sleep Revolution Starts at Home,” The New York Times, last modified April 28, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/realestate/arianna-huffingtons-sleep-revolution-starts-at-home.html; Marie Kondo, “The Joy of Sleep, With Arianna Huffington,” KonMari, accessed July 28, 2020, https://konmari.com/arianna-huffington-sleep/. 42Erin Wigger, “The Whitehall Study,” Unhealthy Work, last modified June 22, 2011, https://unhealthywork.org/classic-studies/the-whitehall-study/; Vicki Brower, “Mind-body research moves towards the mainstream,” EMBO reports 7, no. 4 (2006), https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.embor.7400671. 43“What is Cortisol?

,” Harvard Health Publishing, last modified June, 2017, https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/can-relationships-boost-longevity-and-well-being. 50Darcy Lewis, “What the health effects of loneliness say about illness and cell activity,” David Geffenn School of Medicine, last modified March 3, 2016, https://medschool.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=1158&action=detail&ref=575. 51Nicole K. Valtorta et al., “Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for coronary heart disease and stroke: systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal observational studies,” Heart 102, no. 13 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1136/heartjnl-2015-308790. 52Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006). 53Kozo Tanno et al., “Associations of ikigai as a positive psychological factor with all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality among middle-aged and elderly Japanese people: findings from the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study,” Journal of psychosomatic research 67, no. 1 (2009), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2008.10.018; Megumi Koizumi et al., “Effect of having a sense of purpose in life on the risk of death from cardiovascular diseases,” Journal of epidemiology 18, no. 5 (2008), https://doi.org/10.2188/jea.je2007388; Toshimasa Sone et al., “Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study,” Psychosomatic medicine 70, no. 6 (2008), https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e31817e7e64; Aliya Alimujiang et al., “Association Between Life Purpose and Mortality Among US Adults Older Than 50 Years,” JAMA Network Open 2, no. 5 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.4270; Patricia A.


How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal From Your Past, and Create Your Self by Nicole Lepera

autism spectrum disorder, BIPOC, delayed gratification, epigenetics, fear of failure, global pandemic, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sugar pill, twin studies

Suicide among physicians and health-care workers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE, 14(12), e0226361. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226361. 33.Krill, P. R., Johnson, R., Albert, L. The prevalence of substance use and other mental health concerns among American attorneys. Journal of Addiction Medicine 10(1), January/February 2016, 46–52, doi: 10.1097/ADM.0000000000000182. 34.Dutheil, F., Aubert, C., Pereira, B., Dambrun, M., Moustafa, F., Mermillod, M., Baker, J. S., Trousselard, M., Lesage, F. X., & Navel, V. (2019). Suicide among physicians and health-care workers: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE, 14(12), e0226361. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226361. 35.Lazarus, R.

Group identity, discrimination, and well-being: Confluence of psychosocial and neurobiological factors. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 35–39. 40.Paradies, Y., Ben, J., Denson, N., Elias, A., Priest, N., Pieterse, A., Gupta A., Kelaher, M., & Gee, G. (2015). Racism as a determinant of health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS ONE, Article 10.1371. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0138511. 41.Goldsmith, R. E., Martin, C. G., & Smith, C. P. (2014). Systemic trauma. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 15(2), 117–132. 42.Paradies et al. Racism as a determinant of health. 43.Williams, D.


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The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back by Jacob Ward

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Amazon Mechanical Turk, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, drone strike, endowment effect, George Akerlof, George Floyd, hindsight bias, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeffrey Epstein, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Lyft, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, natural language processing, non-fungible token, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, selection bias, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, smart cities, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Levy, survivorship bias, TikTok, Turing test

In the 1990s, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt established the theory of “social intuition,” which posits that people develop their moral intuitions about the world almost automatically, and then essentially reverse engineer a system of reasoning that supports those moral intuitions. His theory is that any conscious weighing of morality we do usually winds up being used to justify the intuitions we already had. We’re also self-congratulatory. In 2004, a meta-analysis of more than 266 separate studies firmly established what researchers call the “self-serving bias.”1 When something goes my way, my brain tells me it’s because of who I am. When something doesn’t go my way, my brain tells me it’s because of some external factor beyond my control. (In people with depression and anxiety disorders, very often this sort of attribution is reversed—a terrible curse.)

., Hall, C.C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science, Jun 10; 308(5728):1623–1626. doi: 10.1126/science.1110589. PMID: 15947187. CHAPTER 4: CLUSTERS 1. Terrizzi, J.A., Jr., Shook, N.J., McDaniel, M.A. (2013). The behavioral immune system and social conservatism: A meta-analysis. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(2):99–108, https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S109051381200116X 2. Young, J.L., Hegarty, P. (2019). Reasonable men: Sexual harassment and norms of conduct in social psychology. Feminism & Psychology, 29(4):453–474. doi: 10.1177/0959353519855746 3. Gómez, Á., López-Rodríguez, L., Sheikh, H., et al. (2017).

Performative prediction. ArXiv, https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.06673 7. Baude, A., Pearson, J., Drapeau, S. (2016). Child adjustment in joint physical custody versus sole custody: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Divorce Remarriage, 57(5):338–360. doi: 10.1080/10502556.2016.1185203 8. Bauserman, R. (2012). A meta-analysis of parental satisfaction, adjustment, and conflict in joint custody and sole custody following divorce. Journal of Divorce Remarriage, 53:464–488. doi: 10.1080/105 02556.2012.682901 9. Hirsch, J. (2019, September 2). Your boss is going to start using AI to monitor you—and labor laws aren’t ready.


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Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Catherine Shanahan M. D.

Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, disinformation, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, Firefox, Gary Taubes, haute cuisine, impulse control, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, Mason jar, meta-analysis, microbiome, mirror neurons, moral panic, mouse model, pattern recognition, phenotype, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Simon Singh, smart cities, stem cell, the scientific method, traumatic brain injury, twin studies, upwardly mobile, wikimedia commons

Children born today, I’m afraid, may be so genomically compromised that, for many, reproduction will not be possible even with the benefit of high-tech medical prodding. This is why I call these children the Omega generation, referring to the last letter in the Greek alphabet. SIX WAYS NUTRITION CAN OPTIMIZE YOUR CHILD’S GROWTH 1. Height. Pour more milk. A meta analysis concluded that for each additional 100 milliliters of milk (roughly 3.3 ounces) consumed daily, children grew an extra 0.2 centimeters (roughly 1/8 inch) per year.181 Children in the study were aged two to twenty and the study duration ranged from a few months to two years. The study’s authors noted that the growth effect was especially powerful in teens.

Matern Child Nutr, July 2007, 3(3):151-73, a systematic literature review. 139. Association between birth interval and cardiovascular outcomes at thirty years of age: a prospective cohort study from Brazil, Devakumar D et al, PLoS One, 2016; 11(2). 140. Developmental dysplasia of the hip, Am Fam Physician, October 15, 2006, 74(8):1310-1316, Stephen K. Storer. 141. A meta-analysis of common risk factors associated with the diagnosis of developmental dysplasia of the hip in newborns, Eur J Radiol, March 2012, 81(3):e344-51. 142. Idiopathic scoliosis: genetic and environmental aspects, Frances V. De George, J. Med Genet, 1967, pp. 4, 251. 143. Risk factors for deformational plagiocephaly at birth and at seven weeks of age: a prospective cohort study, Van Vlimmeren, LA Pediatrics, February 2007, 119(2):e408-18. 144.

Lifetime risk for diabetes mellitus in the United States, Venkat Narayan, KM, JAMA, 2003, 290:1884-1890. 180. America’s children in brief: key national indicators of well-being, 2008, Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. 181. Dairy products and physical stature: a systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled trials, Hans de Beer, Economics and Human Biology, 10,3 (2012), pp. 229–309. 182. Do variations in normal nutrition play a role in the development of myopia? Marion Edwards et al, Optometry and Vision Science, 73, 10 (1996), pp. 638–643. 183. There are several but one example is K Chen et al, Antioxidant vitamin status during pregnancy in relation to cognitive development in the first two years of life, Early Hum Dev, 85, 7, 2009, pp. 421–27. 184.


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The End of Men: And the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin

affirmative action, call centre, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, delayed gratification, edge city, facts on the ground, financial independence, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, job satisfaction, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, Northern Rock, post-work, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, Results Only Work Environment, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Stanford prison experiment, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, union organizing, upwardly mobile, white picket fence, women in the workforce, work culture , young professional

women “increasingly reported masculine-stereotyped personality traits”: Jean M. Twenge, “Changes in Masculine and Feminine Traits Over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Sex Roles 36, no. 5/6 (1997): 305–325. In 2001, Twenge analyzed personality tests: Jean M. Twenge, “Changes in Women’s Assertiveness in Response to Status and Roles: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis, 1931–1993,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 1 (2001): 133–145. A 1999 analysis of 150 studies on risk-taking behaviors: James P. Byrnes, David C. Miller, and William D. Schafer, “Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 3 (1999): 367–383. To measure rates of competitiveness: Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L.


Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World by Jevin D. West, Carl T. Bergstrom

airport security, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Wiles, Anthropocene, autism spectrum disorder, bitcoin, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, computer vision, content marketing, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, deepfake, delayed gratification, disinformation, Dmitri Mendeleev, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, experimental economics, fake news, Ford Model T, Goodhart's law, Helicobacter pylori, Higgs boson, invention of the printing press, John Markoff, Large Hadron Collider, longitudinal study, Lyft, machine translation, meta-analysis, new economy, nowcasting, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, p-value, Pluto: dwarf planet, publication bias, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social graph, Socratic dialogue, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, stem cell, superintelligent machines, systematic bias, tech bro, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, twin studies, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, When a measure becomes a target

A natural experiment took place in Japan when the MMR vaccine was replaced by monovalent (single-disease) vaccines in 1993. If Wakefield’s hypothesis—that the combined MMR vaccine can cause autism whereas giving three vaccines, one for each disease, should be safe—we would have seen a decrease in autism rates in Japan. That did not happen. More recently, a meta-analysis combining data from multiple studies looked at 1.3 million children and again found no relation between vaccination and autism. *4 Investigative work by journalist Brian Deer revealed that Wakefield was concealing massive conflicts of interest. At the time he was working on the 1998 paper, Wakefield’s research was being funded by a lawyer who was putting together a lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer.

If there isn’t much below the waterline, we have strong support for whatever is being tested. But if there is considerable mass lurking below the surface, the impression one gathers from viewing only the surface can be highly misleading. Fortunately, there are ways to estimate the size of the submerged piece of the iceberg. One of the most powerful approaches involves meta-analysis: looking at multiple studies simultaneously. Doing so, we may be able to see when the published literature is likely to be representative of the set of all experiments conducted, and when, instead, the published literature reflects problematic practices such as p-hacking or publication bias. Figuring out how best to do this has become a hot area in statistics research.

Favot-Mayaud, J. Li, and P. A. Waight. “Autism and Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine: No Epidemiological Evidence for a Causal Association.” The Lancet 353 (1999): 2026–29. Taylor, L. E., A. L. Swerdfeger, and G. D. Eslick. “Vaccines Are Not Associated with Autism: An Evidence-Based Meta-analysis of Case-Control and Cohort Studies.” Vaccine 32 (2014): 3623–29. Wakefield, A. J., S. H. Murch, A. Anthony, J. Linnell, D. M. Casson, M. Malik, …and A. Valentine. “RETRACTED: Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children.” The Lancet 351 (1998): 637–41.


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The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve by Steve Stewart-Williams

Albert Einstein, battle of ideas, carbon-based life, David Attenborough, European colonialism, feminist movement, financial independence, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, moral panic, out of africa, Paul Graham, Peter Pan Syndrome, phenotype, post-industrial society, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, twin studies

New York: Harper & Brothers. Jablonski, N. G. (2006). Skin: A natural history. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Jaeggi, A. V., & Gurven, M. (2013). Reciprocity explains food sharing in humans and other primates independent of kin selection and tolerated scrounging: A phylogenetic meta-analysis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 280, 20131615. Jahr, C. (1976). Elton John: It’s lonely at the top. Rolling Stone, 223, 11, 16–17. James, W. (1880). Great men, great thoughts, and the environment. Atlantic Monthly, 66, 441–459. James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. New York: Dover.

.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 451–493). Oxford University Press. Pinker, Susan. (2008). The sexual paradox: Troubled boys, gifted girls, and the real difference between the sexes. New York: Scribner. Polderman, T. J. C., Benyamin, B., de Leeuw, C. A., et al. (2015). Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies. Nature Genetics, 47, 702–709. Pollan, M. (1990). The botany of desire: A plant’s-eye view of the world. New York: Random House. Popper, K. R. (1979). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford, UK: Clarendon.

Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art and customs. New York: Henry Holt. van den Berghe, P. L. (1979). Human family systems: An evolutionary view. New York: Elsevier. Van Dongen, S., & Gangestad, S. W. (2011). Human fluctuating asymmetry in relation to health and quality: A meta-analysis. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32, 380–398. van Schaik, C. P., Ancrenaz, M., Borgen, G., et al. (2003). Orangutan cultures and the evolution of material culture. Science, 299, 102–105. van Veelen, M., García, J., Sabelis, M. W., & Egas, M. (2012). Group selection and inclusive fitness are not equivalent; the Price equation vs. models and statistics.


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The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith

British Empire, car-free, clean water, cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, Drosophila, dumpster diving, en.wikipedia.org, Gary Taubes, Haber-Bosch Process, longitudinal study, McMansion, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, out of africa, peak oil, placebo effect, Rosa Parks, the built environment, vertical integration

After endorsing soy in 1999, the nutrition committee of the American Heart Association did a turnaround in 2006, announcing that soy confers no benefit and that the organization “therefore does not recommend isoflavone supplements in food or pills.”267 And while it’s true that the FDA has endorsed soy as “heart healthy,” that endorsement was based on a meta-analysis of studies on soy and heart disease—a meta-analysis paid for by PTI (Protein Technologies International, which is partly owned by Du-Pont).268 One soy researcher admitted publicly in 2001 that: Clinical work is driven by the idea that the isoflavone levels of Asians were extremely high and that low incidences of hormonal disease was due to high circulating levels of these compounds.

Remember that 80 percent of the cholesterol in your blood was made by your body. Only 20 percent was put there by your food choices. Your body knows where it wants that cholesterol level. It may have been misled—by insulin, for instance—but it will adjust its production based on what you ingest. If you eat more cholesterol, it will produce less. A meta-analysis of one hundred sixty seven—yes, that’s 167—cholesterol-feeding experiments found that raising dietary cholesterol had a negligible effect on blood cholesterol, and no link to CHD (coronary heart disease) risk.47 Before we go any further, do you even know what cholesterol is? This benign, maligned substance is needed by every cell in your body, and most of all by the ones that make you human.


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Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", affirmative action, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, centre right, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, conceptual framework, critical race theory, deplatforming, desegregation, Donald Trump, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, fake news, feminist movement, gentrification, germ theory of disease, Isaac Newton, late capitalism, meta-analysis, microaggression, moral panic, neurotypical, phenotype, sexual politics, Social Justice Warrior, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, transatlantic slave trade, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, women in the workforce

., lindabacon.org/health-at-every-size-book/haes-excerpts-and-downloads/. 32.See these metastudies addressing the claims of HAES: Caroline K. Kramer, Bernard Zinman, and Ravi Retnakaran, “Are Metabolically Healthy Overweight and Obesity Benign Conditions?: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Annals of Internal Medicine 159 no. 11 (December 03, 2013), annals.org/aim/article-abstract/1784291/metabolically-healthy-overweight-obesity-benign-conditions-systematic-review-meta-analysis?doi=10.7326/0003-4819-159-11-201312030-00008; Lara L. Roberson et al., “Beyond BMI: The ‘Metabolically Healthy Obese’ Phenotype and Its Association with Clinical/Subclinical Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality—A Systematic Review,” BMC Public Health 14, no. 1 (2014): article 14. 33.The ASDAH website states that its commitment to inclusion encompasses diversity based on ethnicity, race, nationality, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, spirituality, abilities, education, economic class, social class, body shape and size, and others.

The Politics of Manhood: Profeminist Men Respond to the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement (and the Mythopoetic Leaders Answer). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. Kramer, Caroline K., Bernard Zinman, and Ravi Retnakaran. “Are Metabolically Healthy Overweight and Obesity Benign Conditions?: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” Annals of Internal Medicine 159, no. 11 (December 03, 2013). annals.org/aim/article-abstract/1784291/metabolically-healthy-overweight-obesity-benign-conditions-systematic-review-meta-ana lysis?doi=10.7326/0003-4819-159-11-201312030-00008. Koehler, Daniel. “Violence and Terrorism from the Far-Right: Policy Options to Counter an Elusive Threat.”


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Gene Eating: The Science of Obesity and the Truth About Dieting by Giles Yeo

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, delayed gratification, Drosophila, Easter island, Gregor Mendel, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microbiome, nudge theory, post-truth, publish or perish, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, twin studies, Wall-E, zoonotic diseases

., ‘Milk and dairy consumption and risk of cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality: dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies’. Eur J Epidemiol 32 (2017), 269–87, doi:10.1007/s10654-017-0243-1; and Tong, X. et al., ‘Cheese Consumption and Risk of All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies’. Nutrients 9 (2017), doi:10.3390/nu9010063. 19.Lu, L., Xun, P., Wan, Y., He, K. and Cai, W., ‘Long-term association between dairy consumption and risk of childhood obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies’. Eur J Clin Nutr 70 (2016), 414–23, doi:10.1038/ejcn. 2015.226. 20.Um, C.


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The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century by Rodrigo Aguilera

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer age, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, long peace, loss aversion, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Slavoj Žižek, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, tail risk, tech bro, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, unbiased observer, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

The Spring 2017 survey showed that only a net 35% of employees felt they were satisfied with the amount of influence they had over their jobs and a net 12% of employees felt that the organization that they worked for “inspired the very best in me in the way of job performance”.4 It should come as no surprise that workers don’t feel valued, since the modern corporation isn’t designed to promote job satisfaction but rather to generate profit for its owners — satisfaction is merely a byproduct for the lucky ones that work in a company that adequately rewards effort and provides meaning or purpose to the work being done. Unfortunately, the consequences of this are significant: the absence of job satisfaction is a strong predictor of mental health problems, including anxiety and depression, burnout, and self-esteem issues. One meta-analysis of the relationship between work life and mental health summarized the problem: There is growing evidence that current trends in employment conditions may be eroding levels of job satisfaction — and directly damaging the physical and mental health of employees. New working practices and rapid technological advances are changing the nature of many jobs.

., and Roser, M., “Happiness and Life Satisfaction”, Our World in Data, May 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction 31 At least one meta-study conducted in 2012 does not fully endorse this view: Luhmann M. et al., “Subjective Well-Being and Adaptation to Life Events: A Meta-Analysis”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(3), Mar. 2012, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025948 32 ten Kate, J., de Koster, W. and van der Waal, J., “The Effect of Religiosity on Life Satisfaction in a Secularized Context: Assessing the Relevance of Believing and Belonging”, Review of Religious Research, 59(2), Jun. 2017, https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs13644-016-0282-1 33 Stewart, F., “Against Happiness: Why Happiness is not a Good Measure of Progress”, Oxford Human Rights Hub, 17 Mar. 2014, http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/against-happiness-why-happiness-is-not-a-good-measure-of-progress/ 34 Ward, G., “Happiness and Voting Behaviour”, in Helliwell, J.F., Layard, R., and Sachs, J.D.

., “Europeans Work to Live and Americans Live to Work”, Journal of Happiness Studies, 12(2), Apr. 2011, http://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9188-8 3 “UK Working Lives: The CIPD Job Index”, CIPD, 2018, https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/UK-working-lives-2_tcm18-40225.pdf 4 “Employee Outlook: Views on Working Life”, CIPD, 2017, https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/employee-outlook_2017-spring_tcm18-21163.pdf 5 Faragher, E.B., Cass, M. and Cooper, C.L. “The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Health: A Meta-Analysis”, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 62(2), Feb. 2005, https://doi.org/10.1136/oem.2002.006734 6 “Which Countries in Europe Offer the Fairest Paid Leave and Unemployment Benefits?”, Glassdoor Economic Research, 17 Feb. 2016, https://www.glassdoor.com/research/studies/europe-fairest-paid-leave-unemployment-benefits/ 7 Reid, E. and Ramarajan, L., “Managing the High-Intensity Workplace”, Harvard Business Review, Jun. 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/06/managing-the-high-intensity-workplace 8 Otake, T., “1 in 4 Firms in Japan Say Workers Log Over 80 Overtime Hours a Month”, Japan Times, 7 Oct. 2016, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/07/national/social-issues/1-in-4-firms-say-some-workers-log-80-hours-overtime-a-month-white-paper-on-karoshi/ 9 “Suicides Down in 2015 in Japan but Numbers Still Serious Among Young, Elderly”, Japan Times, 31 May 2016, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/31/national/social-issues/suicides-2015-japan-numbers-still-serious-among-young-elderly 10 Roser, M., “Economic growth”, Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth 11 Zakaria, T., “Bush Defends Free Market System Ahead of G20”, Reuters, 13 Nov. 2008, https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-financial-summit-bush-idUKTRE4AC7Z320081113 12 “State of the Union with Candy Crowley”, CNN, 14 Nov. 2010, http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1011/14/sotu.02.html 13 “Obama on the opportunities of capitalism”, Kellog School of Management, 2 Oct. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?


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Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition by Michael J. Mauboussin

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, butter production in bangladesh, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, disruptive innovation, Edward Thorp, experimental economics, financial engineering, financial innovation, framing effect, fundamental attribution error, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, hindsight bias, hiring and firing, information asymmetry, libertarian paternalism, Long Term Capital Management, loose coupling, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, money market fund, Murray Gell-Mann, Netflix Prize, pattern recognition, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Philip Mirowski, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, power law, prediction markets, presumed consent, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, statistical model, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, ultimatum game, vertical integration

Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 716–729; Reid Hastie and Robyn M. Dawes, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001), 55–72; and William M. Grove, David H. Zald, Boyd S. Lebow, Beth E. Snitz, and Chad Nelson, “Clinical Versus Mechanical Prediction: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Assessment 12, no. 1 (2000): 19–30. 17. Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 54. 18. Scott E. Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 205–214.

Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009. Groopman, Jerome. How Doctors Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. Grove, William M., David H. Zald, Boyd S. Lebow, Beth E. Snitz, and Chad Nelson. “Clinical Versus Mechanical Prediction: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Assessment 12, no. 1 (2000): 19–30. Groysberg, Boris, Ashish Nanda, and Nitin Nohria. “The Risky Business of Hiring Stars.” Harvard Business Review, May 2004: 92–100. Groysberg, Boris, Lex Sant, and Robin Abrams. “How to Minimize the Risks of Hiring Outside Stars.” Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2008.


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The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine by M. D. James le Fanu M. D.

Barry Marshall: ulcers, clean water, cuban missile crisis, discovery of penicillin, double helix, experimental subject, Gary Taubes, Helicobacter pylori, Isaac Newton, lateral thinking, meta-analysis, rising living standards, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell, tacit knowledge, telerobotics, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, V2 rocket

, BMJ, 2 April 1949, pp. 557–60. 4.Richard Horton, ‘A Manifesto for Reading Medicine’, The Lancet, 1997, Vol. 349, pp. 872–3. 5.Sandra J. Tanenbaum, ‘What Physicians Know’, NEJM, 1993, Vol. 329, pp. 1268–71. See also Gilbert M. Goldman, ‘The Tacit Dimension of Clinical Judgement’, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 1993, Vol. 63, pp. 47–61. 6.Editorial, ‘Meta-analysis Under Scrutiny’, The Lancet, 1997, Vol. 350, p. 675. See also Samuel Shapiro, ‘Meta-analysis/Schmeta-analysis’, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1994, Vol. 140, pp. 771–8. 7.Editorial, ‘A Meeting Too Many’, The Lancet, 1998, Vol. 352, p. 1161. 8.James McCormick, ‘Death of the Personal Doctor’, The Lancet, 1996, Vol. 2, pp. 667–8. Introduction: Ten Years On REFERENCES 1.Office of Health Economics, Compendium of Health Statistics 20th Edition (Office of Health Economics, 2010). 2.H.

Dudley, ‘The Controlled Clinical Trial and the Advance of Reliable Knowledge: An Outsider Looks In’, BMJ, 1983, Vol. 287, pp. 957–60; correspondence, M. Baum et al., BMJ, 1983, Vol. 287, pp. 1216–18; Bruce G. Charlton, ‘The Future of Clinical Research: From Mega-trials Towards Methodological Rigour and Representative Sampling’, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 1996, Vol. 2, pp. 159–69; John C. Bailar, ‘The Promise and Problems of Meta-analysis’, NEJM, 1997, Vol. 337, pp. 559–61; S. Blinkhorn, ‘Meta Better’, Nature, 1998, Vol. 392, pp. 671–2. 4: 1952: Chlorpromazine and the Revolution in Psychiatry GENERAL READING Arvid Carlsson, Annual Review of Neuroscience, 1978, Vol. 10, pp. 19–40. David Healy, ‘The History of British Psychopharmacology’, 150 Years of British Psychiatry, Vol. 2: The Aftermath, ed.

Results from the National Comorbility Survey’, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1994, Vol. 51, pp. 8–19. 16.Alisdair Santhouse, ‘The Person in the Patient’, BMJ, 428:a2262. 17.Quoted in Jackie Law, Big Pharma: How the World’s Biggest Drug Companies Control Illness (Constable, 2006). 18.Cheryll Barron, ‘Big Pharma Snared by Net’, Observer, 26 September 2004. 19.Jackie Law, Big Pharma: How the World’s Biggest Drug Companies Control Illness (Constable, 2006). 20.Irvine Kirsch, 2009, The Emperor’s New Drugs (Bodley Head, 2009). 21.Dr Malcolm Kendrick, The Great Cholesterol Con (John Blake, 2007). 22.C. T. T. Collaborators, ‘Efficacy and Safety of Cholesterol-Lowering Treatment: Prospective Meta-Analysis of Data from 90,056 Participants by the Incidents of Fourteen Randomised Trials of Statins’, The Lancet, 2005, Vol. 366, pp. 1267–72. 23.‘Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults. Executive Summary of The Third Report of The National Cholesterol Education Programme’, JAMA, 2001, Vol. 285, pp. 2486–97. 24.D.


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The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes

Albert Einstein, British Empire, cuban missile crisis, epigenetics, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Gary Taubes, Isaac Newton, meta-analysis, microbiome, phenotype, pre–internet, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, seminal paper, the new new thing, the scientific method, Works Progress Administration

Letter to Roger Adams, April 29. Sugar Research Foundation, Inc. Papers of Roger Adams, University of Illinois Archives, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He, F. J., J. Li, and G. A. MacGregor. 2013. “Effect of Longer Term Modest Salt Reduction on Blood Pressure: Cochrane Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomised Trials.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews no. 4 (April 30): CD004937. Heinbecker, P. 1928. “Studies on the Metabolism of Eskimos.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 80, no. 2 (Dec. 1): 461–75. Helmchen, L. A., and R. M. Henderson. 2004. “Changes in the Distribution of Body Mass Index of White US Men, 1890–2000.”

Trans. D. Spence. In Metabolism and Practical Medicine, Vol. 3: The Pathology of Metabolism, ed. C. von Noorden and I. W. Hall (Chicago: W. Keener, 1907), 693–715. Noto, H., A. Goto, T. Tsujimoto, and M. Noda. 2012. “Cancer Risk in Diabetic Patients Treated with Metformin: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” PLOS One 7, no. 3 (March): e33411. Nuccio, S. 1964. “Advertising: Sales Clicking for Dietetic Pop.” New York Times, May 20: 68. O’Connor, A. 2015. “Coca-Cola Funds Effort to Alter Obesity Battle.” New York Times, Aug. 10: A1. Ors, R., E. Ozek, G. Baysoy, et al. 1999. “Comparison of Sucrose and Human Milk on Pain Response in Newborns.”

“Food Habit and Cultural Changes Among the Pima Indians.” In Joe and Young, eds., 1994, 407–33. Smith, D. 1952. “Fight Continues Between Dentists, Sugar Industry.” Boston Globe, Sept. 1: 34. Snapper, I. 1960. Bedside Medicine. New York: Grune & Stratton. Sniderman, A. D., K. Williams, J. H. Contois, et al. 2011. “A Meta-Analysis of Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol, Non-High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol, and Apolipoprotein B as Markers of Cardiovascular Risk.” Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes 4, no. 3 (May): 337–45. Snowden, C. 2015. “The Coca-Cola ‘Exposé’ Had All the Spin of a Classic Anti-Sugar Smear Piece.”


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10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness by Alanna Collen

Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, biofilm, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, David Strachan, discovery of penicillin, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Fall of the Berlin Wall, friendly fire, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Helicobacter pylori, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, illegal immigration, John Snow's cholera map, Kickstarter, Louis Pasteur, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, microbiome, phenotype, placebo effect, seminal paper, the scientific method

Probiotics for the prevention and treatment of antibiotic-associated diarrhea: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of the American Medical Association 307: 1959–1969. 4. AlFaleh, K. et al. (2011). Probiotics for prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis in preterm infants. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 3. 5. Ringel, Y. and Ringel-Kulka, T. (2011). The rationale and clinical effectiveness of probiotics in irritable bowel syndrome. Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology 45(S3): S145–S148. 6. Pelucchi, C. et al. (2012). Probiotics supplementation during pregnancy or infancy for the prevention of atopic dermatitis: A meta-analysis. Epidemiology 23: 402–414. 7.

Association or lack of association between tetracycline class antibiotics used for acne vulgaris and lupus erythematosus. British Journal of Dermatology 157: 540–546. 13. Tan, L. et al. (2002). Use of antimicrobial agents in consumer products. Archives of Dermatology 138: 1082–1086. 14. Aiello, A.E. et al. (2008). Effect of hand hygiene on infectious disease risk in the community setting: A meta-analysis. American Journal of Public Health 98: 1372–1381. 15. Bertelsen, R.J. et al. (2013). Triclosan exposure and allergic sensitization in Norwegian children. Allergy 68: 84–91. 16. Syed, A.K. et al. (2014). Triclosan promotes Staphylococcus aureus nasal colonization. mBio 5: e01015–13. 17. Dale, R.C. et al. (2004).


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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

Linda Fried, geriatrician, gerontologist, epidemiologist Lack of social integration can be fatal. If Mr O. had the choice of giving up smoking or being more enmeshed socially, it is a close thing: both are potentially life-saving, but social integration is marginally better for his health. A ‘meta-analysis’ combined results from 148 studies of men and women with an average age of sixty-four at the start of the study. It found that over an average 7.5 years of follow-up, people who were socially engaged had a 50 per cent lower chance of dying. Being socially integrated in a variety of ways was more protective than simply being married or not living alone.24 The protective effect was similar in men and women.

Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 1998; 14(4): 245–58. 9Norman RE, Byambaa M, De R, Butchart A, Scott J, Vos T. The long-term health consequences of child physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS Med. 2012;9(11):e1001349. 10Smith Z. NW. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012, pp. 270–1. 11Plomin R. Genetics and children’s experiences in the family. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 1995; 36: 33–67; Plomin R. Nature and Nurture: An Introduction to Human Behavioral Genetics. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole, 1990. 12UCL Institute of Health Equity.

The Potential Impact; Bambra CL, Whitehead MM, Sowden AJ, Akers J, Petticrew MP. Shifting schedules: the health effects of reorganizing shift work. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 2008; 34(5): 427–34; Vyas MV, Garg AX, Iansavichus AV, Costella J, Donner A, Laugsand LE, et al. Shift work and vascular events: systematic review and meta-analysis. British Medical Journal. 2012; 345: e4800. 17Steptoe and Kivimaki. Stress and cardiovascular disease. 18Beveridge W. Social Insurance and Allied Services. London: HMSO, 1942. 19New Policy Institute, MacInnes T, Aldridge H, Bushe S, Kenway P, Tinson A. Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2013.


Yoga Nidra by Kamini Desai

Exxon Valdez, glass ceiling, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, placebo effect, social intelligence, traumatic brain injury, wikimedia commons

“Increased Dopamine Tone During MeditationInduced Change of Consciousness.” Cognitive Brain Research 13.2 (2002): 255-60. [12] 149 – Alexander, C.N., P. Robinson, OTR, and M. Rainforth. “Treating and Preventing Alcohol, Nicotine, and Drug Abuse Through Transcendental Meditation: A Review and Statistical Meta-Analysis.” Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 11 (1994): 13-87. Gelderloos, P., K.G. Walton, D.W. Orme-Johnson, and C.N. Alexander. “Effectiveness of the Transcendental Meditation Program in Preventing and Treating Substance Misuse: A Review.” International Journal of the Addictions 26.3 (1991): 293-325. Benson, H., and R.K.

“Decreased drug abuse with Transcendental Meditation: A study of 1,862 subjects.” Drug abuse: Proceedings of the international conference. Philadelphia: Lee and Febiger, 1972. [13] 150 – Alexander, C.N., P. Robinson, OTR, and M. Rainforth. “Treating and Preventing Alcohol, Nicotine, and Drug Abuse Through Transcendental Meditation: A Review and Statistical Meta-Analysis.” Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 11 (1994): 13-87. [14] 151 – Wynd, Christine A. “Guided Health Imagery for Smoking Cessation and Long-Term Abstinence.” Journal of Nursing Scholarship 37.3 (2005): 245-50. – CHAPTER NINETEEN – Yoga Nidra for Trauma and PTSD In the last chapter, we talked about how habits and addictions can begin as a means to manage the way we feel.

“How Stress Affects Your Brain Madhumita Murgia.” TED-Ed. Ed. Andrew Zimbelman. 9 Nov. 2015. Web. 06 Apr. 2016. [10] 161 – Murgia, Madhumita. “How Stress Affects Your Brain Madhumita Murgia.” TED-Ed. Ed. Andrew Zimbelman. 9 Nov. 2015. Web. 06 Apr. 2016. [11] 162 – Brewin, Chris R., Bernice Andrews, and John D. Valentine. “Meta-analysis of Risk Factors for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Trauma-exposed Adults.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 68.5 (2000): 748-66. Web. 20 Apr. 2016. [12] 163 – Sapolsky, R.M., L.C. Krey, and B.S. McEwen. “Prolonged Glucocorticoid Exposure Reduces Hippocampal Neuron Number: Implications for Aging.”


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Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life With Self-Help Techniques From EMDR Therapy by Francine Shapiro

Columbine, D. B. Cooper, epigenetics, fear of failure, financial independence, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Oklahoma City bombing, randomized controlled trial, traumatic brain injury

., Kasai, K., Kato, T., & Kato, N. (2009). Hemodynamic responses of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing in posttraumatic stress disorder. Neuroscience Research, 65, 375-83. Rodenburg, R., Benjamin, A., de Roos, C., Meijer, A. M., & Stams, G. J. (2009). Efficacy of EMDR in children: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 29, 599-606. Rothbaum, B. (1997). A controlled study of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disordered sexual assault victims. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 61, 317-34. Shapiro, F. (1989). Efficacy of the eye movement desensitization procedure in the treatment of traumatic memories.

First report of the Collaborative Outcome Data Project on the effectiveness of psychological treatment for sexual offenders. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 14, 169-94. Jeperson, A. F., Lalumiere, M. L., & Seto, M. C. (2009). Sexual abuse history among adult sex offenders and non-sex offenders: A meta-analysis. Child Abuse and Neglect, 33, 179-92. Marques, J. K., Wiederanders, M., Day, D. M., Nelson, C., & van Ommeren, A. (2005). Effects of a relapse prevention program on sexual recidivism: Final results from California’s sex offender treatment and evaluation project (SOTEP). Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 17, 79-107.

., & Ellerby, L. (2009). Current practices and trends in sexual abuse management. The safer society 2002 national survey. Brandon, VT: Safer Society Foundation. Pereda, N., Guilera, G., Forns, M., & Gómez-Benito, J. (2009). The prevalence of child sexual abuse in community and student samples: A meta-analysis. Clin Psychol Rev. 29, 328-38. Published online: March 5, 2009. Ricci, R. J. (2006). Trauma resolution using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing with an incestuous sex offender, Clinical Case Studies, 5, 248-65. Ricci, R. J., Clayton, C. A., & Shapiro, F. (2006). Some effects of EMDR on previously abused child molesters: Theoretical reviews and preliminary findings.


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The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better by Will Storr

data science, David Brooks, Demis Hassabis, Gordon Gekko, heat death of the universe, meta-analysis, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, theory of mind, Wall-E

Research suggests that, when we’re transported, our beliefs, attitudes and intentions are vulnerable to being altered, in accordance with the mores of the story, and that these alterations can stick. ‘Research has demonstrated that the transported “traveller” can return changed by the journey,’ write the authors of a meta-analysis of 132 studies of narrative transportation. ‘The transformation that narrative transportation achieves is persuasion of the story-receiver.’ In the 1960s, the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dragged its readers through the experiences of an ordinary prisoner in one of Stalin’s gulag camps, shocking the Communist citizens of the Soviet Union.

Roy Baumeister writes that: The Cultural Animal, Roy Baumeister (Oxford University Press, 2005) p. 102. 4.4 ‘the invisible actor’: Making up the Mind, Chris Frith (Blackwell Publishing, 2007) p. 109. ‘the transported “traveller” can return changed’: ‘The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta-Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers’ Narrative Transportation’, Tom van Laer, Ko de Ruyter, Luca M. Visconti and Martin Wetzels; Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 40, No. 5 (February 2014) pp. 797–817. 4.5 One study had a group of white Americans: ‘Entertainment-education effectively reduces prejudice’, Sohad Murrar, Markus Brauer; Group Processes & Intergroup Relation, 2018, Vol 21, Issue 7.


The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon

Bernie Madoff, epigenetics, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Gregor Mendel, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, personalized medicine, phenotype, Rubik’s Cube, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), stem cell, TED Talk, theory of mind

Twelve percent of the guys had this combination of abuse and the warrior gene, but they were responsible for 44 percent of the men’s violent convictions, doing four times their share of the damage. Overall, 85 percent of the males with the warrior gene who were severely maltreated became antisocial. A similar pattern was seen in females, though they were less violent. A later meta-analysis Caspi and his colleagues conducted of similar studies showed that even without abuse, the warrior gene does increase aggression, but its effect on its own is much smaller. Those several months following birth are sometimes called the “fourth trimester,” and this extended period of what should have been prenatal development means that early environment for a human infant is particularly important.

“The challenge of translation in social neuroscience: a review of oxytocin, vasopressin, and affiliative behavior.” Neuron 65, no. 6 (2010): 768. Kim-Cohen, Julia, Avshalom Caspi, Alan Taylor, Benjamin Williams, Rhiannon Newcombe, Ian W. Craig, and Terrie E. Moffitt. “MAOA, maltreatment, and gene-environment interaction predicting children’s mental health: New evidence and a meta-analysis.” Molecular Psychiatry 11, no. 10 (2006): 903–913. Kirsch, Peter, Christine Esslinger, Qiang Chen, Daniela Mier, Stefanie Lis, Sarina Siddhanti, Harald Gruppe, Venkata S. Mattay, Bernd Gallhofer, and Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg. “Oxytocin modulates neural circuitry for social cognition and fear in humans.”


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Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future by Johan Norberg

agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, availability heuristic, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, carbon tax, classic study, clean water, continuation of politics by other means, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, demographic transition, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, Flynn Effect, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Island, Hans Rosling, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, John Snow's cholera map, Kibera, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, more computing power than Apollo, moveable type in China, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, open economy, place-making, Rosa Parks, sexual politics, special economic zone, Steven Pinker, telerobotics, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transatlantic slave trade, very high income, working poor, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 17f. 23 Environmental Performance Index 2006. 24 Indur M. Goklany, The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2007, p. 149f. 25 Bishwa S. Koirala, Hui Li and Robert P. Berrens, ‘Further investigation of environmental Kuznets curve studies using meta-analysis’, International Journal of Ecological Economics and Statistics, 22, S11 (2011). 26 Indur Goklany, ‘Deaths and death rates from extreme weather events: 1900–2008’. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, 14, 4 (2009), 102–9. 27 Todd Moss and Benjamin Leo, ‘Maximizing access to energy: estimates of access and generation for the overseas private investment corporation’s portfolio’, Center for Global Development, January 2014, www.cgdev.org/publication/maximizing-access-energy-estimates-access-and-generation-overseas-private-investment (accessed on 22 March 2016). 28 Bailey 2015, p. 200. 29 Lindstrand et al. 2006, p. 70.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 488. 19 World Economic Forum, ‘Global gender gap report 2015’, http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2015 (accessed on 22 March 2016). 20 UNDP, Human Development Report 2014. New York: UNDP, 2014. 21 Pinker 2011, p. 413. 22 United Nations Children’s Fund, Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: What Might the Future Hold? New York: UNICEF, 2014. 23 Pew Research Center 2013. 24 Jean M. Twenge, ‘Attitudes toward women, 1970–1995: a meta-analysis’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 1 (1997), 35–51. 25 Pinker 2011, p. 408f. 26 Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015, p. 137. 27 Aaron Day: ‘The PinkNews guide to the history of England and Wales equal marriage’, PinkNews, 15 July 2013. 28 John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, 2nd edn.


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Leadership by Algorithm: Who Leads and Who Follows in the AI Era? by David de Cremer

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, bitcoin, blockchain, business climate, business process, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, data is not the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, future of work, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, race to the bottom, robotic process automation, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stephen Hawking, The Future of Employment, Turing test, work culture , workplace surveillance , zero-sum game

Since the 1970s, scholars have been providing evidence that human experts do not perform as well as simple linear models in things like clinical diagnosis, forecasting graduate students’ success, and other prediction tasks.²¹,²² Findings like this have led to the idea that algorithmic judgment is superior to expert human judgment.²³ For example, research has shown that algorithms deliver more accurate medical diagnoses when detecting heart-rate diseases.²⁴,²⁵,²⁶ Furthermore, in the world of business, algorithms prove better at predicting employee performance, the products customers want to buy, and identifying fake news and information.²⁷,²⁸ An overall analysis of all these effects (what is called a meta-analysis) even reveals that algorithms outperform human forecasters by 10% on average.²⁹ Overall, the evidence suggests that it is (and will increasingly be) the case that algorithms outperform humans. This scientific evidence, combined with our tendency to think of humans and machines as us versus them, poses the question of whether AI will replace people’s jobs at center-stage.³⁰ This question is no longer a peripheral one.

‘Systematic analysis of breast cancer morphology uncovers stromal features associated with survival.’ Science translational medicine, 3(108), doi: 108ra113-108ra113 26 Grove, W. M., Zald, D. H., Lebow, B. S., Snitz, B. E., & Nelson, C. (2000). ‘Clinical versus mechanical prediction: A meta-analysis.’ Psychological Assessment, 12(1), 19-30. 27 Maidens, J., & Slamon, N.B. (2018). Abstract12591: ‘Artificial intelligence detects pediatric heart murmurs with cardiologist-level accuracy.’ Circulation, 138 (suppl_1). 28 Highhouse, S. (2008). ‘Stubborn Reliance on Intuition and Subjectivity in Employee Selection.’


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Protecting Pollinators by Jodi Helmer

Anthropocene, big-box store, clean water, Columbine, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kickstarter, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, the scientific method, urban sprawl, zero-sum game

While honeybees remain in the spotlight, they cannot do the job of pollination alone. Hummingbirds, bats, moths, flies, and thousands of other creatures make up the motley crew of pollinators that allow for effective and stable pollination. Diversity is more important than abundance of a single species, even a managed species like the honeybee. In fact, a 2016 meta-analysis reviewed thirty-nine studies and found that insects other than bees were also efficient pollinators, providing more than two-thirds of visits to crop flowers. Compared to honeybees, nonbee pollinators performed fewer than 50 percent of total flower visits but a higher number of flower visits and, as a result, their pollination services were on par with bees overall.

A growing number of researchers have suggested that, instead of treating honeybees like pollinators, beekeepers should see them as livestock, since managed colonies face issues similar to those faced by cows, pigs, and chickens raised in cramped conditions: overcrowding and homogenous diets depress their immune systems and increase the presence of pathogens. In one meta-analysis, more than half of studies found that competition for resources had negative effects on wild bees. (The research did not measure the direct effects of honeybees on wild bee fitness, abundance, or diversity; managed hives located in their native ranges had a lower impact on wild bees than those in hives situated in nonnative ranges.)


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McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Ronald Purser

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, British Empire, capitalist realism, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, fake news, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, impulse control, job satisfaction, liberation theology, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Nelson Mandela, neoliberal agenda, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, placebo effect, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, publication bias, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, source of truth, stealth mode startup, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, work culture

The US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality also commissioned meta-analytic studies on the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), first in 2007 and again in 2014. Both studies were critical of the lack of rigorous standards, noting that the majority of studies did not utilize randomized control groups. The more recent 2014 meta-analysis found that MBIs had lackluster efficacy, ranging from moderate to none whatsoever.18 What is especially noteworthy was the low reported efficacy of MBIs for reducing stress and improving people’s quality of life. One of the claims made by mindfulness advocates is that the practice in and of itself leads to pro-social conduct, enhancing compassion, altruism and empathy, while reducing aggression and prejudice.

Take that condition away, and the results disappeared. In addition, their study found no evidence that meditation had any significant effect on the reduction of aggression and prejudice. The widespread belief that there is compelling clinical proof that “mindfulness works” is simply not supported by the scientific evidence. Another recent meta-analysis found MBSR was not effective for people suffering from depression.20 Even using the more specific Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which is sanctioned for treating depression by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the efficacy is only modestly helpful for reducing the likelihood of depression relapse.


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

Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Chapter 1, n.d. “Meditation Trains Metacognition - LessWrong,” accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JMgffu9AzhYpTpHFJ/meditation-trains-metacognition. Peter Sedlmeier et al., “The Psychological Effects of Meditation: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 138, no. 6 (November 2012): 1139–71, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028168. “A Map of Bay Area Memespace - LessWrong,” accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WzPJRNYWhMXQTEj69/a-map-of-bay-area-memespace. Tim Buschmann et al., “The Relationship Between Automatic Thoughts and Irrational Beliefs Predicting Anxiety and Depression,” Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy 36 (July 1, 2017): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-017-0278-y.

John, “Individual Differences in Two Emotion Regulation Processes: Implications for Affect, Relationships, and Well-Being,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, no. 2 (August 2003): 348–62, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348. Tianqiang Hu et al., “Relation between Emotion Regulation and Mental Health: A Meta-Analysis Review,” Psychological Reports 114 (April 1, 2014): 341–62, https://doi.org/10.2466/03.20.PR0.114k22w4. James J. Gross, Handbook of Emotion Regulation, Second Edition. Chapter 1: Emotion, 2nd edition (The Guilford Press, 2013). Shengdong Chen et al., “Automatic Reappraisal-Based Implementation Intention Produces Early and Sustainable Emotion Regulation Effects: Event-Related Potential Evidence,” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 14 (July 1, 2020): 89, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00089.


Fix Your Gut: The Definitive Guide to Digestive Disorders by John Brisson

23andMe, big-box store, biofilm, butterfly effect, clean water, Helicobacter pylori, life extension, meta-analysis, microbiome, pattern recognition, publication bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Zimmermann PGP

This compartment, with both activator and regulatory T cells, could be involved in setting the agedependent threshold for allergic sensitization to environmental allergens” It would appear that a diffuse H. pylori colonization in the stomach helps to create robust low-grade mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) which is the first line of defense against allergic proteins that we consume. There is one study, however, that does attempt to shed some doubt on H. pylori’s protection against asthma and allergies. The study is a meta-analysis based on 770 cases and 785 controls. The study did not find a huge link between H. pylori and asthma and allergies. There were issues with the study because they used serological ELISA tests for H. pylori that would show the body’s reaction to a prior infection but not if the H. pylori were flora.

FEBS J. 2007;274(14):3589-600. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17627668 Inulin / FOS http://www.marksdailyapple.com/prebiotics/. Accessed April 27, 2014 http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/knowledge_base/detail/inulin/ Accessed April 27, 2014 Lactulose Beers, Mark. The Merck Manual, Merck Research Laboratories, 2006. Shukla S, Shukla A, Mehboob S, Guha S. Meta-analysis: the effects of gut flora modulation using prebiotics, probiotics and synbiotics on minimal hepatic encephalopathy. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2011;33(6):662-71. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21251030 XOS http://www.marksdailyapple.com/prebiotics/. Accessed April 27, 2014 Xylooligosaccharides (XOS) as an Emerging Prebiotic: Microbial Synthesis, Utilization, Structural Characterization, Bioactive Properties, and Applications.

Review of sangre de drago (Croton lechleri)--a South American tree sap in the treatment of diarrhea, inflammation, insect bites, viral infections, and wounds: traditional uses to clinical research. J Altern Complement Med. 2003;9(6):877-96. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14736360 Iodice S, Gandini S, Maisonneuve P, Lowenfels AB. Tobacco and the risk of pancreatic cancer: a review and meta-analysis. Langenbecks Arch Surg. 2008;393(4):535-45. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18193270 Parasites Parasite General Information Beers, Mark. The Merck Manual, Merck Research Laboratories, 2006. http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/water.html, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/trichinellosis/gen_info/faqs.html, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cat-poop-parasites-may-posepublic-health-hazard-study-suggests-6C10574506, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/hookworm/, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/2/07-047308/en/, Accessed April 28, 2014 https://fri.wisc.edu/files/Briefs_File/parasites.pdf, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.totalityofbeing.com/FramelessPages/Articles/organic_vs_nonorganic Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/05/toxoplasma-gondiibrain-parasite-suicide-cats_n_1651523.html, Accessed April 28, 2014 Piperine http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Jwhozip48e/6.5.html, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/govi/pharmaz/2008/00000063/00000005 crawler=true, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090311085151.htm, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005273695000558, Accessed April 28, 2014 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960894X04005177 Accessed April 28, 2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3588050/, Accessed April 28, 2014 Veerareddy PR, Vobalaboina V, Nahid A.


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Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Atul Gawande, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, death of newspapers, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, helicopter parent, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job satisfaction, lockdown, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, meta-analysis, New Journalism, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school choice, security theater, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, trade route, Upton Sinclair, zoonotic diseases

Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 2020; 56: 978; X. Li et al., “The Role of Children in Transmission of SARS-CoV-2: A Rapid Review,” Journal of Global Health 2020; 10: 011101; R.M. Viner et al., “Susceptibility to and Transmission of COVID-19 amongst Children and Adolescents Compared with Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” medRxiv, May 24, 2020. 40 K.M. Posfay-Barbe et al., “COVID-19 in Children and the Dynamics of Infection in Families,” Pediatrics 2020; 146: e20201576; A. Fontanet et al., “SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Primary Schools in Northern France: A Retrospective Cohort Study in an Area of High Transmission,” medRxiv, June 29, 2020. 41 G.

., 1874, 2.47.4. 44 J. de Venette, The Chronicle of Jean de Venette, in The Black Death, trans. and ed. R. Horrox, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, pp. 55–56. 45 S. Kisely, “Occurrence, Prevention, and Management of the Psychological Effects of Emerging Virus Outbreaks on Healthcare Workers: Rapid Review and Meta-Analysis,” BMJ 2020; 369: m1642. 46 J. Hoffman, “‘I Can’t Turn My Brain Off’: PTSD and Burnout Threaten Medical Workers,” New York Times, May 16, 2020. 47 K. Weise, “Two Emergency Room Doctors Are in Critical Condition with Coronavirus,” New York Times, March 15, 2020. 48 C. Jewett et al., “Nearly 600—and Counting—US Health Care Workers Have Died of COVID-19,” The Guardian, June 6, 2020. 49 M.

Doyle-Burr, “Norwich Rallies Together to Grow Gardens as Part of COVID-19 Response,” Valley News (Lebanon, NH), May 18, 2020. 14 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision (ST/ESA/SER.A/420), New York: United Nations, 2019. 15 Anonymous, “Men Pick Up (Some) of the Slack at Home: New National Survey on the Pandemic at Home,” Council on Contemporary Families, May 20, 2020. 16 Anonymous, “A Survey of Handwashing Behavior (Trended),” Harris Interactive, August 2010. 17 K.R. Moran and S.Y. Del Valle, “A Meta-Analysis of the Association between Gender and Protective Behaviors in Response to Respiratory Epidemics and Pandemics,” PLOS ONE 2016; 11: e0164541. 18 J. Scipioni, “White House Advisor Dr. Fauci Says Handshaking Needs to Stop Even When Pandemic Ends—Other Experts Agree,” CNBC, April 9, 2020. 19 E. Andrews, “The History of the Handshake,” History, August 9, 2016. 20 I.


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San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities by Michael Shellenberger

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, business climate, centre right, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark triade / dark tetrad, defund the police, delayed gratification, desegregation, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, gentrification, George Floyd, Golden Gate Park, green new deal, Haight Ashbury, housing crisis, Housing First, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jane Jacobs, mandatory minimum, Marc Benioff, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peoples Temple, Peter Pan Syndrome, pill mill, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, rent control, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, social distancing, South of Market, San Francisco, Steven Pinker, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, walkable city

Sam Tsemberis, interview by the author, January 6, 2021. 45. Kertesz et al., “Housing first for homeless persons with active addiction.” 46. Rebecca A. Cherner et al., “Housing First for Adults with Problematic Substance Use,” Journal of Dual Diagnosis 13, no. 1 (2017), doi:10.1080/15504263.2017.1319586. 47. Joseph E. Schumacher et al., “Meta-Analysis of Day Treatment and Contingency-Management Dismantling Research: Birmingham Homeless Cocaine Studies (1990–2006),” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 75, no. 5 (2007): 823–28, doi:10.1037/0022–006X.75.5.823. 48. Kertesz et al., “Housing First for Homeless Persons with Active Addiction.” 49.

Ali, and Emily Rosenoff, “Individuals Experiencing Homelessness Are Likely to Have Medical Conditions Associated with Severe Illness from COVID-19,” ASPE Issue Brief, HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, US Department of Health and Human Services, June 2020, www.aspe.hhs.gov; Robert W. Aldridge et al., “Morbidity and Mortality in Homeless Individuals, Prisoners, Sex Workers, and Individuals with Substance Use Disorders in High-Income Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Lancet 391, no. 10117 (2018): 241–50, doi:10.1016/S0140–6736(17)31869-X. 46. Severin Campbell et al., “Performance Audit of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Prepared for the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco,” Office of the San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst, August 6, 2020, www.sfbos.org. 47.

., “Do Images of ‘Watching Eyes’ Induce Behaviour That Is More Pro-Social or More Normative? A Field Experiment on Littering,” PLoS One 8, no. 12 (2013): e82055, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082055; Keith Dear, Kevin Dutton, and Elaine Fox, “Do ‘Watching Eyes’ Influence Antisocial Behavior? A Systematic Review & Meta-Analysis,” Evolution and Human Behavior 40, no. 3 (2019): 269–80, doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.01.006. 16: Love Bombing 1. Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs, Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People (New York: Penguin Books, 2008); Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple, produced and directed by Stanley Nelson, written by Marcia Smith and Noland Walker (2006; Firelight Media, aired April 9, 2007 on American Experience, PBS). 2.


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Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought by Andrew W. Lo

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Andrei Shleifer, Arthur Eddington, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bob Litterman, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, break the buck, Brexit referendum, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, butterfly effect, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, confounding variable, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, Diane Coyle, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, double helix, easy for humans, difficult for computers, equity risk premium, Ernest Rutherford, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Fractional reserve banking, framing effect, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, Henri Poincaré, high net worth, housing crisis, incomplete markets, index fund, information security, interest rate derivative, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Hawkins, Jim Simons, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, language acquisition, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, martingale, megaproject, merger arbitrage, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Neil Armstrong, Nick Leeson, old-boy network, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, p-value, PalmPilot, paper trading, passive investing, Paul Lévy, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, predatory finance, prediction markets, price discovery process, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, RAND corporation, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, Shai Danziger, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical arbitrage, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, stocks for the long run, subprime mortgage crisis, survivorship bias, systematic bias, Thales and the olive presses, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, ultimatum game, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Walter Mischel, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Not only were the researchers able to pinpoint the region of the brain where the comparison was made—a specific area in the prefrontal cortex—but they were even able to calculate the subjects’ mental exchange rate of $4.31 per face. Since the rapid expansion of brain imaging technologies in the twenty-first century, there have been hundreds of fMRI studies on subjective value. There’s now so much science on the topic that papers analyzing groups of other papers—a method called meta-analysis—have been written to help interpret all the results. A 2013 meta-analysis made by Oscar Bartra, Joseph T. McGuire, and Joseph Kable concluded that subjective value is encoded the same way across all the tested categories, activating the same brain regions within the same systems.35 These findings are an excellent example of how quickly our knowledge of the brain is changing.

Journal of Financial Economics 98: 583–604. Baron-Cohen, Simon. 1989. “The Autistic Child’s Theory of Mind: A Case of Specific Developmental Delay.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 30: 285–297. Bartra, Oscar, Joseph T. McGuire, and Joseph W. Kable. 2013. “The Valuation System: A Coordinate-Based Meta-Analysis of BOLD fMRI Experiments Examining Neural Correlates of Subjective Value.” NeuroImage 76: 412–427. Bass, Thomas A. 1985. The Eudaemonic Pie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ___. 2000. The Predictors. New York: Henry Holt. Baumeister, Roy F., Todd F. Heatherton, and Dianne M. Tice. 1994. Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation.

., 263 Mean Genes (Burnham), 337 mean reversion, 286, 292, 324–326 Medallion Fund, 6 “ME HURT YOU” narrative, 339–340, 341, 343, 345 Melanesia, 151–152 memory, 130 merger arbitrage, 267 Meriwether, John, 241 Merrill Lynch, 242–243, 306, 308, 309 Merton, Robert C., 27, 127, 266, 356–357; financial engineering innovations by, 211; housing crisis viewed by, 322–323; at Long-Term Capital Management, 241; network contagion viewed by, 376–377; Nobel Prize awarded to, 97. See also Black-Scholes/Merton option pricing formula mescaline, 79 meta-analysis, 100 Metallgesellschaft, 320, 321 method acting, 105 Microsoft Windows, 372 Milgram, Stanley, 346, 347 Mill, John Stuart, 211 Milner, Peter, 87 Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research, 159 Minsky, Marvin, 132–133 mirror neuron, 110, 157 miscarriages, 152 Mischel, Walter, 120–121 mobile banking, 356 money market funds, 228, 300, 301, 409 Moffitt, Terrie, 160 Montague, Read, 97, 98 Moore, Gordon, 356 Moore, Jesse W., 12 Moore’s Law, 356, 358, 385 Morgan Stanley, 235–237, 240, 284, 286, 307, 308 Morgenbesser, Sidney, 46–47 morphine, 89, 90 Morse, Adair, 353–354 mortgages, 7, 290, 292, 293, 297–329, 376, 377, 410 Morton Thiokol Inc., 13–16 Mossin, Jan, 263 motor control, 153 MSCI World Index, 251 Mulherin, J.


pages: 255 words: 78,207

Web Scraping With Python: Collecting Data From the Modern Web by Ryan Mitchell

AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 13, cloud computing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, data science, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, Guido van Rossum, information security, machine readable, meta-analysis, natural language processing, optical character recognition, random walk, self-driving car, Turing test, web application

If you are storing copyrighted material that you have free access to in your own nonpublic database for the purposes of anal‐ ysis, that is fine. If you are publishing that database to your website for viewing or download, that is not fine. If you are analyzing that database and publishing statistics about word counts, a list of authors by prolificacy, or some other meta-analysis of the data, that is fine. If you are accompanying that meta-analysis with a few select quotes, or brief samples of data to make your point, that is likely also fine, but you might want to examine the “fair use” clause of the DMCA to make sure. Trespass to Chattels Trespass to chattels is fundamentally different from what we think of as “trespassing laws” in that it applies not to real estate or land but to moveable property (such as a server).


pages: 284 words: 72,406

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland, Jj Sutherland

Abraham Maslow, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, business cycle, call centre, clean water, death of newspapers, fail fast, fundamental attribution error, Kaizen: continuous improvement, knowledge worker, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, pets.com, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, Rodney Brooks, Salesforce, Shai Danziger, Silicon Valley, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, work culture

They make more money, they have better jobs, they graduate from college, and they live longer. It’s quite remarkable. Almost universally they’re just better at what they do. Happy people sell more stuff, make more money, cost less, are less likely to leave their jobs, are healthier, and live longer. Or as a 2005 paper that did a meta-analysis of some 225 papers with over 275,000 participants put it: Happiness leads to success in nearly every domain of our lives, including marriage, health, friendship, community involvement, creativity, and, in particular, our jobs, careers, and businesses.1 The meta-analysts showed that people who felt happy were more likely to secure job interviews, be evaluated more positively by supervisors, show superior performance and productivity, and be better managers.

Or as a 2005 paper that did a meta-analysis of some 225 papers with over 275,000 participants put it: Happiness leads to success in nearly every domain of our lives, including marriage, health, friendship, community involvement, creativity, and, in particular, our jobs, careers, and businesses.1 The meta-analysts showed that people who felt happy were more likely to secure job interviews, be evaluated more positively by supervisors, show superior performance and productivity, and be better managers. Here’s the really interesting part, though. It intuitively makes sense that happy people do better—it’s because of their success that they’re happy, right? Wrong. From that same meta-analysis: “Study after study shows that happiness precedes important outcomes and indicators of thriving.” That’s right. People aren’t happy because they’re successful; they’re successful because they’re happy. Happiness is a predictive measure. And performance improves even if people are only a little bit happier.


pages: 280 words: 71,268

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs by John Doerr

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Big Tech, Bob Noyce, cloud computing, collaborative editing, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google X / Alphabet X, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, intentional community, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, Ray Kurzweil, risk tolerance, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, web application, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

By the 1960s, management by objectives—or MBOs, as the process was known—had been adopted by a number of forward-thinking companies. The most prominent was Hewlett-Packard, where it was a part of the celebrated “H-P Way.” As these businesses trained their attention on a handful of top priorities, the results were impressive. In a meta-analysis of seventy studies, high commitment to MBOs led to productivity gains of 56 percent, versus 6 percent where commitment was low. Eventually, though, the limitations of MBOs caught up with them. At many companies, goals were centrally planned and sluggishly trickled down the hierarchy. At others, they became stagnant for lack of frequent updating; or trapped and obscured in silos; or reduced to key performance indicators (KPIs), numbers without soul or context.

Scientific management, Taylor wrote : Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1911). “crisp and hierarchical” : Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management (New York: Random House, 1983). “a principle of management” : Peter F. Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York: Harper & Row, 1954). In a meta-analysis : Robert Rodgers and John E. Hunter, “Impact of Management by Objectives on Organizational Productivity,” Journal of the American Psychological Association, April 1991. “just another tool” : “Management by Objectives,” The Economist , October 21, 2009. He sought to “create” : Grove, High Output Management .


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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

CHAPTER 5 researchers in Great Britain began working: Sarah Milne, Sheina Orbell, and Paschal Sheeran, “Combining Motivational and Volitional Interventions to Promote Exercise Participation: Protection Motivation Theory and Implementation Intentions,” British Journal of Health Psychology 7 (May 2002): 163–184. implementation intentions are effective: Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta‐Analysis of Effects and Processes,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2006): 69–119. writing down the exact time and date of when you will get a flu shot: Katherine L. Milkman, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, and Brigitte C. Madrian, “Using Implementation Intentions Prompts to Enhance Influenza Vaccination Rates,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 26 (June 2011): 10415–10420.

Benjamin Franklin: Benjamin Franklin and Frank Woodworth Pine, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Holt, 1916), 148. Don’t break the chain of creating every day: Shout-out to my friend Nathan Barry, who originally inspired me with the mantra, “Create Every Day.” people who track their progress on goals like losing weight: Benjamin Harkin et al., “Does Monitoring Goal Progress Promote Goal Attainment? A Meta-analysis of the Experimental Evidence,” Psychological Bulletin 142, no. 2 (2016), doi:10.1037/bul0000025. those who kept a daily food log lost twice as much weight as those who did not: Miranda Hitti, “Keeping Food Diary Helps Lose Weight,” WebMD, July 8, 2008, http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20080708/keeping-food-diary-helps-lose-weight; Kaiser Permanente, “Keeping a Food Diary Doubles Diet Weight Loss, Study Suggests,” Science Daily, July 8, 2008, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080708080738.htm; Jack F.


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The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease by Marc Lewis Phd

behavioural economics, deep learning, delayed gratification, helicopter parent, impulse control, language acquisition, meta-analysis, no-fly zone, Rat Park, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Walter Mischel

From William James’s Habit (1887), quoted by Maria Popova at www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/25/william-james-on-habit. Chapter 3: When Craving Comes to Power (There are no notes for this chapter.) Chapter 4: The Tunnel of Attention 1. For a meta-analysis, see J. MacKillop, M. T. Amlung, L. R. Few, L. A. Ray, L. H. Sweet, and M. R. Munafo, “Delayed Reward Discounting and Addictive Behavior: A Meta-analysis,” Psychopharmacology 216 (2011): 305–321. Chapter 5: Donna’s Secret Identity (There are no notes for this chapter.) Chapter 6: Johnny Needs a Drink 1. Barry J. Everitt and Trevor W. Robbins, “From the Ventral to the Dorsal Striatum: Devolving Views of Their Role in Drug Addiction,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 37, no. 9, part A (2013): 1946–1954. 2.


pages: 274 words: 72,657

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Cal Newport, call centre, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, desegregation, fear of failure, Mahatma Gandhi, mental accounting, meta-analysis, peak-end rule, school choice, Sheryl Sandberg, six sigma, Steve Ballmer, TED Talk

(Drug Abuse Resistance Education), launched in 1983, which invites police officers into schools to inform students about the harms of drugs and to encourage a drug-free lifestyle. It’s an admirable and well-intentioned intervention, and it’s popular. It’s the most widely used drug prevention program in the United States. But the evidence from several studies is clear: It doesn’t work. One meta-analysis found that teens enrolled in D.A.R.E. were just as likely to use drugs as those who weren’t. Why doesn’t D.A.R.E. work? Clues about the program’s flaws can be found in the work of Pim Cuijpers, who studied what made antidrug programs successful. Cuijpers’s research had led to a simple conclusion: Programs that reduce drug use employ interactive methods, while ineffective programs don’t.

“Rabbis in Training Receive Lessons in Real-Life Trauma,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/nyregion/10acting.html, and Dan’s interview in February 2017 with Rabbi Menachem Penner. Thanks to Rabbi Naphtali Lavenda for calling our attention to the story. Failure of D.A.R.E. An accessible popular account of the Wei Pan meta-analysis is in http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-just-say-no-doesnt-work/. Pim Cuijpers’s review (2002) is “Effective Ingredients of School-Based Drug Prevention Programs: A Systematic Review,” Addictive Behaviors 27: 1012. Plant a tough question. A response to an author survey on November 2016. 85% of workers felt unable to raise issue.


pages: 478 words: 142,608

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Albert Einstein, anthropic principle, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bletchley Park, Boeing 747, Brownian motion, cosmological principle, David Attenborough, Desert Island Discs, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, gravity well, Gregor Mendel, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Jon Ronson, luminiferous ether, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Murray Gell-Mann, Necker cube, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, placebo effect, planetary scale, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Feynman, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific worldview, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, trickle-down economics, unbiased observer

Sociologists studying British children have found that only about one in twelve break away from their parents’ religious beliefs. As you might expect, different researchers measure things in different ways, so it is hard to compare different studies. Meta-analysis is the technique whereby an investigator looks at all the research papers that have been published on a topic, and counts up the number of papers that have concluded one thing, versus the number that have concluded something else. On the subject of religion and IQ, the only meta-analysis known to me was published by Paul Bell in Mensa Magazine in 2002 (Mensa is the society of individuals with a high IQ, and their journal not surprisingly includes articles on the one thing that draws them together).57 Bell concluded: ‘Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one’s intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection.

On the subject of religion and IQ, the only meta-analysis known to me was published by Paul Bell in Mensa Magazine in 2002 (Mensa is the society of individuals with a high IQ, and their journal not surprisingly includes articles on the one thing that draws them together).57 Bell concluded: ‘Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one’s intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection. That is, the higher one’s intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold “beliefs” of any kind.’ A meta-analysis is almost bound to be less specific than any one of the studies that contributed to it. It would be nice to have more studies along these lines, as well as more studies of the members of elite bodies such as other national academies, and winners of major prizes and medals such as the Nobel, the Crafoord, the Fields, the Kyoto, the Cosmos and others.


pages: 503 words: 131,064

Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together by Bruce Schneier

Abraham Maslow, airport security, Alvin Toffler, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, commoditize, corporate governance, crack epidemic, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, desegregation, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunbar number, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, hydraulic fracturing, impulse control, income inequality, information security, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, iterative process, Jean Tirole, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Julian Assange, language acquisition, longitudinal study, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, microcredit, mirror neurons, moral hazard, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nick Leeson, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, patent troll, phenotype, pre–internet, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, RFID, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, security theater, shareholder value, slashdot, statistical model, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, technological singularity, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, traffic fines, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, UNCLOS, union organizing, Vernor Vinge, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Hessel Oosterbeek, Randolph Sloof, and Gijs van de Kuilen (2004), “Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence From a Meta-Analysis,” Experimental Economics, 7:171–88. how the game works Werner Güth, Rolf Schmittberger, and Bernd Schwarze (1982), “An Experimental Analysis of Ultimatum Bargaining,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 3:267–88. turn down offers Hessel Oosterbeek, Randolph Sloof, and Gijs van de Kuilen (2004), “Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis,” Experimental Economics, 7:171–88. cultural backgrounds Donna L. Bahry (2004), “Trust in Transitional Societies: Experimental Results from Russia,” Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago.

Public Relations Tactics, 9:7,22. A small complaint Daniel J. Solove (2007), The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, Yale University Press. isn't an effective Daniel Balliet, Laetitia B. Mulder, and Paul A.M. Van Lange (2011), “Reward, Punishment, and Cooperation: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin, 137:594–615. Maine lobstermen James M. Acheson (Apr 1972), “Territories of the Lobstermen,” Natural History Magazine, 81 (4): 60–9. Shame is a common Thomas J. Scheff (2000), “Shame and the Social Bond: A Sociological Theory,” Sociological Theory, 18:84–99. excessive CEO pay Sandeep Gopalan (2007), “Shame Sanctions and Excessive CEO Pay,” Delaware Journal of Corporate Law, 32:757–97.


Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism by Pippa Norris, Ronald Inglehart

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, bank run, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cass Sunstein, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, declining real wages, desegregation, digital divide, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, liberal world order, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, machine readable, mass immigration, meta-analysis, obamacare, open borders, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, post-industrial society, post-materialism, precariat, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Bannon, War on Poverty, white flight, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

President Trump speaking at the October 12, 2017 ‘Values Voters’ forum in Washington DC. www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/10/13/trump_how_ times_have_changed_but_now_theyre_changing_back_again.html. 51. Elizabeth Noelle-­Neuman. 1984. The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion – Our Social Skin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; J.C. Glynn, F.A. Hayes, and J. Shanahan. 1997. ‘Perceived support for one’s opinions and willingness to speak out: A meta-­analysis of survey studies on the “spiral of silence”.’ Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (3): 452–463. 52. Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris. 2003.Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World. New York: Cambridge University Press. 53. Michael Heaney. 2018. ‘Making protest great again.’ Contexts 17(1): 42–47. 54.

Although subjective financial insecurity is a significant predictor of lower turnout, having experienced unemployment was not important, and those less satisfied with the state of the national economy were more likely to vote. Overall, the model explained about one-­fifth of the variation in the propensity to vote. Meta-­ analysis of the extensive research literature suggests that other factors reported in other studies may also play an important role, such as micro-­level political interest, media attention, and the strength of partisan identification, as well as macro-­level variations in electoral contexts, such as the type of Majoritarian or Proportional Representation electoral system, the closeness of the race, and the frequency of contests.53 Our analysis largely confirms the typical social profile of voters, but it indicates that the Interwar and Baby Boom generations are far, far more likely to participate in elections than the Millennials – to a considerably greater extent than previous research has indicated.

Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 52. Sidney Verba, Norman Nie, and Jae-­on Kim. 1978. Participation and Political Equality. New York: Cambridge University Press. 53. Kaat Smets and Carolien van Ham. 2013. ‘The embarrassment of riches? A meta-­analysis of individual-­level research on voter turnout.’ Electoral Studies 32 (2): 344–359. 54. Terri E. Givens. 2004. ‘The radical right gender gap.’ Comparative Political Studies 37 (1): 30–54. 55. Pippa Norris. 2005. Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market. New York: Cambridge University Press. 9 Party Fortunes and Electoral Rules In 2016, after the Brexit decision in June and then Trump’s victory in November, widespread fears arose about an unstoppable authoritarian-­populist surge at the polls, a domino effect disrupting European elections.


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The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen

Asian financial crisis, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, confounding variable, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, financial innovation, Flynn Effect, income inequality, indoor plumbing, life extension, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, Savings and loan crisis, school choice, scientific management, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, urban renewal

: The Effect of School Resources on Student Achievement and Adult Success, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996, although many of the papers in that volume still are skeptical about the money-results connection. For one defense of educational spending and its connection to outcomes, see Larry V. Hedges, Richard D. Laine, and Rob Greenwald, “An Exchange: Part I: Does Money Matter? A Meta-Analysis of Studies of the Effects of Differential School Inputs on Student Outcomes,” Educational Researcher, April 1994, 23, 3, pp. 5-14. A response to this perspective can be found in the recent Eric A. Hanushek and Alfred A. Lindseth, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.


pages: 305 words: 79,303

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World by Scott Galloway

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Bob Noyce, Brewster Kahle, business intelligence, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, commoditize, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, Didi Chuxing, digital divide, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of journalism, future of work, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Conference 1984, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, passive income, Peter Thiel, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Mercer, Robert Shiller, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, Tesla Model S, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, undersea cable, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, working poor, you are the product, young professional

September 7, 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/richard-alleyne/6146411/Humans-evolved-to-believe-in-God.html. 5. Winseman, Albert L. “Does More Educated Really = Less Religious?” Gallup. February 4, 2003. http://www.gallup.com/poll/7729/does-more-educated-really-less-religious.aspx. 6. Rathi, Akshat. “New meta-analysis checks the correlation between intelligence and faith.” Ars Technica. August 11, 2013. https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/08/new-meta-analysis-checks-the-correlation-between-intelligence-and-faith/. 7. Carey, Benedict. “Can Prayers Heal? Critics Say Studies Go Past Science’s Reach.” New York Times. October 10, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/health/can-prayers-heal-critics-say-studies-go-past-sciences-reach.html. 8.


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The Eureka Factor by John Kounios

active measures, Albert Einstein, Bluma Zeigarnik, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, classic study, deliberate practice, en.wikipedia.org, Everything should be made as simple as possible, Flynn Effect, functional fixedness, Google Hangouts, impulse control, invention of the telephone, invention of the telescope, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, Necker cube, pattern recognition, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, theory of mind, US Airways Flight 1549, Wall-E, William of Occam

It just means that incubation isn’t equally effective in all kinds of situations. More precision was needed, and two psychological scientists, Ut Na Sio and Thomas Ormerod, recently put the question to rest. They took the findings of all available prior studies of incubation and performed a statistical “meta-analysis” that essentially combined them all into one giant high-resolution study. Their central conclusion was that incubation is real—if a person takes a break from a problem and returns to it later, then the break can increase the likelihood that she will solve the problem (relative to uninterrupted work).

Recent research suggests that sleep can heighten opportunistic assimilation of clues. The effects of sleep on prospective memory are described in M. K. Scullin and M. A. McDaniel, “Remembering to Execute a Goal: Sleep on It!,” Psychological Science 21 (2010): 1028–35. Waking Incubation 1 Sio and Ormerod’s meta-analysis of past incubation research is described in U. N. Sio and T. C. Ormerod, “Does Incubation Enhance Problem Solving?: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Psychological Bulletin 135 (2009): 94–120. Fatigued Brains, Automatic Thinking, and the Real Unconscious Mind 1 Research on “attention restoration theory” backs up the idea that the brain’s executive functions can be rejuvenated by even relatively short periods of rest.


pages: 280 words: 85,091

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success by Kevin Dutton

Asperger Syndrome, Bernie Madoff, business climate, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, dark triade / dark tetrad, delayed gratification, epigenetics, Fellow of the Royal Society, G4S, impulse control, iterative process, John Nash: game theory, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, no-fly zone, Norman Mailer, Philippa Foot, place-making, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, trolley problem, ultimatum game

., including prevalence, motivation, and risk factors, see Debbie Wilson, Clare Sharp, and Alison Patterson, “Young People and Crime: Findings from the 2005 Offending, Crime and Justice Survey” (London: Home Office, 2005). 12 If the results of a recent study by Sara Konrath … Sara Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 15, no. 2 (2011): 180–98, doi:10.1177/1088868310377395. 13 the Interpersonal Reactivity Index … For the background to, and development of, the IRI, see Mark H. Davis, “A Multidimensional Approach to Individual Differences in Empathy,” JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology 10, no. 85 (1980); and M.

News (Health), May 28, 2010, http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/05/28/todays-college-students-more-likely-to-lack-empathy. 15 More worrying still, according to Jean Twenge … See Jean M. Twenge, Sara Konrath, Joshua D. Foster, W. Keith Campbell, and Brad J. Bushman, “Egos Inflating Over Time: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory,” Journal of Personality 76, no. 4 (2008a): 875–901, doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00507.x; Twenge et al., “Further Evidence of an Increase in Narcissism Among College Students,” Journal of Personality 76 (2008b): 919–27, doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00509.x. 16 Many people see the current group of college students … See U.S.


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How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, bank run, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, dematerialisation, demographic transition, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, first-past-the-post, full employment, Gini coefficient, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Leo Hollis, market fundamentalism, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, urban sprawl, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, World Values Survey

One paper found, after fifteen variables had been taken into account, a fourfold increase in homicides in US counties with the highest lead pollution.7 Another discovered that lead levels appeared to explain 90 per cent of the difference in rates of aggravated assault between various American cities.8 A study in Cincinnati finds that young people prosecuted for delinquency are four times more likely than the general population to have high levels of lead in their bones.9 A meta-analysis (a study of studies) of nineteen papers found no evidence that other factors could explain the correlation between exposure to lead and conduct problems among young people.10 Is it really so surprising that a highly potent nerve toxin causes behavioural change? The devastating and permanent impacts of even very low levels of lead on IQ have been known for many decades.

Mielke and Sammy Zahran, 2012, ‘The Urban Rise and Fall of Air Lead (Pb) and the Latent Surge and Retreat of Societal Violence’, Environment International, vol. 43, sciencedirect.com. 6Bureau of Justice, no date given, ‘Homicide Trends in the US’, bjs.ojp. usdoj.gov. 7Lynch and Stretesky, ‘The Relationship between Lead and Crime’. 8Mielke and Zahran, ‘The Urban Rise and Fall of Air Lead (Pb) and the Latent Surge and Retreat of Societal Violence’. 9Herbert L. Needleman et al., 2002, ‘Bone Lead Levels in Adjudicated Delinquents: A Case Control Study’, Neurotoxicology and Teratology, vol. 24. 10David K. Marcus, Jessica J. Fulton and Erin J. Clarke, 2010, ‘Lead and Conduct Problems: A Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, vol.39, no. 2, tandfonline.com. 11R. K. Byers and E. E. Lord, 1943, ‘Late Effects of Lead Poisoning on Mental Development’, American Journal of Diseases of Children, vol. 66. 12Kim M. Cecil et al., 2008, ‘Decreased Brain Volume in Adults with Childhood Lead Exposure’, Public Library of Science (PLOS) Medicine, vol. 5, no. 5, journals.plos.org. 13Joel T.


pages: 315 words: 81,433

A Life Less Throwaway: The Lost Art of Buying for Life by Tara Button

behavioural economics, circular economy, clean water, collaborative consumption, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, Downton Abbey, Fairphone, gamification, Great Leap Forward, hedonic treadmill, Internet of things, Kickstarter, life extension, lock screen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, meta-analysis, period drama, planned obsolescence, Rana Plaza, retail therapy, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, thinkpad

Marketers Respond’, Kidscreen, 15 November 2000. 7.Brian L. Wilcox, et al., Report of the APA Task Force on Advertising and Children, American Psychological Association, 20 February 2004, https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/advertising-children.pdf. 8.Raymond W. Preiss (ed.), Mass Media Effects Research: Advances through meta-analysis (Routledge, 2013). 9.J. L. Weicha, K. E. Peterson, D. S. Ludwig, et al., ‘When Children Eat What They Watch: Impact of television viewing on dietary intake in youth’, Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 60 (2006), 436–42. 10.Marvin E. Goldberg and Gerald J. Gorn, ‘Some Unintended Consequences of TV Advertising to Children’, Journal of Consumer Research, 5: 1 (1978), 22–9. 11.Cai and Zhao, 2010, cited in ‘Advertising to Children and Teens: Current Practices’, Common Sense Media, spring 2014, https://www.commonsensemedia.org/file/csm-advertisingresearchbrief-20141pdf/download. 12.http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/sites/default/files/babies.pdf. 13.http://marketinglaw.osborneclarke.com/retailing/colgates-80-of-dentists-recommend-claim-under-fire/. 14.Bain & Company, Diamond Industry Report for Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), 2011. 15.Haribo, Just Too Good, Quiet Storm, 27 January 2012. 16.Niels Van de Ven Marcel Zeelenberg and Rik Pieters, ‘The Envy Premium in Product Evaluation’, Journal of Consumer Research, 37: 6, 1 April 2011, 984–98, https://doi.org/10.1086/657239. 17.http://bgr.com/2015/06/17/samsung-advertising-fails-iphone/. 18.Tatiana Pilieva, First Kiss, 10 March 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Moran, Caitlin, How to Be a Woman (Ebury Press, 2012). Papanek, Victor, Design for the Real World: Human ecology and social change (Academy Chicago Publishers, 1971, 1985). Pine, Professor Karen J., Mind What You Wear: The psychology of fashion (Amazon Media, 2014). Preiss, Raymond W. (ed.), Mass Media Effects Research: Advances through meta-analysis (Routledge, 2013). Quant, Mary, Quant on Quant (Cassell, 1966; V&A Publishing, 2012). Rubin, Gretchen, The Happiness Project (HarperCollins, 2009). Schor, Juliet B., Born to Buy: The commercialized child and the new consumer culture (Schribner, 2004). Sheldon, Roy, and Arens, Egmont, Consumer Engineering: A new technique for prosperity (Harper & Bros., 1932).


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The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All by Martin Sandbu

air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, collective bargaining, company town, debt deflation, deindustrialization, deskilling, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gini coefficient, green new deal, hiring and firing, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, intangible asset, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, liquidity trap, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, meta-analysis, mini-job, Money creation, mortgage debt, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, pink-collar, precariat, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, social intelligence, TaskRabbit, total factor productivity, universal basic income, very high income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

The evidence is reviewed by Elhanan Helpman, “Globalisation and Wage Inequality,” Journal of the British Academy 5 (July 2017): 125–62, https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/005.125. See also Philipp Heimberger, “Does Economic Globalisation Affect Income Inequality? A Meta-analysis” (Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies Working Paper 165, October 2019), https://wiiw.ac.at/does-economic-globalisation-affect-income-inequality-a-meta-analysis-p-5044.html. This metastudy summarises 123 peer-reviewed articles on globalisation’s effect on income inequality. It finds a small positive relationship—smaller with trade integration than with financial globalisation—in both poor and rich countries, which suggests that any inequality effect of trade integration is similar to that caused by technological advances pushing up the need for skilled labour. 15.


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Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream by Alissa Quart

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, defund the police, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial independence, fixed income, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, high net worth, housing justice, hustle culture, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microaggression, Milgram experiment, minimum wage unemployment, multilevel marketing, obamacare, Overton Window, payday loans, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scientific racism, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech worker, TED Talk, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Cooper, “The Expanding Class Divide in Happiness in the United States, 1972–2016,” Emotion (2020, advance online publication), https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000774. “statistically significant positive relationship between income inequality and risk of depression”: Vikram Patel, Jonathan K. Burns, Monisha Dhingra, Leslie Tarver, Brandon A. Kohrt, and Crick Lund, “Income Inequality and Depression: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association and a Scoping Review of Mechanisms,” World Psychiatry, February 17, 2018: 76–89, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5775138/. as if they were already in some way suspect: Thomas E. Trail and Benjamin R. Karney, “What’s (Not) Wrong with Low-Income Marriages,” Journal of Marriage and Family 73, no. 3 (May 24, 2012): 413–27, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.00977.x.

Cheek and Eldar Shafir, “The Thick Skin Bias in Judgments About People in Poverty,” Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, August 14, 2020: 1–26, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioural-public-policy/article/thick-skin-bias-in-judgments-about-people-in-poverty/2A8CCE13402F69C2B0D1145BE5270E1D. the American Sociological Association’s Journal of Health and Social Behavior: Vikram Patel et al., “Income Inequality and Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Association and a Scoping Review of Mechanisms,” World Psychiatry 17, no. 1 (February 2018): 76–89, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5775138/. Chapter 15: Volunteering Ourselves our volunteerism also has a dark side: Nina Eliasoph, Making Volunteers: Civic Life at Welfare’s End (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).


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Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

is a phrase so beloved of conspiracy movements that it’s become something of an affectionate cliché. 13. It really does: Stella Talic et al., ‘Effectiveness of public health measures in reducing the incidence of covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 transmission, and covid-19 mortality: systematic review and meta-analysis’, www.bmj.com, 18 November 2021. 14. Patrick Saunders-Hastings, ‘Effectiveness of personal protective measures in reducing pandemic influenza transmission: A systematic review and meta-analysis’, Epidemics, 20 (September 2017), www.sciencedirect.com. 15. Correct for the UK Amazon site as at April 2022. 16. Zachary Cohen, ‘China and Russia “weaponized” QAnon conspiracy around time of US Capitol attack, report says’, https://edition.cnn.com, 19 April 2021. 17.


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The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World by John Robbins

Albert Einstein, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, clean water, complexity theory, do well by doing good, double helix, Exxon Valdez, food miles, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), laissez-faire capitalism, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, profit motive, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, telemarketer

Daily vegetable intake during pregnancy negatively associated to islet autoimmunity in the offspring-The ABIS study. Pediatr Diabetes. Advanced access published September 16, 2009. DOI: 10.1111 /j.1399-5448.2009.00563.x. xvii. Aune D, Ursin G, Veierod MB. Meat consumption and the risk of type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. Diabetologia. 2009;52:2277-2287. xviii. Koh WP, Wu AH, Wang R, et al. Gender-specific associations between soy and risk of hip fracture in the Singapore Chinese Health Study. Ain J Epi- deiniol. 2009;170:901-909. xix. Kathy Freston, "Vegetarian is the new Prins," Huffington Post, Jan 18, 2007.

., "Mortality Pattern and Life Expectancy of Seventh-Day Adventists in the Netherlands," International Journal of Epidemiology 12 (1983):455-9; Chang-Claude, J., et al., "Mortality Pattern of German Vegetarians after 11 Years of Followup," Epidemiology 3 (1992):395-401. 13. Resnicow, et al., "Diet and Serum Lipids in Vegan Vegetarians." See also Messina and Messina, The Dietitian's Guide to Vegetarian Diets. 14. Anderson, J. W., et al., "Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Soy Protein Intake on Serum Lipids," New England Journal of Medicine 333 (1995):276-82. See also Carroll, K. K., "Dietary Protein in Relation to Plasma Cholesterol Levels and Atherosclerosis," Nutrition Review 36 (1978):1-5. 15. Ibid. 16. "Myths and Facts about Beef Production." 17.

., "Vegan, Vegetarian and Omnivore Diets"; Hughes, et al., "Riboflavin Levels in the Diet and Breast Milk of Vegans and Omnivores," Proceedings of Nutritional Science 38 (1979):95A; Janelle, et al., "Nutrient Intakes and Eating Behavior Scores," 180-6. 36. Davis, et al., "Rebuttal." 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Anderson J. W., et al., "Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Soy Protein Intake on Serum Lipids," New England Journal of Medicine 333 (1995):276-82; Sirtori, C. R., et al., "Double-Blind Study of the Addition of High-Protein Soya Milk vs. Cow's Milk to the Diet of Patients ... ," British Journal of Nutrition 82 (1999):91-6. 40. Jacobsen, B.


pages: 530 words: 147,851

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism by Ed West

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, assortative mating, battle of ideas, Beeching cuts, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Bullingdon Club, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, gender pay gap, George Santayana, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, Jeremy Corbyn, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lump of labour, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, moral panic, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, pattern recognition, Ralph Nader, replication crisis, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Social Justice Warrior, Stephen Fry, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, twin studies, urban decay, War on Poverty, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

Yet reason is an illusion, and most research tends to support David Hume’s idea that emotions are in charge of the brain when politics is concerned; we just use reason when we want to come up with good explanations for how we reached our prejudices.10 The idea that one side of the political divide is ‘rational’ goes at least back to Shelley, and yet there is overwhelming evidence that bias is pretty evenly split between Left and Right. According to one meta-analysis of fifty-one experimental studies using eighteen thousand volunteers, liberals and conservatives ‘were biased to very similar degrees’.11 Both groups had the same ‘tendency to evaluate otherwise identical information more favorably when it supports one’s political beliefs or allegiances’. This backs up the symmetry hypothesis, the idea that Left and Right ‘showed no difference in mean levels of bias across studies’.12 Likewise, while conservatives are more religious, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe in a number of irrational beliefs, such as that ‘thought can influence the physical world’, ‘houses can be haunted by spirits’, and that fortune telling and astrology are real.

It’s true that ‘education reduces individuals’ prejudices toward people who belong to different groups’ – when it comes to race.55 Analysis of American National Election Studies data from 1964 to 2012, however, also shows that education is related ‘to increases in ideological (liberal vs. conservative) prejudice’.56 Self-reported political anger among Americans is overall higher among Democrats but ‘the angrier Democrats are those who have higher education’ and the angrier Republicans are also the better schooled.57 They’re angry, but not necessarily because they’re right – since the highly educated can be just as biased. One meta-analysis suggested that while ‘misinformation about politics is harder to correct than misinformation about health’, it is ‘particularly hard’ among the better-educated political partisans.58 In an experiment, academics from Yale Law School took a thousand subjects and tested them for numeracy and political leanings, after which they gave them basic puzzles and then politically charged ones.

Meanwhile, the ‘evidence for innate sex-linked personality differences in humans is overwhelmingly strong’, something found in nearly every species studied, including all our closest relatives, ‘especially in traits like aggression, female choosiness, territoriality, grooming behaviour, and parental care’.28 Likewise our ability to exercise self-control is largely determined by genes and our parents have little influence on it, while even criminality has a genetic component.29 Perhaps those two boys I saw attacking the old Polish lady might not have been victims of circumstances any more than the awful parents whose nature they inherited; maybe Augustine was more realistic than Pelagius. Likewise with personality: a recent meta-analysis published in Nature Genetics looked at 2748 publications surveying 17,804 traits, and found that pretty much all the variation in personality traits is about 50 per cent genetic.30 Indeed, it turns out there is an association between parents’ child-raising behaviour and children’s authoritarianism, but it is based on nature, not nurture.31 So the Freudians were wrong, once again.


pages: 667 words: 149,811

Economic Dignity by Gene Sperling

active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, antiwork, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, cotton gin, David Brooks, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Elon Musk, employer provided health coverage, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ferguson, Missouri, fulfillment center, full employment, gender pay gap, ghettoisation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, green new deal, guest worker program, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job automation, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, late fees, liberal world order, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, mental accounting, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open immigration, payday loans, Phillips curve, price discrimination, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, speech recognition, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, tech worker, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Toyota Production System, traffic fines, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, working poor, young professional, zero-sum game

Beyond a higher minimum wage or unionization or even free college, we need comprehensive investment throughout the pipeline from birth through college to attack the disadvantage of the accident of birth for those born into poverty. Indeed, “direct investments in the health and education of low-income children” all the way into their mid-twenties have the highest return on investment of government programs, with those programs often paying for themselves over time, according to a meta-analysis conducted by Harvard economists Nathaniel Hendren and Ben Sprung-Keyser.67 EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES MUST START EARLY Equal opportunities start with universal quality early education. As Isabel Sawhill and Jens Ludwig summarize, “Findings from a number of rigorously conducted studies of early childhood and elementary school programs suggest that intervening early, often, and effectively in the lives of disadvantaged children from birth to age ten may substantially improve their life chances for higher educational attainment and greater success in the labor market, thereby helping impoverished children avoid poverty in adulthood.”68 Nobel Prize–winning economist James Heckman and his coauthors famously found that every $1 investment in quality early learning initiatives returns $8.60, with the greatest gains coming from the most intensive investments.69 Yet despite the strong evidence that early education provides major long-term benefits and that the achievement gap starts in early childhood, the United States spends less than half of the OECD average for the size of our economy on childcare and early childhood education—only 0.3 percent of GDP.70 The result?

Patrick Oakford, Cara Brumfield, Casey Goldvale, Laura Tatum, Margaret diZerega, and Fred Patrick, “Investing in Futures: Economic and Fiscal Benefits of Postsecondary Education in Prison,” Vera Institute of Justice, January 2019, https://storage.googleapis.com/vera-web-assets/downloads/Publications/investing-in-futures-education-in-prison/legacy_downloads/investing-in-futures.pdf. 51. Robert Bozick, Jennifer Steele, Lois Davis, and Susan Turner, “Does Providing Inmates with Education Improve Post-Release Outcomes? A Meta-Analysis of Correctional Education Programs in the United States,” Journal of Experimental Criminology 14, no. 3 (2018): 389–428, https://perma.cc/NKE4-KDFK. 52. E. Ann Carson, “Prisoners in 2014,” U.S. Department of Justice, September 2015, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf. 53. Mike McPhate, “California Today: Firefighters, at Less Than $2 an Hour,” New York Times, September 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/california-today-firefighters-at-less-than-2-an-hour.html. 54.

Krueger, “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,” American Economic Review 84, no. 4 (September 1994): 772, http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/njmin-aer.pdf. 16. Cooper, Raising the Federal Minimum Wage, 16. In addition, economists Paul Wolfson and Dale Belman, in a meta-analysis of thirty-seven published studies on the minimum wage and job growth, concluded there is “no support for the proposition that the minimum wage has had an important effect on U.S. employment.” Paul J. Wolfson and Dale Belman, “15 Years of Research on U.S. Employment and the Minimum Wage,” abstract (Tuck School of Business Working Paper no. 2705499, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, December 2016), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?


pages: 340 words: 92,904

Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars by Samuel I. Schwartz

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, bike sharing, car-free, City Beautiful movement, collaborative consumption, congestion charging, congestion pricing, crowdsourcing, desegregation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Enrique Peñalosa, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, high-speed rail, if you build it, they will come, Induced demand, intermodal, invention of the wheel, lake wobegon effect, Lewis Mumford, Loma Prieta earthquake, longitudinal study, Lyft, Masdar, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nate Silver, oil shock, parking minimums, Productivity paradox, Ralph Nader, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, scientific management, self-driving car, skinny streets, smart cities, smart grid, smart transportation, TED Talk, the built environment, the map is not the territory, transportation-network company, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, walkable city, Wall-E, white flight, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, Yogi Berra, Zipcar

And, while I’m not sure this actually qualifies as active transportation, MAPS 3 upgraded the banks of the Oklahoma River to accommodate both rowing and kayaking facilities.j It also called for a state-of-the-art streetcar system running on five miles of rails through Oklahoma City’s downtown, which isn’t, strictly speaking, a form of active transportation. However, a meta-analysis—a research technique that combines multiple investigations, giving different statistical weights to each one depending on its findings—of fifty different studies found that one of the most important factors in walkability was connectivity: the ease with which walkers could get from one street to another.

Economy Started Waning in the 70s.” StreetsBlog USA, December 18, 2014. “ ———. The Koch Brothers’ War on Transit.” StreetsBlog USA, September 2014. Schwartz, Samuel I., and Shauna Tarshis Colasuonno. “VIM: Not Just Another Acronym.” ITE Journal (September 1982): 23–27. Seto, Karen C., et al. “A Meta-Analysis of Global Urban Land Expansion.” PLoS One 6, no. 8 (August 2011): e23777. Shoup, Donald C. “Free Parking or Free Markets.” Access: The Magazine of the University of California Transportation Center 38 (Spring 2011). ———. “The High Cost of Free Parking.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 17, no. 1 (Fall 1997): 201–216.


pages: 420 words: 98,309

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson

Ayatollah Khomeini, classic study, climate anxiety, cognitive dissonance, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donald Trump, false memory syndrome, fear of failure, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, medical malpractice, medical residency, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral panic, Nelson Mandela, placebo effect, psychological pricing, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, social intelligence, sugar pill, telemarketer, the scientific method, trade route, transcontinental railway, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

Jensen (2003), "Hypnosis and Clinical Pain," Psychological Bulletin, 29, pp. 495–521. Hypnosis can also add to the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral techniques for losing weight, quitting smoking, and other behavior problems; see Irving Kirsch, Guy Montgomery, and Guy Sapirstein (1995), "Hypnosis as an Adjunct to Cognitive-Behavioral Psychotherapy: A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2, pp. 214–220. But the evidence is overwhelming that hypnosis is unreliable as a way of retrieving memories, which is why the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association oppose the use of "hypnotically refreshed" testimony in courts of law.

Stephen Lindsay, Amina Memon, and Ray Bull (1995), "Psychotherapy and the Recovery of Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse: U.S. and British Practitioners' Opinions, Practices, and Experiences," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63, pp. 426–437. More recent replications have found that the percentages have not changed appreciably. 34 The notion that childhood sexual abuse is a leading cause of eating disorders has not been supported by empirical evidence, according to a meta-analysis of the leading studies. See Eric Stice (2002), "Risk and Maintenance Factors for Eating Pathology: A Meta-Analytic Review," Psychological Bulletin, 128, pp. 825–848. 35 Richard J. McNally (2005), "Troubles in Traumatology," The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 50, pp. 815–816. His quote is on p. 815. 36 John Briere made this statement at the 12th International Congress on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1998, in Auckland, New Zealand.


pages: 289 words: 87,137

What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear by Danielle Ofri

big-box store, Columbine, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, medical residency, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, stem cell, sugar pill

Improved communication is certainly one of those things, but the devil for all of these interventions is in the magnitude of effect. The medical system needs to know how much bang there is for the buck before it chooses where to invest resources. So a team of scientists examined more than fifty years of research,11 using the technique of meta-analysis to combine the results of one hundred individual studies. (These studies encompassed a total of forty-five thousand patients.) If all of these data are taken together, patients of doctors with good communication skills are more than twice as likely to have good adherence to medical recommendations, compared with patients whose doctors had poor communication skills.

., “The Effect of Treatment Expectation on Drug Efficacy: Imaging the Analgesic Benefit of the Opioid Remifentanil,” Science Translational Medicine 3 (2011). 10. M. R. DiMatteo, “Variations in Patients’ Adherence to Medical Recommendations: A Quantitative Review of 50 Years of Research,” Medical Care 42 (2004): 200–209. 11. K. B. Haskard Zolnierek and M. R. Dimatteo, “Physician Communication and Patient Adherence to Treatment: A Meta-Analysis,” Medical Care 47 (2009) 826–34. 12. S. H. McDaniel et al., “Physician Self-Disclosure in Primary Care Visits: Enough About You, What About Me?,” Archives of Internal Medicine 167 (2007): 1321–26. 13. D. S. Morse et al., “Enough About Me, Let’s Get Back to You: Physician Self-Disclosure During Primary Care Encounters,” Annals of Internal Medicine 149, no. 11 (2008): 835–37. 14.


pages: 295 words: 89,280

The Narcissist Next Door by Jeffrey Kluger

Albert Einstein, always be closing, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Columbine, dark triade / dark tetrad, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, impulse control, Jony Ive, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, theory of mind, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, twin studies, Walter Mischel, zero-sum game

A whole lot of people are now moving up that scale, developing cases of subclinical, or lowercase-n, narcissism that may not shut down governments but may cause plenty of personal harm to the people around them. In 2008, a team of researchers published a study in the Journal of Personality looking at narcissism among college students over a twenty-seven-year period, from 1979 to 2006. Their paper was what’s known as a meta-analysis, a recrunching of the data from eighty-five separate narcissism studies covering a collective 16,475 subjects. All of the people surveyed had been administered the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), a forty-item questionnaire that requires subjects to choose between such essentially opposite statements as “I insist upon getting the respect that is due me” and “I usually get the respect that I deserve”; “Sometimes I tell good stories” and “Everybody likes to hear my stories”; “I can read people like a book” and “People are sometimes hard to understand”; “I am more capable than other people” and “There is a lot I can learn from other people.”

When children in the 1950s were administered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)—an exceedingly detailed survey that requires subjects to answer hundreds of true-false questions measuring personality on multiple dimensions—only 12 percent agreed with the statement “I am a special person.” By the late 1980s, the figure had exploded to 80 percent. Other studies in the 1990s showed similar high numbers of kids agreeing with such statements as “I have often met people who are supposed to be experts who are no better than I.” A 2012 meta-analysis of results from the American Freshman Survey, a personality inventory that has been administered to a collective nine million incoming college students in the United States over the past forty-seven years, has found that in every one of five different personality dimensions tested—drive to achieve, intellectual self-confidence, belief in leadership ability, social self-confidence and belief in writing ability—scores have been steadily on the rise, with up to 75 percent of kids believing they are above average.


pages: 350 words: 96,803

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution by Francis Fukuyama

Albert Einstein, Asilomar, assortative mating, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, Columbine, cotton gin, demographic transition, digital divide, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, impulse control, life extension, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, precautionary principle, presumed consent, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Scientific racism, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sexual politics, stem cell, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Turing test, twin studies

., p. 10. 4 Kramer (1993); and Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation: A Memoir (New York: Riverhead Books, 1994). 5 Kramer (1993), pp. 1–9. 6 Joseph Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash: Overcoming the Dangers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and Other Antidepressants with Safe, Effective Alternatives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), p. 15. 7 Irving Kirsch and Guy Sapirstein, “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo: A Meta-Analysis of Antidepressant Medication,” Prevention and Treatment 1 (1998); Larry E. Beutler, “Prozac and Placebo: There’s a Pony in There Somewhere,” Prevention and Treatment 1 (1998); and Seymour Fisher and Roger P. Greenberg, “Prescriptions for Happiness?,” Psychology Today 28 (1995): 32–38. 8 Peter R.

The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Kirkwood, Tom. Time of Our Lives: Why Ageing Is Neither Inevitable nor Necessary. London: Phoenix, 1999. Kirsch, Irving, and Guy Sapirstein. “Listening to Prozac but Hearing Placebo: A Meta-Analysis of Antidepressant Medication.” Prevention and Treatment I (1998). Klam, Matthew. “Experiencing Ecstasy.” The New York Times Magazine, January 21, 2001. Kolata, Gina. Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead. New York: William Morrow, 1998. ———. “Genetic Defects Detected In Embryos Just Days Old.”


pages: 300 words: 65,976

The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food Is Wrong by Barry Glassner

Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, Gary Taubes, haute cuisine, Helicobacter pylori, income inequality, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, New Urbanism, placebo effect, profit motive, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Saturday Night Live, stem cell, sugar pill, twin studies, urban sprawl, working poor

., “Intake of Fatty Acids and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease in a Cohort of Finnish Men,” American Journal of Epidemiology 145 (1997): 876–87; Uffe Ravnskov, “Diet–Heart Disease Hypothesis Is Wishful Thinking,” British Medical Journal 324 (2002): 238; Hester Vorster et al., “Egg Intake Does Not Change Plasma Lipoprotein and Coagulation Profiles,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 55 (1992): 400–410; Paul N. Hopkins, “Effects of Dietary Cholesterol on Serum Cholesterol: A Meta-Analysis and Review,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 55 (1992): 1060–70; Esther Lopez-Garcia, M. Schulze, et al., “Consumption of Trans Fatty Acids Is Related to Plasma Biomarkers of Inflammation and Endothelial Dysfunction,” Journal of Nutrition 135 (2005): 562–66. 21. Emily Green, “No—Less Is Less,” Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2000. 22.

On the PCRM, see, for example, Mary Carmichael, “Atkins Under Attack,” Newsweek, February 23, 2004; Joe Sharkey, “Perennial Foes Meet Again in a Battle of the Snack Bar,” New York Times, November 23, 2004; “Who’s Who in Animal Rights,” Observer (London), August 1, 2004. 10. See, for example, Nestle, Food Politics, part 4; “Vitamin A: ‘Magic Bullet’ That Can Backfire,” Tufts Nutrition Letter (February 2005); Edgar Miller, Roberto Pastor-Barriuso, et al., “Meta-Analysis: High-Dosage Vitamin E Supplementation May Increase All-Cause Mortality,” Annals of Internal Medicine 142 (2005): 37–46. 11. USDA Food Guidance System Public Comment Meeting, August 19, 2004: 101 (www.usda.gov/cnpp/pyramid-update/Comments/Oral%20Comm entsTranscript.pdf); Warren Belasco, “Futures Notes: The Meal-in-a-Pill,” Food and Foodways 8 (2000): 253–71.


pages: 335 words: 89,924

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Bartolomé de las Casas, biodiversity loss, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, classic study, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, company town, complexity theory, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, energy transition, European colonialism, feminist movement, financial engineering, Food sovereignty, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Haber-Bosch Process, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, means of production, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microcredit, Naomi Klein, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, peak oil, precariat, scientific management, Scientific racism, seminal paper, sexual politics, sharing economy, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, spinning jenny, strikebreaker, surplus humans, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, wages for housework, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War

., Gerd Sparovek, Martial Bernoux, William E. Easterling, Jerry M. Melillo, and Carlos Clemente Cerri. 2007. “Tropical Agriculture and Global Warming: Impacts and Mitigation Options.” Scientia Agricola 64: 83–99. Challinor, A.J., J. Watson, D.B. Lobell, S.M. Howden, D.R. Smith, and N. Chhetri. 2014. “A Meta-analysis of Crop Yield under Climate Change and Adaptation.” Nature Climate Change 4, no. 4: 287–91. Channell, Rob, and Mark V. Lomolino. 2000. “Trajectories to Extinction: Spatial Dynamics of the Contraction of Geographical Ranges.” Journal of Biogeography 27, no. 1: 169–79. Chapman, Ian. 2014. “The End of Peak Oil?

Lappé, Frances Moore, Jennifer Clapp, Molly Anderson, Robin Broad, Ellen Messer, Thomas Pogge, and Timothy Wise. 2013. “How We Count Hunger Matters.” Ethics and International Affairs 27, no. 3: 251–59. Latimer, Jeff, Craig Dowden, and Danielle Muise. 2005. “The Effectiveness of Restorative Justice Practices: A Meta-analysis.” Prison Journal 85, no. 2: 127–44. La Vega, Garcilasso de. 1688. The Royal Commentaries of Peru, in Two Parts. . . . Translated by Paul Rycaut. London: Miles Flesher. La Via Campesina. 2009. “Via Campesina Campaign to End Violence against Women.” https://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/women-mainmenu-39/643-via-campesina-campaign-to-end-violence-against-women.


pages: 86 words: 27,453

Why We Work by Barry Schwartz

Atul Gawande, call centre, deskilling, do well by doing good, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Higgs boson, if you build it, they will come, invisible hand, job satisfaction, meta-analysis, Paradox of Choice, scientific management, Silicon Valley, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Toyota Production System

New York Times Magazine, February 23, 1986: 44–47, 58. Hirsch, F. Social Limits to Growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1976.* Hodson, R. Dignity at Work. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.* Judge, T. A., R. F. Piccolo, N. P. Podsakoff, J. C. Shaw, and B. L. Rich. “The Relationship Between Pay and Job Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature.” Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77 (2010): 157–67. Jussim, L. “Self-fulfilling Prophecies: A Theoretical and Integrative Review.” Psychological Review, 93 (1986): 429–45. ——. “Teacher Expectations: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, Perceptual Biases, and Accuracy.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57 (1989): 469–80.


pages: 100 words: 28,911

A Short Guide to a Long Life by David B. Agus

Danny Hillis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Larry Ellison, lifelogging, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, Murray Gell-Mann, personalized medicine, placebo effect, risk tolerance, TED Talk, the scientific method

While it’s true that you can find single, unrepeated studies that contradict my ideas, that’s not how science works. When scientists weigh in on a topic, they can’t just rely on single studies that support their view. Instead, they have to consider all the studies on a topic and examine the results of each. That is exactly what a meta-analysis does. Hence, all of my prescriptions are rooted in studies that meet this gold standard. They always will be. And if the day comes when science uproots an established “truth” or does a complete 180 on a universally accepted fact, then I will welcome that new viewpoint with excitement and resolve (and a new rule).


pages: 314 words: 101,034

Every Patient Tells a Story by Lisa Sanders

classic study, data acquisition, discovery of penicillin, high batting average, index card, medical residency, meta-analysis, natural language processing, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan

Med Ed. 2007;41:1133–39, Charlin B, et al. Scripts and clinical reasoning. Med Ed. 2007;41:1178–84. 29 One of the ways doctors are taught to think about disease: Mangruikar RS, et al. What is the role of the clinical “pearl.” Am J Med. 2002; 113(7):617–24. Ioannidis JPA, Lau J. Uncontrolled pearls, controlled evidence, meta-analysis and the individual patient. J Clin Epidemiolo. 1998;51(8):709–11. 31 Dr. André Lemierre, a physician in Paris, first described this disease in 1936: Lemierre A. On certain septicemias due to anaerobic organisms. Lancet. 1936;1:701–3. Centor RM. Should Lemierre’s syndrome re-emergence change pharyngitis guidelines?

N Engl J Med. 1990;323:219–223. 178 They recruited one hundred residents: Shadick NA, Phillips CB, Logigian EL, Steere AC, Kaplan RF, Berardi VP, et al. The long-term clinical outcomes of Lyme disease. A population-based retrospective cohort study. Ann Int Med. 1994;121:560–567. 178 Other studies too have found: Cairn V, Godwin J. Post-Lyme borreliosis syndrome: a meta-analysis of reported symptoms. Int J Epi. 2005;34:1340–1345. 179 Researchers at Tufts Medical Center: Klempner MS, et al. Two controlled trials of antibiotic treatment in patients with persistent symptoms and a history of Lyme disease. N Engl J Med. 2001;345:85–92. 179 Two other rigorous trials: Krupps LB, et al.


pages: 327 words: 97,720

Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection by John T. Cacioppo

Alfred Russel Wallace, biofilm, butterfly effect, Celebration, Florida, classic study, corporate governance, delayed gratification, experimental subject, gentrification, impulse control, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, longitudinal study, mental accounting, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, placebo effect, post-industrial society, Rodney Brooks, Ted Kaczynski, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, theory of mind, urban planning, urban renewal, Walter Mischel

People with few social ties were at increased risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular and circulatory disease, cancer, and a broader category that included respiratory, gastrointestinal, and all other causes of death.3 In 1988 an article in Science reviewed subsequent research, and that meta-analysis indicated that social isolation is on a par with high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise, or smoking as a risk factor for illness and early death.4 For some time the most common explanation for this sizeable effect has been the “social control hypothesis.” This theory holds that, in the absence of a spouse or close friends who might provide material help or a more positive influence, individuals may have a greater tendency to gain weight, to drink too much, or to skip exercise.

Gatherings As an obligatorily gregarious species, we humans have a need not just to belong in an abstract sense but to actually get together. Congregating physically may actually play a role in an association found between religious observance and decreased morbidity and mortality. The sociologists Lynda H. Powell, Leila Shahabi, and Carl E. Thoresen conducted a meta-analysis of the extensive literature on religion and health, exploring nine different hypotheses that might account for the purportedly positive effects. Do religious people live longer and healthier lives because of the more conservative and healthful lifestyle that religion promotes? Is it the power of prayer?


pages: 327 words: 103,336

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer by Duncan J. Watts

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Swan, business cycle, butterfly effect, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, clockwork universe, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, discovery of DNA, East Village, easy for humans, difficult for computers, edge city, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, framing effect, Future Shock, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Santayana, happiness index / gross national happiness, Herman Kahn, high batting average, hindsight bias, illegal immigration, industrial cluster, interest rate swap, invention of the printing press, invention of the telescope, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, lake wobegon effect, Laplace demon, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, oil shock, packet switching, pattern recognition, performance metric, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, prediction markets, pre–internet, RAND corporation, random walk, RFID, school choice, Silicon Valley, social contagion, social intelligence, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, ultimatum game, urban planning, Vincenzo Peruggia: Mona Lisa, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, X Prize

New York Times Magazine, February 13. Lewis, Randall, and David Reiley. 2009. “Retail Advertising Works! Measuring the Effects of Advertising on Sales via a Controlled Experiment on Yahoo.” Working paper, Yahoo. Lodish, Leonard M., Magid Abraham, Stuart Kalmenson, et al. 1995a. “How TV Advertising Works: A Meta-analysis of 389 Real World Split Cable TV Advertising Experiments.” Journal of Marketing Research 32: 125–39. Lodish, Leonard M., Magid Abraham, Jeanne Livelsberger, et al. 1995b. “A Summary of Fifty-five In-Market Experimental Estimates of the Long-term Effect of TV Advertising.” Marketing Science 14 (3):133–40.

“In Louvre, New Room with View of ‘Mona Lisa.’ ” New York Times, April 6. Rigney, Daniel. 2010. The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage. New York: Columbia University Press. Robbins, Jordan M., and Joachim I. Krueger. 2005. “Social Projection to Ingroups and Outgroups: A Review and Meta-analysis.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 9:32–47. Rogers, Everett M. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations, 4th ed. New York: Free Press. Roese, Neal J., and James M. Olson. 1996. “Counterfactuals, Causal Attributions, and the Hindsight Bias: A Conceptual Integration.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 32 (3):197–227.


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Reset: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy by David Sawyer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, beat the dealer, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Cal Newport, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, David Attenborough, David Heinemeier Hansson, Desert Island Discs, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, financial independence, follow your passion, gig economy, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, index card, index fund, invention of the wheel, John Bogle, knowledge worker, loadsamoney, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, mortgage debt, Mr. Money Mustache, passive income, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart meter, Snapchat, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, The 4% rule, Tim Cook: Apple, Vanguard fund, William Bengen, work culture , Y Combinator

You can only have one priority. 11. The importance of chit-chat The strongest predictor of how long you’ll live is your daily interactions with strangers. Not the quality of your close relationships (albeit that’s a close second), not whether you smoke, booze, exercise or are fat or thin. In a meta-analysis of 300,000-plus people[493], researchers at Brigham Young University found that the key to living a long life is social integration. Those chats with your neighbours, people at the school gate, the bloke serving you coffee at Starbucks, the guard on the train; it’s those daily interactions on which we place no emphasis that make a long life.

[490] 1 Second Everyday app: “1SE.” toreset.me/490. [491] “ghosts haunting the lost landscapes of our childhood”: “THE WRITING LIFE: TALES OUT OF SCHOOL – The Washington Post.” 18 Mar. 1997, toreset.me/491. [492] The Pomodoro [productivity] Technique: “Pomodoro Technique – Wikipedia.” toreset.me/492. [493] In a meta-analysis of 300,000-plus people: “Social Ties Boost Survival by 50 Per Cent – Scientific American.” 28 Jul. 2010, toreset.me/493. [494] Watch Susan Pinker’s TED talk: “The secret to living longer may be your social life – TED.com.” 18 Aug. 2017, toreset.me/494. [495] businesses fail within the first 18 months, according to Bloomberg: “Five Reasons 8 Out Of 10 Businesses Fail – Forbes.” 12 Sep. 2013, toreset.me/495


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Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

3D printing, additive manufacturing, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Boston Dynamics, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, company town, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, Firefox, Galaxy Zoo, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, gravity well, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Jono Bacon, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, microbiome, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Narrative Science, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, optical character recognition, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, rolodex, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart grid, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, superconnector, Susan Wojcicki, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Turing test, urban renewal, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine, web application, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

To gather the advice in the how-to sections in part three, my team did exhaustive research, interviewing over a hundred top platform providers, the very people behind all of these crowd-powered companies, and speaking with top users, those exponential entrepreneurs who have already succeeded in leveraging crowd tools to tackle the bold. We also conducted a meta-analysis of all the various how-to articles online and in major reports, distilling key lessons and insights. Finally, during the same time this work was going on, I had the opportunity to implement much of this advice, putting it to the test in my own companies. Taken together, my hope is that these how-to sections serve as a comprehensive playbook, literally a user’s guide for going big, creating wealth, and impacting the world.

The final example is the ARKYD Space Telescope, a campaign run by my company Planetary Resources, which helped us start and forge an enormously passionate community of space enthusiasts—generating the kind of support that is absolutely required by this kind of future-forward project.15 One quick clarification: these examples have been kept intentionally short because they’ll again be followed by a lengthy how-to section—the real meat of this chapter. It’s here we’ll break down everything you need to know to get started, providing information drawn from four sources: a meta-analysis of all the major crowdfunding guides that have appeared in the past few years (twenty-six in total); lengthy interviews with the founders and CEOs of major crowdfunding companies such as Indiegogo, RocketHub, and Crowdfunder; lengthy interviews with entrepreneurs who have run incredibly successful campaigns (for example, Eric Migicovsky, creator of the Pebble Watch campaign); and finally, my own personal experience raising $1.5 million via crowdfunding, which at the time was the twenty-fifth most successful Kickstarter campaign ever.


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The Miracle Pill by Peter Walker

active transport: walking or cycling, agricultural Revolution, autonomous vehicles, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, car-free, Coronary heart disease and physical activity of work, coronavirus, COVID-19, driverless car, experimental subject, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, Sidewalk Labs, social distancing, Stop de Kindermoord, the built environment, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, twin studies, Wall-E, washing machines reduced drudgery

., ‘Association of Step Volume and Intensity with All-Cause Mortality in Older Women’, JAMA Internal Medicine, Vol. 179, No. 8 (2019): 1105–12. 26 Interview with the author. 27 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Scientific Report. 28 Hmwe H. Kyu et al., ‘Physical activity and risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, diabetes, ischemic heart disease, and ischemic stroke events: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013’, British Medical Journal, Vol. 354:i3857 (2016). 29 I-Min Lee, Howard D. Sesso, Yuko Oguma, Ralph S. Paffenbarger, Jr, ‘The “Weekend Warrior” and Risk of Mortality’, American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 160, No. 7 (2004): 636–41. 30 Gary O’Donovan, I-Min Lee et al., ‘Association of “Weekend Warrior” and Other Leisure Time Physical Activity Patterns With Risks for All-Cause, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer Mortality’, JAMA Internal Medicine, Vol. 177, No. 3 (2017): 335–42.

., ‘A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial to Reduce Office Workers’ Sitting Time: Effect on Activity Outcomes’, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Vol. 48, No. 9 (2016): 1787–97. 35 Interview with the author. 36 Interview with the author. 37 Ulf Ekelund et al., ‘Does physical activity attenuate, or even eliminate, the detrimental association of sitting time with mortality? A harmonised meta-analysis of data from more than 1 million men and women’, The Lancet, Vol. 388, No. 10051 (2016): 1302–10. 38 Email correspondence with the author. Chapter 8 1 Interview with the author. 2 Statistics supplied by Daily Mile. 3 NHS Health Survey for England 2016: Physical Activity in Adults. 4 NHS Health Survey for England 2015: Physical Activity in Children. 5 Hallal et al., ‘Global physical activity levels: surveillance progress, pitfalls, and prospects’. 6 Gavin R.


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We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds by Sally Adee

air gap, airport security, anesthesia awareness, animal electricity, biofilm, colonial rule, computer age, COVID-19, CRISPR, discovery of DNA, double helix, Elon Musk, epigenetics, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, hype cycle, impulse control, informal economy, Internet Archive, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, lockdown, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, multilevel marketing, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, stealth mode startup, stem cell, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, traumatic brain injury

Soon a wave of studies began to debunk the previous glut of hopeful findings: to prove that the currents involved in tDCS could have no possible effects on neurons, one group electrically stimulated a cadaver and concluded that it was pseudoscientific bullshit; another looked at all the effects across hundreds of tDCS studies—a meta-analysis—and concluded that if you averaged out all the effects, you’d end up with nothing. They had history on their side. The skeptics pointed to 200 years of electro-foolery, in which quacks claimed that their various electrical belts, rings, baths, and other contraptions could cure everything from perennial ailments like constipation and cancer to complaints of a more distinctly Victorian flavor, like the loss of “male vigor” and excessive masturbation.

., and Peter A. Robinson. “Quantitative Theory of Deep Brain Stimulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus for the Suppression of Pathological Rhythms in Parkinson’s Disease,” ed. by Saad Jbabdi, PLOS Computational Biology, vol. 14, no. 5 (2018), e1006217. See also Kisely, Steve, et al. “A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Deep Brain Stimulation for Depression.” Depression and Anxiety, vol. 35, no. 5 (2018), pp. 468–80 57 Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Scribner; London: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1994, p. 10, see also pp. 182-4 58 Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, p. 3.


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We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation by Eric Garcia

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, defund the police, Donald Trump, epigenetics, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, full employment, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, intentional community, Internet Archive, Joi Ito, Lyft, meta-analysis, neurotypical, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, phenotype, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, short selling, Silicon Valley, TED Talk

“Our CBPR process allowed us to adapt instruments to be accessible to this sample of autistic adults, primarily by increasing the clarity and precision of the language used in the instruments,” the study said. But physical health is only part of the equation for autistic people, and it is possible that autistic people’s mental-health needs might be more acute than neurotypical people’s needs. One 2018 meta-analysis of sixty-six studies in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology found that people with autism spectrum disorder “are 4-times more likely to experience depression in their lifetime.” Suicidal ideation is something I am all too familiar with. I’ve lived with depression as long as I can remember and have been on numerous antidepressants over the years.

., “Comparison of Healthcare Experiences in Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey Facilitated by an Academic-Community Partnership,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 28, no. 6 (June 6, 2013), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3663938/. “more likely to experience depression”: Chloe C. Hudson, Layla Hall, and Kate L. Harkness, “Prevalence of Depressive Disorders in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 47, no. 1 (March 1, 2018), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10802-018-0402-1. Cal Montgomery noted: Cal Montgomery, interview with the author, 2019. 6. “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” some autistic kids didn’t speak: Chris Williams, interview with the author, 2020.


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Food Allergy: Adverse Reactions to Foods and Food Additives by Dean D. Metcalfe

active measures, Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, bioinformatics, classic study, confounding variable, epigenetics, Helicobacter pylori, hygiene hypothesis, impulse control, life extension, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mouse model, pattern recognition, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Recombinant DNA, selection bias, statistical model, stem cell, twin studies, two and twenty

Maternal and/or infant elimination diets Studies attempting to prevent CM and egg allergies by maternal CM and egg avoidance during late pregnancy have failed to show a reduction in food allergy, any other atopic disorder, or sensitization from birth through age 5 years. Additionally, maternal weight gain during pregnancy was negatively affected by these dietary restrictions. A recent Cochrane meta-analysis [51] confirmed the above findings, and the authors concluded that the prescription of an antigen avoidance diet to a high-risk woman during pregnancy is unlikely to substantially reduce the child’s risk of atopic diseases, and such a diet may adversely affect maternal or fetal nutrition, or both.

Breast-feeding For quite some time, it has been suggested that the presence of food antigens in breast milk might sensitize an infant if the mother does not avoid these foods in her diet during lactation. However, results of studies during the 1980s and 1990s examining this hypothesis have been contradictory. These contradictory studies, along with consideration of many others, led both a Cochrane analysis [51] and a recent meta-analysis [52] to conclude that while the prescription of an antigen avoidance diet to high-risk women during lactation may reduce the child’s risk of developing AD, there is insufficient conclusive evidence to show a preventative effect of maternal diet during lactation on atopic disease in childhood. Furthermore, one cannot state for certain whether food antigens in breast milk will induce allergy or be immunoprotective in any given recipient [53].

Of the many studies regarding the association between breast-feeding and AD, some have shown a protective effect [54,55], whereas others have shown a lack 114 Chapter 9 of association [56], and some have even shown a positive association [57]. To assist in sorting out the discrepancies in the above studies, Gdalevich et al. [58] performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies in developed countries that compared breast-feeding with CM formula feeding on the development of AD. Statistical analysis revealed a significant overall protective effect of breastfeeding for 3 months on AD, with an OR of 0.68 (95% CI, 0.52–0.88) in the cohort as a whole.


She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, clean water, clockwatching, cloud computing, CRISPR, dark matter, data science, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, Easter island, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Fellow of the Royal Society, Flynn Effect, friendly fire, Gary Taubes, germ theory of disease, Gregor Mendel, Helicobacter pylori, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, lolcat, longitudinal study, medical bankruptcy, meta-analysis, microbiome, moral panic, mouse model, New Journalism, out of africa, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Recombinant DNA, Scientific racism, statistical model, stem cell, twin studies, W. E. B. Du Bois

“Aberrant Melanoblast Migration Associated with Trisomy 18 Mosaicism.” Journal of Medical Genetics 20:135–37. Chen, Brian H., Riccardo E. Marioni, Elena Colicino, Marjolein J. Peters, Cavin K. Ward-Caviness, Pei-Chien Tsai, Nicholas S. Roetker, Allan C. Just, Ellen W. Demerath, and Weihua Guan. 2016. “DNA Methylation-Based Measures of Biological Age: Meta-Analysis Predicting Time to Death.” DNA 8:9. Chen, Qi, Wei Yan, and Enkui Duan. 2016. “Epigenetic Inheritance of Acquired Traits Through Sperm RNAs and Sperm RNA Modifications.” Nature Reviews Genetics 17:733–43. Chen, Serena H., Claudia Pascale, Maria Jackson, Mary Ann Szvetecz, and Jacques Cohen. 2016.

Walker, and others. 2015. “Optimizing Cancer Genome Sequencing and Analysis.” Cell Systems 1:210–23. Grognet, Pierre, Hervé Lalucque, Fabienne Malagnac, and Philippe Silar. 2014. “Genes That Bias Mendelian Segregation.” PLOS Genetics 10:e1004387. Grudnik, Jennifer L., and John H. Kranzler. 2001. “Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Intelligence and Inspection Time.” Intelligence 29:523–35. Grüneberg, Hans. 1967. “Sex-linked Genes in Man and the Lyon Hypothesis.” Annals of Human Genetics 30:239–57. Guevara-Aguirre, Jaime, Priya Balasubramanian, Marco Guevara-Aguirre, Min Wei, Federica Madia, Chia-Wei Cheng, David Hwang, and others. 2011.

Lehtinen, L. Benjamin Hills, and others. 2012. “Somatic Activation of AKT3 Causes Hemispheric Developmental Brain Malformations.” Neuron 74:41–48. Polderman, Tinca J. C., Beben Benyamin, Christiaan A. de Leeuw, Patrick F. Sullivan, Arjen van Bochoven, Peter M. Visscher, and Danielle Posthuma. 2015. “Meta-Analysis of the Heritability of Human Traits Based on Fifty Years of Twin Studies.” Nature Genetics 47:702–09. Poliakov, Léon. 1974. The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe. New York: Basic Books. Politi, Yoav, Liron Gal, Yossi Kalifa, Liat Ravid, Zvulun Elazar, and Eli Arama. 2014.


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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, bread and circuses, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, California gold rush, Cass Sunstein, citation needed, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, Columbine, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, crack epidemic, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, delayed gratification, demographic transition, desegregation, Doomsday Clock, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, experimental subject, facts on the ground, failed state, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fudge factor, full employment, Garrett Hardin, George Santayana, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, global village, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, impulse control, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, McMansion, means of production, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mirror neurons, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Republic of Letters, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, security theater, Skinner box, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, technological determinism, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Turing machine, twin studies, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Aggression in separated twins: Bouchard & McGue, 2003, table 6. 142. Aggression in adoptees: van den Oord et al., 1994; see also Rhee & Waldman, 2007. 143. Aggression in twins: Cloninger & Gottesman, 1987; Eley et al., 1999; Ligthart et al., 2005; Rhee & Waldman, 2007; Slutske et al., 1997; van Beijsterveldt et al., 2003. 144. Meta-analysis of behavioral genetics of aggression: Rhee & Waldman, 2007. 145. Violent crime in twins: Cloninger & Gottesman, 1987. 146. Pedomorphy and self-domestication: Wrangham, 2009b; Wrangham & Pilbeam, 2001. 147. Heritability of gray matter distribution: Thompson et al., 2001. 148. Heritability of white matter connectivity: Chiang et al., 2009. 149.

Psychological Review, 100, 204–32. Bussman, M., & Schneider, G. 2007. When globalization discontent turns violent: Foreign economic liberalization and internal war. International Studies Quarterly, 51, 79–97. Byrnes, J. P., Miller, D. C., & Schafer, W. D. 1999. Gender differences in risk-taking: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 367–83. C-SPAN. 2010. C-SPAN 2009 Historians presidential leadership survey. http://legacy.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/presidential-leadership-survey.aspx. Cairns, R. B., Gariépy, J.-L., & Hood, K. E. 1990. Development, microevolution, and social behavior. Psychological Review, 97, 49–65.

Evidence for positive selection and population structure at the human MAO-A gene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 862–67. Gilbert, S. J., Spengler, S., Simons, J. S., Steele, J. D., Lawrie, S. M., Frith, C. D., & Burgess, P. W. 2006. Functional specialization within rostral prefrontal cortex (Area 10): A meta-analysis. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 932–48. Gilligan, C. 1982. In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ginges, J., & Atran, S. 2008. Humiliation and the inertia effect: Implications for understanding violence and compromise in intractable intergroup conflicts.


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Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future by John Brockman

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Asperger Syndrome, availability heuristic, Benoit Mandelbrot, biofilm, Black Swan, bread and circuses, British Empire, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Danny Hillis, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, Evgeny Morozov, financial engineering, Flynn Effect, Frank Gehry, Future Shock, Google Earth, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, index card, information retrieval, Internet Archive, invention of writing, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, lone genius, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Neal Stephenson, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, pneumatic tube, Ponzi scheme, power law, pre–internet, Project Xanadu, Richard Feynman, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, satellite internet, Schrödinger's Cat, search costs, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart grid, social distancing, social graph, social software, social web, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, telepresence, the medium is the message, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, trade route, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Yochai Benkler

The tools for research and communication about this research developed, along with new thinking about mind-machine interaction, the future of education, the impact of the Internet on texts and writing, and the issues of filtering, relevance, learning, and memory. And then somehow the creature became autonomous, an ordinary part of our universe. We are no longer surprised, no longer engaged in so much meta-analysis. We are dependent. Some of us are addicted to this marvelous tool, this multifaceted medium that is—as predicted even ten years ago—concentrating all of communication, knowledge, entertainment, business. I, like many of us, spend so many hours before a computer screen, typing away, even when surrounded by countless books, that it is hard to say exactly how the Internet has affected me.

As ratings accumulate, margins of error shrink, confidence intervals get tighter, and estimates improve. Ordinary consumers have access to better product rating data than market researchers could hope to collect. Online peer ratings empower us to be evidence-based about almost all our decisions. For most goods and services—and, indeed, most domains of life—they offer a kind of informal meta-analysis, an aggregation of data across all the analyses already performed by like-minded consumers. Judgment becomes socially distributed and statistical rather than individual and anecdotal. Rational-choice economists might argue that sales figures are a better indication than online ratings of real consumer preferences, insofar as people vote with their dollars to reveal their preferences.


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Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson

airport security, animal electricity, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, Frederick Winslow Taylor, glass ceiling, Iridium satellite, medical residency, megaproject, meta-analysis, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Stanford marshmallow experiment, sugar pill, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Walter Mischel

But there was no further improvement when they drank more than they had chosen to in the first trial. Avoiding thirst, rather than avoiding dehydration, seems to be the most important key to performance. This controversial claim was mostly dismissed when it was first published, but the debate has gradually shifted in the years since then. A 2013 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded than any losses of less than 4 percent are “very unlikely to impair [endurance performance] under real-world exercise conditions,” and concluded that athletes should be encouraged to drink according to thirst.31 Still, as compelling as these lines of evidence are, focusing on the details of plasma osmolality and total body water misses a larger point that has recurred throughout this book: the importance of any underlying physiological signal depends in part on how your brain receives and interprets it.

Shona Halson and David Martin: Shona Halson and David Martin, “Lying to Win—Placebos and Sport Science,” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance 8 (2013): 597–99. 5. purported benefits of a post-workout ice bath: J. Leeder, “Cold Water Immersion and Recovery from Strenuous Exercise: A Meta-Analysis,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 46, no. 4 (2012). 6. a “placebo-controlled” ice bath: J. R. Broatch et al., “Postexercise Cold Water Immersion Benefits Are Not Greater than the Placebo Effect,” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 46, no. 11 (2014). 7. paradigm-altering demonstration: J.


The Targeter: My Life in the CIA, Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House by Nada Bakos

Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, fear of failure, feminist movement, meta-analysis, operational security, performance metric, place-making, pneumatic tube, RAND corporation, WikiLeaks, work culture

In the DI, thankfully, people were mostly judged by the substantive knowledge they brought to their work and their ability to do their jobs. Looking back at my time in the CIA, I think the simplest difference in approaches comes from the way women tend to balance risk and reward. I know this veers toward armchair theorizing, but there’s a scientific underpinning for it. In a 1999 meta-analysis of 150 studies comparing risk-taking tendencies of males and females, entitled “Gender Differences in Risk Taking,” researchers James Byrnes, David Miller, and William Schafer concluded that “clearly… male participants are more likely to take risks than female participants.” Other studies built upon those findings, including the 2006 “Gender, Financial Risk, and Probability Weights,” by Swiss researchers Helga Fehr-Duda, Manuele de Gennaro, and Renate Schubert, which found that females weigh probabilities differently from males and that women are more pessimistic about potential significant gains.

. $940,000 in back pay and granting twenty-five retroactive promotions: Ibid. 12. “a fantasy of a different sort”: Slatkin, “Executive Director Speech.” 13. “male participants are more likely to take risks”: James Byrnes, David Miller, and William Schafer, “Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 3 (May 1999): 377. 14. “may indeed lead to higher risk aversion”: Helga Fehr-Duda, Manuele de Gennaro, and Renate Schubert, “Gender, Financial Risk, and Probability Weights,” Theory and Decision 60, no. 2 (May 2006). 15. “Armed and Dangerous”: United States Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous,” August 21–22, 1993, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/files/2008/03/wandering_mujahidin.pdf. 16.


pages: 519 words: 104,396

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (And How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone

availability heuristic, behavioural economics, book value, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, equal pay for equal work, experimental economics, experimental subject, feminist movement, game design, German hyperinflation, Henri Poincaré, high net worth, index card, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, Landlord’s Game, Linda problem, loss aversion, market bubble, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Nash equilibrium, new economy, no-fly zone, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, Potemkin village, power law, price anchoring, price discrimination, psychological pricing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, random walk, RFID, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, rolodex, social intelligence, starchitect, Steve Jobs, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-martini lunch, ultimatum game, working poor

“Experts, Amateurs, and Real Estate: An Anchoring-and-Adjustment Perspective on Property Pricing Decisions.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 84, 87–93. Oosterbeek, Hessel, Randolph Sloof, and Gijs van de Kuilen (2004). “Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-analysis.” Experimental Economics 7, 171–88. Orr, Dan, and Chris Guthrie (2006). “Anchoring, Information, Expertise, and Negotiation: New Insights from Meta-Analysis.” Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution 21, 597–628. Available at ssrn.com/abstract=900152. Phillips, Lawrence D., and Detlof von Winterfeldt (2006). “Reflections on the Contributions of Ward Edwards to Decision Analysis and Behavioral Research.”


Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

Instead, they are archived and recycled and used repeatedly to shame and belittle, leading to increased depression and other mental health risks.142 With respect to adolescent boys, on the other hand, social media — especially online first-person shooter games — tap into their craving for adrenaline rushes and their attraction to pack behaviour with an artificial and sedentary alternative to the real thing. (A 2018 meta-analysis of twenty-eight separate studies confirmed that there’s a higher prevalence of internet addiction among adolescent males — possibly related to their greater susceptibility to developing addictions altogether — than there is among the population overall.)143 It’s become familiar to hear about boys who go to school (where they sit most of the day) and then return home to sit in front of a screen to which they are hopelessly attached.

Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/health/social-media-depression-girls-study/index.html Higher prevalence of internet addiction among adolescent males: Fumero, A., Marrero, R. J., Voltes, D., & Peñate, W. (2018). Personal and social factors involved in internet addiction among adolescents: A meta-analysis. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.005 The World Health Organization and the American Psychiatric Association added “internet gaming disorder”: Jabr. Can you really be addicted to video games? Higher levels of screen time … may be linked with increased symptoms of depression: Boers, E., Afzali, M.


pages: 363 words: 109,834

The Crux by Richard Rumelt

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air gap, Airbnb, AltaVista, AOL-Time Warner, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, biodiversity loss, Blue Ocean Strategy, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, creative destruction, crossover SUV, Crossrail, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, drop ship, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, financial engineering, Ford Model T, Herman Kahn, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Just-in-time delivery, Larry Ellison, linear programming, lockdown, low cost airline, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, meta-analysis, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, packet switching, PageRank, performance metric, precision agriculture, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, search costs, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, software as a service, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stochastic process, Teledyne, telemarketer, TSMC, uber lyft, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, WeWork

This, in fact, may be one reason for some of the statistically negative results from large deals. It seems reasonable that the greatest benefits, the largest synergy, would come from an acquisition that is closely related to the business of the acquirer. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. In a thorough meta-analysis of sixty-seven studies of acquisitions and relatedness researchers concluded, “The overall effect of relatedness on [stock-price] performance is negligible. It is also possible that synergies exist but that their effect is too small to pay-off a (high) acquisition premium.”5 The largest premium is due to hubris—overconfidence.

David Trainer, “Perverse Incentives Produce Deals That Shred Shareholder Value,” Forbes, May 2, 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/05/02/perverse-incentives-produce-deals-that-shred-shareholder-value. 5. F. Homberg, K. Rost, and M. Osterloh, “Do Synergies Exist in Related Acquisitions? A Meta-analysis of Acquisition Studies,” Review of Managerial Science 3, no. 2 (2009): 100. 6. Colin Camerer and Dan Lovallo, “Overconfidence and Excess Entry: An Experimental Approach,” American Economic Review 89, no. 1 (1999): 306–318. 7. D. Fisher, “Accounting Tricks Catch Up with GE,” Forbes, November 22, 2019. 8.


Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals by David Aronson

Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, asset allocation, availability heuristic, backtesting, Black Swan, book value, butter production in bangladesh, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, cognitive dissonance, compound rate of return, computerized trading, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, distributed generation, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, equity risk premium, feminist movement, Great Leap Forward, hindsight bias, index fund, invention of the telescope, invisible hand, Long Term Capital Management, managed futures, mental accounting, meta-analysis, p-value, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, retrograde motion, revision control, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, riskless arbitrage, Robert Shiller, Sharpe ratio, short selling, source of truth, statistical model, stocks for the long run, sugar pill, systematic trading, the scientific method, transfer pricing, unbiased observer, yield curve, Yogi Berra

It was a review of prior studies, known as a meta-analysis, which examined 20 studies that had compared the subjective diagnoses of psychologists and psychiatrists with those produced by linear statistical models. The studies covered the prediction of academic success, the likelihood of criminal recidivism, and predicting the outcomes of electrical shock therapy. In each case, the experts rendered a judgment by evaluating a multitude of variables in a subjective manner. “In all studies, the statistical model provided more accurate predictions or the two methods tied.”34 A subsequent study by Sawyer35 was a meta analysis of 45 studies.

The studies include prediction of academic performance, life-expectancy of cancer patients, changes in stock prices, psychological diagnosis, bankruptcy, student ratings of teacher effectiveness, sales performance, and IQ based on Rorschach test. The average correlation between prediction and outcome for expert judgment was 0.33 on a scale of 0 to 1.0. The average correlation for the objective model was 0.64. In a meta-analysis of over 100 peer-reviewed studies comparing expert judgment with statistical rules, statistical rules were more accurate in 96 percent of the cases. See J.A. Swets, R.M. Dawes, and J. Monahan, “Psychological Science Can Improve Diagnostic Decisions,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 1 (2000). 482 NOTES 27.


pages: 244 words: 37,906

Spiralizer Cookbook by Rockridge Press

meta-analysis

“The New Way to Make a Homemade (Healthy!) Pasta Dinner.” Good Housekeeping. (Accessed Sep. 30, 2014). http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-reviews/test-kitchen-blog/spiralizer-spiraled-vegetables. Santos, F. L., S. S. Esteves, A. da Costa Pereira, W. S. Yancy Jr., and J. P. L. Nunes. “Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Clinical Trials of the Effects of Low Carbohydrate Diets on Cardiovascular Risk Factors.” Obesity Reviews (July 2012), doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01021.x/ “Spiral Slicers (Spiralizers).” Cook’s Illustrated. Accessed March 12, 2015. http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment_reviews/1540-spiral-slicers-spiralizers.


pages: 395 words: 116,675

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, altcoin, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Broken windows theory, carbon tax, Columbian Exchange, computer age, Corn Laws, cosmological constant, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, Donald Davies, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Eben Moglen, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, endogenous growth, epigenetics, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fail fast, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, George Santayana, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, hydraulic fracturing, imperial preference, income per capita, indoor plumbing, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, land reform, Lao Tzu, long peace, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Necker cube, obamacare, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, twin studies, uber lyft, women in the workforce

Behavioral Genetics (6th edition). Worth Publishers. On intelligence heritability increasing with age, Briley, D.A. and Tucker-Drob, E.M. 2013. Explaining the increasing heritability of cognitive ability over development: A meta-analysis of longitudinal twin and adoption studies. Psychological Science 24:1704–1713; and Briley, D.A. and Tucker-Drob, E.M. 2014. Genetic and environmental continuity in personality development: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin 140:1303–1331. On regression to the mean, Clark, Gregory 2014. The Son Also Rises. Princeton University Press. On monkeys and toys, Hines, M. and Alexander, G.M. 2008.


pages: 412 words: 115,266

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

., et al. (2004). Reciprocal modulation and attenuation in the prefrontal cortex: An fMRI study on emotional-cognitive interaction. Hum Brain Mapp, 21 (3), 202–212. Northoff, G., Heinzel, A., de Greck, M., Bermpohl, F., Dobrowolny, H., & Panksepp, J. (2006). Self-referential processing in our brain—a meta-analysis of imaging studies on the self. Neuroimage, 31 (1), 440–457. Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (2005). Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature, 437 (7063), 1291–1298. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York: Basic Books. Nunez, J. M., Casey, B. J., Egner, T., Hare, T., & Hirsch, J. (2005).

Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 645–726. Stark, R. (2001). One true God: Historical consequences of monotheism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Steele, J. D., & Lawrie, S. M. (2004). Segregation of cognitive and emotional function in the prefrontal cortex: A stereotactic meta-analysis. Neuroimage, 21 (3), 868–875. Stenger, V. A. (2009). The new atheism: Taking a stand for science and reason. New York: Prometheus Books. Stewart, P. (2008, May 29). Vatican says it will excommunicate women priests. Reuters. Stoller, S. E., & Wolpe, P. R. (2007). Emerging neurotechnologies for lie detection and the Fifth Amendment.


pages: 390 words: 115,769

Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World's Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples by John Robbins

caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clean water, collective bargaining, Community Supported Agriculture, Donald Trump, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, land reform, life extension, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, telemarketer

Of the twenty-five nutrients that are removed when whole wheat flour is milled into white flour, only five nutrients are chemically replaced when the white flour is enriched. The importance of whole grains in cancer prevention was vividly illustrated in a 2001 report published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.3 The authors conducted a “meta-analysis,” reviewing the entire body of available scientific literature on whole grains and cancer risk. Here’s what they found: Of forty-five studies on whole grains and cancer, forty-three showed whole-grain intake to provide significant protection from several cancers. Specifically, a protective association was seen in 9 of 10 mentions of studies on colorectal cancers and polyps, 7 of 7 mentions of gastric cancer, 6 of 6 mentions of other digestive tract cancers, 7 of 7 mentions of hormone-related cancers (breast, prostate, ovarian, and uterine cancer), 4 of 4 mentions of pancreatic cancer, and 10 of 11 mentions of other cancers.

Craig Willcox, and Makoto Suzuki, The Okinawa Program: Learn the Secrets to Health and Longevity (Three Rivers Press, 2001), pp. 43, 71. 2. Ibid. p. 69. 3. Joanne Slavin et al., “The Role of Whole Grains in Disease Prevention,” Journal of the American Dietetic Association 2001, 101:780–85. See also D. R. Jacobs et al., “Whole-grain intake and cancer: An expanded review and meta-analysis,” Nutrition and Cancer 1998, 30:85–96. 4. D. R. Jacobs et al., “Is whole-grain intake associated with reduced total and cause-specific death rates in older women? The Iowa Women’s Health Study,” American Journal of Public Health 1999, 89(3):322–29. See also S. Liu, “Intake of refined carbohydrates and whole grain foods in relation to risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease,” Journal of the American College of Nutrition 2002, 21(4):298–306; D.


pages: 501 words: 114,888

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, call centre, cashless society, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital twin, disruptive innovation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, fake news, food miles, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, gigafactory, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hive mind, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, loss aversion, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Lou Jepsen, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, mobile money, multiplanetary species, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, urban planning, Vision Fund, VTOL, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, X Prize

By decade’s end, as Mark Levine explained in Outside magazine: “The weather [had] come to assume the shape of our collective anxieties, our fantasies about technology, nature, retribution, inevitability.… We have overstepped, we whisper, we have changed the weather. Now the weather is going to change us.” How much will it change us? In a 2015 meta-analysis of all available data, Climate Central, an independent group of leading scientists and journalists, reported that even if we manage to halt warming at two degrees, extreme weather will still displace 130 million people. If we don’t? Climate Central’s prognosis isn’t good: “Carbon emissions causing 4 degrees C of warming—what business-as-usual points toward today—could lock in enough sea level rise to submerge land currently home to 470 to 760 million people.”

Oxford scientist Norman Myers: Norman Myers, “Environmental Refugees: A Growing Phenomenon of the 21st Century,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences, May 2002, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2001.0953. as Mark Levine explained in Outside magazine: Mark Levine, “A Storm at the Bone: A Personal Exploration into Deep Weather,” Outside, November 1, 1998. See: https://www.outsideonline.com/1907231/storm-bone-personal-exploration-deep-weather. a 2015 meta-analysis of all available data: “New Report and Maps: Rising Seas Threaten Land Home to Half a Billion,” Climate Central, November 8, 2015. See: http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/news/global-mapping-choices. made a series of maps: Ibid. everything south of Wall Street: Benjamin Strauss, “American Icons Threatened by Sea Level Rise: In Pictures” Climate Central, October 16, 2015.


pages: 1,172 words: 114,305

New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI by Frank Pasquale

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, blockchain, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, collective bargaining, commoditize, computer vision, conceptual framework, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, critical race theory, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, deskilling, digital divide, digital twin, disinformation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, finite state, Flash crash, future of work, gamification, general purpose technology, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, guns versus butter model, Hans Moravec, high net worth, hiring and firing, holacracy, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, late capitalism, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, medical malpractice, megaproject, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, obamacare, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open immigration, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, paradox of thrift, pattern recognition, payday loans, personalized medicine, Peter Singer: altruism, Philip Mirowski, pink-collar, plutocrats, post-truth, pre–internet, profit motive, public intellectual, QR code, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, regulatory arbitrage, Robert Shiller, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, smart cities, smart contracts, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Strategic Defense Initiative, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telepresence, telerobotics, The Future of Employment, The Turner Diaries, Therac-25, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, wage slave, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zero day

Kim Saverno, “Ability of Pharmacy Clinical Decision-Support Software to Alert Users about Clinically Important Drug-Drug Interactions,” Journal of American Medical Informatics Association 18, no. 1 (2011): 32–37. 13. Lorenzo Moja, “Effectiveness of Computerized Decision Support Systems Linked to Electronic Health Records: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Public Health 104 (2014): e12–e22; Mariusz Tybinski, Pavlo Lyovkin, Veronika Sniegirova, and Daniel Kopec, “Medical Errors and Their Prevention,” Health 4 (2012): 165–172. 14. Committee on Patient Safety and Health Information Technology Board on Health Care Services, Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2012), 39. 15.

Committee on Patient Safety and Health Information Technology Board on Health Care Services, Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2012), 39. 15. Lorenzo Moja, Koren Hyogene Kwag, Theodore Lytras, Lorenzo Bertizzolo, Linn Brandt, Valentina Pecoraro et al., “Effectiveness of Computerized Decision Support Systems Linked to Electronic Health Records: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Public Health 104 (2014): e12–e22. See also Elizabeth Murphy, “Clinical Decision Support: Effectiveness in Improving Quality Processes and Clinical Outcomes and Factors that May Influence Success,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 87 (2014): 187–197, which showed that there was reduced risk in certain situations like deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms by 41 percent. 16.


pages: 405 words: 112,470

Together by Vivek H. Murthy, M.D.

Airbnb, call centre, cognitive bias, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, death from overwork, gentrification, gig economy, income inequality, index card, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, medical residency, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, stem cell, TED Talk, twin studies, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft

David, “My life has become a major distraction from my cell phone: Partner phubbing and relationship satisfaction among romantic partners,” Computers in Human Behavior 54 (2016): 134–41, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.07.058. 17Sara H. Konrath, Edward H. Obrien, and Courtney Hsing, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 15, no. 2 (August 2010): 180–98, https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868310377395. 18Victoria J. Rideout, Ulla G. Foehr, and Donald F. Roberts, “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds,” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2010, https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/8010.pdf. 19Yalda T.

Robinson Kurpius, “The Relationship of Loneliness and Social Support with College Freshmen’s Academic Performance and Persistence,” Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice 8, no. 3 (2006): 345–58, https://doi.org/10.2190/a465-356m-7652-783r. 6Catharine Beyes, Angela Davis-Unger, Nana Lowell, Debbie McGhee, and Jon Peterson, “UW Undergraduate Retention and Graduation Study,” University of Washington Office of Educational Assessment, June 2014, accessed August 31, 2019, http://depts.washington.edu/assessmt/pdfs/reports/OEAReport1401.pdf. 7Genevieve Glatsky, “A college junior wants you to have a deep conversation with 20 strangers in Center City,” Daily Pennsylvanian, October 26, 2016, https://www.thedp.com/article/2016/10/space-conversation-with-strangers-serena-bian. 8Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century (New York: New Directions Publishing Corp, 1970). 9Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (New York: Broadway Books, 2012). 10Julieta Galante, Ignacio Galante, Marie-Jet Bekkers, and John Gallacher, “Effect of kindness-based meditation on health and well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 82, no. 6 (December 2014): 1101–1104, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0037249. 11Xianglong Zeng, Cleo P. K. Chiu, Rong Wang, Tian P. S. Oei, and Freedom Y. K. Leung, “The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (November 3, 2015): 1693, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01693. 12Christopher R.


pages: 391 words: 112,312

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

Asian countries where mask-wearing was common reported sharply lower rates of transmission. As of March 17, when U.S. officials were still weighing in strongly against masks, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan had fewer than a thousand cases of Covid-19 altogether. The WHO changed its stance after commissioning a meta-analysis of 172 observational studies across sixteen countries of the effectiveness of social distancing and face masks, finding they made a significant difference. An enlightening natural experiment occurred in Kansas, when the governor issued an executive order in July to wear masks in public but allowed counties to opt out.

fewer than a thousand: Shan Soe-Lin and Robert Hecht, “Guidance against wearing masks for the coronavirus is wrong—you should cover your face,” Boston Globe, March 19, 2020. 172 observational studies: Derek K. Chu, et al., “Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” The Lancet, June 1, 2020. mask-wearing counties: Miriam E. Van Dyke, et al. “Trends in County-Level COVID-19 Incidence in Counties With and Without a Mask Mandate—Kansas, June 1-August 23, 2020.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Nov. 27, 2020. Wu Lien-teh: “From the Black Death to Covid-19: The evolution of medical masks as disease control,” Agence France-Presse, May 18, 2020.


pages: 444 words: 117,770

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, ASML, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, ChatGPT, choice architecture, circular economy, classic study, clean tech, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, drone strike, drop ship, dual-use technology, Easter island, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, energy transition, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, facts on the ground, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, global pandemic, GPT-3, GPT-4, hallucination problem, hive mind, hype cycle, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lab leak, large language model, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, license plate recognition, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, Mustafa Suleyman, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Nikolai Kondratiev, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, plutocrats, precautionary principle, profit motive, prompt engineering, QAnon, quantum entanglement, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, satellite internet, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, SpaceX Starlink, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steven Levy, strong AI, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, techlash, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, TSMC, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, warehouse robotics, William MacAskill, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, zero day

Yet over the last decade a growing consensus suggests these technologies did something else as well: creating the conditions to feed and amplify this underlying political polarization and institutional fragility. It’s hardly news that social media platforms can trigger gut emotional responses, the jolts of adrenaline so effectively delivered by perceived threats. Social media thrives on heightened emotions and, quite often, outrage. A meta-analysis published in the journal Nature reviewed the results of nearly five hundred studies, concluding there is a clear correlation between growing use of digital media and rising distrust in politics, populist movements, hate, and polarization. Correlation may not be causation, but this systematic review throws up “clear evidence of serious threats to democracy” coming from new technologies.

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT It would take a brave The demise of the nation-state is hardly a novel idea; see, for example, Rana Dasgupta, “The Demise of the Nation State,” Guardian, April 5, 2018, www.theguardian.com/​news/​2018/​apr/​05/​demise-of-the-nation-state-rana-dasgupta. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT A meta-analysis published Philipp Lorenz-Spreen et al., “A Systematic Review of Worldwide Causal and Correlational Evidence on Digital Media and Democracy,” Nature Human Behaviour, Nov. 7, 2022, www.nature.com/​articles/​s41562-022-01460-1. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT As the historian of technology Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-Out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), 6.


pages: 442 words: 112,155

The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure by Yascha Mounk

23andMe, affirmative action, basic income, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, Donald Trump, failed state, global pandemic, illegal immigration, income inequality, language acquisition, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, transatlantic slave trade, universal basic income, unpaid internship, World Values Survey

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT But among whites who had exclusively: Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 274. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Allport formulated four broad conditions: As Thomas F. Pettigrew, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, wrote in an influential meta-analysis of hundreds of studies in 1998, Allport’s conditions “continue to receive support across a great variety of situations, groups, and societies.” Pettigrew, “Intergroup Contact Theory,” 68. The summary of the conditions on intergroup contact in the following paragraphs is based on the formulation by Pettigrew.

On the Netherlands, see Iris Andriessen, Eline Nievers, and Jaco Dagevos, “Ethnic Discrimination in the Dutch Labor Market: Its Relationship with Job Characteristics and Multiple Group Membership,” Work and Occupations 39, no. 3 (August 2012): 237–69, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0730888412444783. On the United States, see Lincoln Quillian, Devah Pager, Ole Hexel, and Arnfinn H. Midtbøen, “Meta-Analysis of Field Experiments Shows No Change in Racial Discrimination in Hiring over Time,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 41 (September 2017): 10870–875, http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706255114. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT account is nevertheless rejected: See Coulter, Adios America; Zemmour, Le Suicide Francais; and the books of Ko Bunyu.


pages: 179 words: 43,441

The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, circular economy, clean water, collaborative consumption, commoditize, conceptual framework, continuous integration, CRISPR, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, future of work, global value chain, Google Glasses, hype cycle, income inequality, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, life extension, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, Narrative Science, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear taboo, OpenAI, personalized medicine, precariat, precision agriculture, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, reshoring, RFID, rising living standards, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social contagion, software as a service, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y Combinator, Zipcar

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-9313474.html 61 Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever & the OpenAI team, “Introducing OpenAI”, 11 December 2015 https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/ 62 Steven Levy, “How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking Over”, 11 December 2015 https://medium.com/backchannel/how-elon-musk-and-y-combinator-plan-to-stop-computers-from-taking-over-17e0e27dd02a#.qjj55npcj 63 Sara Konrath, Edward O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing. “Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis.” Personality and Social Psychology Review (2010). 64 Quoted in: Simon Kuper, “Log out, switch off, join in”, FT Magazine, 2 October 2015. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fc76fce2-67b3-11e5-97d0-1456a776a4f5.html 65 Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Penguin, 2015. 66 Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember, Atlantic Books, 2010. 67 Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, Simon and Schuster, 2014. 68 Quoted in: Elizabeth Segran, “The Ethical Quandaries You Should Think About the Next Time You Look at Your Phone”, Fast Company, 5 October 2015.


pages: 405 words: 130,840

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt

Abraham Maslow, classic study, coherent worldview, crack epidemic, delayed gratification, do well by doing good, feminist movement, hedonic treadmill, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, invisible hand, job satisfaction, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Paradox of Choice, Peter Singer: altruism, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, placebo effect, prisoner's dilemma, Ralph Waldo Emerson, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), social intelligence, stem cell, tacit knowledge, telemarketer, the scientific method, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, zero-sum game

., Hollon, S. D., Amsterdam, J. D., Shelton, R. C., Young, P R., Sa-lomon, R. M., et al. (2005). Cognitive therapy vs medications in the treatment of moderate to severe depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62, 409-^4 16. DeWolff, M., 8c van Ijzendoorn, M. (1997). Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysis on parental antecedents of infant attachment. Child Development, 68, 571-591. I )harmakirti. (2002). Mahayana tantra. New Delhi, India: Penguin. Diener, E., 8c Diener, C. (1996). Most people are happy. Psychological Science, 7, 181-185. Diener, E., 8c Oishi, S. ( 2 0 0 0 ) . Money and happiness: Income and subjective well-being across nations.

Physical attractiveness and subjective w e l l - b e i n g .Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6 9 , 120—129. I >ijksterhuis, A., 8c van Rnippenberg, A. (1998). The relation between perception and behavior, or how to win a game of Trivial Pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7 4 , 8 6 5 — 8 7 7 . I )obson, K. S. (1989). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of cognitive therapy for de-p r e s s i o n . Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 5 7 , 4 1 4 — 4 1 9 . Doniger, W., 8c Smith, B. (Eds. 8c Trans.). (1991). The ,laws of Manu. London: Penguin. D o n n e , J. ( 1 9 7 5 / 1 6 2 3 ) . Devotions upon emergent occasions: A critical edition with introduction and commentary.


pages: 405 words: 121,531

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini

Albert Einstein, attribution theory, bank run, behavioural economics, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, desegregation, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental subject, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, Milgram experiment, Norman Macrae, Ralph Waldo Emerson, telemarketer, The Wisdom of Crowds

Politics and basking-in-reflected-glory. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24, 205–214. Bollen, K. A., & Phillips, D. P (1982). Imitative suicides: A national study of the effects of television news stories. American Sociological Review, 47, 802–809. Bond, M. H., & Smith, P. B. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 111–137. Bornstein, R. F., Leone, D. R., & Galley, D. J. (1987). The generalizability of subliminal mere exposure effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1070–1079. Brehm, J. W. (1966).

Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Stangor, C., Sechrist, G. B., & Jost, J. T. (2001). Changing racial beliefs by providing consensus information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 486–496. Stanne, M. B., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Does competition enhance or inhibit motor performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 133–154. Stelfox, H. T., Chua, G., O’Rourke, K., & Detsky, A. S. (1998). Conflict of interest in the debate over calcium-channel antagonists. New England Journal of Medicine, 333, 101–106. Stephan, W. G. (1978). School desegregation: An evaluation of predictions made in Brown vs.


pages: 442 words: 127,300

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

A. Roger Ekirch, active measures, autism spectrum disorder, Boeing 747, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clockwatching, Dmitri Mendeleev, Donald Trump, Exxon Valdez, impulse control, lifelogging, longitudinal study, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Pepsi Challenge, placebo effect, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, systems thinking, the scientific method, time dilation

Dijk, “Randomised clinical trial of the effects of prolonged release melatonin, temazepam and zolpidem on slow-wave activity during sleep in healthy people,” Journal of Psychopharmacology 29, no. 7 (2015): 764–76. II. T. B. Huedo-Medina, I. Kirsch, J. Middlemass, et al., “Effectiveness of non-benzodiazepine hypnotics in treatment of adult insomnia: meta-analysis of data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration,” BMJ 345 (2012): e8343. III. A related concern is that of sleeping pill use in pregnant women. A recent scientific review of Ambien from a team of leading world experts stated: “[the] use of zolpidem [Ambien] should be avoided during pregnancy.

Kline, “Hypnotics’ association with mortality or cancer: a matched cohort study,” BMJ Open 2, no. 1 (2012): e000850. VI. Source: Dr. Daniel F. Kripke, “The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills: Mortality and Cancer Risks, Which Pills to Avoid & Better Alternatives,” March 2013, accessed at http://www.darksideofsleepingpills.com. VII. M. T. Smith, M. L. Perlis, A. Park, et al., “Comparative meta-analysis of pharmacotherapy and behavior therapy for persistent insomnia,” American Journal of Psychiatry 159, no. 1 (2002): 5–11. VIII. Such committees will also assign a weighted grade to their clinical recommendation, from mild to moderate to strong. This grade helps guide and inform GPs across the nation regarding how judiciously they should apply the ruling.


pages: 561 words: 120,899

The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant From Two Centuries of Controversy by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Abraham Wald, Alan Greenspan, Bayesian statistics, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, British Empire, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edmond Halley, Fellow of the Royal Society, full text search, government statistician, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, industrial research laboratory, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, linear programming, longitudinal study, machine readable, machine translation, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, p-value, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, prediction markets, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, speech recognition, statistical model, stochastic process, Suez canal 1869, Teledyne, the long tail, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, uranium enrichment, We are all Keynesians now, Yom Kippur War

As part of the government’s post-Sputnik push to teach students at every level about probability, Mosteller wrote two textbooks about frequentism and Bayes’ rule for high school students. In 1961 he taught probability and statistics on NBC’s early-morning Continental Classroom series; his lectures were viewed by more than a million people and taken for credit by 75,000. In medical research Mosteller pioneered meta-analysis and strongly advocated randomized clinical trials, fair tests of medical treatments, and data-based medicine. He was one of the first to conduct large-scale studies of placebo effects, evaluations of many medical centers, collaborations between physicians and statisticians, and the use of large, mainframe computers.

See also Markov chains Monte Carlo simulation McNamara, Robert, 194 means, 130–32 medical devices, 228–29 medicine: cancer, x, 108–9, 110–14, 215–16, 227–28, 235, 255–57 diagnosis in, 135, 226–29, 255–57 heart attacks, x, 114–16 strokes, 226–27, 244 treatment in, 116, 235 X-rays, 53 Mercer, Robert L., 237–38, 245–47 Meshenberg, M. P., 101 meta-analysis, 215–16 metric system, 29 Metropolis, Nicholas, 222–23, 224 Michie, Donald, 81, 82 Microsoft, 242–43 military: asteroids and, 209 in Cold War, generally, 164–65, 173–75, 215 equal probabilities and, 38, 73 of France, 29, 38–40 image analysis and, 240, 241 inverse probability and, 38 mathematics and, 97 nuclear weapons and, 119–28, 182–95 robotics and, 240 of Russia, 72–73 satellites and, 209 statistics and, 97 submarines and, 194–203, 206–8 translation and, 247 weapons systems and, 241.


pages: 510 words: 120,048

Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier

3D printing, 4chan, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, augmented reality, automated trading system, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, book scanning, book value, Burning Man, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, cloud computing, commoditize, company town, computer age, Computer Lib, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, David Graeber, delayed gratification, digital capitalism, digital Maoism, digital rights, Douglas Engelbart, en.wikipedia.org, Everything should be made as simple as possible, facts on the ground, Filter Bubble, financial deregulation, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global village, Haight Ashbury, hive mind, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, life extension, Long Term Capital Management, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, obamacare, off-the-grid, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, pre–internet, Project Xanadu, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart meter, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, Ted Nelson, The Market for Lemons, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

To what degree must replication require the gathering of different, but similar big data, and not just the reuse of the same data with different algorithms? • What is publication? Is it just a description of the code used? The code itself? The code in some standardized form or framework that makes it reusable and tweakable? • Must analysis be performed in a way that anticipates standard practices of meta-analysis? • What documentation of the chain of custody of data must be standardized? • Must there be new practices established, analogous to double-blind tests or placebos, that help prevent big data scientists from fooling themselves? Should there be multiple groups developing code to analyze big data that remain completely insulated from each other in order to arrive at independent results?

., 296, 298 lawyers, 98–99, 100, 136, 184, 318–19 leadership, 341–51 legacy prices, 272–75, 288 legal issues, 49, 63, 74–82, 98–99, 100, 104–5, 108, 136, 184, 204, 206, 318–19 Lehman Brothers, 188 lemonade stands, 79–82 “lemons,” 118–19 Lennon, John, 211, 213 levees, economic, 43–45, 46, 47, 48, 49–50, 52, 92, 94, 96, 98, 108, 171, 176n, 224–25, 239–43, 253–54, 263, 345 leveraged mortgages, 49–50, 61, 227, 245, 289n, 296 liberal arts, 97 liberalism, 135–36, 148, 152, 202, 204, 208, 235, 236, 251, 253, 256, 265, 293, 350 libertarianism, 14, 34, 80, 202, 208, 210, 262, 321 liberty, 13–15, 32–33, 90–92, 277–78, 336 licensing agreements, 79–82 “Lifestreams” (Gelernter), 313 Lights in the Tunnel, The (Ford), 56n Linux, 206, 253, 291, 344 litigation, 98–99, 100, 104–5, 108, 184 loans, 32–33, 42, 43, 74, 151–52, 306 local advantages, 64, 94–95, 143–44, 153–56, 173, 203, 280 Local/Global Flip, 153–56, 173, 280 locked-in software, 172–73, 182, 273–74 logical copies, 223 Long-Term Capital Management, 49, 74–75 looms, 22, 23n, 24 loopholes, tax, 77 lotteries, 338–39 lucid dreaming, 162 Luddites, 135, 136 lyres, 22, 23n, 24 machines, 19–20, 86, 92, 123, 129–30, 158, 261, 309–11, 328 see also computers “Machine Stops, The” (Forster), 129–30, 261, 328 machine translations, 19–20 machine vision, 309–11 McMillen, Keith, 117 magic, 110, 115, 151, 178, 216, 338 Malthus, Thomas, 132, 134 Malthusian humor, 125, 127, 132–33 management, 49 manufacturing sector, 49, 85–89, 99, 123, 154, 343 market economies, see economies, market marketing, 211–13, 266–67, 306, 346 “Markets for Lemons” problem, 118–19 Markoff, John, 213 marriage, 167–68, 274–75, 286 Marxism, 15, 22, 37–38, 48, 136–37, 262 as humor, 126 mash-ups, 191, 221, 224–26, 259 Maslow, Abraham, 260, 315 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 75, 93, 94, 96–97, 157–58, 184 mass media, 7, 66, 86, 109, 120, 135, 136, 185–86, 191, 216, 267 material extinction, 125 materialism, 125n, 195 mathematics, 11, 20, 40–41, 70, 71–72, 75–78, 116, 148, 155, 161, 189n, 273n see also statistics Matrix, The, 130, 137, 155 Maxwell, James Clerk, 55 Maxwell’s Demon, 55–56 mechanicals, 49, 51n Mechanical Turk, 177–78, 185, 187, 349 Medicaid, 99 medicine, 11–13, 17, 18, 54, 66–67, 97–106, 131, 132–33, 134, 150, 157–58, 325, 346, 363, 366–67 Meetings with Remarkable Men (Gurdjieff), 215 mega-dossiers, 60 memes, 124 Memex, 221n memories, 131, 312–13, 314 meta-analysis, 112 metaphysics, 12, 127, 139, 193–95 Metcalf’s Law, 169n, 350 Mexico City, 159–62 microfilm, 221n microorganisms, 162 micropayments, 20, 226, 274–75, 286–87, 317, 337–38, 365 Microsoft, 19, 89, 265 Middle Ages, 190 middle class, 2, 3, 9, 11, 16–17, 37–38, 40, 42–45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 60, 74, 79, 91, 92, 95, 98, 171, 205, 208, 210, 224–25, 239–43, 246, 253–54, 259, 262, 263, 280, 291–94, 331, 341n, 344, 345, 347, 354 milling machines, 86 mind reading, 111 Minority Report, 130, 310 Minsky, Marvin, 94, 157–58, 217, 326, 330–31 mission statements, 154–55 Mixed (Augmented) Reality, 312–13, 314, 315 mobile phones, 34n, 39, 85, 87, 162, 172, 182n, 192, 229, 269n, 273, 314, 315, 331 models, economic, 40–41, 148–52, 153, 155–56 modernity, 123–40, 193–94, 255 molds, 86 monetization, 172, 176n, 185, 186, 207, 210, 241–43, 255–56, 258, 260–61, 263, 298, 331, 338, 344–45 money, 3, 21, 29–35, 86, 108, 124, 148, 152, 154, 155, 158, 172, 185, 241–43, 278–79, 284–85, 289, 364 monocultures, 94 monopolies, 60, 65–66, 169–74, 181–82, 187–88, 190, 202, 326, 350 Moondust, 362n Moore’s Law, 9–18, 20, 153, 274–75, 288 morality, 29–34, 35, 42, 50–52, 54, 71–74, 188, 194–95, 252–64, 335–36 Morlocks, 137 morning-after pill, 104 morphing, 162 mortality, 193, 218, 253, 263–64, 325–31, 367 mortgages, 33, 46, 49–52, 61, 78, 95–96, 99, 224, 227, 239, 245, 255, 274n, 289n, 296, 300 motivation, 7–18, 85–86, 97–98, 216 motivational speakers, 216 movies, 111–12, 130, 137, 165, 192, 193, 204, 206, 256, 261–62, 277–78, 310 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 23n MRI, 111n music industry, 11, 18, 22, 23–24, 42, 47–51, 54, 61, 66, 74, 78, 86, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95–96, 97, 129, 132, 134–35, 154, 157, 159–62, 186–87, 192, 206–7, 224, 227, 239, 253, 266–67, 281, 318, 347, 353, 354, 355, 357 Myspace, 180 Nancarrow, Conlon, 159–62 Nancarrow, Yoko, 161 nanopayments, 20, 226, 274–75, 286–87, 317, 337–38, 365 nanorobots, 11, 12, 17 nanotechnology, 11, 12, 17, 87, 162 Napster, 92 narcissism, 153–56, 188, 201 narratives, 165–66, 199 National Security Agency (NSA), 199–200 natural medicine, 131 Nelson, Ted, 128, 221, 228, 245, 349–50 Nelsonian systems, 221–30, 335 Nelson’s humor, 128 Netflix, 192, 223 “net neutrality,” 172 networked cameras, 309–11, 319 networks, see digital networks neutrinos, 110n New Age, 211–17 Newmark, Craig, 177n New Mexico, 159, 203 newspapers, 109, 135, 177n, 225, 284, 285n New York, N.Y., 75, 91, 266–67 New York Times, 109 Nobel Prize, 40, 118, 143n nodes, network, 156, 227, 230, 241–43, 350 “no free lunch” principle, 55–56, 59–60 nondeterministic music, 23n nonlinear solutions, 149–50 nonprofit share sites, 59n, 94–95 nostalgia, 129–32 NRO, 199–200 nuclear power, 133 nuclear weapons, 127, 296 nursing, 97–100, 123, 296n nursing homes, 97–100, 269 Obama, Barack, 79, 100 “Obamacare,” 100n obsolescence, 89, 95 oil resources, 43, 133 online stores, 171 Ono, Yoko, 212 ontologies, 124n, 196 open-source applications, 206, 207, 272, 310–11 optical illusions, 121 optimism, 32–35, 45, 130, 138–40, 218, 230n, 295 optimization, 144–47, 148, 153, 154–55, 167, 202, 203 Oracle, 265 Orbitz, 63, 64, 65 organ donors, 190, 191 ouroboros, 154 outcomes, economic, 40–41, 144–45 outsourcing, 177–78, 185 Owens, Buck, 256 packet switching, 228–29 Palmer, Amanda, 186–87 Pandora, 192 panopticons, 308 papacy, 190 paper money, 34n parallel computers, 147–48, 149, 151 paranoia, 309 Parrish, Maxfield, 214 particle interactions, 196 party machines, 202 Pascal, Blaise, 132, 139 Pascal’s Wager, 139 passwords, 307, 309 “past-oriented money,” 29–31, 35, 284–85 patterns, information, 178, 183, 184, 188–89 Paul, Ron, 33n Pauli exclusion principle, 181, 202 PayPal, 60, 93, 326 peasants, 565 pensions, 95, 99 Perestroika (Kushner), 165 “perfect investments,” 59–67, 77–78 performances, musical, 47–48, 51, 186–87, 253 perpetual motion, 55 Persian Gulf, 86 personal computers (PCs), 158, 182n, 214, 223, 229 personal information systems, 110, 312–16, 317 Pfizer, 265 pharmaceuticals industry, 66–67, 100–106, 123, 136, 203 philanthropy, 117 photography, 53, 89n, 92, 94, 309–11, 318, 319, 321 photo-sharing services, 53 physical trades, 292 physicians, 66–67 physics, 88, 153n, 167n Picasso, Pablo, 108 Pinterest, 180–81, 183 Pirate Party, 49, 199, 206, 226, 253, 284, 318 placebos, 112 placement fees, 184 player pianos, 160–61 plutocracy, 48, 291–94, 355 police, 246, 310, 311, 319–21, 335 politics, 13–18, 21, 22–25, 47–48, 85, 122, 124–26, 128, 134–37, 149–51, 155, 167, 199–234, 295–96, 342 see also conservatism; liberalism; libertarianism Ponzi schemes, 48 Popper, Karl, 189n popular culture, 111–12, 130, 137–38, 139, 159 “populating the stack,” 273 population, 17, 34n, 86, 97–100, 123, 125, 132, 133, 269, 296n, 325–26, 346 poverty, 37–38, 42, 44, 53–54, 93–94, 137, 148, 167, 190, 194, 253, 256, 263, 290, 291–92 power, personal, 13–15, 53, 60, 62–63, 86, 114, 116, 120, 122, 158, 166, 172–73, 175, 190, 199, 204, 207, 208, 278–79, 290, 291, 302–3, 308–9, 314, 319, 326, 344, 360 Presley, Elvis, 211 Priceline, 65 pricing strategies, 1–2, 43, 60–66, 72–74, 145, 147–48, 158, 169–74, 226, 261, 272–75, 289, 317–24, 331, 337–38 printers, 90, 99, 154, 162, 212, 269, 310–11, 316, 331, 347, 348, 349 privacy, 1–2, 11, 13–15, 25, 50–51, 64, 99, 108–9, 114–15, 120–21, 152, 177n, 199–200, 201, 204, 206–7, 234–35, 246, 272, 291, 305, 309–13, 314, 315–16, 317, 319–24 privacy rights, 13–15, 25, 204, 305, 312–13, 314, 315–16, 321–22 product design and development, 85–89, 117–20, 128, 136–37, 145, 154, 236 productivity, 7, 56–57, 134–35 profit margins, 59n, 71–72, 76–78, 94–95, 116, 177n, 178, 179, 207, 258, 274–75, 321–22 progress, 9–18, 20, 21, 37, 43, 48, 57, 88, 98, 123, 124–40, 130–37, 256–57, 267, 325–31, 341–42 promotions, 62 property values, 52 proprietary hardware, 172 provenance, 245–46, 247, 338 pseudo-asceticism, 211–12 public libraries, 293 public roads, 79–80 publishers, 62n, 92, 182, 277–78, 281, 347, 352–60 punishing vs. rewarding network effects, 169–74, 182, 183 quants, 75–76 quantum field theory, 167n, 195 QuNeo, 117, 118, 119 Rabois, Keith, 185 “race to the bottom,” 178 radiant risk, 61–63, 118–19, 120, 156, 183–84 Ragnarok, 30 railroads, 43, 172 Rand, Ayn, 167, 204 randomness, 143 rationality, 144 Reagan, Ronald, 149 real estate, 33, 46, 49–52, 61, 78, 95–96, 99, 193, 224, 227, 239, 245, 255, 274n, 289n, 296, 298, 300, 301 reality, 55–56, 59–60, 124n, 127–28, 154–56, 161, 165–68, 194–95, 203–4, 216–17, 295–303, 364–65 see also Virtual Reality (VR) reason, 195–96 recessions, economic, 31, 54, 60, 76–77, 79, 151–52, 167, 204, 311, 336–37 record labels, 347 recycling, 88, 89 Reddit, 118n, 186, 254 reductionism, 184 regulation, economic, 37–38, 44, 45–46, 49–50, 54, 56, 69–70, 77–78, 266n, 274, 299–300, 311, 321–22, 350–51 relativity theory, 167n religion, 124–25, 126, 131, 139, 190, 193–95, 211–17, 293, 300n, 326 remote computers, 11–12 rents, 144 Republican Party, 79, 202 research and development, 40–45, 85–89, 117–20, 128, 136–37, 145, 154, 215, 229–30, 236 retail sector, 69, 70–74, 95–96, 169–74, 272, 349–51, 355–56 retirement, 49, 150 revenue growth plans, 173n revenues, 149, 149, 150, 151, 173n, 225, 234–35, 242, 347–48 reversible computers, 143n revolutions, 199, 291, 331 rhythm, 159–62 Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Kiyosaki), 46 risk, 54, 55, 57, 59–63, 71–72, 85, 117, 118–19, 120, 156, 170–71, 179, 183–84, 188, 242, 277–81, 284, 337, 350 externalization of, 59n, 117, 277–81 risk aversion, 188 risk pools, 277–81, 284 risk radiation, 61–63, 118–19, 120, 156, 183–84 robo call centers, 177n robotic cars, 90–92 robotics, robots, 11, 12, 17, 23, 42, 55, 85–86, 90–92, 97–100, 111, 129, 135–36, 155, 157, 162, 260, 261, 269, 296n, 342, 359–60 Roman Empire, 24–25 root nodes, 241 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 129 Rousseau humor, 126, 129, 130–31 routers, 171–72 royalties, 47, 240, 254, 263–64, 323, 338 Rubin, Edgar, 121 rupture, 66–67 salaries, 10, 46–47, 50–54, 152, 178, 270–71, 287–88, 291–94, 338–39, 365 sampling, 71–72, 191, 221, 224–26, 259 San Francisco, University of, 190 satellites, 110 savings, 49, 72–74 scalable solutions, 47 scams, 119–21, 186, 275n, 287–88, 299–300 scanned books, 192, 193 SceneTap, 108n Schmidt, Eric, 305n, 352 Schwartz, Peter, 214 science fiction, 18, 126–27, 136, 137–38, 139, 193, 230n, 309, 356n search engines, 51, 60, 70, 81, 120, 191, 267, 289, 293 Second Life, 270, 343 Secret, The (Byrne), 216 securitization, 76–78, 99, 289n security, 14–15, 175, 239–40, 305–8, 345 self-actualization, 211–17 self-driving vehicles, 90–92, 98, 311, 343, 367 servants, 22 servers, 12n, 15, 31, 53–57, 71–72, 95–96, 143–44, 171, 180, 183, 206, 245, 358 see also Siren Servers “Sexy Sadie,” 213 Shakur, Tupac, 329 Shelley, Mary, 327 Short History of Progress, A (Wright), 132 “shrinking markets,” 66–67 shuttles, 22, 23n, 24 signal-processing algorithms, 76–78, 148 silicon chips, 10, 86–87 Silicon Valley, 12, 13, 14, 21, 34n, 56, 59, 60, 66–67, 70, 71, 75–76, 80, 93, 96–97, 100, 102, 108n, 125n, 132, 136, 154, 157, 162, 170, 179–89, 192, 193, 200, 207, 210, 211–18, 228, 230, 233, 258, 275n, 294, 299–300, 325–31, 345, 349, 352, 354–58 singularity, 22–25, 125, 215, 217, 327–28, 366, 367 Singularity University, 193, 325, 327–28 Sirenic Age, 66n, 354 Siren Servers, 53–57, 59, 61–64, 65, 66n, 69–78, 82, 91–99, 114–19, 143–48, 154–56, 166–89, 191, 200, 201, 203, 210n, 216, 235, 246–50, 258, 259, 269, 271, 272, 280, 285, 289, 293–94, 298, 301, 302–3, 307–10, 314–23, 326, 336–51, 354, 365, 366 Siri, 95 skilled labor, 99–100 Skout, 280n Skype, 95, 129 slavery, 22, 23, 33n Sleeper, 130 small businesses, 173 smartphones, 34n, 39, 162, 172, 192, 269n, 273 Smith, Adam, 121, 126 Smolin, Lee, 148n social contract, 20, 49, 247, 284, 288, 335, 336 social engineering, 112–13, 190–91 socialism, 14, 128, 254, 257, 341n social mobility, 66, 97, 292–94 social networks, 18, 51, 56, 60, 70, 81, 89, 107–9, 113, 114, 129, 167–68, 172–73, 179, 180, 190, 199, 200–201, 202, 204, 227, 241, 242–43, 259, 267, 269n, 274–75, 280n, 286, 307–8, 317, 336, 337, 343, 349, 358, 365–66 see also Facebook social safety nets, 10, 44, 54, 202, 251, 293 Social Security, 251, 345 software, 7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 68, 86, 99, 100–101, 128, 129, 147, 154, 155, 165, 172–73, 177–78, 182, 192, 234, 236, 241–42, 258, 262, 273–74, 283, 331, 347, 357 software-mediated technology, 7, 11, 14, 86, 100–101, 165, 234, 236, 258, 347 South Korea, 133 Soviet Union, 70 “space elevator pitch,” 233, 342, 361 space travel, 233, 266 Spain, 159–60 spam, 178, 275n spending levels, 287–88 spirituality, 126, 211–17, 325–31, 364 spreadsheet programs, 230 “spy data tax,” 234–35 Square, 185 Stalin, Joseph, 125n Stanford Research Institute (SRI), 215 Stanford University, 60, 75, 90, 95, 97, 101, 102, 103, 162, 325 Starr, Ringo, 256 Star Trek, 138, 139, 230n startup companies, 39, 60, 69, 93–94, 108n, 124n, 136, 179–89, 265, 274n, 279–80, 309–10, 326, 341, 343–45, 348, 352, 355 starvation, 123 Star Wars, 137 star (winner-take-all) system, 38–43, 50, 54–55, 204, 243, 256–57, 263, 329–30 statistics, 11, 20, 71–72, 75–78, 90–91, 93, 110n, 114–15, 186, 192 “stickiness,” 170, 171 stimulus, economic, 151–52 stoplights, 90 Strangelove humor, 127 student debt, 92, 95 “Study 27,” 160 “Study 36,” 160 Sumer, 29 supergoop, 85–89 supernatural phenomena, 55, 124–25, 127, 132, 192, 194–95, 300 supply chain, 70–72, 174, 187 Supreme Court, U.S., 104–5 surgery, 11–13, 17, 18, 98, 157–58, 363 surveillance, 1–2, 11, 14, 50–51, 64, 71–72, 99, 108–9, 114–15, 120–21, 152, 177n, 199–200, 201, 206–7, 234–35, 246, 272, 291, 305, 309–11, 315, 316, 317, 319–24 Surviving Progress, 132 sustainable economies, 235–37, 285–87 Sutherland, Ivan, 221 swarms, 99, 109 synthesizers, 160 synthetic biology, 162 tablets, 85, 86, 87, 88, 113, 162, 229 Tahrir Square, 95 Tamagotchis, 98 target ads, 170 taxation, 44, 45, 49, 52, 60, 74–75, 77, 82, 149, 149, 150, 151, 202, 210, 234–35, 263, 273, 289–90 taxis, 44, 91–92, 239, 240, 266–67, 269, 273, 311 Teamsters, 91 TechCrunch, 189 tech fixes, 295–96 technical schools, 96–97 technologists (“techies”), 9–10, 15–16, 45, 47–48, 66–67, 88, 122, 124, 131–32, 134, 139–40, 157–62, 165–66, 178, 193–94, 295–98, 307, 309, 325–31, 341, 342, 356n technology: author’s experience in, 47–48, 62n, 69–72, 93–94, 114, 130, 131–32, 153, 158–62, 178, 206–7, 228, 265, 266–67, 309–10, 325, 328, 343, 352–53, 362n, 364, 365n, 366 bio-, 11–13, 17, 18, 109–10, 162, 330–31 chaos and, 165–66, 273n, 331 collusion in, 65–66, 72, 169–74, 255, 350–51 complexity of, 53–54 costs of, 8, 18, 72–74, 87n, 136–37, 170–71, 176–77, 184–85 creepiness of, 305–24 cultural impact of, 8–9, 21, 23–25, 53, 130, 135–40 development and emergence of, 7–18, 21, 53–54, 60–61, 66–67, 85–86, 87, 97–98, 129–38, 157–58, 182, 188–90, 193–96, 217 digital, 2–3, 7–8, 15–16, 18, 31, 40, 43, 50–51, 132, 208 economic impact of, 1–3, 15–18, 29–30, 37, 40, 53–54, 60–66, 71–74, 79–110, 124, 134–37, 161, 162, 169–77, 181–82, 183, 184–85, 218, 254, 277–78, 298, 335–39, 341–51, 357–58 educational, 92–97 efficiency of, 90, 118, 191 employment in, 56–57, 60, 71–74, 79, 123, 135, 178 engineering for, 113–14, 123–24, 192, 194, 217, 218, 326 essential vs. worthless, 11–12 failure of, 188–89 fear of (technophobia), 129–32, 134–38 freedom as issue in, 32–33, 90–92, 277–78, 336 government influence in, 158, 199, 205–6, 234–35, 240, 246, 248–51, 307, 317, 341, 345–46, 350–51 human agency and, 8–21, 50–52, 85, 88, 91, 124–40, 144, 165–66, 175–78, 191–92, 193, 217, 253–64, 274–75, 283–85, 305–6, 328, 341–51, 358–60, 361, 362, 365–67 ideas for, 123, 124, 158, 188–89, 225, 245–46, 286–87, 299, 358–60 industrial, 49, 83, 85–89, 123, 132, 154, 343 information, 7, 32–35, 49, 66n, 71–72, 109, 110, 116, 120, 125n, 126, 135, 136, 254, 312–16, 317 investment in, 66, 181, 183, 184, 218, 277–78, 298, 348 limitations of, 157–62, 196, 222 monopolies for, 60, 65–66, 169–74, 181–82, 187–88, 190, 202, 326, 350 morality and, 50–51, 72, 73–74, 188, 194–95, 262, 335–36 motivation and, 7–18, 85–86, 97–98, 216 nano-, 11, 12, 17, 162 new vs. old, 20–21 obsolescence of, 89, 97 political impact of, 13–18, 22–25, 85, 122, 124–26, 128, 134–37, 199–234, 295–96, 342 progress in, 9–18, 20, 21, 37, 43, 48, 57, 88, 98, 123, 124–40, 130–37, 256–57, 267, 325–31, 341–42 resources for, 55–56, 157–58 rupture as concept in, 66–67 scams in, 119–21, 186, 275n, 287–88, 299–300 singularity of, 22–25, 125, 215, 217, 327–28, 366, 367 social impact of, 9–21, 124–40, 167n, 187, 280–81, 310–11 software-mediated, 7, 11, 14, 86, 100–101, 165, 234, 236, 258, 347 startup companies in, 39, 60, 69, 93–94, 108n, 124n, 136, 179–89, 265, 274n, 279–80, 309–10, 326, 341, 343–45, 348, 352, 355 utopian, 13–18, 21, 31, 37–38, 45–46, 96, 128, 130, 167, 205, 207, 265, 267, 270, 283, 290, 291, 308–9, 316 see also specific technologies technophobia, 129–32, 134–38 television, 86, 185–86, 191, 216, 267 temperature, 56, 145 Ten Commandments, 300n Terminator, The, 137 terrorism, 133, 200 Tesla, Nikola, 327 Texas, 203 text, 162, 352–60 textile industry, 22, 23n, 24, 135 theocracy, 194–95 Theocracy humor, 124–25 thermodynamics, 88, 143n Thiel, Peter, 60, 93, 326 thought experiments, 55, 139 thought schemas, 13 3D printers, 7, 85–89, 90, 99, 154, 162, 212, 269, 310–11, 316, 331, 347, 348, 349 Thrun, Sebastian, 94 Tibet, 214 Time Machine, The (Wells), 127, 137, 261, 331 topology, network, 241–43, 246 touchscreens, 86 tourism, 79 Toyota Prius, 302 tracking services, 109, 120–21, 122 trade, 29 traffic, 90–92, 314 “tragedy of the commons,” 66n Transformers, 98 translation services, 19–20, 182, 191, 195, 261, 262, 284, 338 transparency, 63–66, 74–78, 118, 176, 190–91, 205–6, 278, 291, 306–9, 316, 336 transportation, 79–80, 87, 90–92, 123, 258 travel agents, 64 Travelocity, 65 travel sites, 63, 64, 65, 181, 279–80 tree-shaped networks, 241–42, 243, 246 tribal dramas, 126 trickle-down effect, 148–49, 204 triumphalism, 128, 157–62 tropes (humors), 124–40, 157, 170, 230 trust, 32–34, 35, 42, 51–52 Turing, Alan, 127–28, 134 Turing’s humor, 127–28, 191–94 Turing Test, 330 Twitter, 128, 173n, 180, 182, 188, 199, 200n, 201, 204, 245, 258, 259, 349, 365n 2001: A Space Odyssey, 137 two-way links, 1–2, 227, 245, 289 underemployment, 257–58 unemployment, 7–8, 22, 79, 85–106, 117, 151–52, 234, 257–58, 321–22, 331, 343 “unintentional manipulation,” 144 United States, 25, 45, 54, 79–80, 86, 138, 199–204 universities, 92–97 upper class, 45, 48 used car market, 118–19 user interface, 362–63, 364 utopianism, 13–18, 21, 30, 31, 37–38, 45–46, 96, 128, 130, 167, 205, 207, 265, 267, 270, 283, 290, 291, 308–9, 316 value, economic, 21, 33–35, 52, 61, 64–67, 73n, 108, 283–90, 299–300, 321–22, 364 value, information, 1–3, 15–16, 20, 210, 235–43, 257–58, 259, 261–63, 271–75, 321–24, 358–60 Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles (VALS), 215 variables, 149–50 vendors, 71–74 venture capital, 66, 181, 218, 277–78, 298, 348 videos, 60, 100, 162, 185–86, 204, 223, 225, 226, 239, 240, 242, 245, 277, 287, 329, 335–36, 349, 354, 356 Vietnam War, 353n vinyl records, 89 viral videos, 185–86 Virtual Reality (VR), 12, 47–48, 127, 129, 132, 158, 162, 214, 283–85, 312–13, 314, 315, 325, 343, 356, 362n viruses, 132–33 visibility, 184, 185–86, 234, 355 visual cognition, 111–12 VitaBop, 100–106, 284n vitamins, 100–106 Voice, The, 185–86 “voodoo economics,” 149 voting, 122, 202–4, 249 Wachowski, Lana, 165 Wall Street, 49, 70, 76–77, 181, 184, 234, 317, 331, 350 Wal-Mart, 69, 70–74, 89, 174, 187, 201 Warhol, Andy, 108 War of the Worlds, The (Wells), 137 water supplies, 17, 18 Watts, Alan, 211–12 Wave, 189 wealth: aggregate or concentration of, 9, 42–43, 53, 60, 61, 74–75, 96, 97, 108, 115, 148, 157–58, 166, 175, 201, 202, 208, 234, 278–79, 298, 305, 335, 355, 360 creation of, 32, 33–34, 46–47, 50–51, 57, 62–63, 79, 92, 96, 120, 148–49, 210, 241–43, 270–75, 291–94, 338–39, 349 inequalities and redistribution of, 20, 37–45, 65–66, 92, 97, 144, 254, 256–57, 274–75, 286–87, 290–94, 298, 299–300 see also income levels weather forecasting, 110, 120, 150 weaving, 22, 23n, 24 webcams, 99, 245 websites, 80, 170, 200, 201, 343 Wells, H.


pages: 476 words: 121,460

The Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya

Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, Alvin Roth, Andrew Wiles, Benoit Mandelbrot, business cycle, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clockwork universe, cloud computing, Conway's Game of Life, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, DeepMind, deferred acceptance, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Georg Cantor, Greta Thunberg, Gödel, Escher, Bach, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jean Tirole, John Conway, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, linear programming, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, Norman Macrae, P = NP, Paul Samuelson, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, second-price auction, side project, Silicon Valley, spectrum auction, Steven Levy, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological singularity, Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, zero-sum game

See, for example, Harry Henderson, 2007, Mathematics: Powerful Patterns into Nature and Society, Chelsea House, New York, p. 30. 8. Despite decades of research, whether chess ability is correlated with general intelligence or mathematical ability is still a fiercely contested question. A recent meta-analysis of past studies (Alexander P. Burgoyne et al., ‘The Relationship between Cognitive Ability and Chess Skill: A Comprehensive Meta-analysis’, Intelligence, 59 (2016), pp. 72–83) suggests some correlation exists and is strongest for numerical ability, and among younger players rather than highly skilled older masters of the game. One of the earliest studies in the area found no differences in intelligence between eight grandmasters and non-chess players (I.


pages: 309 words: 121,279

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

air freight, airport security, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, barriers to entry, big-box store, bitcoin, British Empire, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, climate anxiety, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, global pandemic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Snow's cholera map, Kintsugi, lockdown, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, refrigerator car, sharing economy, social distancing, space junk, Suez canal 1869, Tim Cook: Apple

Accessed via wellcomecollection.org. 16 One upside of the miasma theory is that Victorians were obsessed with ventilation, which may have helped fight the spread of airborne viruses – and gained a renewed appreciation during the Covid-19 pandemic. 17 Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, p. 48. 18 Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (New York: The New Press), 2005, p. 54. 19 Stefano Capuzzi and Giulio Timelli, ‘Preparation and Melting of Scrap in Aluminium Recycling: A Review’, Metals (2018): DOI: 10.3390/met8040249 20 Benefits of Recycling, Stanford University, https://lbre.stanford.edu/pssistanford-recycling/frequently-asked-questions/frequently-asked-questions-benefits-recycling 21 US Environmental Protection Agency, ‘Environmental factoids’, 30/03/2016: https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/smm/wastewise/web/html/factoid.html 22 Kirsten Linninkoper, ‘Multi-billion growth ahead for international scrap recycling market’, Recycling International, 18/02/2019: https://recyclinginternational.com/research/multi-billion-growth-ahead-for-international-scrap-recycling-market/18639/ 23 According to a meta-analysis conducted by GAIA; previous studies have estimated smaller differences in job creation, but still put recycling at least 10 times higher (see Samantha MacBride, Recycling Reconsidered (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 2013). J. Ribeiro-Broomhead, and N. Tangri, ‘Zero Waste and Economic Recovery: The Job Creation Potential of Zero Waste Solutions’, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, 2021: DOI: 10.46556/GFWE6885 24 Bureau of International Recycling, ‘World Steel Recycling in Figures: 2015–2019’, 2020, p. 2. 25 Zachary Skidmore, ‘The fragmentation of the copper supply chain’, Mine (2022): https://mine.nridigital.com/mine_may22/fragmentation_copper_supply_chain 26 Susan Freinkel, Plastic: A Toxic Love Story (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 2011, p. 60. 27 Ibid, p. 25 28 Rogers, Gone Tomorrow, p. 114. 29 In truth, bottle manufacturers had attempted to patent ways to stop reuse for decades.

., ‘Progress in sustainable technologies of leather wastes valorization as solutions for the circular economy’, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 313 (2021): DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127902 45 Kazi Madina Maraz, ‘Benefits and problems of chrome tanning in leather processing: Approach a greener technology in leather industry’, Materials Engineering Research 3(1), 2001, pp. 156–64: DOI: 10.25082/MER.2021.01.004 46 Yujiao Deng et al., ‘The Effect of Hexavalent Chromium on the Incidence and Mortality of Human Cancers: A Meta-Analysis Based on Published Epidemiological Cohort Studies’, Frontiers in Oncology, 04/02/2019: DOI: 10.3389/fonc.2019.00024 47 Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta, ‘As Kanpur Tanneries Face Extinction, Adityanath’s (Mis)Rule Dominates Poll Talk’, The Wire, 19/02/2022: https://thewire.in/labour/as-kanpur-tanneries-face-extinction-adityanaths-misrule-dominates-poll-talk 48 Malavika Vyawahare, ‘This Kanpur village drinks neon green water & lives near a toxic waste dump as big as CP’, The Print, 15/03/2019: https://theprint.in/india/this-kanpur-village-drinks-neon-green-water-lives-near-a-toxic-waste-dump-as-big-as-cp/205769/ 49 Dipak Paul, ‘Research on heavy metal pollution of river Ganga: A review’, Annals of Agrarian Science 15(2), 2017, pp. 278–86: DOI: 10.1016/j.aasci.2017.04.001 50 Iqbal Ahmad and Sadhana Chaurasia, ‘Study on Heavy Metal Pollution in Ganga River at Kanpur (UP)’, Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, 6 (2019), pp. 391–8. 51 Tanuj Shukla, Indra Sen et al., ‘A Time-Series Record during Covid-19 Lockdown Shows the High Resilience of Dissolved Heavy Metals in the Ganga River’, Environmental Science & Technology Letters 8(4), 2021, pp. 301–6: DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00982 52 The other ‘Big Pollution Diseases’ were Minamata disease (methylmercury poisoning), Niigata Minamata disease (also methylmercury poisoning) and Yokkaichi asthma (sulphur dioxide poisoning).


pages: 1,294 words: 210,361

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Apollo 11, Barry Marshall: ulcers, belling the cat, conceptual framework, discovery of penicillin, experimental subject, government statistician, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Helicobacter pylori, iterative process, Joan Didion, life extension, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, medical residency, meta-analysis, mouse model, New Journalism, phenotype, Plato's cave, randomized controlled trial, Recombinant DNA, Robert Mercer, scientific mainstream, Silicon Valley, social contagion, social web, statistical model, stem cell, women in the workforce, Year of Magical Thinking, éminence grise

Each member of the committee brought insight to a unique dimension of the puzzle. The precise and meticulous Cochran devised a new mathematical insight to judge the trials. Rather than privilege any particular study, he reasoned, perhaps one could use a method to estimate the relative risk as a composite number through all trials in the aggregate. (This method, termed meta-analysis, would deeply influence academic epidemiology in the future.) The organic chemist in Fieser was similarly roused: his discussion of chemicals in smoke remains one of the most authoritative texts on the subject. Evidence was culled from animal experiments, from autopsy series, from thirty-six clinical studies, and, crucially, from seven independent prospective trials.

., 191 “Ella” (VAMP protocol survivor), 148–50 Ellie: A Child’s Fight Against Leukemia (Tucker), 21 embryonic stem cells, 458 Enders, John, 22, 94 Endicott, Kenneth, 162, 171, 177, 260 environmentalists, 456 enzymes, viral, 352–53, 354 epidemiology, 238, 243, 245 case-control studies in, 245, 246–47, 276, 280 causality and, 253–56, 276, 290, 350 Framingham longitudinal data and, 444–45 meta-analysis and, 261 molecular, 457 preventive medicine and, 290, 457 recall bias in, 446 tobacco-cancer link and, 241–42, 247, 248–49, 250, 261 Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), 175 Erikson, Ray, 358, 361, 368, 375 Erk protein, 387, 454 Erwin, Bob, 429 esophageal cancer, 274, 305 estrogen, 211, 213, 456 breast cancer and, 215, 221, 222–23, 456, 464 receptor in, 215, 216, 217, 464 etoposide, 206 Evans, Audrey, 123 evolution, 39, 247–48 Ewing, James, 30n extended field radiation, 159–61, 163 extirpations, 23 Faget, Max, 178 fairness doctrine, 265–66, 267 “Fall, The” (Milosz), 116 false positives, false negatives, 291–92 Farber, Emmanuel, 259, 261 Farber, Norma, 30 Farber, Sidney, 129, 162, 286, 395 as advocate for cancer research, 100, 171–72, 189 background of, 18–19 cancer research hospital project of, see Jimmy’s Clinic cancer research of, 122–23, 126–27 chemotherapy regimens devised by, 103 chemotherapy seen as universal cure by, 93, 155, 403 colostomy of, 118 death of, 189–90, 193, 461 as fund-raiser, 102 isolation of, 27, 35, 101–2 at Jimmy’s Clinic, 125–26, 153, 189–90 leukemia research of, 19–20, 21, 27, 29–30, 31, 33–36, 92, 100, 101, 114, 121, 122–23, 130, 132, 136, 158, 309, 338, 433, 439 M.

., 26 Marlboro Man, 251 Marmite, 28 Marshall, Barry, 276, 281, 282–84, 456 Martin, Steve, 358 Masi, Phil, 97–98 Massachusetts, 325 Massachusetts General Hospital, 3, 56, 223, 320, 390, 398, 403, 437, 451 mastectomies, 49, 419 of Atossa, 5, 41–42, 463 disfigurement from, 65–66, 294 prophylactic, 457–58, 464 radical, 23, 64–72, 73, 109–10, 173, 193–95, 196, 197, 198–201, 202, 218, 219, 225, 294, 463 simple (local), 67, 197, 201, 464 success rate of, 66–69 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), 273 Matter, Alex, 432–33 mauve, 81–82 Mayer, Robert, 130–31, 311, 326, 328 Mayfield, Jerry, 441, 442–43 MD Anderson Cancer Center, 147, 366, 438 measurement: of leukemia, 19 of negative claims, 167–68 of radiation, 74 in War on Cancer, 227, 231, 232–33 Medical and Chirurgical Society, 157 Medical Journal of Australia, 283 Medical Research Council (British), 131, 243–44 Medical World News, 349 medicine: synthetic chemistry and, 83–84 as technological art, 462 Mek protein, 387, 454 melanoma, 451 Memorial Sloan-Kettering, 92, 135, 138, 167n, 184, 234, 424 Mendel, Gregor, 343–44, 346, 364, 366, 369 meningiomas, 71 menopausal symptoms, 456 Mercer, Robert, 34 Merck, 21 Meselson, Matthew, 345 meta-analysis, 261 metastasis, metastases, 16, 38, 39, 55, 58, 123, 135, 136, 154, 161, 196–97, 204, 223, 391, 442, 465, 467 of breast cancer, 67, 76, 161, 217, 218, 302–3, 314, 322, 325, 329, 419, 422, 424, 463, 465 of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, 163 as inevitable, 79 of lung cancer, 208, 256, 267, 268, 307, 389–90, 403 methotrexate, 127, 132–33, 137, 138, 140, 162, 164, 219, 220, 338 Mexico, cigarette regulation in, 274 Meyer, Willy, 65, 78–79, 80, 219 mice, transgenic, 382–83, 384 microtubules, 140 Middle Ages, medical knowledge in, 49–50, 51–53 Million Women Study, 456 Milosz, Czeslaw, 116 Milstein, Cesar, 417, 419 Ministry of Health, British, 243 Ministry of Health, Mexican, 274 Minot, George, 27–28, 29 Mississippi, antitobacco lawsuit of, 272–73 mitosis, 451 mitosis, pathological, 348, 351, 355, 359, 387, 391 see also hyperplasia, pathological Mizutani, Satoshi, 353 molecular biology, “central dogma” of, 346, 352, 354, 357 molecular pumps, 442 molecules: decoy, 31, 87 structural view of, 432 as switches, 28 see also receptors Moloney, William, 143 Monod, Jacques, 20, 345, 346 mononucleosis, 175 Montagnier, Luc, 318 Moore, Charles, 64 Moore, Michael, 272–73 MOPP, 164–66, 208 Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body, The (Baillie), 53 Morgan, Thomas Hunt, 344, 346, 347–48, 364 Morison, Robert, 116 morphine, 63, 149, 225 mortality rates, of cancer, xi, 25, 105, 228–30, 293, 401 age-adjusted, 230–31, 232–33, 330 of breast cancer, 296, 297, 300–301, 401–2 dynamic equilibrium in, 330–31 mortality rates, of tuberculosis, 229 Morton, William, 56 motility, of cancer cells, 386, 387, 388 see also metastasis, metastases MRIs, 457, 464 Mukherjee, Leela, 398 Mukherjee, Siddhartha: Berne and, 467–70 and daughter’s birth, 398–99 as oncology fellow, 2–5, 168, 190, 305–6, 307–8, 337, 390, 398–99, 437–38, 467 Orman and, 152–53, 399–400 palliative care suggested by, 223–24 Reed and, 2–3, 7, 17–18, 127, 168–69, 190, 337, 338–39, 400, 448–49 Sorenson and, 153–55 tobacco-cancer link in patients of, 274–75 Muller, Hermann Joseph, 347–48 multidose regimens, see chemotherapy, high-dose multidrug regimens in multiple myeloma, 309, 443–44 mummies, cancer in, 43, 45 Murayama, Hashime, 288 Murphy, Mary Lois, 92 mustard gas, see nitrogen mustard mutagens, mutagenesis, 278, 303, 347, 348, 362, 364, 406, 456 mutation, genetic, 377 in bacteria, 277–78 Cancer Genome Atlas and, 450–54 causes of, see mutagens, mutagenesis driver (active), 453 frequency of, 451–52 in fruit flies, 347 functional vs. structural view of, 455 as governing all aspects of cancer, 387–88, 462 as mechanism of carcinogenesis, 6, 39, 176, 278, 357, 362, 370, 380–83, 384–88, 390–92, 403, 406, 449–50, 462, 464–65 passenger (passive), 452–53 see also oncogenes myc (c-myc) gene, 382–83, 384, 391, 410, 412, 453–54, 458 mycobacteria, 84, 131 myelodysplasia, 306, 309, 312 myeloid cells, 16–17 Myriad Genetics, 381 Nathan, David, 140 National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO), 327 National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC), 426, 429 National Cancer Act (1971), 188, 189 National Cancer Institute (NCI), 15, 114, 130, 158, 159, 166, 177, 188, 228, 231, 318, 325, 330, 339, 374, 393, 443 chemotherapy protocols of, 132–42, 143–50, 164–66, 206–8, 219–20, 232, 310, 317 Clinical Center of, 128–29, 139, 145, 162, 165, 260 creation of, 25–26 Institutional Board of, 137 mammography project (BCDDP) of, 296–98, 302 Pap smear trial of, 289–90 preventative strategies neglected by, 233–34 Special Virus Cancer Program of, 175–76, 280–81, 356, 357 National Cancer Institute Act (1937), 25 National Health Service, British, 294 National Institutes of Health (NIH), 25n, 121, 187, 188, 202–3, 260, 319 National Library of Medicine, 261 National Program for the Conquest of Cancer, 184 National Science Foundation (NSF), 121 National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), 200–201 National Tuberculosis Association, 259 natural selection, 248 Nature, 354, 379 Nature Medicine, 435 nausea, from chemotherapy, 165, 205–6, 209, 226, 305 Nazis, 290 Neely, Matthew, 25, 173 negative statistical claims, 197–98 Nelson, Marti, 424–25, 429 “funeral procession” for, 425–26 neoplasia, 16, 42, 385 neu, 410–11, 412, 413, 420 neuroblastomas, 410, 413 New England Journal of Medicine, 35–36, 161, 229, 330, 385 Newton, Isaac, 370 New York, HIP in, 294–96, 297 New York, N.Y., AIDS in, 316, 318 New York Amsterdam News, 286 New York Times, 24, 26–27, 105, 117, 119–20, 180–81, 183, 319, 327, 455 Neyman, Jerzy, 197–98 nicotine: addictive properties of, 270–71 see also cigarettes; smoking; tobacco; tobacco industry Nisbet, Robert, 193 nitrogen mustard, 207, 220, 257 bone marrow affected by, 88, 90 DNA damaged by, 163, 406 hyperplasia as halted by, 163, 406 as mustard gas, 87–88, 89–90, 162–63 nitrosoguanidine derivatives, 278 Nixon, Richard M., 180–81, 183, 184, 187–88 Nobel Prize, 28, 87, 91, 176, 348, 363 Norris Center, 323 Norton, Larry, 327, 426 Novartis, 436, 439 Nowell, Peter, 365 NSABP-04 trial, 200–201, 203, 220 Nuland, Sherwin, 38 Ochsner, Alton, 256–57 Oedipus the King (Sophocles), 321 Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), 90, 119 Oliver Twist (Dickens), 239 oncogenes, 363, 366, 370–71, 380, 384, 402, 409–11, 412, 415, 431, 439, 443, 450, 453, 454, 462, 466 amplification of, 416 pathological hyperplasia induced by, 357–59, 372, 431 proto-, see proto-oncogenes see also specific genes oncology, oncologists, 304, 433 AIDS and, 316–17 death and, 4, 306–8, 337–38 fellowships in, 2–5, 168 origin of term, 47 overconfidence of, 223, 226, 231–32, 234, 308, 310 palliative care and, 224–26, 307 patients’ relationships with, 199, 202, 209, 306–8, 449 radiation, see radiation therapy OncoMouse, 382–83, 384 onkos, 47 etymology of, 466–67 “On Some Morbid Appearances of the Absorbent Glands and Spleen” (Hodgkin), 157 opiates, 226 Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), 434 Orman, Ben, 151–53, 155, 399–400 Osler, William, 45 osteosarcomas (bone tumors), 43 ovarian cancer, 59, 162, 346, 381, 450, 451, 457 ovaries, removal of, 214, 215 Pacific yew tree, 206 Pack, George, 70–71 Padhy, Lakshmi Charon, 410–11 Page, Irvine, 187 paleopathology, 42 palliative care, 223–26, 231, 307 drug trials for, 226 pancreas, 154, 414 pancreatic cancer, 154, 158, 450, 451, 465 Panel of Consultants, 184, 188 Panzer, Fred, 270 Papanicolaou, George, 286–90, 291, 384–85, 386, 401 Papanicolaou, Maria, 287 papillomavirus, 174, 349n, 381n Pap smears, 228, 286, 287–90, 296, 303, 331, 381, 385, 401 Paré, Ambroise, 49 Paris, University of, 51 Park, Roswell, 24, 45 Parliament cigarettes, 269 Pasteur, Louis, 57 pathology, pathologists, 11–12, 14 Hodgkin’s approach to, 156–57 Patterson, James, 183 PCP (Pneumocystis carinii), 165, 315–16 Pearson, Egon, 197–98 pectoralis major, 64–65 pectoralis minor, 64 pellagra, 110 penicillin, 21–22, 122, 129, 465–66 Penicillium, 122 Pepper, Claude, 26n peptic ulcers, 281–84 Perkin, William, 81–82, 83 pernicious anemia, 27–28, 31 Peru, 42–43 pesticides, 456–57 Peters, Vera, 159–60 Peters, William, 311–15, 319–20, 321, 325, 326, 329 Peto, Richard, 241, 249, 273–74, 462 pharmaceutical industry, 426 see also specific companies Philadelphia chromosome, 365, 430–31 Philip Morris, 251, 269–71, 273 phlegm, 48 phosphorylation, 358–59, 361, 380, 418, 431–32 Piccolo, Brian, 181 Pim, Isabella, 58 Pinkel, Donald, 123, 167–68, 170, 178 pitchblende, 74 pituitary cells, 414 placebos, in randomized trials, 131–32, 319 placenta, 135, 219 platelets, 18 Plato, 370 Pneumocystis carinii (PCP), 165, 315–16 pneumonectomy, 242 pneumonia, 45 PCP, 165, 315–16 Poet Physicians, 60 polio, 22, 229, 342, 466 national campaign against, 93–94, 175 Popper, Karl, 370 population, U.S., aging of, 230 Postmortem Examination, The (Farber), 19 Pott, Percivall, 173, 237–39, 241, 276, 447 precancer, 286, 306, 455 Auerbach’s research on, 258–59, 284, 289 prednisone, 127, 140, 143, 149 see also VAMP regimen Premarin, 213 preventive medicine, 281 epidemiology and, 290 see also cancer prevention procarbazine, 162, 164 product-liability lawsuits, 269–73, 401 progesterone, 456 “Progress Against Cancer?”


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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

They found the same N400 effect, as well as a bigger and slower LPP (late positive potential) effect, linked to emotional responding in general, indicating that partisans began to feel different things within the first half-second of reading key words. 16. Dion, Berscheid, and Walster 1972. 17. For an experiment with mock jurors, see Efran 1974; for a field study showing that attractive defendants get off more lightly, see Stewart 1980. For a meta-analysis, see Mazzella and Feingold 1994. Being attractive is an advantage for defendants for most crimes, but not for those where attractiveness helped the criminal pull off the crime, such as swindling (Sigall and Ostrove 1975). 18. Todorov et al. 2005. He discarded the few cases in which participants could identify either candidate. 19.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, early edition, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1105604108. Maynard Smith, J., and E. Szathmary. 1997. The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mazzella, R., and A. Feingold. 1994. “The Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Gender of Defendants and Victims on Judgments of Mock Jurors: A Meta-analysis.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 24:1315–44. McAdams, D. P. 2006. The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. New York: Oxford University Press. McAdams, D. P., M. Albaugh, E. Farber, J. Daniels, R. L. Logan, and B. Olson. 2008. “Family Metaphors and Moral Intuitions: How Conservatives and Liberals Narrate Their Lives.”


pages: 453 words: 130,632

Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood by Rose George

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air freight, airport security, British Empire, call centre, corporate social responsibility, Edward Snowden, global pandemic, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, index card, Jeff Bezos, meta-analysis, microbiome, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, period drama, Peter Thiel, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, Silicon Valley, Skype, social contagion, stem cell, TED Talk, time dilation

Connolly, “The ‘Blessed Turf’: Cholera and Popular Panic in Ireland, June 1832,” Irish Historical Studies 23, no. 91 (1983): 214–32.   25. John Donnelly, “Activists Wonder if Life Imitates Television in U.S. Policy on AIDS,” Boston Globe, June 18, 2001.   26. In their meta-analysis, researchers found that 55 percent of Americans and 77 percent of sub-Saharan Africans adhered properly to their treatment regime. E. J. Mills, J. B. Nachega, I. Buchanan, et al., “Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa and North America: A Meta-analysis,” JAMA 296, no. 6 (2006): 679–90.   27. Treatment Action Campaign, Fighting for Our Lives: The History of the Treatment Action Campaign 1998–2010 (Cape Town, South Africa: Treatment Action Campaign, 2010).   28. 


pages: 473 words: 130,141

The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution by Richard Wrangham

agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, dark triade / dark tetrad, Defenestration of Prague, domesticated silver fox, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, impulse control, income inequality, meta-analysis, out of africa, phenotype, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Social Justice Warrior, Steven Pinker, Strategic Defense Initiative, twin studies, ultimatum game

Pobiner, James S. Oliver, Laura C. Bishop, David R. Braun, Peter W. Ditchfield, et al. 2013. “Earliest archaeological evidence of persistent hominin carnivory.” PLoS ONE 8(4): e62174. Ficks, Courtney A., and Irwin D. Waldman. 2014. “Candidate genes for aggression and antisocial behavior: a meta-analysis of association studies of the 5HTTLPR and MAOA-uVNT.” Behavior Genetics 44: 427–44. Fischer, David Hackett. 1992. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Fiske, Alan Page, and Tage Shakti Rai. 2015. Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End and Honor Social Relationships.

Harvati, Katerina. 2007. “100 years of Homo heidelbergensis—life and times of a controversial taxon.” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 16: 85–94. Haselhuhn, Michael P., Margaret E. Ormiston, and Elaine M. Wong. 2015. “Men’s facial width-to-height ratio predicts aggression: a meta-analysis.” PLoS ONE 10 (4): e0122637. Hathaway, Oona A., and Scott J. Shapiro. 2017. “Outlawing war? It actually worked.” New York Times September 2. Hauser, Marc D. 2006. Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. New York: HarperCollins. ———, and Jeffrey Watumull. 2017.


Howard Rheingold by The Virtual Community Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier-Perseus Books (1993)

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", Alvin Toffler, Apple II, bread and circuses, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, commoditize, conceptual framework, disinformation, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, experimental subject, General Magic , George Gilder, global village, Gregor Mendel, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, intentional community, Ivan Sutherland, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, license plate recognition, loose coupling, Marshall McLuhan, megaproject, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, multilevel marketing, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, profit motive, RAND corporation, Ray Oldenburg, rent control, RFC: Request For Comment, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, telepresence, The Great Good Place, The Hackers Conference, the strength of weak ties, urban decay, UUNET, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, young professional

Communication Research 21, no. 4 (1994): 427-459. Streck, John M. "Pulling the Plug on Electronic Town Meetings: Participatory Democracy and the Reality of the Usenet." New Political Science 41-42 (1997): 17-46. Stuhlmacher, A.F., and A.E. Walters. "Gender Differences in Negotiation Outcome: A Meta-Analysis." Personnel Psychology 52, no. 3 (1999): 653-677. Suler, J.R., and W. Phillips. "The Bad Boys of Cyberspace: Deviant Behavior in Multimedia Chat Communities." CyberPsychology and Behavior 1 (1998): 275-294. Suler, J.R. "To Get What You Need: Healthy and Pathological Internet Use." CyberPsychology and Behavior 2 (1999): 385-394.

Western Journal of Communication 57 (1993): 381-399. Walther, Joseph B. "Anticipated Ongoing Interaction Versus Channel Effects on Relational Communication in Computer-Mediated Interaction." Human Communication Research 20, no. 4 (1994): 473-501. Walther, Joseph B. "Interpersonal Effects in Computer-Mediated Interaction: A Meta-Analysis of Social and Antisocial Communication." Human Communication Research 21, no. 4 (1994): 460-487. Walther, Joseph B. "Relational Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication: Experimental Observations Over Time." Organization Science 6, no. 2 (1995): 186-203. Walther, Joseph B., et al. "Interpersonal Deception: Effects of Suspicion on Perceived Communication and Nonverbal Behavior Dynamics."


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Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants by Maurice E. Stucke, Ariel Ezrachi

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 737 MAX, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, Corrections Corporation of America, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, delayed gratification, disinformation, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Chrome, greed is good, hedonic treadmill, incognito mode, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, information asymmetry, invisible hand, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, late fees, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Network effects, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, payday loans, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price anchoring, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, search costs, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stanford prison experiment, Stephen Hawking, sunk-cost fallacy, surveillance capitalism, techlash, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, Yochai Benkler

But being offered more than twenty-two choices resulted in choice overload, with more customers making no choice.22 However, the study of the effects of choice overload is not by any means an exact science. For example, several attempts to replicate Iyengar and Lepper’s jam study did not find evidence of choice overload.23 One meta-analysis of fifty experiments found mixed results.24 Another meta-analysis identified four factors that can influence choice overload: first, the complexity of the choices; second, the difficulty in deciding (such as decisions under time pressure versus choices with no time constraints); third, whether we have clear preferences (such as organic food); and fourth, our ultimate goal (are we browsing or seeking to find the best choice).25 Because choice overload can depend on so many situational and individual factors, there is no magic number of options that will prove to be the trigger.


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The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt by Sinan Aral

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, death of newspapers, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital nomad, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, Filter Bubble, George Floyd, global pandemic, hive mind, illegal immigration, income inequality, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, performance metric, phenotype, recommendation engine, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Russian election interference, Second Machine Age, seminal paper, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social intelligence, social software, social web, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yogi Berra

While there are only two large-scale studies of the effect of social media on voting, the substantial research on the effects of persuasive messaging on voter turnout and vote choice can help us to calibrate the likely effects of Russian interference on the 2016 election.*2 With regard to vote choice, some meta-analytic reviews suggest the effects of impersonal contact (mailings, TV, and digital advertising) on vote choice in general elections are very small. Kalla and Broockman conclude, from a meta-analysis of forty-nine field experiments, that “the best estimate of the size of persuasive effects [i.e., effects of advertising on vote choice] in general elections…is zero.” But their data do not consider social media. And there is substantial uncertainty in their estimates, such as the effect of impersonal contact within two months of Election Day, which was when Russia’s attack was in full swing.

For example, a randomized experiment by Katherine Haenschen and Jay Jennings showed that targeted digital advertising significantly increased voter turnout among millennial voters in competitive districts. Research by Andrew Guess, Dominique Lockett, Benjamin Lyons, Jacob Montgomery, Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler showed that randomized exposure to just a single misleading article increased belief in the article’s claims and increased self-reported intentions to vote. The meta-analysis by Green et al. estimated that direct mailings, combined with social pressure, generate an average increase in voter turnout of 2.9 percent, while canvassing generates an average increase of 2.5 percent, and volunteer phone banks generate an average increase of 2 percent. Dale and Strauss estimated the effect of text messages on voter turnout to be 4.1 percent, and there is evidence that personalized emails have a similar impact.


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A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul

Anthropocene, assortative mating, coronavirus, COVID-19, Elon Musk, Google Earth, jitney, long peace, low earth orbit, meta-analysis, microbiome, microcredit, off grid, phenotype, quantum entanglement, SpaceX Starlink, the scientific method

A large analysis combining the results of almost 90 studies and more than 1,000 datasets from across the Southern Hemisphere found that there, too, austral spring was advancing far more rapidly than were bird movements. In Australia (where changes in seasonal rainfall, rather than temperature, seemed to be the driving force), plants had advanced the time of flowering and fruiting by almost 10 days per decade, while bird migration had changed by only two and a half days. Conversely, a meta-analysis of multiple long-term datasets in China showed a strong spring advance for trees and shrubs, but actually found a slight delay in springtime bird arrivals—though the study’s own authors cautioned that the number of bird species involved, and avian datasets in general from China, were too limited to draw firm conclusions.

Abram, Jacqueline Austermann, Victor Brovkin, Emilie Capron, et al. “Palaeoclimate Constraints on the Impact of 2 C Anthropogenic Warming and Beyond.” Nature Geoscience 11, no. 7 (2018): 474. Ge, Quansheng, Huanjiong Wang, This Rutishauser, and Junhu Dai. “Phenological Response to Climate Change in China: A Meta-analysis.” Global Change Biology 21, no. 1 (2015): 265–274. Helm, Barbara, Benjamin M. Van Doren, Dieter Hoffmann, and Ute Hoffmann. “Evolutionary Response to Climate Change in Migratory Pied Flycatchers.” Current Biology (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.08.072. Hiemer, Dieter, Volker Salewski, Wolfgang Fiedler, Steffen Hahn, and Simeon Lisovski.


pages: 445 words: 135,648

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales

Airbnb, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital divide, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, emotional labour, fake news, feminist movement, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, global pandemic, helicopter parent, Jaron Lanier, Jeffrey Epstein, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, New Urbanism, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, post-work, Robert Durst, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TikTok, women in the workforce, young professional

They assume that any criticism of porn comes from prudishness. They accuse critics of porn of advocating censorship (even when they’re not), as if this is the biggest concern in this debate. The problem is they’re ignoring nearly forty years of research showing a connection between porn and sexual violence. A 2015 meta-analysis of twenty-two studies from seven different countries done between 1978 and 2014 concluded that porn consumption contributes significantly to “aggressive behaviors and attitudes” and is “associated with sexual aggression.” A 2011 study of American college men found that 83 percent of them watched porn, and those who did were more likely to say that they would commit rape or sexual assault if they knew they wouldn’t be caught.

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. Wong, Brittany. “The Subtle Way Dating Apps Reinforce Our Racial Biases.” HuffPost, November 21, 2018. www.huffpost.com/entry/dating-apps-may-reinforce-sexual-racism-study_n_5bf3056ae4b0376c9e67abe1. Wright, Paul J., Robert S. Tokunaga, and Ashley Kraus. “A Meta-Analysis of Pornography Consumption and Actual Acts of Sexual Aggression in General Population Studies.” Journal of Communication 66, no. 1 (February 2016). Zagorsky, Jay L. “Why Are Fewer People Getting Married?” The Conversation, June 1, 2016. https://theconversation.com/why-are-fewer-people-getting-married-60301.


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The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It) by Jamie Bartlett

Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Californian Ideology, Cambridge Analytica, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, computer vision, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Hans Moravec, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, information retrieval, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Gilmore, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mittelstand, move fast and break things, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans, Peter Thiel, post-truth, prediction markets, QR code, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, smart contracts, smart meter, Snapchat, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, the long tail, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, too big to fail, ultimatum game, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Y Combinator, you are the product

., in one week’, 31 October 2016, www.politifact.com. Polling data was taken from www.realclearpolitics.com poll tracker. 15 B. Nyhan and J. Reifler (2010), ‘When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions’, Political Behavior, 32 (2), 303–330. 16 Dolores Albarracin et al. (2017), ‘Debunking: A Meta-Analysis of the Psychological Efficacy of Messages Countering Misinformation, Psychological Science, 28 (11), 1531–1546. 17 Paul Lewis, ‘“Fiction is outperforming reality”: how YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth’, Guardian, 2 February 2018. 18 Nicholas Confessore, ‘For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance’, New York Times, 13 July 2016. 19 Southern Poverty Law Centre, ‘Richard Bertrand Spencer’, https://www.splcenter.org.


The Fast Diet Revised and Updated by Michael Mosley, Mimi Spencer

caloric restriction, caloric restriction, cognitive bias, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, Easter island, life extension, meta-analysis, mouse model, randomized controlled trial, stem cell

‘The effect of coffee on blood pressure and cardiovascular disease in hypertensive individuals’. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2011 & Larsson, S and Orsini, N, National Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. ‘Coffee consumption and risk of stroke: a dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies’. American Journal of Epidemiology, September 2011 & Floegel, A, Pischon, T, Bergmann, MM, Teucher, B, Kaaks, R and Boeing, H, European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), Germany. ‘Coffee consumption and risk of chronic disease’. American Society for Nutrition, April 2012 55.


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Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn by Chris Hughes

"World Economic Forum" Davos, basic income, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, end world poverty, full employment, future of journalism, gig economy, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, new economy, oil rush, payday loans, Peter Singer: altruism, Potemkin village, precariat, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

Campbell, Harry. “RSG 2017 Survey Results: Driver Earnings, Satisfaction and Demographics.” The Rideshare Guy (blog), January 17, 2017. http://therideshareguy.com/rsg-2017-survey-results-driver-earnings-satisfaction-and-demographics/. Card, David, Jochen Kluve and Andrea Weber. “What Works? A Meta Analysis of Recent Active Labor Market Program Evaluations.” RUHR Economic Papers, July 2015. Carroll, Christopher, Jiri Slacalek, Kiichi Tokuoka, and Matthew N. White. “The Distribution of Wealth and the Marginal Propensity to Consume.” Quantitative Economics, June 3, 2017. http://www.econ2.jhu.edu/people/ccarroll/papers/cstwMPC.pdf.


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Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age by Steven Johnson

Airbus A320, airport security, algorithmic trading, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Cass Sunstein, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cognitive dissonance, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Brooks, Donald Davies, Evgeny Morozov, Fairchild Semiconductor, future of journalism, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, Jane Jacobs, John Gruber, John Harrison: Longitude, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, mega-rich, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Occupy movement, packet switching, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, pre–internet, private spaceflight, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social graph, SpaceShipOne, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, techno-determinism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, US Airways Flight 1549, WikiLeaks, William Langewiesche, working poor, X Prize, Yochai Benkler, your tax dollars at work

Daily Kos provided in-depth surveys and field reports on state races that the Times would never have had the ink to cover. Individual bloggers such as Andrew Sullivan responded to each twist in the news cycle; The Huffington Post culled the most provocative opinion pieces from the rest of the blogosphere. The statistician Nate Silver at the website Five Thirty Eight did meta-analysis of polling that exceeded anything Bill Schneider dreamed of doing on CNN in 1992. When the banking crisis erupted in September 2008, I followed economist bloggers such as Brad DeLong to get their expert take on the candidates’ responses to the crisis. I watched the debates with a thousand virtual friends live-tweeting alongside me on the couch.


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How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan

1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Anton Chekhov, Burning Man, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, dark matter, Day of the Dead, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, Golden Gate Park, Google Earth, Haight Ashbury, Howard Rheingold, Internet Archive, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Marshall McLuhan, Mason jar, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microdosing, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Mother of all demos, off-the-grid, overview effect, placebo effect, radical decentralization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, reality distortion field, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, satellite internet, scientific mainstream, scientific worldview, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, sugar pill, TED Talk, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Whole Earth Catalog

Results were notably impressive when the studies were performed by sympathetic therapists (and especially by therapists who themselves had taken LSD) and notably dismal when conducted by inexperienced investigators who gave mammoth doses to patients with no attention to set or setting. The record was a complete muddle until 2012, when a meta-analysis that combined data from the six best randomized controlled studies done in the 1960s and 1970s (involving more than five hundred patients in all) found that indeed there had been a statistically robust and clinically “significant beneficial effect on alcohol misuse” from a single dose of LSD, an effect that lasted up to six months.

Kleber, Herbert D. “Commentary On: Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Psychopharmacology 187 (2006): 291–92. Krebs, Teri S., and Pål-Ørjan Johansen. “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) for Alcoholism: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Journal of Psychopharmacology 26, no. 7 (2012): 994–1002. doi:10.1177/0269881112439253. Kupferschmidt, Kai. “High Hopes.” Science 345, no. 6192 (2014). Langlitz, Nicolas. Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain.


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The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth by Robin Hanson

8-hour work day, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, brain emulation, business cycle, business process, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, deep learning, demographic transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental subject, fault tolerance, financial intermediation, Flynn Effect, Future Shock, Herman Kahn, hindsight bias, information asymmetry, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, lone genius, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market design, megaproject, meta-analysis, Nash equilibrium, new economy, Nick Bostrom, pneumatic tube, power law, prediction markets, quantum cryptography, rent control, rent-seeking, reversible computing, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Vernor Vinge, William MacAskill

“Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America: An Innosight Executive Briefing on Corporate Strategy.” Strategy & Innovation 10(1). Fox, J.G., and E.D. Embrey. 1972. “Music—an aid to productivity.” Applied Ergonomics 3(4): 202–205. Frattaroli, J. 2006. “Experimental Disclosure and its Moderators: A Meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 132(6): 823–865. Freitas, Robert. 1999. Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities. Landes Bioscience. Freitas, Robert, and Ralph Merkle. 2004. Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines. Landes Bioscience. October 30. Fridley, Jason, and Dov Sax. 2014. “The Imbalance of Nature: Revisiting a Darwinian Framework for Invasion Biology.”

Ramscar, Michael, Peter Hendrix, Cyrus Shaoul, Petar Milin, and Harald Baayen. 2014. “The Myth of Cognitive Decline: Non-Linear Dynamics of Lifelong Learning.” Topics in Cognitive Science 6(1): 5–42. Randall, Jason, Frederick Oswald, and Margaret Beier. 2014. “Mind-Wandering, Cognition, and Performance: A Theory-Driven Meta-Analysis of Attention Regulation.” Psychological Bulletin 140(6): 1411–1431. Rao, Venkatesh. 2012. “Welcome to the Future Nauseous.” Ribbon Farm blog, May 9, http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/09/welcome-to-the-future-nauseous/. Rayneau-Kirkhope, Daniel, Yong Mao, and Robert Farr. 2012. “Ultralight Fractal Structures from Hollow Tubes.”


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The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin

3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, benefit corporation, big-box store, bike sharing, bioinformatics, bitcoin, business logic, business process, Chris Urmson, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commons-based peer production, Community Supported Agriculture, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, crowdsourcing, demographic transition, distributed generation, DIY culture, driverless car, Eben Moglen, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Free Software Foundation, Garrett Hardin, general purpose technology, global supply chain, global village, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, industrial robot, informal economy, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Elkington, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, low interest rates, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, mirror neurons, natural language processing, new economy, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, phenotype, planetary scale, price discrimination, profit motive, QR code, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, RFID, Richard Stallman, risk/return, Robert Solow, Rochdale Principles, Ronald Coase, scientific management, search inside the book, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, social web, software as a service, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game, Zipcar

A massive study of 14,000 college students conducted between 1979 and 2009 by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan concluded that “college kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”20 Sarah Konrath, a University of Michigan researcher who conducted the meta-analysis study, which combined the results of 72 studies of American college students over the 30-year period, says that today’s college students are less likely to agree with statements such as, “I sometimes tried to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”21 Other studies on the Millennial Generation, however, appear to show the opposite trend.

Diane Swanbrow, “Empathy: College Students Don’t Have as Much as They Used To,” University of Michigan News Service, May 27, 2010, http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/7724 (accessed April 2, 2013). 21. Swanbrow, “Empathy”; Sara H. Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 5(2) (2011): 180–81, http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/eob/files /konrathetal2011.pdf (accessed April 2, 2013). 22. Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, Millenial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 5. 23.


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Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You by Scott E. Page

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Checklist Manifesto, computer age, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, discrete time, distributed ledger, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental economics, first-price auction, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Higgs boson, High speed trading, impulse control, income inequality, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, meta-analysis, money market fund, multi-armed bandit, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, Network effects, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, p-value, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, phenotype, Phillips curve, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, race to the bottom, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, school choice, scientific management, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, selection bias, six sigma, social graph, spectrum auction, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Great Moderation, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the rule of 72, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, value at risk, web application, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

If we make a person’s depth (thickness front to back) and width proportional to height using parameters d and w, then BMI can be written as follows: The BMIs of many NBA stars and other athletes place them in the overweight category (BMI > 25), along with many of the world’s top male decathletes.10 Given that even moderately tall, physically fit people will likely have high BMIs, we should not be surprised that a meta-analysis of nearly a hundred studies with a combined sample size in the millions found that slightly overweight people live longest.11 Metabolic rates: We now apply our model to predict an inverse relationship between an animal’s size and its metabolic rate. Every living entity has a metabolism, a repeated sequence of chemical reactions that breaks down organic matter and transforms it into energy.

“Why Your Friends Have More Friends than You Do.” American Journal of Sociology 96, no. 6: 1464–1477. Flegal, Katherine M., Brian K. Kit, Heather Orpana, and Barry I. Graubard. 2012. “Association of All-Cause Mortality with Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” Journal of the American Medical Association 309, no. 1: 71–82. Flores, Thomas, and Irfan Nooruddin. 2016. Elections in Hard Times: Building Stronger Democracies in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Florida, Richard. 2005. Cities and the Creative Class. New York: Routledge.


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The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, availability heuristic, biodiversity loss, Columbian Exchange, computer vision, cosmological constant, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, defense in depth, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Drosophila, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Ernest Rutherford, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Society, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, OpenAI, p-value, Peter Singer: altruism, planetary scale, power law, public intellectual, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, social discount rate, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, survivorship bias, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, William MacAskill

“Accelerated Modern Human-Induced Species Losses: Entering the Sixth Mass Extinction.” Science Advances, 1(5), e1400253. Cederman, L.-E. (2003). “Modeling the Size of Wars: From Billiard Balls to Sandpiles.” The American Political Science Review, 97(1), 135–50. Challinor, A. J., et al. (2014). “A Meta-Analysis of Crop Yield under Climate Change and Adaptation.” Nature Climate Change, 4(4), 287–91. Chan, S. (September 18, 2017). “Stanislav Petrov, Soviet Officer Who Helped Avert Nuclear War, Is Dead at 77.” The New York Times. Chapman, C. R. (2004). “The Hazard of Near-Earth Asteroid Impacts on Earth.”

., 1979). 84 Rogelj et al. (2016). 85 Tai, Martin & Heald (2014) find that under the IPCC’s most pessimistic scenario, global food production would decrease by 16% by 2050 relative to 2000. But this takes into account neither adaptation nor the impact of carbon dioxide on crop yields, both of which are expected to have significant, albeit uncertain, offsetting effects. A recent meta-analysis found that crop-level adaptations alone could increase yields by 7–15% (Challinor et al., 2014). Such a reduction in food supply would have disastrous consequences for millions of people, but would pose little risk to civilization. 86 IPCC (2014), pp. 14–15. 87 We don’t see such biodiversity loss in the 12°C warmer climate of the early Eocene, nor the rapid global change of the PETM, nor in rapid regional changes of climate.


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Your Computer Is on Fire by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip

"Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, digital divide, digital map, don't be evil, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, fake news, financial innovation, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Grace Hopper, hiring and firing, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Landlord’s Game, Lewis Mumford, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mobile money, moral panic, move fast and break things, Multics, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, old-boy network, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), packet switching, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, postindustrial economy, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Salesforce, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart cities, Snapchat, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, telepresence, the built environment, the map is not the territory, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, Y2K

Bradac and Randall Wisegarver, “Ascribed Status, Lexical Diversity, and Accent: Determinants of Perceived Status, Solidarity, and Control of Speech Style,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 3, no. 4 (1984): 239–255; Jairo N. Fuertes, William H. Gottdiener, Helena Martin, Tracey C. Gilbert, and Howard Giles, “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Speakers’ Accents on Interpersonal Evaluations,” European Journal of Social Psychology 42, no. 1 (2012): 120–133; Stephanie Lindemann, “Koreans, Chinese or Indians? Attitudes and Ideologies About Non-Native English Speakers in the United States,” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7, no. 3 (2003): 348–364; Stephanie Lindemann, “Who Speaks “Broken English”?

The analysis of metaphors is useful not simply to assign blame; it is critically important for finding solutions. Informatics scholars Lilly Irani and M. Six Silberman, reporting on Turkopticon, a worker-centered web portal and services site they designed and maintained, published software design papers as well as reflective “meta-analysis” papers about it.5 Both were presented at CHI, the premier computer-human interaction conference. The scholarly association that studies computer-human interaction issues had recognized, in other words, that things (like software) and words (with which both technical and nontechnical people represented, used, and critiqued that software) were both relevant to its work.


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Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle

Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, cloud computing, El Camino Real, Erik Brynjolfsson, fear of failure, Jeff Bezos, longitudinal study, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, PalmPilot, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, Tim Cook: Apple

Grant, “From GROW to GROUP: Theoretical Issues and a Practical Model for Group Coaching in Organisations,” Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice 3, no. 1 (2010): 30–45. 15.Steven Graham, John Wedman, and Barbara Garvin-Kester, “Manager Coaching Skills: What Makes a Good Coach,” Performance Improvement Quarterly 7, no. 2 (1994): 81–94. 16.Richard K. Ladyshewsky, “The Manager as Coach as a Driver of Organizational Development,” Leadership & Organization Development Journal 31, no. 4 (2010): 292–306. Chapter 2: Your Title Makes You a Manager. Your People Make You a Leader. 1.Fariborz Damanpour, “Organizational Innovation: A Meta-Analysis of Effects of Determinants and Moderators,” Academy of Management Journal 34, no. 3 (September 1991): 555–90; Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro, “Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem,” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 2 (September 2005): 447–504. 2.Nicholas Bloom, Erik Brynjolfsson, Lucia Foster, Ron S.


The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist

Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, classic study, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, computer age, Donald Trump, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, epigenetics, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, Georg Cantor, hedonic treadmill, Henri Poincaré, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, music of the spheres, Necker cube, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, randomized controlled trial, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Schrödinger's Cat, social intelligence, social web, source of truth, stem cell, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury

The earliest pierced shells, suggesting symbolic body ornamentation, arose at around the same time in the same region, along with evidence of trade in valued materials and the mining of flints (McBrearty & Brooks, 2003). See also Mithen, 1998a, 1998b; Noble & Davidson, 1996; Milo & Quiatt, 1993. 29. Overall the correlation between brain size and intelligence remains robust across species and within human populations. See the most comprehensive meta-analysis of investigations of the relation of brain size to IQ to date: McDaniel, 2005. 30. See, e.g., Suthers & Zollinger, 2004. 31. These long, long musical ‘sentences’ of Wagner’s are, however, paralleled in language by the extraordinarily long sentences of his admirer, Thomas Mann, in which one has to keep subjects and subordinate clauses in mind for minutes at a time, while one waits for the verb, or for the principal clause to conclude. 32.

., ‘Spiritual asymmetry in portraiture’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 1965, 5, pp. 6–13 Marx, K., Die Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie [1841], in Marx-Engels-Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1968, vol. 40 Marzi, C. A., Bisiacchi, P. & Nicoletti, R., ‘Is interhemispheric transfer of visuomotor information asymmetric? Evidence from a meta-analysis’, Neuropsychologia, 1991, 29(12), pp. 1163–77 Marzi, C. A., Perani, D., Tassinari, G. et al., ‘Pathways of interhemispheric transfer in normals and in a split-brain subject: a positron emission tomography study’, Experimental Brain Research, 1999, 126(4), pp. 451–8 Mashal, N. & Faust, M., ‘Right hemisphere sensitivity to novel metaphoric relations: application of the signal detection theory’, Brain and Language, 2008, 104(2), pp. 103–12 Mashal, N., Faust, M. & Hendler, T., ‘The role of the right hemisphere in processing nonsalient metaphorical meanings: application of principal components analysis to fMRI data’, Neuropsychologia, 2005, 43(14), pp. 2084–100 Mashal, N., Faust, M., Hendler, T. et al., ‘An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the processing of novel metaphoric expressions’, Brain and Language, 2007, 100(2), pp. 115–26 ——, ‘Hemispheric differences in processing the literal interpretation of idioms: converging evidence from behavioral and fMRI studies’, Cortex, 2008, 44(7), pp. 848–60 ——, ‘An fMRI study of processing novel metaphoric sentences’, Laterality, 2009, 14(1), pp. 30–54 Masuda, T. & Nisbett, R.

., ‘A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 2001, 98(20), pp. 11832–5 McCarthy, R. A. & Warrington, E. K., Cognitive Neuropsychology, Academic Press, London, 1990 McDaniel, M. A., ‘Big-brained people are smarter: a meta-analysis of the relationship between in vivo brain volume and intelligence’, Intelligence, 2005, 33, pp. 337–46 McEvoy, J. P., Hartman, M., Gottlieb, D. et al., ‘Common sense, insight, and neuropsychological test performance in schizophrenia patients’, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 1996, 22(4), pp. 635–41 McFarland, R.


pages: 223 words: 59,820

The One-Minute Workout by Martin Gibala

Biosphere 2, Kickstarter, large denomination, meta-analysis

But the HERITAGE study was an enormous undertaking: an intervention on 742 people spread out over four clinical centers and followed over the course of five months. A comparable HIIT study would cost many millions of dollars today. In the absence of a HERITAGE-like interval training study, the Mayo Clinic’s Michael Joyner and a few colleagues led by Andrew Bacon did the next best thing. In 2013 they published something called a meta-analysis—they did a study on other scientific studies by effectively combining the results. They identified thirty-seven different studies dating from 1965 to 2012 and encompassing 334 subjects. They discovered what you, having read to this point, might have expected. Despite shorter workouts and much shorter time spent conducting hard exercise, the people who performed intense interval training tended to improve their cardiorespiratory fitness more than people who conducted vastly larger durations of endurance exercise.


pages: 230 words: 61,702

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

The latter were (and still are) controversial on privacy grounds; moreover, more than one person argued that the scanner violated their dignity. But while scans like this can make you uncomfortable, this sort of directed, publicly known invasion of one’s privacy is not equivalent to the systematic program of incidental collection and meta-analysis of phone call data practiced by the NSA. That’s because full body scans are given to commercial airplane passengers for a very specific reason: to detect whether they have a concealed weapon or explosives. This reason is well understood—or should be—by those given the scans. It is, in fact, a classic case of trading privacy for more security.


Epigenetics: How Environment Shapes Our Genes by Richard C. Francis

agricultural Revolution, autism spectrum disorder, cellular automata, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Drosophila, epigenetics, experimental subject, Gregor Mendel, longitudinal study, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, meta-analysis, phenotype, stem cell, twin studies

“Cytoplasmic and nuclear determinants of the maternal-to-embryonic transition.” Reprod Fertil Dev 20(1): 45–53. Beurton, P. J., R. Falk, et al. (2000). The concept of the gene in development and evolution: Historical and epistemological perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Bevilacqua, E., R. Brunelli, et al. (2010). “Review and meta-analysis: Benefits and risks of multiple courses of antenatal corticosteroids.” J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med 23(4): 244–260. Bharadwaj, R., and H. Yu (2004). “The spindle checkpoint, aneuploidy, and cancer.” Oncogene 23(11): 2016–2027. Bianco, S. D., and U. B. Kaiser (2009). “The genetic and molecular basis of idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism.”


pages: 632 words: 166,729

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll

airport security, Albert Einstein, Build a better mousetrap, business intelligence, capital controls, cashless society, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, emotional labour, Future Shock, game design, impulse control, information asymmetry, inventory management, iterative process, jitney, junk bonds, large denomination, late capitalism, late fees, longitudinal study, means of production, meta-analysis, Nash equilibrium, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paradox of Choice, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, profit motive, RFID, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Slavoj Žižek, statistical model, the built environment, yield curve, zero-sum game

The adaptation hypothesis allows that there will be spikes in the development of gambling problems when individuals in a given area are newly exposed to gambling, but argues that “after the novelty of initial exposure, people gradually adapt to the risks and hazards associated with potential objects of addiction” (Shaffer 2005, 1228). The majority of research, however, continues to find that problem gambling prevalence is directly related to the availability and accessibility of gambling. In a recent meta-analysis by three researchers, one of whom is a former proponent of the adaptation hypothesis, “strong statistically meaningful relationships were found for an increase in prevalence with increasing per capita density of [gambling machines], consistent with the access hypothesis” (Storer, Abbott, and Stubbs 2009, 225).

“Demystifying Slot Machines and Their Impact in the United States.” American Gaming Association White Paper, http.americangaming.org/industry-resources/research/white-papers, accessed May 2011. Stewart, Kathleen. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Storer, John, M. W. Abbott, and J. Stubbs. 2009. “Access or Adaptation? A Meta-Analysis of Surveys of Problem Gambling Prevalence in Australia and New Zealand with Respect to Concentration of Electronic Gaming Machines.” International Gambling Studies 9 (3): 225–44. Strickland, Eliza. 2008. “Gambling with Science: Determined to Defeat Lawsuits over Addiction, the Casino Industry Is Funding Research at a Harvard-Affiliated Lab.”


pages: 651 words: 162,060

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, BIPOC, bitcoin, British Empire, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, degrowth, disinformation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Food sovereignty, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, land tenure, late capitalism, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, phenotype, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, retail therapy, rewilding, social distancing, supervolcano, tech billionaire, the built environment, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

It’s important to note that these findings are not just correlations. They are from carefully designed studies whose entire purpose is to carefully isolate the role of climatic variables from the myriad other factors that might cause conflict. There are enough of these high-quality studies that we can do a ‘meta-analysis’ – a study of studies – to summarize overall findings across dozens of published works. In doing so we again find consistent evidence that warming temperatures in particular can amplify the risk of various types of conflict, with the risk of damaging group-level conflicts going up by as much as 10–20 per cent for every degree Celsius increase in temperature.

R. 13–14 meat consumption, 107, 112, 236, 248, 249–50, 249, 250, 253, 254, 282, 285, 288, 302, 356, 434 media, 122, 203, 210, 279, 282, 286, 287, 302, 325, 332, 339, 355–9, 377, 399, 427, 432; changing the media narrative, 369–71; producers, 435 Mediterranean, 75, 86, 97, 138, 145, 180, 351, 352–3 megafaunal extinctions, 9, 107–8, 349 Merkel, Angela, 27, 330 meta-analysis, 189 methane, 24, 34, 53–6, 55, 59, 96, 118–19, 121, 140–41, 217, 227, 235, 236, 238–9, 247, 248, 252, 255, 290–91, 297, 346, 416, 434 Mexico, 89, 110, 166, 189, 258, 299, 300, 389, 417 microplastics, 86–7, 297 middle class, global, 282–3 migration: climate refugees, 133, 165–8, 169–70, 180, 186, 187, 191, 192, 399; crisis (2015), 187; species, 14, 102–3, 110–11, 113–15, 171, 174, 417 military: conflicts, dependency on fossil fuels and, 181; greenhouse gas emissions and, 156, 389, 429, 434; military industrial complex, 312; power and global agreement on rapid decarbonization, 315, 317 mining, 24, 27, 103, 222, 237, 369, 388, 394, 413 mitigation, climate change.


pages: 224 words: 69,494

Mobility: A New Urban Design and Transport Planning Philosophy for a Sustainable Future by John Whitelegg

active transport: walking or cycling, Berlin Wall, British Empire, car-free, carbon tax, conceptual framework, congestion charging, congestion pricing, corporate social responsibility, Crossrail, decarbonisation, Donald Shoup, energy transition, eurozone crisis, glass ceiling, high-speed rail, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), megacity, meta-analysis, negative emissions, New Urbanism, peak oil, post-industrial society, price elasticity of demand, price mechanism, Right to Buy, smart cities, telepresence, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, transit-oriented development, urban planning, urban sprawl

Urban freight platforms. Boege, S (1995) The well-travelled yoghurt pot: lessons for new freight transport policies and regional production, World Transport Policy and Practice, Volume 1, Number 1, 7-11. Brons, M, Pels, E, Nijkamp, P and Rietveld, P (2002) Price elasticities of demand for passenger air travel: a meta-analysis. Journal of Air Transport Management 8, 165-175. Brown, L (2009) Plan B 4.0. Mobilizing to save civilization, Earth Policy Institute, W W Norton and Company. Burke, M and Dodson, J (2014) Suburban density: disrupting the density debate in Gleeson, B and Beza, B (2014) The Public City. Essays in honour of Paul Mees, Melbourne University Press, 132-148.


pages: 226 words: 66,188

Adventures in Human Being (Wellcome) by Gavin Francis

Apollo 11, Atul Gawande, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, Ralph Waldo Emerson, stem cell, traveling salesman

., ‘Risk Factors for falls as a cause of hip fracture in women’, The New England Journal of Medicine (9 May 1991), 1,326–31. p. 202 ‘Around 40 percent …’ Figures from Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (London: Profile, 2014). p. 202 ‘Between five and eight …’ P. Haentjens et al., ‘Meta-analysis: Excess Mortality After Hip Fracture Among Older Women and Men’, Annals of Internal Medicine 152 (2010), 380–90. p. 203 ‘His name Yaakov …’ My reading of Jacob’s story has been informed by Geoffrey H. Hartman, ‘The Struggle for the Text’, from Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick (eds), Midrash and Literature (London: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 3–18.


pages: 211 words: 69,380

The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman

classic study, Day of the Dead, experimental subject, fear of failure, hedonic treadmill, Kibera, Lao Tzu, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, Paradox of Choice, science of happiness, security theater, selection bias, Steve Jobs, summit fever, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, traveling salesman, World Values Survey

And perhaps more to the point, it certainly seems to be the case that if you set out to achieve material goals, you’ll be less happy than those with other priorities: see Carol Nickerson et al., ‘Zeroing in on the Dark Side of the American Dream’, Psychological Science 14 (2003): 531-6. Nor does better education: See for example Robert Witter et al., ‘Education and Subjective Wellbeing: A Meta-analysis’, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 6 (1984): 165-73. Nor does an increased choice of consumer products: The canonical resource on this is Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice (New York: Ecco, 2003). Nor do bigger and fancier homes: Robert H. Frank, ‘How Not To Buy Happiness’, Daedalus 133 (2004): 69-79.


pages: 212 words: 68,690

Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite by Carne Ross

Abraham Maslow, barriers to entry, blood diamond, carbon tax, cuban missile crisis, Doha Development Round, energy security, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Global Witness, income inequality, information security, iterative process, meta-analysis, oil-for-food scandal, one-China policy, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, stakhanovite, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, zero-sum game

And the Americans, well, that’s a story better told by others.1 It is human nature that when you are on weak ground you seek to undermine your attacker, rather than examine the ground on which you are standing. Once a position has been taken on an issue — for example that the wars in Yugoslavia were a “civil war” — all analysis becomes suborned to that meta-analysis. Groupthink, in this case as in others, not only ruled but was encouraged. If we believed in a nice, tidy, ordered world of states, as British officials most emphatically did, then the break-up of a state was a Bad Thing and must be “contained”. British policy seemed logical, and the facts could, if we chose, be made to fit our views (telegrams from our posts in the region, particularly Belgrade,2 did just that).


pages: 250 words: 64,011

Everydata: The Misinformation Hidden in the Little Data You Consume Every Day by John H. Johnson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, autism spectrum disorder, Black Swan, business intelligence, Carmen Reinhart, cognitive bias, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, lake wobegon effect, Long Term Capital Management, Mercator projection, Mercator projection distort size, especially Greenland and Africa, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, obamacare, p-value, PageRank, pattern recognition, publication bias, QR code, randomized controlled trial, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, statistical model, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Thomas Bayes, Tim Cook: Apple, wikimedia commons, Yogi Berra

Allison Aubrey, “Even if You’re Lean, 1 Soda Per Day Ups Your Risk of Type 2 Diabetes,” NPR website, July 23, 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/23/425635400/even-if-youre-lean-1-soda-per-day-ups-your-risk-of-diabetes. 25. Fumiaki Imamura, Laura O’Connor, Zheng Ye, Jaako Mursu, Yasuaki Hayashino, Shilpa N. Bhupathiraju, and Nita G. Forouhi, “Consumption of Sugar Sweetened Beverages, Artifically Sweetened Beverages, and Fruit Juice and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Estimation of Population Attributable Fraction,” BMJ 351(2015), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h3576. 26. On February 12, 2002, Rumsfeld (former U.S. secretary of defense) appeared at a U.S. Department of Defense briefing and said: “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.


pages: 239 words: 70,206

Data-Ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else by Steve Lohr

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bioinformatics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Carl Icahn, classic study, cloud computing, computer age, conceptual framework, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Danny Hillis, data is the new oil, data science, David Brooks, driverless car, East Village, Edward Snowden, Emanuel Derman, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Future Shock, Google Glasses, Ida Tarbell, impulse control, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of writing, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, lifelogging, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, meta-analysis, money market fund, natural language processing, obamacare, pattern recognition, payday loans, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, precision agriculture, pre–internet, Productivity paradox, RAND corporation, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Salesforce, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, six sigma, skunkworks, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tony Fadell, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, yottabyte

hospital infections are a huge problem: The death estimate comes from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study by Monina Klevens et al., “Estimating Health Care-Associated Infections and Deaths in the U.S. Hospitals, 2002,” Public Health Reports 122, no. 2 (March–April 2007): 160–66. The cost estimate comes from a 2013 article by Eyal Zimlichman et al., “Health Care-Associated Infections: A Meta-analysis of Costs and Financial Impact on the US Health Care System,” JAMA Internal Medicine 173, no. 22 (Dec. 9–23, 2013): 2039–46. Alex Rubinsteyn had just completed his PhD: His descriptions and quotes come from an interview on Dec. 19, 2013. Tim O’Donnell was doing broadly similar research: His descriptions and quotes come from an interview on Dec. 24, 2013. 10: The Prying Eyes of Big Data the Kodak-wielding “camera fiend”: Information on the Kodak section comes largely from the online essays, written by David Lindsay, that accompanied the PBS American Experience series, The Wizard of Photography, which aired in 2000. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eastman/peopleevents/index.html.


pages: 218 words: 70,323

Critical: Science and Stories From the Brink of Human Life by Matt Morgan

agricultural Revolution, Atul Gawande, biofilm, Black Swan, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive dissonance, crew resource management, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Strachan, discovery of penicillin, en.wikipedia.org, hygiene hypothesis, job satisfaction, John Snow's cholera map, meta-analysis, personalized medicine, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, traumatic brain injury

Always Hungry? (Hachette UK, 2016). ‘. . . due to replacement of fat content . . .’ Bazzano, L. A. et al. Effects of low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets: a randomized trial. Ann. Intern. Med. 161, 309–318 (2014). ‘. . . with refined sugars.’ Siri-Tarino, P. W., Sun, Q., Hu, F. B. & Krauss, R. M. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 91, 535–546 (2010). ‘Named after New York physician Dr Burrill Crohn in 1932 . . .’ Geller, S. A. in Encyclopedia of Pathology (ed. van Krieken, J. H. J. M.) 1–4 (Springer International Publishing, 2016)


The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living by Brock Bastian

Abraham Maslow, classic study, cognitive dissonance, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, Donald Trump, driverless car, helicopter parent, impulse control, income inequality, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, placebo effect, retail therapy, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Steven Pinker, sugar pill, upwardly mobile, Virgin Galactic, women in the workforce

T. and Greenfield, P. M. (2012). The value of fame: Preadolescent perceptions of popular media and their relationship to future aspirations. Developmental Psychology, 48 (2), 315–26. 9 Twenge, J. M., Konrath, S., Foster, J. D., Campbell, W. K. and Bushman, B. J. (2008). Egos inflating over time: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the narcissistic personality inventory. Journal of Personality, 76 (4), 875–902. 10 Sayer, L. C., Bianchi, S. M. and Robinson, J. P. (2004). Are parents investing less in children? Trends in mothers’ and fathers’ time with children. American Journal of Sociology, 110, 1–43. 11 The National Center for Safe Routes to School (2011).


Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity by Brian Hare, Vanessa Woods

autism spectrum disorder, Cass Sunstein, cognitive bias, desegregation, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, drone strike, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, Law of Accelerating Returns, meta-analysis, microbiome, Milgram experiment, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, out of africa, phenotype, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, smart cities, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, zero-sum game

Notes Introduction 1. Elliot Aronson, Shelley Patnoe, Cooperation in the Classroom: The Jigsaw Method (London: Pinter & Martin, 2011). 2. D. W. Johnson, G. Maruyama, R. Johnson, D. Nelson, L. Skon, “Effects of Cooperative, Competitive, and Individualistic Goal Structures on Achievement: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 89, 47 (1981). 3. D. W. Johnson, R. T. Johnson, “An Educational Psychology Success Story: Social Interdependence Theory and Cooperative Learning,” Educational Researcher 38, 365–79 (2009). 4. M. J. Van Ryzin, C. J. Roseth, “Effects of Cooperative Learning on Peer Relations, Empathy, and Bullying in Middle School,” Aggressive Behavior (2019). 5.


Bulletproof Problem Solving by Charles Conn, Robert McLean

active transport: walking or cycling, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, asset allocation, availability heuristic, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Black Swan, blockchain, book value, business logic, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, deep learning, Donald Trump, driverless car, drop ship, Elon Musk, endowment effect, fail fast, fake news, future of work, Garrett Hardin, Hyperloop, Innovator's Dilemma, inventory management, iterative process, loss aversion, megaproject, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, nudge unit, Occam's razor, pattern recognition, pets.com, prediction markets, principal–agent problem, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart contracts, stem cell, sunk-cost fallacy, the rule of 72, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, Vilfredo Pareto, walkable city, WikiLeaks

August, 2017. 5  Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years,” New England Journal of Medicine 2007, no. 357 (2007): 370–379. 6  H. T. Tie, et al., “Risk of Childhood Overweight or Obesity Associated with Excessive Weight Gain During Pregnancy: A Meta‐Analysis,” Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics 289, no. 2 (2014): 247–257. 7  US data source provided by Professor Desiree Silva, the ORIGINS project at Joondalup Health Campus, Western Australia. 8  Submission 10 to Senate Select Enquiry into the Obesity Epidemic in Australia, July 2018. 9  Walk Economy, The Place Report (2016), 7. 10  Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science (December 13, 1968). 11  Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1990). 12  Oral communications, Chuck Cook and Charles Conn, August–October, 2017. 13  Mark Tercek and Jonathan Adams, Nature's Fortune (Island Press, 2015). 14  Morro Bay Commercial Fisheries. 2015 Economic Impact Report Working Waterfront Edition. 15  Morro Bay Commercial Fisheries. 2015 Economic Impact Report Working Waterfront Edition.


pages: 234 words: 67,917

The Wondering Jew: Israel and the Search for Jewish Identity by Micah Goodman

augmented reality, battle of ideas, cognitive dissonance, European colonialism, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Mount Scopus

See also Marilyn Baetz and John Toews, “Clinical Implications of Research on Religion, Spirituality, and Mental Health,” Revue Canadienne de Psychiatrie 54, no. 5 (May 2009). See also Yoram Kirsh, Roads to Happiness: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Mathematics of Happiness (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2011), 58–60 [Hebrew]. For a more critical and detailed examination of the different studies, see Charles H. Hackney and Glenn S. Sanders, “Religiosity and Mental Health: A Meta-Analysis of Recent Studies,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42, no. 1 (2003): 43–55. 5. For a clear and readable overview of the findings of studies on this question, see Pamela Paul, “The Power to Uplift,” Time (9 January 2005), accessible at: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1015870,00.html. 6.


pages: 213 words: 68,363

Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction by Judith Grisel

cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, dark matter, double helix, epigenetics, Haight Ashbury, impulse control, Livingstone, I presume, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, phenotype, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), seminal paper, systems thinking, trade route, traumatic brain injury

Samuel Bogoch (New York: Plenum Press, 1969). 2. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (London: Macmillan, 1865). 3. Human Rights Watch, World Report, 2017. 4. Richard Karban, Louie H. Yang, and Kyle F. Edwards, “Volatile Communication Between Plants That Affects Herbivory: A Meta-analysis,” Ecology Letters 17, no. 1 (2013); and see Kat McGowan, “The Secret Language of Plants,” Quanta Magazine, Dec. 16, 2013, www.quantamagazine.org. 5. Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, N.M., cac.org. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Judith Grisel, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized behavioral neuroscientist and a professor of psychology at Bucknell University.


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

MichaelNygard.com (blog), April 29, 2015. http://michaelnygard.com/blog/2015/04/the-perils-of-semantic-coupling/. Nygard, Michael T. Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software, 2nd edition. Raleigh, North Carolina: O’Reilly, 2018. O’Connor, Debra L., and Tristan E. Johnson. “Understanding Team Cognition in Performance Improvement Teams: A Meta-Analysis of Change in Shared Mental Models.” Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Concept Mapping (2006). https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4106/3eb1567e630a35b4f33f281a6bb9d193ddf5.pdf. O’Dell, Chris. “You Build It, You Run It (Why Developers Should Also Be on Call).” SkeltonThatcher.com (blog), October 18, 2017. https://skeltonthatcher.com/blog/build-run-developers-also-call/.


Jaws by Sandra Kahn,Paul R. Ehrlich

agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, clean water, desegregation, Edward Jenner, epigenetics, Great Leap Forward, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Indoor air pollution, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, language acquisition, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, out of africa, randomized controlled trial, twin studies, Wall-E, women in the workforce

Sleep and neurobehavioral characteristics of 5–to 7–year-old children with parentally reported symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Pediatrics 111: 554–563; and K. Sedky, D. S. Bennett, and K. S. Carvalho. 2014. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and sleep disordered breathing in pediatric populations: A meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews 18: 349e356. 54. D. J. Timms. 1990. Rapid maxillary expansion in the treatment of nocturnal enuresis. The Angle Orthodontist 60: 229–233. 55. U. Schültz-Fransson and J. Kurol. 2008. Rapid maxillary expansion effects on nocturnal enuresis in children: A follow-up study.


pages: 654 words: 191,864

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

Bodenhausen, “Social Cognition: Thinking Categorically about Others,” Annual Review of Psychology 51 (2000): 93–120. po {"><21; : Sian L. Beilock and Thomas H. Carr, “When High-Powered People Fail: Working Memory and Choking Under Pressure in Math,” Psychological Science 16 (2005): 101–105. exertion of self-control: Martin S. Hagger et al., “Ego Depletion and the Strength Model of Self-Control: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 136 (2010): 495–525. resist the effects of ego depletion: Mark Muraven and Elisaveta Slessareva, “Mechanisms of Self-Control Failure: Motivation and Limited Resources,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29 (2003): 894–906. Mark Muraven, Dianne M. Tice, and Roy F.

., “Medical-School Performance of Initially Rejected Students,” JAMA 257 (1987): 47–51. Jason Dana and Robyn M. Dawes, “Belief in the Unstructured Interview: The Persistence of an Illusion,” working paper, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 2011. William M. Grove et al., “Clinical Versus Mechanical Prediction: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Assessment 12 (2000): 19–30. Dawes’s famous article: Robyn M. Dawes, “The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision Making,” American Psychologist 34 (1979): 571–82. not affected by accidents of sampling: Jason Dana and Robyn M. Dawes, “The Superiority of Simple Alternatives to Regression for Social Science Predictions,” Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics 29 (2004): 317–31.


pages: 255 words: 75,208

Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes

California gold rush, cognitive dissonance, Gary Taubes, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial

American Heart Journal. Nov;68(5):581–85. West, K. M. 1981. “North American Indians.” In Western Diseases, ed. H. C. Trowell and D. P. Burkitt, pp. 129–37. London: Edward Arnold. Chapter 2: The Elusive Benefits of Undereating Dansinger, M. L., A. Tatsioni, W. B. Wong, M. Chung, and E. M. Balk. 2007. “Meta-Analysis: The Effect of Dietary Counseling for Weight Loss.” The Archives of Internal Medicine. Jul 3;147(1):41–50. Howard, B. V., J. E. Manson, M. L. Stefanick, et al. 2006. “Low-Fat Dietary Pattern and Weight Change over 7 Years: The Women’s Health Initiative Dietary Modification Trial.” Journal of the American Medical Association.


pages: 257 words: 77,030

A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian

Cass Sunstein, Easter island, Filter Bubble, Henri Poincaré, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Nick Bostrom, Ray Kurzweil, selection bias, Socratic dialogue, stem cell, the scientific method

Assessments of Anticriminal Plans and the Prediction of Criminal Futures. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 14(1), 33–37. Andrews, D. A., Zinger, I., Hoge, R. D., Bonta, J., Gendreau, P., & Cullen, F. T. (1990). Does correctional treatment work? A clinicallyrelevant and psychologically-informed meta-analysis. Criminology, 28(3), 369–404. Andrews, S. (2013). Deconverted: A journey from religion to reason. Denver, Colorado: Outskirts Press. Argyle, M. (2000). Psychology and religion: An introduction. London, England: Routledge. Baltag, A., Rodenhäuser, B., & Smets, S. (2011). Doxastic attitudes as belief-revision policies.


pages: 265 words: 75,669

Potatoes not Prozac by Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph. D.

confounding variable, impulse control, meta-analysis, mouse model, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)

Daily bingeing on sugar repeatedly releases dopamine in the accumbens shell. Neuroscience, 2005. 134(3): 737–44. Rakatansky, H. Chocolate: pleasure or pain? RI Med, 1995. 78(7): 179. Reid, L. D., et al. Opioids and intake of alcoholic beverages. NIDA Res Monogr, 1986. 75: 359–62. Ripsin, C. M., et al. Oat products and lipid lowering. A meta-analysis. JAMA, 1992. 267(24): 3317–25. Roach, M. K., and R. J. Williams. Impaired and inadequate glucose metabolism in the brain as an underlying cause of alcoholism—an hypothesis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 1966. 56(2): 566–71. Ruegg, H., W. Z. Yu, and R. J. Bodnar. Opioid-receptor subtype agonist-induced enhancements of sucrose intake are dependent upon sucrose concentration.


pages: 267 words: 72,552

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

Klein, “When Dating Algorithms Can Watch You Blush,” Nautilus, April 14, 2016, http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/when-dating-algorithms-can-watch-you-blush. it used the wrong data: See, e.g., Paul W. Eastwick, Laura B. Luchies, Eli F. Finkel, and Lucy L. Hunt, “The Predictive Validity of Ideal Partner Preferences: A Review and Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 140 (20014), 623–665. CHAPTER 5: COMPANIES AND CONTROL annual revenues of more than $100 billion: Jim Milliot, “Amazon Sales Top $100 Billion,” Publishers Weekly, January 28, 2016, http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/69269-amazon-sales-top-100-billion.html.


pages: 298 words: 76,727

The Microbiome Solution by Robynne Chutkan M.D.

clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, David Strachan, discovery of penicillin, epigenetics, Helicobacter pylori, hygiene hypothesis, Mason jar, meta-analysis, microbiome, rewilding, sugar pill

Being treated with antibiotics in your first year of life is associated with a threefold increase in risk for IBD compared to children who haven’t received antibiotics, and the risk seems to increase the more antibiotics you receive. In countries like Canada and Finland where antibiotics are widely available, the incidence of IBD in children has steadily increased about 5 percent to 8 percent annually. Studies from the United States, including a meta-analysis of more than seven thousand patients by researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital, confirm that the risk of IBD from antibiotics is highest in children, but also show an increase in new-onset Crohn’s in adults who’ve taken antibiotics in the months before diagnosis. All antibiotics except penicillin have been implicated, but, ironically, the ones most commonly used to treat Crohn’s—metronidazole and fluoroquinolones like Ciprofloxacin—confer the highest risk.


pages: 269 words: 77,042

Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals: How Drug Companies Plan to Profit From Female Sexual Dysfunction by Ray Moynihan, Barbara Mintzes

business intelligence, clean water, meta-analysis, moral panic, Naomi Klein, New Journalism, placebo effect, profit motive, Ralph Nader, systematic bias

., ‘Interventions for sexual dysfunction following treatments for cancer’, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, vol. 4, 2007, CD005540. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD00540.pub.2. 31 A. Tsertsvadze, F. Yazdi & H.A. Fink et. al., ‘Oral sildenafil citrate (Viagra) for erectile dysfunction: A systematic review and meta-analysis of harms’, Urology, vol. 74, 2009, pp. 831–6. 32 US Food and Drug Administration, Sildenafil Citrate (marketed as Viagra) Information, November 2007, www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugsSafety/PostmarketDrugSafetyInformationforPatientsandProviders/ucm162833.htm. 33 T. Melnik, B. Soares & A. Nasello, ‘Psychosocial interventions for erectile dysfunction’, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, vol. 3, 2007, CD004825.


pages: 296 words: 78,631

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms by Hannah Fry

23andMe, 3D printing, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Brixton riot, Cambridge Analytica, chief data officer, computer vision, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Chrome, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, John Markoff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, ransomware, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, selection bias, self-driving car, Shai Danziger, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, sparse data, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, systematic bias, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, trolley problem, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web of trust, William Langewiesche, you are the product

Meehl, Clinical versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1996; first publ. 1954), http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.693.6031&rep=rep1&type=pdf. 39. William M. Grove, David H. Zald, Boyd S. Lebow, Beth E. Snitz and Chad Nelson, ‘Clinical versus mechanical prediction: a meta-analysis’, Psychological Assessment, vol. 12, no. 1, 2000, p. 19. 40. Berkeley J. Dietvorst, Joseph P. Simmons and Cade Massey. ‘Algorithmic aversion: people erroneously avoid algorithms after seeing them err’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Sept. 2014, http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/library/WPAF201410-AlgorithmAversion-Dietvorst-Simmons-Massey.pdf.


pages: 220 words: 73,451

Democratizing innovation by Eric von Hippel

additive manufacturing, correlation coefficient, Debian, disruptive innovation, Free Software Foundation, hacker house, informal economy, information asymmetry, inventory management, iterative process, James Watt: steam engine, knowledge economy, longitudinal study, machine readable, meta-analysis, Network effects, placebo effect, principal–agent problem, Richard Stallman, software patent, systematic bias, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, tragedy of the anticommons, transaction costs, vertical integration, Vickrey auction

Why Many Users Want Custom Products (Chapter 3) Why do so many users develop or modify products for their own use? Users may innovate if and as they want something that is not available on the market and are able and willing to pay for its development. It is likely that many users do not find what they want on the market. Meta-analysis of market-segmentation studies suggests that users’ needs for products are highly heterogeneous in many fields (Franke and Reisinger 2003). Mass manufacturers tend to follow a strategy of developing products that are designed to meet the needs of a large market segment well enough to induce purchase from and capture significant profits from a large number of customers.


The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin, Richard Panek

Apollo 11, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, correlation does not imply causation, dark matter, David Brooks, deliberate practice, double helix, ghettoisation, Gregor Mendel, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, impulse control, Khan Academy, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, mouse model, neurotypical, pattern recognition, phenotype, Richard Feynman, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, The future is already here, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury, twin studies

. [>] The title of another paper: Maria Kozhevnikov et al., “Spatial versus Object Visualizers: A New Characterization of Visual Cognitive Style,” Memory and Cognition 33, no. 4 (2005): 710–26. [>] Kozhevnikov said: Maria Kozhevnikov interview. [>] researchers at a neuroimaging center: Angélique Mazard et al., “A PET Meta-Analysis of Object and Spatial Mental Imagery,” European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 16, no. 5 (2004): 673–95. [>] her original paper: Mary Hegarty and Maria Kozhevnikov, “Types of Visual-Spatial Representations and Mathematical Problem Solving,” Journal of Educational Psychology 91, no. 4 (1999): 684–89. [>] she published a paper: Kozhevnikov et al., “Spatial versus Object Visualizers.” [>] a self-report questionnaire: O.


Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game by Walker Deibel

barriers to entry, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, deal flow, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, diversification, drop ship, Elon Musk, family office, financial engineering, financial independence, high net worth, intangible asset, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Network effects, new economy, Peter Thiel, risk tolerance, risk/return, rolodex, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supply-chain management, Y Combinator

. $216,000 in SDE divided by twelve months. 32 It’s an unfair comparison because real estate has a cash flow component as well as equity build up, but the point illustrated here is that the value that can be built in your own privately owned business is not limited like other asset classes. 33 Carol Dweck, What Having a ”Growth Mindset” Actually Means, Harvard Business Review, January, 2016. 34 Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Herman Aguinis, Jeremy D. Mackey, Philip S. DeOrtentiis, “A Meta-Analysis of the Interactive, Additive, and Relative Effects of Cognitive Ability and Motivation on Performance” Journal of Management, January, 2018. 293 35 36 37 David Dunning, Chip Heath, and Jerry M. Suls, “Flawed SelfAssessment, Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace,” American Psychological Society, 2004.


pages: 555 words: 80,635

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital by Kimberly Clausing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, climate change refugee, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, fake news, floating exchange rates, full employment, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, index fund, investor state dispute settlement, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, uber lyft, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, zero-sum game

These disputes are often protectionist moves in disguise, as dumping rulings typically have little to do with whether the foreign firm engaged in predatory pricing practices. See Douglas A. Irwin, Free Trade under Fire: Fourth Edition. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 164–194. 3. See, as one example, the meta-analysis by Ross Levine and David Renelt. “A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth Regressions,” American Economic Review 82:4 (1992): 942–963. 4. See “China and Currency Manipulation,” Economist. March 2, 2017; and Eduardo Porter, “Trump Isn’t Wrong on China Currency Manipulation, Just Late,” New York Times, April 11, 2017. 5. 529 plans are so called because they are authorized by Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code; likewise, 401K plans are named for the subsection that describes them. 6.


pages: 258 words: 79,503

The Genius Within: Unlocking Your Brain's Potential by David Adam

Albert Einstein, business intelligence, cognitive bias, CRISPR, Flynn Effect, Gregor Mendel, job automation, John Conway, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, SimCity, Skype, Stephen Hawking, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray

‘expert chess players’, Franke A. et al. (2017), ‘Methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine for cognitive enhancement in chess: A double-blind, randomised controlled trial’, European Neuropsychopharmacology 27 (3), pp. 248–260. ‘Mozart effect’, Pietschnig J. et al. (2010), ‘Mozart effect – Shmozart effect: a meta-analysis’, Intelligence 38, pp. 314–323. ‘wasting their time’, Underwood E. (2014), ‘Neuroscientists speak out against brain game hype’, Science, 22 October. ‘asked viewers’, Owen A. et al. (2010), ‘Putting brain training to the test’, Nature 465, pp. 775–778. ‘silver-haired’, Corbett A. (2015), ‘The effect of an online cognitive training package in healthy older adults: an online randomized controlled trial’, JAMDA 16, pp. 990–997.


pages: 265 words: 75,202

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, big-box store, Blue Ocean Strategy, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Brooks, do well by doing good, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), fear of failure, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, lockdown, long term incentive plan, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, old-boy network, pension reform, performance metric, popular capitalism, pre–internet, race to the bottom, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, risk/return, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, supply-chain management, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, young professional, zero-sum game

Jeff Bezos, “Annual Letter to Shareholders,” April 6, 2016, US Securities and Exchange Commission, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312516530910/d168744dex991.htm. 6. Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York, NY: Random House, Kindle Edition, 2007), 20. 7. Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill, “Perfectionism Is Increasing over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences from 1989 to 2016,” Psychological Bulletin 145, no. 4 (2019): 410–429, https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000138.pdf. Chapter Four 1. A recent Edelman survey highlighted that a majority of respondents around the world believe that capitalism in its current form is now doing more harm than good, and according to the Pew Research Center, a third of Americans hold a negative view of capitalism.


pages: 261 words: 72,277

Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior by Jonah Berger

Apollo 11, assortative mating, barriers to entry, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, double helix, driverless car, fixed-gear, flying shuttle, Google Glasses, job satisfaction, messenger bag, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, PalmPilot, Ronald Reagan, six sigma, spinning jenny, The Wisdom of Crowds, twin studies, white flight, Yogi Berra

Other times people completed the questions for someone else’s purchase and then rated their own. 4. Match.com and Chadwick Martin Bailey Behavioral Studies (2010), “Match.com and Chadwick Martin Bailey 2009–2010 Studies: Recent Trends: Online Dating,” 1–5. 5. For a review of mere exposure research, see Bornstein, Robert (1989), “Exposure and Affect: Overview and Meta-Analysis of Research,” Psychological Bulletin 106, 263–89. 1. Monkey See, Monkey Do 1. Sherif, Muzafer (1935), “A Study of Some Social Factors in Perception: Chapter 2,” Archives of Psychology 187, 17–22. 2. For a summary of some of Asch’s studies, see Asch, Solomon (1956), “Studies of Independence and Conformity: A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority,” Psychological Monographs 70, 1–70. 3.


pages: 342 words: 72,927

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

The World Economic Forum found that 86% of people across twenty-eight countries wanted significant change to make the world a fairer and more sustainable place.17 Until recently, the behavioural economics literature looked quite underpowered, as it typically concentrated on the behaviour of individuals, examining social norms only to the extent they affect individuals rather than how those norms are formed and evolved in the first place.18 The evidence has grown into a consensus that large-scale changes in habits require shifting circumstances, not just personal willpower. Sebastian Bamberg, a transport researcher based in Germany, led a meta-analysis of individual voluntary travel behaviour change in 2017.19 He found that habits are weakly formed when people embark on personal travel planning (shifting car usage by an average of 5%). By using norms and emphasizing cooperation, insights from psychology, anthropology and sociology can signpost more powerful forces for change.20 Our knowledge of the power of societal norms is partly based on the work of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, both developmental psychologists, on how we develop a moral sense of right and wrong.21 Social norms that persist have peer-to-peer enforcement: in a pandemic, for example, a government temporarily mandates remote working and physical distancing – by law in some cases – but top-down policies become norms only once people feel that their friends or colleagues will not judge them negatively if they follow the new practices.


pages: 786 words: 195,810

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman

Albert Einstein, animal electricity, Apollo 11, Asperger Syndrome, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, Bletchley Park, crowdsourcing, Douglas Engelbart, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental subject, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, hydroponic farming, hypertext link, IBM and the Holocaust, index card, Isaac Newton, John Markoff, Kickstarter, language acquisition, Larry Wall, megacity, meta-analysis, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, neurotypical, New Journalism, pattern recognition, placebo effect, scientific mainstream, side project, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Skype, slashdot, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, sugar pill, the scientific method, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War

Wakefield was stripped of his medical license in England by the General Medical Council in 2010, and the editors of the British Medical Journal denounced his study as “an elaborate fraud” in 2011. Multiple attempts by independent researchers to confirm a link between autism and the MMR vaccine have failed. In 2003, researchers writing for the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine performed a systematic meta-analysis of a dozen epidemiological studies and concluded, “The current literature does not suggest an association between ASD and the MMR vaccine. While the risk of autism from MMR remains theoretical, the consequences of not vaccinating are real.” — FROM THEIR OFFICE AT the Lorna Wing Centre for Autism a few miles outside London, Lorna and Judith regarded the vaccine controversy with a sense of tragic inevitability.

“If my son really is Patient 11”: “Exposed: Andrew Wakefield and the MMR-Autism Fraud,” Brian Deer. http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm ten of the study’s co-authors took their names off the paper: “Controversial MMR and Autism Study Retracted,” Maggie McKee. New Scientist, March 4, 2004. Wakefield was stripped of his medical license: “Retracted Autism Study an ‘Elaborate Fraud,’ British Journal Finds,” CNN Wire Staff. http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/ a systematic meta-analysis of a dozen epidemiological studies: “Association of Autistic Spectrum Disorder and the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine: A Systematic Review of Current Epidemiological Evidence,” Kumanan Wilson et al. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Vol. 157, No. 7, July 2003, pp. 628–63. “It’s a question of diagnosis”: Lorna Wing and Judith Gould, interview with the author, 2011.


pages: 289 words: 87,292

The Strange Order of Things: The Biological Roots of Culture by Antonio Damasio

Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, biofilm, business process, CRISPR, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, double helix, Gordon Gekko, invention of the wheel, invention of writing, invisible hand, job automation, mental accounting, meta-analysis, microbiome, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, planetary scale, post-truth, profit motive, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, Thomas Malthus

Pride, and Brian C. Trainor, “Effects of Kappa Opioid Receptors on Conditioned Place Aversion and Social Interaction in Males and Females,” Behavioural Brain Research 262 (2014): 84–93; M. T. Bardo, J. K. Rowlett, and M. J. Harris, “Conditioned Place Preference Using Opiate and Stimulant Drugs: A Meta-analysis,” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 19, no. 1 (1995): 39–51. 7. While activation of the innate immune system induces a generalized protective response to any form of tissue damage or infection, the adaptive immune system—which evolved later, in jawed vertebrates about 450 million years ago—mounts a direct assault targeting a specific pathogen.


pages: 287 words: 82,576

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream by Tyler Cowen

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, business climate, business cycle, circulation of elites, classic study, clean water, David Graeber, declining real wages, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, East Village, Elon Musk, Ferguson, Missouri, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentrification, gig economy, Google Glasses, Hyman Minsky, Hyperloop, income inequality, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, meta-analysis, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paradox of Choice, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Richard Florida, security theater, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, working-age population, World Values Survey

“Sex Differences in Mate Preferences Revisited: Do People Know What They Initially Desire in a Romantic Partner?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 2 (2008): 245–264. Eastwick, Paul W., Laura B. Luchies, Eli J. Finkel, and Lucy L. Hunt. “The Predictive Validity of Ideal Partner Preferences: A Review and Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 140, no. 3 (May 2013): 623–665. Economic Report of the President. Washington, DC: presented to Congress February 2015. Edlund, Lena, Cecilia Machado, and Michaela Sviatchi. “Bright Minds, Big Rent: Gentrification and the Rising Returns to Skill.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 21729, November 2015.


pages: 309 words: 86,909

The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger by Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, basic income, Berlin Wall, classic study, clean water, Diane Coyle, epigenetics, experimental economics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, God and Mammon, impulse control, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, moral panic, Murray Bookchin, offshore financial centre, phenotype, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, statistical model, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of human mating. New York: Basic Books, 1994. 210. P. Fajnzylber, D. Lederman and N. Loayza, ‘Inequality and violent crime’, Journal of Law and Economics (2002) 45: 1–40. 211. C.-C. Hsieh and M. D. Pugh, ‘Poverty, income inequality, and violent crime: A meta-analysis of recent aggregate data studies’, Criminal Justice Review (1993) 18: 182–202. 212. United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network, Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth). New York: United Nations, 2000. 213. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States.


pages: 301 words: 85,263

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future by James Bridle

AI winter, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boeing 747, British Empire, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, congestion charging, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Eyjafjallajökull, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, fear of failure, Flash crash, fulfillment center, Google Earth, Greyball, Haber-Bosch Process, Higgs boson, hive mind, income inequality, informal economy, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Bridle, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Large Hadron Collider, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, Leo Hollis, lone genius, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, oil shock, p-value, pattern recognition, peak oil, recommendation engine, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, social graph, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, speech recognition, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, stem cell, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, the built environment, the scientific method, Uber for X, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks

Casadevall, ‘Retracted Science and the Retraction Index’, Infection and Immunity 79 (2011), 3855–9. 9.F. C. Fang, R. G. Steen, and A. Casadevall, ‘Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications’, FAS, October 16, 2012, pnas.org. 10.Daniele Fanelli, ‘How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data’, PLOS ONE, May 29, 2009, PLOS ONE, journals.pl. 11.F. C. Fang, R. G. Steen, and A. Casadevall, ‘Why Has the Number of Scientific Retractions Increased?’, PLOS ONE, July 8, 2013, journals.plosone.org. 12.‘People Who Mattered 2014’, Time, December 2014, time.com. 13.Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, ‘The Mind of a Con Man’, New York Times, April 26, 2013, nytimes.com. 14.Monya Baker, ‘1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility’, Nature, May 25, 2016, nature.com. 15.For more on the math of this experiment, see Jean-Francois Puget, ‘Green dice are loaded (welcome to p-hacking)’, IBM developer-Works blog entry, March 22, 2016, ibm.com. 16.M.


pages: 284 words: 84,169

Talk on the Wild Side by Lane Greene

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Boris Johnson, deep learning, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, framing effect, Google Chrome, Higgs boson, illegal immigration, invisible hand, language acquisition, Large Hadron Collider, machine translation, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral panic, natural language processing, obamacare, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Snapchat, sparse data, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, Turing test, Wall-E

But it turns out to have no research whatsoever behind it. Though it seems like common sense, one study has even found that this was the worst of several approaches that were carefully compared to see which got students writing the best prose. In 2007 Steve Graham and Dolores Perin, two academics, compared dozens of teaching strategies in a meta-analysis, a study of studies considered a kind of gold standard in academia. (Any one study may have flaws, but looking at a large batch of them and combining their findings means that those flaws should wash out.) Graham and Perin found 11 strategies that were proven to work – things like practising summarisation, pre-writing and collaborative writing assignments.


pages: 276 words: 81,153

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

., Chang, K-W, Zou, J. Y., Saligrama, V. and Kalai, A. T. 2016. ‘Man is to computer programmer as woman is to homemaker? Debiasing word embeddings.’ In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, pp. 4349–57. 11 For a review see Hofmann, W., Gawronski, B., Gschwendner, T., Le, H. and Schmitt, M. 2005. ‘A meta-analysis on the correlation between the implicit association test and explicit self-report measures.’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31, no. 10: 1369–85. Chapter 15 : The Only Thought Between the Decimal 1 A similar gate can be found in quantum computing and is known as the Hadamard gate. 2 To implement this model I used the neural network demo program at https://lecture-demo.ira.uka.de.


pages: 271 words: 82,159

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

affirmative action, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, mass incarceration, medical residency, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, RAND corporation, school choice, Silicon Valley

So the results presented here may be showing evidence of a marginal return for reductions in class size over a range of sizes that are not characteristic of most American schools.” For a discussion of the relationship between drinking and health as an inverted-U curve, see Augusto Di Castelnuovo et al., “Alcohol Dosing and Total Mortality in Men and Women: An Updated Meta-analysis of 34 Prospective Studies,” Archives of Internal Medicine 166, no. 22 (2006): 2437–45. Jesse Levin’s research on class size and achievement is “For Whom the Reductions Count: A Quantile Regression Analysis of Class Size and Peer Effects on Scholastic Achievement,” Empirical Economics 26 (2001): 221.


pages: 285 words: 86,174

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy by Chris Hayes

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, carried interest, circulation of elites, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Kenneth Arrow, Mark Zuckerberg, mass affluent, mass incarceration, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, radical decentralization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Savings and loan crisis, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, Vilfredo Pareto, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

Esquire, January 18, 2011. 41 “And I—I mean—you know, my dad”: See “Republican Presidential Candidates Participate in a CNN-Sponsored Debate,” Political Transcript Wire, January 20, 2012. 42 “It was always a business where you had to have an edge”: Steve Fishman, “The Madoff Tapes,” New York, February 27, 2011. 43 “I am an important person”: Jean M. Twenge et al., “Egos Inflating Over Time: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder,” Journal of Personality 76, no. 4 (2008): 878. 44 “People with insecure high self-esteem”: Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger (New York: Bloomsbury), p. 37. 45 “not that smart and kind of a bully”: See Jeffrey Rosen, “The Case Against Sotomayor,” New Republic, May 4, 2009. 46 “meritocratic feedback loop”: Ho, Liquidated, p. 57. 47 “There’s 100 percent no question”: Author interview. 48 “the outstretched arms of J.P.


pages: 291 words: 81,703

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen

Amazon Mechanical Turk, behavioural economics, Black Swan, brain emulation, Brownian motion, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, choice architecture, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, computerized trading, cosmological constant, crowdsourcing, dark matter, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deliberate practice, driverless car, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, Flynn Effect, Freestyle chess, full employment, future of work, game design, Higgs boson, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, Loebner Prize, low interest rates, low skilled workers, machine readable, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microcredit, Myron Scholes, Narrative Science, Netflix Prize, Nicholas Carr, off-the-grid, P = NP, P vs NP, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, reshoring, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, Yogi Berra

A Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment on Gender Differences in Job-Entry Decisions,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 16546, November 2010. On the importance of conscientiousness in the workplace and for earnings, see for instance Murray R. Barrick and Michael K. Mount, “The Big Five Personality Dimensions and Job Performance: A Meta-Analysis,” Personnel Psychology, 1991, 44(1): 1–26; Ellen K. Nyhus and Empar Pons, “The Effects of Personality on Earnings,” Journal of Economic Psychology, 2005, 26(3): 363–84; and Daniel Spurk and Andrea E. Abele, “Who Earns More and Why? A Multiple Mediation Model from Personality to Salary,” Journal of Business and Psychology, 2011, 26(1): 87–103.


pages: 297 words: 83,651

The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour

4chan, anti-communist, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cal Newport, Californian Ideology, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, classic study, colonial rule, Comet Ping Pong, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, dark triade / dark tetrad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, Gabriella Coleman, gamification, Google Chrome, Google Earth, hive mind, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of writing, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, moral panic, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, packet switching, patent troll, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-truth, RAND corporation, Rat Park, rent-seeking, replication crisis, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skinner box, smart cities, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Timothy McVeigh, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, upwardly mobile, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

The industry is riddled with . . . Ben Goldacre, ‘Foreword’, Bad Pharma: How Medicine is Broken, and How We Can Fix it Fourth Estate: London, 2013. 54. When a peer-reviewed survey of scientists . . . Daniele Fanelli, ‘How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data’, PLOS One, 29 May 2009. 55. Data was hailed as . . . ‘The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data’, the Economist, 6 May 2017; Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, ‘Big Data: The Management Revolution’, Harvard Business Review, October 2012. 56. In an excitable piece for Wired . . .


pages: 266 words: 85,265

Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance

classic study, fixed income, Frances Oldham Kelsey, hive mind, impulse control, Isaac Newton, meta-analysis, nocebo, personalized medicine, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, side project, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, Yogi Berra

“When Words Are Painful: Unraveling the Mechanisms of the Nocebo Effect.” Neuroscience 147, no. 2 (June 29, 2007): 260–71. doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2007.02.020. Bicket, Mark C., Anita Gupta, Charlie H. Brown, and Steven P. Cohen. “Epidural Injections for Spinal Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Evaluating the ‘Control’ Injections in Randomized Controlled Trials.” Anesthesiology 119, no. 4 (October 2013): 907–31. doi:10.1097/ALN.0b013e31829c2ddd. Brodwin, Paul. Medicine and Morality in Haiti: The Contest for Healing Power. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Cannon, Walter B. “ ‘Voodoo’ Death.”


The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work by Vishen Lakhiani

Abraham Maslow, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, data science, deliberate practice, do what you love, Elon Musk, fail fast, fundamental attribution error, future of work, gamification, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, meta-analysis, microbiome, performance metric, Peter Thiel, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, social bookmarking, social contagion, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TED Talk, web application, white picket fence, work culture

The Power of PQ Positive optimism can equate to what Shirzad Chamine, author of the book Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential, would call a high Positive Intelligence Quotient (PQ). A person with a high PQ means they have a higher ratio of positive feelings to overall feelings. In a simple sense: a person who is feeling a little stressed or insecure or down 10 percent of the time would have a PQ of 90. The book is a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies on happiness and work, concluding that “higher PQ leads to higher salary and greater success in the arenas of work, marriage, health, sociability, friendship, and creativity.” Chamine writes: “Your mind is your best friend, but it is also your worst enemy. Positive intelligence is the relative strength of these two modes of your mind.


pages: 266 words: 80,273

Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One by Debora MacKenzie

Anthropocene, anti-globalists, butterfly effect, Citizen Lab, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, dark matter, Donald Trump, European colonialism, gig economy, global supply chain, income inequality, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, machine translation, megacity, meta-analysis, microcredit, planetary scale, reshoring, social distancing, supply-chain management, TED Talk, uranium enrichment, zoonotic diseases

One critic… stiff whiskey: Debora MacKenzie, “Evidence that Tamiflu reduces deaths in pandemic flu,” New Scientist, June 24, 2013, www.newscientist.com/article/dn23744-evidence-that-tamiflu-reduces-deaths-in-pandemic-flu. 30. Jonathan Van… effect: S.G. Muthuri, et al., “Impact of neuraminidase inhibitor treatment on outcomes of public health importance during the 2009-2010 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis in hospitalized patients,” The Journal of Infectious Diseases 207, no. 4 (November 2012): 553–63, doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jis726. 31. In an investigation… infect bacteria: Debora MacKenzie, “The war against antibiotic resistance is finally turning in our favour,” New Scientist, January 16, 2019, www.newscientist.com/article/2190957-the-war-against-antibiotic-resistance-is-finally-turning-in-our-favour. 32.


pages: 286 words: 87,168

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

air freight, Airbnb, Anthropocene, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, biodiversity loss, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, circular economy, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate personhood, cotton gin, COVID-19, David Graeber, decarbonisation, declining real wages, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, disinformation, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, extractivism, Fairphone, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, meta-analysis, microbiome, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, passive income, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Post-Keynesian economics, quantitative easing, rent control, rent-seeking, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, Rupert Read, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, universal basic income

Politics & Society 34(4), 2006, pp. 503–542. 26 This research is reported in Peter Barck-Holst et al., ‘Reduced working hours and stress in the Swedish social services: A longitudinal study,’ International Social Work 60(4), 2017, pp. 897–913. 27 Boris Baltes, et al., ‘Flexible and compressed workweek schedules: A meta-analysis of their effects on work-related criteria,’ Journal of Applied Psychology 84(4), 1999. 28 Anna Coote et al., ‘21 hours: why a shorter working week can help us all flourish in the 21st century,’ New Economics Foundation, 2009. 29 François-Xavier Devetter and Sandrine Rousseau, ‘Working hours and sustainable development,’ Review of Social Economy 69(3), 2011, pp. 333–355. 30 See for example what happened in France when it shifted to a thirty-five-hour week: Samy Sanches, ‘Sustainable consumption à la française?


pages: 291 words: 80,068

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

,” BBC News, October 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/41365364. More rigorous analyses have found a positive correlation (but not a causal link) between firm performances and female representation in top management in some instances. Cf. Corinne Post and Kris Byron, “Women on Boards and Firm Financial Performance: A Meta-Analysis,” Academy of Management Journal 58, no. 2, November 7, 2014, https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2013.0319. Diversity ending up with uniformity: An illustration is Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s argument that American universities’ approach to diversity has undermined the free exchange of ideas.


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

Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality, Pew Research Center, January 9, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/. 19.  Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (and How to Fix It) (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2019). 20.  Dimitri van der Linden et al., “Overlap Between the General Factor of Personality and Emotional Intelligence: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 143, no. 1 (2017): 36–52, https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000078. 21.  Peter K. Jonason and Jeremy Tost, “I Just Cannot Control Myself: The Dark Triad and Self-Control,” Personality and Individual Differences 49, no. 6 (October 2010): 611–15, accessed May 12, 2021, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886910002783. 22.  


pages: 366 words: 87,916

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It by Gabriel Wyner

card file, crowdsourcing, en.wikipedia.org, index card, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, language acquisition, machine translation, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, pattern recognition, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Skype, spaced repetition, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Yogi Berra

The first provides a nice overview of the research in general, and the second delves a bit deeper into the mnemonic advantages of Personal Connection (also known as the Self-Reference Effect): Robert S. Lockhart and Fergus I. M. Craik, “Levels of Processing: A Retrospective Commentary on a Framework for Memory Research,” Canadian Journal of Psychology 44, no. 1 (1990): 87–112; Cynthia S. Symons and Blair T. Johnson, “The Self-Reference Effect in Memory: A Meta-Analysis,” CHIP Documents (1997): Paper 9. 2 This effect even applies to totally unrelated images: Note that a related image works better, so if you need to learn the word apple, you might as well grab a picture of an apple. Also note that if the image is the opposite of what you’re learning (if you’re learning hot with a picture of an ice cube), you’re going to have a harder time remembering that combination.


pages: 276 words: 93,430

Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body by Sara Pascoe

Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, meta-analysis, presumed consent, rolodex, selection bias, Stephen Fry, TED Talk, WikiLeaks

We continue a culture where women who don’t depend on men wanting sex with them for income behave as if they do. Want to know a disturbing statistic? You know I said that all women who have boob jobs are unwittingly part of an ongoing study; well, lots of studies are conducted using their data – health complications afterwards, further cosmetic procedures, etc. And a meta-analysis of all these studies found that women who’ve had breast enlargements are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than women who haven’t. We need to think about that. About why this is happening, about the vulnerabilities of the women who choose cosmetic surgery and the normalisation of such choices.


pages: 354 words: 91,875

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Doto Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal

banking crisis, behavioural economics, bioinformatics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive bias, delayed gratification, Dunning–Kruger effect, Easter island, game design, impulse control, lifelogging, loss aversion, low interest rates, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, PalmPilot, phenotype, Richard Thaler, social contagion, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Tragedy of the Commons, Walter Mischel

“Giving In to Feel Good: The Place of Emotion Regulation in the Context of General Self-Control.” Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory 11 (2000): 149–59. Page 139—Terror management theory: Burke, B. L., A. Martens, and E. H. Faucher. “Two Decades of Terror Management Theory: A Meta-Analysis of Mortality Salience Research.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14 (2010): 155–95. Page 140—Death and comfort eating: Mandel, N., and D. Smeesters. “The Sweet Escape: Effects of Mortality Salience on Consumption Quantities for High- and Low-Self-Esteem Consumers.” Journal of Consumer Research 35 (2008): 309–23.


pages: 257 words: 94,168

Oil Panic and the Global Crisis: Predictions and Myths by Steven M. Gorelick

California gold rush, carbon footprint, energy security, energy transition, flex fuel, Ford Model T, income per capita, invention of the telephone, Jevons paradox, meta-analysis, North Sea oil, nowcasting, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, price elasticity of demand, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, statistical model, stock buybacks, Thomas Malthus

B. (2003). “Price elasticity of demand for crude oil: estimates for 23 countries,” OPEC Review, 27: 1–8. US Federal Trade Commission (2005). “Gasoline price changes: The dynamics of supply, demand, and competition,” page 135, citing Epsey, M. (1998). “Gasoline Demand Revisited: An International Meta-Analysis of Elasticities,” Energy Economics, 20: 273–95, for long-term elasticity value and their own analysis for the short-term value. Cooper, J. C. B. (2003). Price elasticity of demand for crude oil: estimates for 23 countries, OPEC Review, 27: 1–8. www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/gasoline_q-and-a.html Ye, M., J.


pages: 322 words: 87,181

Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy by Dani Rodrik

3D printing, airline deregulation, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, central bank independence, centre right, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, continuous integration, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, full employment, future of work, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, global value chain, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, open immigration, Pareto efficiency, postindustrial economy, precautionary principle, price stability, public intellectual, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, World Values Survey, zero-sum game, éminence grise

The typical distance elasticity is around –1.0, meaning that trade falls by 10 percent for every 10 percent increase in distance. This is a fairly large effect. Presumably, what lies behind it is not just transportation and communication costs but the lack of familiarity and cultural differences. (Linguistic differences are often controlled for separately.) Disdier and Head undertook a meta-analysis, collecting 1,467 distance effects from 103 papers covering trade flows at different points in time, and stumbled on a surprising result: distance matters more now than it did in the late nineteenth century. The distance effect seems to have increased from the 1960s, remaining persistently high since then (see Figure 2.4).


Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child by Alissa Quart

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, cognitive dissonance, deliberate practice, Flynn Effect, haute couture, helicopter parent, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Stephen Hawking, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, Two Sigma, War on Poverty

And because it costs little, it is far less explosive politically than, say, demanding ample federal funds for gifted education. But does it damage children to remove them from their peer group? The answer is not entirely clear. Advocates of acceleration point not only to Colangelo’s book but also to a 1992 meta-analysis by University of Michigan researchers, who crunched twenty-six studies conducted internationally of accelerated students, and found that such students not only do better academically than their peers but also have nearly the same social abilities as those peers. But another study conducted with data gathered from children who attended the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins confirmed the ambiguities of acceleration: it found that while 95 percent of the 175 youths in the study regarded their acceleration positively, 50 percent reported some negative effects.


pages: 293 words: 90,714

Copenhagenize: The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism by Mikael Colville-Andersen

active transport: walking or cycling, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, bike sharing, business cycle, car-free, congestion charging, corporate social responsibility, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Enrique Peñalosa, functional fixedness, gamification, if you build it, they will come, Induced demand, intermodal, Jane Jacobs, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, megaproject, meta-analysis, neurotypical, out of africa, place-making, Ralph Waldo Emerson, safety bicycle, self-driving car, sharing economy, smart cities, starchitect, transcontinental railway, urban planning, urban sprawl, Yogi Berra

Traces of car-centric planning are everywhere, like scars on our cities’ skin. Individuals, organizations, and policymakers in every country subconsciously do the bidding of Big Auto, even though they may feel their intentions are good. Traffic safety organizations abound. Local, national, international. My company did a meta-analysis of the communication techniques used by a selection of them. From the Danish Road Safety Council to FIA—the international automobile association. It was easy to find their common denominators. Their techniques are firmly rooted in the Culture of Fear, so aptly described in the book of the same name by British sociologist Frank Furedi.


pages: 340 words: 91,745

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

Our talent for detecting deception, with anyone—friend, foe, lover, family member, or stranger—is no better than a roll of the dice. In fact, the closer you are to someone, the more likely you are to believe them, because your blinders are in place and securely fastened. What’s more, there’s no slowly growing protuberance that screams “LIAR!” Pinocchio isn’t real. In a meta-analysis of over two hundred studies, psychologist Charles F. Bond and lying researcher Bella DePaulo concluded that people could only finger a liar 47 percent of the time.16 Experienced job interviewers didn’t fare any better (52 percent) when trying to distinguish between candidates who lied about their career histories and those who didn’t.17 “So much of lie detection is based on the verbal as well as the non-verbals that one would have to have expertise in psychology, anthropology, sociology, criminology, jurisprudence, sociobiology, neurobiology, psychiatry, anatomy, physiology, communications, zoology, ethnography, primatology, linguistics, language, and grammar, to name a few, to truly understand the depth of what is behind deception and how to detect it,” wrote former FBI agent Joe Navarro.18 People are more honest online than they are in person, which surprised me.


pages: 319 words: 90,965

The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere by Kevin Carey

Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Blue Ocean Strategy, business cycle, business intelligence, carbon-based life, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, complexity theory, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, declining real wages, deliberate practice, discrete time, disruptive innovation, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Downton Abbey, Drosophila, Fairchild Semiconductor, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Google X / Alphabet X, Gregor Mendel, informal economy, invention of the printing press, inventory management, John Markoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, natural language processing, Network effects, open borders, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, pez dispenser, Recombinant DNA, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Ruby on Rails, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, technoutopianism, transcontinental railway, uber lyft, Vannevar Bush

Meyer, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2008, p. 12. The U.S. Department of Education has examined scores of online learning studies: Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia, Karla Jones, and the Center for Technology in Learning, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service, revised 2010, http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf. Suppes showed up on the first day of class: Michael Allen, “Addressing Diversity in (e-)Learning,” in Michael Allen’s e-Learning Annual, 2008, San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2008.


pages: 312 words: 89,728

The End of My Addiction by Olivier Ameisen

Albert Einstein, epigenetics, fake it until you make it, meta-analysis, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), statistical model

A double-blind trial of baclofen against placebo in the treatment of schizophrenia. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 1976; 54:287–293. 9. Bigelow LB, Nasrallah H, Carman J, et al. Baclofen treatment in chronic schizophrenia: a clinical trial. Am J Psychiatry. 1977; 134:318–320. 10. Soares KV, McGrath JJ. The treatment of tardive dyskinesia—a systematic review and meta-analysis. Schizophr Res. 1999; 39:1–16. 11. Glazer WM, Moore DC, Bowers MB. The treatment of tardive dyskinesia with baclofen. Psychopharmacology (Berlin). 1985; 87:480–483. 12. Itil TM, Herkert E, Schneider SJ, et al. Baclofen in the treatment of tardive dyskinesia: open label study. Acta Ther. 1980; 6:315–323. 13.


pages: 342 words: 94,762

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy

algorithmic trading, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, blood diamond, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computerized trading, corporate governance, cotton gin, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Flash crash, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, Google Earth, Hernando de Soto, High speed trading, impulse control, income inequality, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Long Term Capital Management, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nick Leeson, paper trading, Paul Graham, payday loans, Pershing Square Capital Management, Ralph Nader, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, six sigma, social discount rate, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, upwardly mobile, Walter Mischel, work culture

., “Implicit Bias Among Physicians,” p. 7. 4. Dana R. Carney and Greg Willard, “Racial Prejudice Is Contagious,” working paper, available at: http://www.columbia.edu/~dc2534/Contagion.pdf. 5. Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, “Thin Slices of Expressive Behavior as Predictors of Interpersonal Consequences: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 111(1992): 256–274. 6. Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, “Predicting Teacher Evaluations from Thin Slices of Nonverbal Behavior and Physical Attractiveness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64(3, 1993): 431–441. 7. Gordon W. Allport, Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (Holt, 1937). 8.


pages: 313 words: 91,098

The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Air France Flight 447, attribution theory, bitcoin, Black Swan, Cass Sunstein, combinatorial explosion, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Dmitri Mendeleev, driverless car, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Flynn Effect, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, hindsight bias, hive mind, indoor plumbing, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, libertarian paternalism, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Peoples Temple, prediction markets, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Rodney Brooks, Rosa Parks, seminal paper, single-payer health, speech recognition, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Wisdom of Crowds, Vernor Vinge, web application, Whole Earth Review, Y Combinator

Polarization from discussion: An early paper showing this effect is D. Pruitt (1971). “Choice Shifts in Group Discussion: An Introductory Review.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 20(3): 339–360. A review of the literature can be found in D. J. Isenberg (1986). “Group Polarization: A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50(6): 1141–1151. illusion of explanatory depth with political issues: P. M. Fernbach, T. Rogers, C. Fox, and S. A. Sloman (2013). “Political Extremism Is Supported by an Illusion of Understanding.” Psychological Science 24(6): 939–946. Thinking increases extremism: A.


pages: 287 words: 92,194

Sex Power Money by Sara Pascoe

Albert Einstein, call centre, Donald Trump, fake news, Firefox, gender pay gap, invention of movable type, Louis Daguerre, meta-analysis, Neil Kinnock, Ocado, phenotype, Russell Brand, TED Talk, telemarketer, twin studies, zero-sum game

They found that men had a more pronounced reaction to the sexual scenario, women to the emotional scenario. I imagine it wasn’t a pleasant morning for anyone, covered in electrodes, picturing their partner cheating. These studies inspired a genre and since 1992 over a hundred experiments have investigated sex differences in jealousy. Meta-analysis has proved the ‘men more bothered by sexual infidelity’ hypothesis to be robust. But it’s important to remember that this doesn’t dictate anything about you and me, as individuals. Women and men do not fall into separate, distinct categories. Our sex alone does not dictate how and why we get jealous.


pages: 324 words: 93,606

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy by Linsey McGoey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, American Legislative Exchange Council, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, cashless society, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, effective altruism, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, germ theory of disease, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Ida Tarbell, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Hollis, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, microcredit, Mitch Kapor, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, obamacare, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school choice, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, tacit knowledge, technological solutionism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trickle-down economics, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators

At the lower end of the spectrum, where consumers have little purchasing power, flexibility ebbs and choices grow scarcer. Studies to date indicate that most charters perform either no better, or worse, than traditional public schools. Approximately four out of five – or over 80 per cent – of charter schools achieve no better test results than traditional public schools, and some are considerably worse. A meta-analysis (a study that pools existent data in order to compare multiple studies) conducted at the Center on Reinventing Public Education in Seattle found that charters were better at teaching reading and mathematics at the primary level, while high school charters fared worse in maths and reading outcomes than traditional schools.


Daughter Detox: Recovering From an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life by Peg Streep

Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, fear of failure, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Kintsugi, loss aversion, meta-analysis, Stanford marshmallow experiment, sunk-cost fallacy, Walter Mischel

Lench, Heather C., and Linda J. Levin. Goals and Responses to Failure: Knowing When to Hold Them and When to Fold Them. Motivation and Emotion , 2008, vol. 32(2), pp. 127-140. Mesman, Judi, Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, and Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg. The Many Faces of the Still-Face Paradigm: A Review and Meta-Analysis. Developmental Review , 2009, vol. 29(2), pp. 120-162. Nishitani, S., et al. The Calming Effect of a Maternal Breast Milk Odor on the Human Newborn Infant. Neuroscience Research , 2009, vol. 63(1), pp. 66-71. Ochsner, Kevin N., and James J. Gross. The Cognitive Control of Emotion. Trends in Cognitive Science , 2005, vol. 9(5), pp. 242-249.


pages: 270 words: 88,213

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People by Tracy Kidder

Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, bank run, coronavirus, feminist movement, fixed income, gentrification, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, medical residency, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, obamacare, San Francisco homelessness, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Soul of a New Machine, War on Poverty

On costs of ACT teams generally: “Assertive Community Treatment.” Harvard Mental Health Letter 23, no. 5 (2006): 4–5. On the nature of ACT teams: Menzies Munthe-Kaas, H., R. C. Berg, and N. Blaasvaer. “Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Homelessness: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Campbell Systematic Reviews 14 (February 28, 2018): 1–281. Jill Roncarati’s study: Roncarati, J. S., H. Tiemeier, R. Tachick, T. J. VandeerWeele, and J. J. O’Connell. “Housing Boston’s Chronically Homeless Unsheltered Population: 14 Years Later.” Medical Care 59, no. 4, suppl. 2. (April 2021). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/​33710091/.


pages: 901 words: 234,905

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, anti-communist, behavioural economics, belling the cat, British Empire, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Defenestration of Prague, desegregation, disinformation, Dutch auction, epigenetics, Exxon Valdez, George Akerlof, germ theory of disease, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, Gregor Mendel, Hobbesian trap, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, Joan Didion, language acquisition, long peace, meta-analysis, More Guns, Less Crime, Murray Gell-Mann, mutually assured destruction, Norman Mailer, Oklahoma City bombing, PalmPilot, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, plutocrats, Potemkin village, prisoner's dilemma, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Rodney Brooks, Saturday Night Live, Skinner box, social intelligence, speech recognition, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the new new thing, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Timothy McVeigh, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, ultimatum game, urban renewal, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Laterborns, in contrast, should be more conciliatory and open to new ideas and experiences. Though family therapists and laypeople have had these impressions for a long time, Sulloway tried to explain them in terms of Trivers’s theory of parent-offspring conflict and its corollary, sibling rivalry. He found some support for these ideas in a meta-analysis (a quantitative literature review) of studies of birth order and personality.47 Sulloway’s theory, however, also requires that children use the same strategies outside the home—with their peers and colleagues—as the ones that served them well inside the home. That does not follow from Trivers’s theory; indeed, it contradicts the larger theory from evolutionary psychology that relationships with blood relatives should be very different from relationships with nonrelatives.

Emergenesis: Genetic traits that may not run in families. American Psychologist, 47, 1565–1577. Lytton, H. 1990. Child effects—Still unwelcome? Response to Dogge and Wahler. Developmental Psychology, 26, 705–709. Lytton, H., & Romney, D. M. 1991. Parents’ differential socialization of boys and girls: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 109, 267–296. Maccoby, E. E., & Jacklin, C. N. 1987. The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. 1983. Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-child interaction. In P. H. Mussen & E. M. Hetherington (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Socialization, personality, and social development (4 ed., Vol. 4).


pages: 436 words: 98,538

The Upside of Inequality by Edward Conard

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, bank run, Berlin Wall, book value, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, future of work, Gini coefficient, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the telephone, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, liquidity trap, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, new economy, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, survivorship bias, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, University of East Anglia, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

Lawrence Summers, “The Future of Work in the Age of the Machine: A Hamilton Project Policy Forum,” National Press Club, February 19, 2015, http://www.hamilton project.org/events/the_future_of_work_in_the_age_of_the_machine. 44. Schulzke, “Bill Gates Says Education Reform Is Tougher Than Eradicating Polio, Malaria or Tuberculosis.” 45. Tinca J. C. Polderman, Beben Benyamin, Christiaan A. de Leeuw, Patrick Sullivan, et al., “Meta-Analysis of the Heritability of Human Traits Based on Fifty Years of Twin Studies,” Nature Genetics 47 (2015): 702–9, http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v47/n7/full/ng.3285.html. Kaili Rimfeld, Yulia Kovas, Philip S. Dale, and Robert Plomin, “Pleiotropy Across Academic Subjects at the End of Compulsory Education,” Scientific Reports, 2015, http://www.nature.com/articles/srep11713. 46.


pages: 360 words: 100,991

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence by Richard Yonck

3D printing, AI winter, AlphaGo, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, backpropagation, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, brain emulation, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, deep learning, DeepMind, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Fairchild Semiconductor, friendly AI, Geoffrey Hinton, ghettoisation, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of writing, Jacques de Vaucanson, job automation, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, Loebner Prize, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, mirror neurons, Neil Armstrong, neurotypical, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, old age dependency ratio, pattern recognition, planned obsolescence, pneumatic tube, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, Skype, social intelligence, SoftBank, software as a service, SQL injection, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, theory of mind, Turing test, twin studies, Two Sigma, undersea cable, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Review, working-age population, zero day

The advantage deception potentially affords those who successfully engage in it contributes to the belief that such behavior is worth the risk. In some cases this may actually be true. The means and methods of deception vary widely but are all linked by one thing: the intention to undermine the balance of relational power to the perpetrator’s advantage. A large-scale meta-analysis of research results from 206 documents and 24,483 judges’ records revealed that all of us, even police and judges, fare little better than chance when assessing whether or not someone is lying. On average people made correct truth-lie judgments only 54 percent of the time.7 Interestingly, while most people operate with a truth bias, law enforcement officials skew in the other direction, operating with a slight lie bias.


pages: 435 words: 95,864

Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal by Donna Jackson Nakazawa

classic study, epigenetics, fear of failure, impulse control, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, randomized controlled trial, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), TED Talk

But if there is a mutation in that gene, which causes another allele to be expressed, a red blood cell might be shaped, instead, in the form of a sickle—causing sickle-cell anemia. People with this Sensitivity Gene variant who experience: K. Karg, M. Burmeister, S. Sen, et al., “The Serotonin Transporter Promoter Variant (5-HTTLPR), Stress, and Depression Meta-Analysis Revisited: Evidence of Genetic Moderation,” Archives of General Psychiatry 68, no. 5 (May 2011), 444–54. In the study, Srijan Sen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School, and his colleagues examined fifty-four studies done between 2001 and 2010 looking at 41,000 individuals—the largest analysis ever done of the relationship between individuals’ serotonin genetic makeup and how well they were able to bounce back from adversity.


pages: 297 words: 96,509

Time Paradox by Philip G. Zimbardo, John Boyd

Albert Einstein, behavioural economics, cognitive dissonance, Drosophila, endowment effect, heat death of the universe, hedonic treadmill, impulse control, indoor plumbing, loss aversion, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Monty Hall problem, Necker cube, overconfidence effect, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, twin studies

Kaltman, “Toward an Integrative Perspective on Bereavement,” Psychological Bulletin 125: 760–76 (1999); and G. A. Bonnano et al., “Resilience to Loss and Chronic Grief: A Prospective Study from Preloss to 18-Months Postloss,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83: 1150–64 (2002). 3. E. J. Ozer et al., “Predictors of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Symptoms in Adults: A Meta-analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 129: 52–73 (2003). 4. G. A. Bonanno, C. Rennicke, and S. Dekel, “Self-Enhancement Among High-Exposure Survivors of the September 11th Terrorist Attack: Resilience or Social Maladjustment?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 984–98 (2005). 5. R. G. Tedeschi and L.


pages: 111 words: 1

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Alan Greenspan, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, availability heuristic, backtesting, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Swan, commoditize, complexity theory, corporate governance, corporate raider, currency peg, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, endowment effect, equity premium, financial engineering, fixed income, global village, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, PalmPilot, Paradox of Choice, Paul Samuelson, power law, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, Richard Feynman, risk free rate, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, selection bias, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, survivorship bias, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, Yogi Berra

., the value of the order flow).The seat has a value as the New York Stock Exchange specialist “book” is worth quite large sums: See Hilton (2003). See also Taleb (1997) for a discussion of the time and place advantage. Data mining: Sullivan, Timmermann and White (1999). Dogs not barking: I thank my correspondent Francesco Corielli from Bocconi for his remark on meta-analysis. CHAPTER 10 Networks: Arthur (1994). See Barabasi (2002), Watts (2003). Nonlinear dynamics: For an introduction to nonlinear dynamics in finance, see Brock and De Lima (1995), and Brock, Hsieh and LeBaron (1991). See also the recent, and certainly the most complete, Sornette (2003). Sornette goes beyond just characterizing the process as fat-tailed and saying that the probability distribution is different from the one we learned in Finance 101.


pages: 351 words: 101,051

Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors by Caroline Elton

Alvin Roth, fear of failure, feminist movement, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Libby Zion, longitudinal study, medical residency, meta-analysis, Rubik’s Cube, traumatic brain injury, women in the workforce

., “Medical School Applicants from Ethnic Minority Groups: Identifying If and When They Are Disadvantaged,” BMJ 310:6978 (1995), pp. 496–500. comprehensive study on ethnic differentials: Woolf, K., et al., “Ethnicity and Academic Performance in UK Trained Doctors and Medical Students: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” BMJ 342 (2011), 10.1136/bmj.d901. an accompanying editorial to the article, Aneez Esmail: Esmail, A., “Ethnicity and Academic Performance in the UK,” BMJ 342 (2011), 10.1136/bmj.d709. Sir Richard Doll in the 1950s: Doll, R., and Hill, A., “The Mortality of Doctors in Relation to Their Smoking Habits,” BMJ 1 (1954), pp. 1451–1455.


pages: 369 words: 98,776

The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans by Mark Lynas

Airbus A320, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Easter island, Eyjafjallajökull, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Negawatt, New Urbanism, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, special drawing rights, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Tragedy of the Commons, two and twenty, undersea cable, University of East Anglia, We are as Gods

., 2008: “Endocrine Disruptors, Genital Development, and Hypospadias,” Journal of Andrology, 29, 499–505. 18. H. Fisch et al., 2010: “Rising Hypospadias Rates: Disproving a Myth,” Journal of Pediatric Urology, 6, 1, 37–9. 19. M. López-Cervantes et al., 2004: “Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane Burden and Breast Cancer Risk: A Meta-analysis of the Epidemiologic Evidence,” Environmental Health Perspectives, 112, 2, 207–14. 20. M. Gammon et al., 2002: “Environmental Toxins and Breast Cancer on Long Island. II. Organochlorine Compound Levels in Blood,” Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, 11, 8, 686–97. 21. S. Safe, 2004: “Endocrine Disruptors and Human Health: Is There a Problem,” Toxicology, 205, 1–2, 3–10. 22.


Beautiful Visualization by Julie Steele

barriers to entry, correlation does not imply causation, data acquisition, data science, database schema, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, global pandemic, Hans Rosling, index card, information retrieval, iterative process, linked data, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, no-fly zone, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, performance metric, power law, QR code, recommendation engine, semantic web, social bookmarking, social distancing, social graph, sorting algorithm, Steve Jobs, the long tail, web application, wikimedia commons, Yochai Benkler

Deep South: An Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Freeman, Linton C. 1979. “Centrality in social networks: I. Conceptual clarification.” Social Networks 1: 215–239. http://moreno.ss.uci.edu/27.png. Freeman, Linton C. 2003. “Finding social groups: A meta-analysis of the southern women data.” In Dynamic Social Network Modeling and Analysis, eds. Ronald Breiger, Kathleen Carley, and Philippa Pattison. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. http://moreno.ss.uci.edu/85.png. Freeman, Linton C. 2004. The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science.


pages: 407 words: 103,501

The Digital Divide: Arguments for and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Netwo Rking by Mark Bauerlein

Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, business cycle, centre right, citizen journalism, collaborative editing, computer age, computer vision, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, digital divide, disintermediation, folksonomy, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Future Shock, Hacker News, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telephone, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, late fees, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, meta-analysis, moral panic, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, PageRank, PalmPilot, peer-to-peer, pets.com, radical decentralization, Results Only Work Environment, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, search engine result page, semantic web, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technology bubble, Ted Nelson, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thorstein Veblen, web application, Yochai Benkler

The trick, though, is to make the learning games compelling enough to actually be used in their place. They must be real games, not just drills with eye candy, combined creatively with real content. The numbers back this up. The Lightspan Partnership, which created PlayStation games for curricular reinforcement, conducted studies in over 400 individual school districts and a “meta-analysis” as well. Their findings were increases in vocabulary and language arts of 24 and 25 percent respectively over the control groups, while the math problem solving and math procedures and algorithms scores were 51 and 30 percent higher.29 Click Health, which makes games to help kids self-manage their health issues, did clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health.


pages: 362 words: 99,063

The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late by Michael Ellsberg

affirmative action, Black Swan, Burning Man, corporate governance, creative destruction, do what you love, financial engineering, financial independence, follow your passion, future of work, hiring and firing, independent contractor, job automation, knowledge worker, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, means of production, mega-rich, meta-analysis, new economy, Norman Mailer, Peter Thiel, profit motive, race to the bottom, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social intelligence, solopreneur, Steve Ballmer, survivorship bias, telemarketer, Tony Hsieh

But there’s a generation of kids coming, who have grown up with Wikipedia, who have grown up with a notion that they’re not just a consumer of media, but a participant. They therefore have a deeper and more ingrained skepticism of the media, and therefore have a better capability to distinguish truth from fiction, authority from charlatan. This capability for meta-analysis of information is essential as they wade through the vast sea of information. For the first time in history they have all the world’s information at their disposal, accessible from anywhere they want. The result is that this emerging generation no longer has reality dictated to them—they are finally empowered to construct their own unique, and possibly idiosyncratic, perspective on the world, if they so choose.


pages: 304 words: 22,886

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein

Al Roth, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, call centre, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, continuous integration, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, desegregation, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, endowment effect, equity premium, feminist movement, financial engineering, fixed income, framing effect, full employment, George Akerlof, index fund, invisible hand, late fees, libertarian paternalism, loss aversion, low interest rates, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Mason jar, medical malpractice, medical residency, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, money market fund, pension reform, presumed consent, price discrimination, profit maximization, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Saturday Night Live, school choice, school vouchers, systems thinking, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Vanguard fund, Zipcar

Research in progress (b). Bikhchandani, Sushil, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch. “Learning from the Behavior of Others.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12, no. 3 (1998): 151–70. Boaz, David. Libertarianism: A Primer. New York: Free Press, 1997. Bond, Rod, and Peter Smith. “Culture and Conformity: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using Asch’s Line Judgment Task.” Psychological Bulletin 119 (1996): 111–37. Boston Research Group. “Enron Has Little Effect on 401(k) Participants’ View of Company Stock.” 2002. Breman, Anna. “Give More Tomorrow: A Field Experiment on Intertemporal Choice in Charitable Giving.”


pages: 335 words: 96,002

WEconomy: You Can Find Meaning, Make a Living, and Change the World by Craig Kielburger, Holly Branson, Marc Kielburger, Sir Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, blood diamond, Boeing 747, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, Colonization of Mars, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, energy transition, family office, food desert, future of work, global village, impact investing, inventory management, James Dyson, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, market design, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, pre–internet, retail therapy, Salesforce, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Virgin Galactic, working poor, Y Combinator

Accessed July 14, 2017. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/10/narcissistic-altruism.html. 4. Edelman, goodpurpose 2012: Executive Summary, p. 2, http://www.scribd.com/doc/90411623/Executive-Summary-2012-Edelman-goodpurpose%C2%AE-Study. 5. Tully, Stephanie M., and Russell S. Winer. “Are People Willing to Pay More for Socially Responsible Products: A Meta-Analysis,” Stern School of Business, New York University, August 2013, p. 17, http://web-docs.stern.nyu.edu/pa/winer_tully.pdf. 6. Ibid., p. 16. 7. Mission Measurement, December 2015. Building the Business Case for Corporate Partnerships. Unpublished internal document. ME TO WE. 8. Edelman, p. 3. 9.


pages: 349 words: 98,868

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason by William Davies

active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, citizen journalism, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, Colonization of Mars, continuation of politics by other means, creative destruction, credit crunch, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, digital divide, discovery of penicillin, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, first-past-the-post, Frank Gehry, gig economy, government statistician, housing crisis, income inequality, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Johannes Kepler, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, planetary scale, post-industrial society, post-truth, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Social Justice Warrior, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, Turing machine, Uber for X, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Valery Gerasimov, W. E. B. Du Bois, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Gray (2017), “Health and social care spending cuts linked to 120,000 excess deaths in England,” BMJ Open, 15 November 2017. 20Stuckler & Basu (2013), p. 103. 21“More and more women are now dying in childbirth, but only in America,” Vox, 8 August 2016. 22“French election results: Macron’s victory in charts,” Financial Times, 9 May 2017. 23A. Fayaz et al. (2016), “Prevalence of chronic pain in the UK: A systematic review and meta-analysis of population studies,” BMJ Open, Vol. 6, Issue 6. 24E. Scarry (1985), The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Oxford University Press, p. 29. 25Ibid., p. 13. 26See K. Wailoo (2014), Pain: A Political History, JHU Press. 27M. Bair et al. (2003), “Depression and pain comorbidity: A literature review,” Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol. 163, Issue 20. 28D.


pages: 331 words: 96,989

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam L. Alter

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bluma Zeigarnik, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Sedaris, death from overwork, drug harm reduction, easy for humans, difficult for computers, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Ian Bogost, IKEA effect, Inbox Zero, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kickstarter, language acquisition, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Oculus Rift, Richard Thaler, Robert Durst, side project, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, telemarketer, three-martini lunch

Monti, “Motivational Enhancement and Other Brief Interventions for Adolescent Substance Abuse: Foundations, Applications and Evaluations,” Addiction 99 (December 2004): 63–75; C. Dunn, L. Deroo, and F. P. Rivara, “The Use of Brief Interventions Adapted from Motivational Interviewing Across Behavioral Domains: A Systematic Review,” Addiction 96, no. 12 (December 2001): 1725–42; Craig S. Schwalbe, Hans Y. Oh, and Allen Zweben, “Sustaining Motivational Interviewing: A Meta-Analysis of Training Studies,” Addiction 109, 1287–94; Kate Hall and others, “After 30 Years of Dissemination, Have We Achieved Sustained Practice Change in Motivational Interviewing?,” Addiction (in press; a sample script is available here: careacttarget.org/sites/default/files/file-upload/resources/module5-handout1.pdf).


pages: 420 words: 100,811

We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves by John Cheney-Lippold

algorithmic bias, bioinformatics, business logic, Cass Sunstein, centre right, computer vision, critical race theory, dark matter, data science, digital capitalism, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Hans Moravec, Ian Bogost, informal economy, iterative process, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, lifelogging, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, price discrimination, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software studies, statistical model, Steven Levy, technological singularity, technoutopianism, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Toyota Production System, Turing machine, uber lyft, web application, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

Price, Susan Smith, and John Hollywood, “Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations,” RAND Corporation, 2013, www.rand.org. 65. Jeremy Gorner, “Chicago Police Use Heat List as Strategy to Prevent Violence,” Chicago Tribune, August 21, 2013, http://articles.chicagotribune.com. 66. Anthony Braga, Andrew Papachristos, and David Hureau, “The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Justice Quarterly 31, no. 4 (2012): 633–663. 67. Todd R. Clear, Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 68. Gorner, “Chicago Police Use Heat List.” 69. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Free Press, 1949), 90. 70.


pages: 493 words: 98,982

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, global supply chain, helicopter parent, High speed trading, immigration reform, income inequality, Khan Academy, laissez-faire capitalism, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, Yochai Benkler

Sally C. Curtin and Melonie Heron, “Death Rates Due to Suicide and Homicide Among Persons Aged 10–24: United States, 2000–2017,” NCHS Data Brief, No. 352, October 2019, cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db352-h.pdf . 75 . Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill, “Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences from 1989 to 2016,” Psychological Bulletin 145 (2019), pp. 410–29, apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000138.pdf ; Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill, “How Perfectionism Became a Hidden Epidemic Among Young People,” The Conversation , January 3, 2018, theconversation.com/how-perfectionism-became-a-hidden-epidemic-among-young-people-89405 ; Sophie McBain, “The New Cult of Perfectionism,” New Statesman , May 4–10, 2018. 76.


pages: 319 words: 101,673

The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness by Suzanne O'Sullivan

cognitive dissonance, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, epigenetics, meta-analysis, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, social contagion, traumatic brain injury

A great deal of money is made from the treatment of depression and, for the purpose of insurance companies and doctors’ visits, it helps to have a category into which to fit consultations for low mood. Doctors like to offer a diagnosis and, for patients, it gives meaning to their feelings. However, as Dowrick points out, the utility of the diagnosis is debatable. While antidepressants have been shown to provide benefit to people with severe depression, meta-analysis of clinical trials provide little evidence for their use in mild depression. In trials, their use in mild depression is only as good as a placebo. Dowrick argues, and I agree, that labels make patients passive victims of circumstance. To reconceptualize depression and low mood outside of the frame of these labels doesn’t have to mean that a person cannot turn to a doctor for support.


pages: 330 words: 99,044

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire by Rebecca Henderson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, asset allocation, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, dark matter, decarbonisation, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, fixed income, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, growth hacking, Hans Rosling, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, means of production, meta-analysis, microcredit, middle-income trap, Minsky moment, mittelstand, Mont Pelerin Society, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, plant based meat, profit maximization, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, scientific management, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Pinker, stocks for the long run, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, Toyota Production System, uber lyft, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WeWork, working-age population, Zipcar

“Global Asset Management 2018: The Digital Metamorphosis,” www.bcg.com; BCG, www.bcg.com/publications/2018/global-asset-management-2018-digital-metamorphosis.aspx. 20. “2018 Global Sustainable Investment Review”; Fages et al., “Global Asset Management 2018.” 21. See, for example, Christophe Revelli and Jean-Laurent Viviani, “Financial Performance of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI): What Have We Learned? A Meta-analysis,” Business Ethics: A European Review 24, no. 2 (April 2015). 22. Mozaffar Khan, George Serafeim, and Aaron Yoon, “Corporate Sustainability: First Evidence on Materiality,” Accounting Review 91, no. 6 (November 2016). 23. “Materiality,” Business Literacy Institute Financial Intelligence, Sept. 23, 2016. 24.


pages: 372 words: 110,208

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, carbon credits, Easter island, European colonialism, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, invention of agriculture, invention of the wheel, invention of writing, mass immigration, meta-analysis, new economy, out of africa, phenotype, Scientific racism, sparse data, supervolcano, the scientific method, transatlantic slave trade

., “Genome-Wide Association Study of Cognitive Functions and Educational Attainment in UK Biobank (N=112 151),” Molecular Psychiatry 21 (2016): 758–67; M. T. Lo et al., “Genome-Wide Analyses for Personality Traits Identify Six Genomic Loci and Show Correlations with Psychiatric Disorders,” Nature Genetics 49 (2017): 152–56. 30. S. Sniekers et al., “Genome-Wide Association Meta-Analysis of 78,308 Individuals Identifies New Loci and Genes Influencing Human Intelligence,” Nature Genetics 49 (2017): 1107–12. 31. I. Mathieson et al., “Genome-wide Patterns of Selection in 230 Ancient Eurasians,” Nature 528 (2015): 499–503; Field et al., “Detection of Human Adaptation.” 32. N. A.


pages: 369 words: 105,819

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy X. Lee

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anthropocene, Carl Icahn, cuban missile crisis, dark triade / dark tetrad, David Brooks, declining real wages, delayed gratification, demand response, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, facts on the ground, fake news, false flag, fear of failure, illegal immigration, impulse control, meta-analysis, national security letter, Neil Armstrong, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Skype, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, The Chicago School

Grijalva, E., D. A. Newman, L. Tay, M. B. Donnellan, P. D. Harms, R. W. Robins, and T. Yan. 2014. “Gender Differences in Narcissism: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Psychological Bulletin 141 (2): 261–310. Grijalva, Emily, and Daniel A. Newman. 2014. “Narcissism and Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB): Meta-Analysis and Consideration of Collectivist Culture, Big Five Personality, and Narcissism’s Facet Structure.” Applied Psychology 64 (1): 93–126. Grijalva, Emily, Peter D. Harms, Daniel A. Newman, Blaine H. Gaddis, and R. Chris Fraley. 2014. “Narcissism and Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of Linear and Nonlinear Relationships.”


pages: 605 words: 110,673

Drugs Without the Hot Air by David Nutt

British Empire, double helix, drug harm reduction, en.wikipedia.org, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, moral panic, offshore financial centre, precautionary principle, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), War on Poverty

.”• LSD: my problem child, Albert Hofmann, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1980 4 “I lost all control of time• As above. 5 they recorded that they found themselves taking their schizophrenic patients’ accounts of their illness more seriously• Hofmann’s Potion: The Early Years of LSD, Connie Littlefield, URL-120, 2002 6 The LSD trials at Saskatchewan• As above. 7 outbreak of insanity in the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951• A terrible mistake, Hank Albarelli, Trine Day, 2009 8 Leary first tried psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, and he soon began experimenting with LSD as well• Hofmann’s Potion: The Early Years of LSD, Connie Littlefield, URL-120, 2002 9 “hearing voices”• Schizophrenia, National Institute of Mental Health, URL-118. 10 an edition of Spiderman in 1971• The Amazing Spiderman issues #96–98, Stan Lee, Marvel Comics, May–July 1971 11 five other studies that have found LSD helps people overcome alcoholism• Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for alcoholism: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, Teri S. Krebs and Pal-Orjan Johansen, Journal of Psychopharmacology, 2011 12 cluster headaches self-medicate with psychedelics• Will Harvard drop acid again?, Peter Bebergal, URL-121, June 9th 2008 13 use in problem solving• LSD – The Problem Solving Psychedelic, PG Stafford and BH Golightly, Award Books, 1967 14 Francis Crick• Nobel Prize Genius Crick was High on LSD when he discovered the secret of life, Alun Rees, the Mail on Sunday, August 8th 2004 15 Kary Mullis• BBC Horizon – Psychedelic Science – DMT, LSD, Ibogaine – Part 5, BBC, 1997 16 polymerase chain reaction (PCR)• The polymerase chain reaction is used to “amplify” a small amount of DNA, to produce a larger quantity that makes testing possible or easier.


pages: 477 words: 106,069

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

My advice will often shock purists and occasionally puzzle readers who have always been under the impression that this word meaning or that grammatical usage is an error. But the advice is thoroughly conventional. It combines data from the ballots given to the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, the usage notes of several dictionaries and style guides, the erudite historical analyses in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, the meta-analysis in Roy Copperud’s American Usage and Style: The Consensus, and the view from modern linguistics represented in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language and the blog Language Log.6 When the experts disagree, or when the examples are all over the map, I will offer my own best judgment. I divide the hundred usage issues into points of grammar, the expression of quantity and quality, word choice, and punctuation.


pages: 370 words: 107,983

Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All by Robert Elliott Smith

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, adjacent possible, affirmative action, AI winter, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, animal electricity, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, correlation coefficient, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, desegregation, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, Geoffrey Hinton, Gerolamo Cardano, gig economy, Gödel, Escher, Bach, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, John Harrison: Longitude, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Linda problem, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, new economy, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, p-value, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, Pierre-Simon Laplace, post-truth, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, stochastic process, Stuart Kauffman, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, twin studies, Vilfredo Pareto, Von Neumann architecture, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, Yochai Benkler

Perhaps the best-known work based on Pioneer Fund supported research was the 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, a book that has received renewed endorsement with the rise of the alt-right movement, and in turn revived Spearman’s century-old ideas of the g factor. In the book, psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray used meta-analysis (effectively analyses of many other analyses of populations of IQ tests) to assert that these tests categorically measure a real, underlying g factor. Their results purportedly indicate that high IQ is a clear indicator of positive social outcomes (like having a job, avoiding poverty, having legitimate children, staying out of jail, and having a positive, survey-based ‘middle-class values index’) and they, too, controversially conclude that statistically white Americans have substantially higher IQs than African-Americans, and that this difference is better explained by race than by socio-economic status.


pages: 424 words: 108,768

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History by Lewis Dartnell

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, bioinformatics, clean water, Columbian Exchange, decarbonisation, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, Eratosthenes, financial innovation, Google Earth, Khyber Pass, Malacca Straits, megacity, meta-analysis, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Pax Mongolica, peak oil, phenotype, rewilding, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, spice trade, Suez crisis 1956, supervolcano, trade route, transatlantic slave trade

Krivolutskaya, N., B. Gongalsky, A. Dolgal, N. Svirskaya and T. Vekshina (2016). ‘Siberian Traps in the Norilsk Area: A Corrected Scheme of Magmatism Evolution’, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 44: 042008. Kroeker, K. J., R. L. Kordas, R. N. Crim and G. G. Singh (2010). ‘Meta-analysis reveals negative yet variable effects of ocean acidification on marine organisms’, Ecology Letters 13(11): 1419–34. Kukula, M. (2016). The Intimate Universe: How the stars are closer than you think, Quercus. Laitin, D. D., J. Moortgat and A. L. Robinson (2012). ‘Geographic axes and the persistence of cultural diversity’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109(26): 10263–8.


pages: 406 words: 109,794

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Atul Gawande, Checklist Manifesto, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, deliberate practice, Exxon Valdez, fail fast, Flynn Effect, Freestyle chess, functional fixedness, game design, Gene Kranz, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, knowledge economy, language acquisition, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, messenger bag, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, multi-armed bandit, Nelson Mandela, Netflix Prize, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, precision agriculture, prediction markets, premature optimization, pre–internet, random walk, randomized controlled trial, retrograde motion, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, Walter Mischel, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, young professional

“oculostenotic reflex”: Eric Topol is the cardiologist who coined that term. (For a patient who is actually having a heart attack, a stent can be lifesaving.) one in fifty patients: K. Stergiopoulos and D. L. Brown, “Initial Coronary Stent Implantation With Medical Therapy vs Medical Therapy Alone for Stable Coronary Artery Disease: Meta-analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials,” Archives of Internal Medicine 172, no. 4 (2012): 312–19. cannot believe that stenting: G. A. Lin et al., “Cardiologists’ Use of Percutaneous Coronary Interventions for Stable Coronary Artery Disease,” Archives of Internal Medicine 167, no. 15 (2007):1604–09.


pages: 312 words: 35,664

The Mathematics of Banking and Finance by Dennis W. Cox, Michael A. A. Cox

backpropagation, barriers to entry, Brownian motion, call centre, correlation coefficient, fixed income, G4S, inventory management, iterative process, linear programming, meta-analysis, Monty Hall problem, pattern recognition, random walk, traveling salesman, value at risk

Finally there is the option of conducting a literature search, in its broadest sense. The data required might already be available – for example, in the company’s records. Would it be possible to combine the results of a number of independent but related studies using statistical methods to retrieve, select and combine the data – a process referred to as meta-analysis? The case may also occur where a range of independent surveys has already been conducted and their results published. While the results on a survey in the USA may not be directly applicable to the business you are looking at in the United Kingdom, the conclusions are likely to be of interest and the questions employed may also be suitable for your purposes.


pages: 422 words: 104,457

Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance by Julia Angwin

AltaVista, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Chelsea Manning, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Graeber, Debian, disinformation, Edward Snowden, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Garrett Hardin, GnuPG, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Ida Tarbell, incognito mode, informal economy, Jacob Appelbaum, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market design, medical residency, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, prediction markets, price discrimination, randomized controlled trial, RFID, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, security theater, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart meter, sparse data, Steven Levy, Tragedy of the Commons, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP

“A public display of connections”: Judith Donath and Danah Boyd, “Public Displays of Connection,” BT Technology Journal 22, no. 4 (October 2004): 73, http://www.danah.org/papers/PublicDisplays.pdf. Scientists have found that people: Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, “Thin Slices of Expressive Behavior as Predictors of Interpersonal Consequences: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 111, no. 2 (1992): 256, http://ambadylab.stanford.edu/pubs/1992Ambady.pdf. Online photos are notoriously misleading: Lauren F. Sessions, “‘You Looked Better on MySpace’: Deception and Authenticity on Web 2.0,” First Monday 14, no. 7 (July 6, 2009), http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2539/2242#4a.


pages: 353 words: 110,919

The Road to Character by David Brooks

Cass Sunstein, coherent worldview, David Brooks, desegregation, digital rights, Donald Trump, follow your passion, George Santayana, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, New Journalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent control, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, you are the product

Gretchen Anderson, “Loneliness Among Older Adults: A National Survey of Adults 45+” (AARP Research and Strategic Analysis, 2010). 22. Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Profile, 1999), 50. 23. Sara Konrath, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis” (University of Michigan, 2011). 24. Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell, and Brittany Gentile, “Increases in Individualistic Words and Phrases in American Books, 1960–2008” (2012), PLoS ONE 7(7): e40181, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0040181. 25. David Brooks, “What Our Words Tell Us,” New York Times, May 20, 2013. 26.


pages: 334 words: 104,382

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Burning Man, California gold rush, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, company town, data science, David Brooks, deal flow, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, game design, gender pay gap, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hacker News, high net worth, Hyperloop, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microservices, Parker Conrad, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, pull request, reality distortion field, Richard Hendricks, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, women in the workforce, Zenefits

There is little evidence: Gerald E. Evans and Mark G. Simkin, “What Best Predicts Computer Proficiency?,” Communications of the ACM (1989): 1322, https://doi.org/10.1145/68814.68817. Nor is there evidence: Sara M. Lindberg, Janet Shibley Hyde, and Jennifer L. Petersen, “New Trends in Gender and Mathematics Performance: A Meta-analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 136, no. 6 (2010): 1123–35, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021276. an electronic mailing list: “Systers,” Anita Borg Institute, accessed Sept. 5, 2017, https://anitaborg.org/systers. “industry selected for antisocial”: Ensmenger, Computer Boys Take Over, 78–79. “I was afraid to be”: Padmasree Warrior, “NextEV’s Padmasree Warrior: Studio 1.0 (Full Show 3/27),” interview by author, Bloomberg, March 27, 2016, video, 23:36, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-03-27/nextev-s-padmasree-warrior-studio-1-0-full-show.


A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, autism spectrum disorder, bioinformatics, British Empire, classic study, colonial rule, dark matter, delayed gratification, demographic transition, double helix, Drosophila, epigenetics, Eyjafjallajökull, Google Earth, Gregor Mendel, Higgs boson, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, out of africa, phenotype, sceptred isle, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, twin studies

Do the Chinese have a reputation as being genetic warriors? A chunky paper in 2003 suggested that violence associated with the defective variant was significantly worsened if the perpetrator had been sexually abused as a child, whereas abused children with a normal MAOA were less likely to be criminals. This result was affirmed in 2012 in a meta-analysis – a super-powerful way of aggregating multiple studies to ramp up the analytical depth. And the studies keep coming, with subtly specific conditions, with the law trailing behind them. In 2009, an Algerian living in Italy called Abdelmalek Bayout had his sentence for the murder of a Colombian man reduced by three years, after his defence also identified him as a carrier of the defective MAOA gene.


pages: 353 words: 106,704

Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution by Beth Gardiner

barriers to entry, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon footprint, clean water, connected car, Crossrail, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Hyperloop, index card, Indoor air pollution, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, meta-analysis, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, statistical model, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, white picket fence

., “Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease: An Update to the Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association,” Circulation 121, no. 21 (2010): 2331–78, https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0b013e3181dbece1. 13 Anoop S. V. Shah, Kuan Ken Lee, David A. McAllister, Amanda Hunter, Harish Nair, William Whiteley, Jeremy P. Langrish, David E. Newby, and Nicholas L. Mills, “Short Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Stroke: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” BMJ 350, no. H1295 (March 24, 2015), https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h1295. 14 Kristin A. Miller, David S. Siscovick, Lianne Sheppard, Kristen Shepherd, Jeffrey H. Sullivan, Garnet L. Anderson, and Joel D. Kaufman, “Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Incidence of Cardiovascular Events in Women,” New England Journal of Medicine 356, no. 5 (2007): 447–58, doi:10.1056/NEJMoa054409. 15 R.


pages: 453 words: 111,010

Licence to be Bad by Jonathan Aldred

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, framing effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, nudge unit, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, spectrum auction, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, zero-sum game

., 79. 13 Kinnaman, T. (2006), ‘Examining the Justification for Residential Recycling’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20 (4), 219–32. 14 Gneezy and Rustichini, 29, 1–18. 15 Gasioroska, A., Zaleskiewicz, T., and Wygrab, S. (2012), ‘Would You Do Something for Me?’ Journal of Economic Psychology, 33 (3), 603–8. 16 A comprehensive recent review of the evidence is Niza, C., Tung, B., and Marteau, T. M. (2013), ‘Incentivizing Blood Donation: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis to Test Titmuss’ Hypotheses’, Health Psychology, 32, 941–9. In response, in a letter to the editors of Health Psychology, economists Lacetera, Macis and Slonim criticize Niza et al.’s research on the basis that ‘basic economics principles predict that increasing the value of incentives will increase effectiveness’.


pages: 428 words: 103,544

The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics by Tim Harford

Abraham Wald, access to a mobile phone, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, algorithmic bias, Automated Insights, banking crisis, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Attenborough, Diane Coyle, disinformation, Donald Trump, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, experimental subject, fake news, financial innovation, Florence Nightingale: pie chart, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hans Rosling, high-speed rail, income inequality, Isaac Newton, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Kickstarter, life extension, meta-analysis, microcredit, Milgram experiment, moral panic, Netflix Prize, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, publication bias, publish or perish, random walk, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, replication crisis, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, sorting algorithm, sparse data, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, survivorship bias, systematic bias, TED Talk, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, When a measure becomes a target

., “A Group-Based Yoga Therapy Intervention for Urinary Incontinence in Women,” Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery 20, no. 3 (2014), 147–54, DOI: 10.1097/SPV.0000000000000072, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4310548/. 45. L. S. Wieland et al., “Yoga for Treating Urinary Incontinence in Women,” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2019 2, art. no. CD012668, DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD012668.pub2. Rule Six: Ask Who Is Missing 1. Rod Bond and Peter B. Smith, “Culture and Conformity: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) Line Judgment Task,” Psychological Bulletin 119, no. 1 (1996), 111–37, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111. 2. Tim Harford, “The Truth about Our Norm-Core,” Financial Times, June 12, 2015, http://timharford.com/2015/06/the-truth-about-our-norm-core/. 3.


Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland

agricultural Revolution, Alexander Shulgin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Burning Man, classic study, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, Day of the Dead, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Drosophila, experimental economics, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, hive mind, invention of agriculture, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, lateral thinking, lockdown, lone genius, meta-analysis, microdosing, Picturephone, placebo effect, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, search costs, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Zenefits

“Silent disco: Dancing in synchrony leads to elevated pain thresholds and social closeness.” Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(5), 343–349. Taylor, B., H. M. Irving, F. Kanteres, R. Room, G. Borges, C. Cherpitel,…J. Rehm. (2010). “The more you drink, the harder you fall: A systematic review and meta-analysis of how acute alcohol consumption and injury or collision risk increase together.” Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 110(1-2), 108–116. Taylor, Jenny, Naomi Fulop, and John Green. (1999). “Drink, illicit drugs and unsafe sex in women.” Addiction, 94(8), 1209–1218. ten Brinke, Leanne, Stephen Porter, and Alysha Baker. (2012).


CRISPR People by Henry T. Greely

Albert Einstein, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, autism spectrum disorder, bitcoin, clean water, CRISPR, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, double helix, dual-use technology, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Gregor Mendel, Ian Bogost, Isaac Newton, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, mouse model, New Journalism, phenotype, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, special economic zone, stem cell, synthetic biology, traumatic brain injury, Xiaogang Anhui farmers

John Novembre, Alison P Galvani, and Montgomery Slatkin, “The Geographic Spread of the CCR5 Δ32 HIV-Resistance Allele,” PLOS Biology 3, no. 11 (October 18, 2005): e339, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030339. 22. Maryam Zafer, Hacsi Horvath, Okeoma Mmeje, et al., “Effectiveness of Semen Washing to Prevent HIV Transmission and Assist Pregnancy in HIV-Discordant Couples: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Fertility and Sterility 105, no. 3 (2016): 645–655, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2015.11.028. 23. Cédric Blanpain, Frédérick Libert, Gilbert Vassart, et al., “CCR5 and HIV Infection,” Receptors and Channels 8 (2002): 19–31, https://doi.org/10.1080/10606820212135. 24. “HIV and AIDS in China,” Avert, October 3, 2019, https://www.avert.org/professionals/hivaround-world/asia-pacific/china; “Country Comparison—HIV/AIDS Prevalence Rate,” The World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/rankorder/2155rank.html.


pages: 446 words: 109,157

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, active measures, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Black Lives Matter, centre right, classic study, Climategate, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, deplatforming, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, Filter Bubble, framing effect, hive mind, illegal immigration, information asymmetry, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, jimmy wales, Jon Ronson, Louis Pasteur, market bubble, meta-analysis, microaggression, mirror neurons, Peace of Westphalia, peer-to-peer, post-truth, profit motive, QAnon, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Russian election interference, social software, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, yellow journalism, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, “The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion,” Journal of Communication 24, no. 2 (Spring 1974). Recent empirical research supporting the “spiral of silence” hypothesis, and finding that it applies to social media, is in Jörg Matthes, Johannes Knoll, and Christian von Sikorski, “The ‘Spiral of Silence’ Revisited: A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship between Perceptions of Opinion Support and Political Opinion Expression,” Communication Research 45, no. 1 (2018). 5. Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread (Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 73, 74, 82, 83, 85, 86. 6.


pages: 384 words: 105,110

A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life by Heather Heying, Bret Weinstein

autism spectrum disorder, biofilm, Carrington event, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, dark matter, delayed gratification, discovery of DNA, double helix, epigenetics, Francisco Pizarro, germ theory of disease, Gregor Mendel, helicopter parent, hygiene hypothesis, lockdown, meta-analysis, microbiome, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, phenotype, planned obsolescence, precautionary principle, profit motive, Silicon Valley, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, theory of mind

Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 35(3): 320–330; McLean, C. P., et al., 2011. Gender differences in anxiety disorders: Prevalence, course of illness, comorbidity and burden of illness. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 45(8): 1027–1035. 18. Su, R., Rounds, J., and Armstrong, P. I., 2009. Men and things, women and people: A meta-analysis of sex differences in interests. Psychological Bulletin, 135(6): 859–884. 19. Brown, D., 1991. Human Universals. New York: McGraw Hill, 133. 20. Reviewed in Neaves, W. B., and Baumann, P., 2011. Unisexual reproduction among vertebrates. Trends in Genetics, 27(3): 81–88. 21. Watts, P.


Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories From the Frontline by Steven K. Kapp

Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, book value, butterfly effect, cognitive dissonance, demand response, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, epigenetics, feminist movement, glass ceiling, Internet Archive, Jeremy Corbyn, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, multilevel marketing, neurotypical, New Journalism, pattern recognition, phenotype, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, slashdot, theory of mind, twin studies, universal basic income, Wayback Machine

Carson, D. (2017). Walking with Joaquin. TEDx Talks (Video file). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruXB3lbiD3U. 30. Russell, G., Mandy, W., Elliott, D., White, R., Pittwood, T., & Ford, T. (2019). Selection bias on intellectual ability in autism research: A crosssectional review and meta-analysis. Molecular Autism, 10 (1), 9. 31. Stedman, A., Taylor, B., Erard, M., Peura, C., & Siegel, M. (2018). Are children severely affected by autism spectrum disorder underrepresented in 22 Conclusion 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 317 treatment studies? An analysis of the literature.


pages: 454 words: 107,163

Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists by Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, carbon credits, carbon tax, clean water, conceptual framework, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Easter island, facts on the ground, falling living standards, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, Indoor air pollution, insecure affluence, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, knowledge economy, land reform, loss aversion, market fundamentalism, McMansion, means of production, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, new economy, oil shock, postindustrial economy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Florida, science of happiness, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, Ted Nordhaus, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade liberalization, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, winner-take-all economy, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

In a major review of social science research since the 1950s, a group of social scientists found that fear of death, change, ambiguity, complexity, and system collapse were some of the most powerful predictors of conservatism. This confirmed other research showing that people hold particular political views to meet psychological needs. In situations where people fear events such as system collapse, they tend to become more right-wing and authoritarian. The meta-analysis was of 88 studies in 12 countries with a total of 22,818 cases studied. John T. Jost et al., “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 3 (2003): 339–75. The authors concluded, “Conservative ideologies, like virtually all other belief systems, are adopted in part because they satisfy various psychological needs.


pages: 371 words: 107,141

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All by Adrian Hon

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", 4chan, Adam Curtis, Adrian Hon, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Astronomia nova, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, bread and circuses, British Empire, buy and hold, call centre, computer vision, conceptual framework, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, David Sedaris, deep learning, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, deplatforming, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, fake news, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, Galaxy Zoo, game design, gamification, George Floyd, gig economy, GitHub removed activity streaks, Google Glasses, Hacker News, Hans Moravec, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, job automation, jobs below the API, Johannes Kepler, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, linked data, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, LuLaRoe, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, megaproject, meme stock, meta-analysis, Minecraft, moral panic, multilevel marketing, non-fungible token, Ocado, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Parler "social media", passive income, payment for order flow, prisoner's dilemma, QAnon, QR code, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, r/findbostonbombers, replication crisis, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skinner box, spinning jenny, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, why are manhole covers round?, workplace surveillance

Noah Smith, “Virtual Reality Is Starting to See Actual Gains in Gaming,” Washington Post, February 4, 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/02/04/virtual-reality-future-games; “Introducing Oculus Quest 2, the Next Generation of All-in-One VR,” Oculus Blog, Meta Quest, Facebook Technologies, September 16, 2020, www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-oculus-quest-2-the-next-generation-of-all-in-one-vr-gaming; Will Greenwald, “Oculus Quest 2 Review,” PCMag, updated August 12, 2021, www.pcmag.com/reviews/oculus-quest-2. 30. Liliana Laranjo et al., “Do Smartphone Activities and Activity Trackers Increase Physical Activity in Adults? Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis and Metaregression,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 55, no. 8 (2021): 422–432, https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2020-102892. 31. “First Quarter FY 2022 Highlights,” Peloton, November 4, 2021, https://investor.onepeloton.com/static-files/4e16bcc7-dd3b-40ec-acb6-840e691b40ee. 32. Ed Zitron, “My Gamer Brain Is Addicted to the Peloton Exercise Bike,” VICE, November 5, 2018, www.vice.com/en/article/vba4dx/my-gamer-brain-is-addicted-to-the-peloton-exercise-bike. 33. u/plymouthvan, “Apple watch should have a ‘Sick’ mode,” r/apple, Reddit, February 29, 2020, www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/fbffqy/apple_watch_should_have_a_sick_mode. 34.


pages: 405 words: 105,395

Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator by Keith Houston

Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Andy Kessler, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apple II, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, classic study, clockwork universe, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, double entry bookkeeping, Edmond Halley, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fellow of the Royal Society, Grace Hopper, human-factors engineering, invention of movable type, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, machine readable, Masayoshi Son, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Neil Armstrong, off-by-one error, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, pattern recognition, popular electronics, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert X Cringely, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Home Computer Revolution, the payments system, Turing machine, Turing test, V2 rocket, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Works Progress Administration, Yom Kippur War

65 Texas Instruments, 2011 Annual Report (Dallas, TX: Texas Instruments, 2011), 47, https://investor.ti.com/static-files/2b690577-f4c8-4e19-80c6-5d8cba 365c80; Texas Instruments, 2020 Annual Report (Dallas, TX: Texas Instruments, 2020), 18, https://investor.ti.com/static-files/05b7598d-4a01-4f45-a63d-058c69a165ad. 66 Aimee J. Ellington, “A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Calculators on Students’ Achievement and Attitude Levels in Precollege Mathematics Classes,” Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 34, no. 5 (2003): 456, https://doi.org/10.2307/30034795. 67 Jeremy Hodgen et al., “Improving Mathematics in Key Stages Two and Three: Evidence Review,” Education Endowment Foundation, 2018. 15. software arts visicalc 1 William J.


pages: 387 words: 120,155

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

D. (2011), ‘If money doesn’t make you happy, then you probably aren’t spending it right’, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 21(2): 115–25. Subsequently expanded into the book Happy Money. 13 See Halpern, D., (2005), Social Capital, Polity Press, for a summary of the literature. For a more recent meta-analysis see Holt-Lunstad et al., including 148 independent studies which used data from over 300,000 individuals followed for an average of 7.5 years. This shows that individuals with adequate social support experience a 50 per cent increase in the odds of survival than their counterparts with poorer social connections.


pages: 389 words: 119,487

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic trading, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charlie Hebdo massacre, cognitive dissonance, computer age, computer vision, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, deglobalization, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Freestyle chess, gig economy, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job automation, knowledge economy, liberation theology, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, obamacare, pattern recognition, post-truth, post-work, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, TED Talk, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero-sum game

Knutson, ‘Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change’, Nature Geoscience 3 (2010), 157–63; Edward Hanna et al., ‘Ice-Sheet Mass Balance and Climate Change’, Nature 498 (2013), 51–9; Tim Wheeler and Joachim von Braun, ‘Climate Change Impacts on Global Food Security’, Science 341:6145 (2013), 508–13; A. J. Challinor et al., ‘A Meta-Analysis of Crop Yield under Climate Change and Adaptation’, Nature Climate Change 4 (2014), 287–91; Elisabeth Lingren et al., ‘Monitoring EU Emerging Infectious Disease Risk Due to Climate Change’, Science 336:6080 (2012), 418–19; Frank Biermann and Ingrid Boas, ‘Preparing for a Warmer World: Towards a Global Governance System to Protect Climate Change’, Global Environmental Politics 10:1 (2010), 60–88; Jeff Goodell, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2017); Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (Washington: National Geographic, 2008); Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs.


pages: 515 words: 117,501

Miracle Cure by William Rosen

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, availability heuristic, biofilm, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, creative destruction, demographic transition, discovery of penicillin, do well by doing good, Edward Jenner, Ernest Rutherford, experimental subject, Fellow of the Royal Society, Frances Oldham Kelsey, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, functional fixedness, germ theory of disease, global supply chain, Haber-Bosch Process, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Joseph Schumpeter, Louis Pasteur, medical malpractice, meta-analysis, microbiome, New Journalism, obamacare, out of africa, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, public intellectual, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, stem cell, the long tail, transcontinental railway, working poor

Rothman, S. M. Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History, 1st ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Roy, A., et al. “Effect of BCG Vaccination Against Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection in Children: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. British Medical Journal 349, no. g4643 (August 2014): 1–11. Sarrett, L. H. Max Tishler 1906–1989: A Biographical Memoir. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1995. Saturday Review. Letters to the Editor. Saturday Review, January 24, 1959, 21–23. Schatz, A. “The True Story of the Discovery of Streptomycin.”


pages: 410 words: 114,005

Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From Their Mistakes--But Some Do by Matthew Syed

Abraham Wald, Airbus A320, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Eddington, Atul Gawande, Black Swan, Boeing 747, British Empire, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, crew resource management, deliberate practice, double helix, epigenetics, fail fast, fear of failure, flying shuttle, fundamental attribution error, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Henri Poincaré, hindsight bias, Isaac Newton, iterative process, James Dyson, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Johannes Kepler, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, luminiferous ether, mandatory minimum, meta-analysis, minimum viable product, publication bias, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, seminal paper, Shai Danziger, Silicon Valley, six sigma, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, US Airways Flight 1549, Wall-E, Yom Kippur War

This is a global, nonprofit organization devoted to evidence-based policy. They conducted what is called a “systematic review.” This is where the data from all the randomized trials are collated into a single spreadsheet. By pooling the results from all the individual trials (seven were used in the so-called meta-analysis), a systematic review represents the gold standard when it comes to scientific evidence. It is the ultimate failure test.18 Forgive me if you know what’s coming, but the results were emphatic. Scared Straight doesn’t work. It increases crime. Some research indicates that this increase can be as high as 28 percent.19 In exquisitely understated language, the authors effectively damned its entire rationale: “We conclude that programs like Scared Straight are likely to have a harmful effect and increase delinquency . . .


pages: 389 words: 112,319

Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol

Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Boeing 747, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, dark matter, delayed gratification, different worldview, discovery of DNA, double helix, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake news, fear of failure, functional fixedness, Gary Taubes, Gene Kranz, George Santayana, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Inbox Zero, index fund, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, late fees, lateral thinking, lone genius, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, move fast and break things, multiplanetary species, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occam's razor, out of africa, Peter Pan Syndrome, Peter Thiel, Pluto: dwarf planet, private spaceflight, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Schrödinger's Cat, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Skinner box, SpaceShipOne, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Yogi Berra

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning,” said Werner Heisenberg, the brains behind the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.13 When we reframe a question—when we change our method of questioning—we have the power to change the answers. Research supports this conclusion. A meta-analysis of fifty-five years of research on problem finding across numerous disciplines found a significant positive relationship between problem framing and creativity.14 In one famous study, Jacob Getzels and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that the most creative art students spend more time in the preparation and discovery stage than do their less creative counterparts.15 Problem finding, according to these researchers, doesn’t end with the preparation stage.


pages: 573 words: 115,489

Prosperity Without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow by Tim Jackson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, biodiversity loss, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, business cycle, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, decarbonisation, degrowth, dematerialisation, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, Money creation, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Murray Bookchin, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, new economy, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, paradox of thrift, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, Philip Mirowski, Post-Keynesian economics, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, secular stagnation, short selling, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, Works Progress Administration, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(6): 1278–1290. Dittmar, Helga 1992. The Social Psychology of Material Possessions – To Have Is to Be. New York: St Martin’s Press. Dittmar, Helga, Rod Bond, Megan Hurst and Tim Kasser 2014. ‘The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: a meta-analysis’. Journal of Personal and Social Psychology 107: 879–924. Dittmer, K. 2015. ‘100 per cent reserve banking: a critical review of green perspectives’. Ecological Economics 109: 9–16. Dolan, Paul 2015. Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life. London: Penguin. Dong, Boamin, Fei Wang and Guo 2006.


pages: 424 words: 114,820

Neurodiversity at Work: Drive Innovation, Performance and Productivity With a Neurodiverse Workforce by Amanda Kirby, Theo Smith

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, Automated Insights, barriers to entry, Black Lives Matter, call centre, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, deep learning, digital divide, double empathy problem, epigenetics, fear of failure, future of work, gamification, global pandemic, iterative process, job automation, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, Minecraft, neurotypical, phenotype, remote work: asynchronous communication, remote working, seminal paper, the built environment, traumatic brain injury, work culture

In H R Mykelbust (ed), Progress in Learning Disabilities, Ulverscroft, New York, USA, pp 235–64 12 Badian, N A (1999) Persistent arithmetic, reading, or arithmetic and reading disability, Annals of Dyslexia, 49, pp 43–70 13 Shalev, R S et al (2000) Developmental dyscalculia: prevalence and prognosis, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 9 (Suppl 2), II58–II64, https://doi.org/10.1007/s007870070009 (archived at https://perma.cc/4TFV-Z6AS) 14 Lingam, R et al (2009) Prevalence of Developmental Coordination Disorder using the DSM-IV at 7 years of age: a UK population-based study, Pediatrics, 123, e693–e700 15 Lindsay, G and Strand, S (2016) Children with language impairment: prevalence, associated difficulties, and ethnic disproportionality in an English population, Frontiers in Education, 1 (2) 16 Scahill, L, Specht, M and Page, C (2014) The prevalence of tic disorders and clinical characteristics in children, Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 3 (4), pp 394–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2014.06.002 (archived at https://perma.cc/C77X-L3VA) 17 Knight, T et al (2012) Prevalence of tic disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Pediatric Neurology, 47 (2), pp 77–90 Glossary ABI: This stands for Acquired Brain Injury. Acquired Brain Injury: Any injury to the brain. This includes Traumatic Brain Injury but also stroke, encephalitis, brain cancer, hypoxia, poisoning, substance abuse and other brain injuries. ADD: This stands for Attention Deficit Disorder.


Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison by The Class Ceiling Why it Pays to be Privileged (2019, Policy Press)

affirmative action, Ascot racecourse, Boris Johnson, Bullingdon Club, classic study, critical race theory, discrete time, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Hyperloop, if you build it, they will come, imposter syndrome, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, longitudinal study, Martin Parr, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microaggression, nudge theory, nudge unit, old-boy network, performance metric, psychological pricing, school choice, Skype, starchitect, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, work culture

., Pollak, R. and Brinton, M.C. (2009) ‘Microclass mobility: Social reproduction in four countries’, American Journal of Sociology, 114(4), 9771036 (https://doi.org/10.1086/592200). Judge, T.A. and Bono, J.E. (2001) ‘Relationship of core selfevaluations traits – self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability – with job satisfaction and job performance: A meta-analysis’, Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 80-92 (https://doi.org/http://dx.doi. org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.1.80). Kant, I. ([1790] 1987) Critique of judgment, UK: Hackett Publishing Co. Kanter, R.M. (1993) Men and women of the corporation (2nd edn), New York: Basic Books. Kehal, P.S. (no date) ‘Racializing meritocracy: Ideas of excellence and exclusion in faculty diversity’, Unpublished PhD disseration, Brown University, RI.


System Error by Rob Reich

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deplatforming, digital rights, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Lean Startup, linear programming, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Philippa Foot, premature optimization, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trolley problem, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, union organizing, universal basic income, washing machines reduced drudgery, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, When a measure becomes a target, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, you are the product

the work radiologists and other medical professionals do: Hugh Harvey, “Why AI Will Not Replace Radiologists,” Medium, April 7, 2018, https://towardsdatascience.com/why-ai-will-not-replace-radiologists-c7736f2c7d80. “deep learning models to be equivalent”: Xiaoxuan Liu et al., “A Comparison of Deep Learning Performance Against Health-Care Professionals in Detecting Diseases from Medical Imaging: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Lancet Digital Health 1, no. 6 (October 1, 2019): e271–97, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(19)30123-2. eighty distinct AI ethics documents: Anna Jobin, Marcello Ienca, and Effy Vayena, “The Global Landscape of AI Ethics Guidelines,” Nature Machine Intelligence 1, no. 9 (September 2019): 389–99, https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-019-0088-2.


pages: 386 words: 112,064

Rich White Men: What It Takes to Uproot the Old Boys' Club and Transform America by Garrett Neiman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, basic income, Bernie Sanders, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, clean water, confounding variable, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, Donald Trump, drone strike, effective altruism, Elon Musk, gender pay gap, George Floyd, glass ceiling, green new deal, high net worth, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, impact investing, imposter syndrome, impulse control, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, liberal capitalism, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, mandatory minimum, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, microaggression, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, occupational segregation, offshore financial centre, Paul Buchheit, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, TED Talk, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, uber lyft, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, white flight, William MacAskill, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor

“What makes a community or individual resilient is not self-mastery or will,” insists Lucién Demaris, a somatic healer and codirector of the Relational Uprising program. “It is the quality, strength, intimacy, and inclusivity of our relational bonds.”14 Research substantiates Demaris’s thesis. In 2010, psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues Timothy Smith and J. Bradley Layton conducted a meta-analysis of 148 studies, including more than 308,000 participants, to determine the factors that predict longevity.15 Least predictive were whether a person had access to clean air, was treated for high blood pressure, was overweight, exercised regularly, or was recovering from a heart attack. Drinking habits, smoking habits, and getting a flu vaccine were more predictive but were still not highest on the list.


The Next Great Migration by Sonia Shah

Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, British Empire, climate change refugee, colonial rule, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Donald Trump, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, Fellow of the Royal Society, Garrett Hardin, GPS: selective availability, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, illegal immigration, immigration reform, index card, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ken Thompson, Lewis Mumford, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, open borders, out of africa, Scientific racism, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, TED Talk, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl

“We see the whole network of animals …” Wikelski interview. ecologists have started to reevaluate their theories Warren, “Perspectives on ‘Alien.’ ” zero extinctions among the locals Mooney and Cleland, “Evolutionary Impact.” arrival of newcomers increases biodiversity Mark Vellend et al., “Global Meta-Analysis Reveals No Net Change in Local-Scale Plant Biodiversity Over Time,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 48 (2013): 19456–59; Thompson, Where Do Camels Belong? 108. compared the impact Mooney and Cleland, “Evolutionary Impact”; Jessica Gurevitch and Dianna K. Padilla, “Are Invasive Species a Major Cause of Extinctions?”


pages: 472 words: 117,093

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Airbnb, airline deregulation, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, asset light, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, backtesting, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, British Empire, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, complexity theory, computer age, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial innovation, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, law of one price, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Mitch Kapor, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Mustafa Suleyman, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, PageRank, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, plutocrats, precision agriculture, prediction markets, pre–internet, price stability, principal–agent problem, Project Xanadu, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Davenport, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, Two Sigma, two-sided market, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, yield management, zero day

., “The Supreme Court Forecasting Project: Legal and Political Science Approaches to Predicting Supreme Court Decisionmaking,” Columbia Law Review 104 (2004): 1150–1210, http://sites.lsa.umich.edu/admart/wp-content/uploads/sites/127/2014/08/columbia04.pdf. 41 A team led by psychologist William Grove: William M. Grove et al., “Clinical versus Mechanical Prediction: A Meta-analysis,” Psychological Assessment 12, no. 1 (2000): 19–30, http://zaldlab.psy.vanderbilt.edu/resources/wmg00pa.pdf. 41 “the clinicians received more data”: Ibid. 41 “There is no controversy”: Paul E. Meehl, “Causes and Effects of My Disturbing Little Book,” Journal of Personality Assessment 50, no. 3 (1986): 370–75, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327752jpa5003_6. 42 Working with the US Census Bureau: Erik Brynjolfsson and Kristina McElheran, “Data in Action: Data-Driven Decision Making in US Manufacturing,” 2016, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?


pages: 468 words: 123,823

A People's History of Poverty in America by Stephen Pimpare

affirmative action, British Empire, car-free, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, dumpster diving, East Village, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Gilder, green new deal, hedonic treadmill, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, index card, it's over 9,000, Jane Jacobs, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, moral panic, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, payday loans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, subprime mortgage crisis, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, union organizing, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Conference of Mayors, 41 percent of homeless Americans were single men; 40 percent were families with children; two-thirds were single-parent families; over one in five were mentally disabled; 10 percent were veterans (other studies show 25 percent or more); and almost one-third were drug- or alcohol-dependent. Fully half were African American.56 One meta-analysis of sixty surveys conducted during the 1980s found that, on average, between one-fourth and one-third of all homeless people had been in a psychiatric hospital, undergone detox, had a current mental illness or alcohol addiction, or described themselves as having no friends. Over 40 percent had been in jail, prison, or both.


pages: 538 words: 121,670

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, carbon tax, carried interest, circulation of elites, cognitive dissonance, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, crony capitalism, David Brooks, Edward Glaeser, Filter Bubble, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, invisible hand, jimmy wales, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Pareto efficiency, place-making, profit maximization, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, TSMC, Tyler Cowen, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

., “a substantial majority of academic research on the subject has shown that there is little connection between contributions and legislative votes or actions.”36 “We don’t see it” is not the same as “there is nothing to see.” Ansolabehere and his colleagues’ conclusions, moreover, are not uncontested. Some political scientists do believe that there is a link between money and results that can be demonstrated by the numbers alone.37 Thomas Stratmann, for example, conducted a meta-analysis of the same forty studies that Ansolabehere and his colleagues reviewed. That analysis rejected the conclusion that money does not affect results.38 Sanford Gordon and his colleagues find that an executive’s likelihood of contributing to political candidates is tied to how sensitive his or her salary is to firm profitability: the higher the sensitivity, the higher the likelihood of contributions, reinforcing the suggestion that the contribution is an investment rather than consumption.39 Consistent with this result, in a study of PAC contributions related to the 1984 Deficit Reduction Act, Sanjay Gupta and Charles Swenson found that firms whose managers’ compensation included earnings-based bonuses made larger PAC contributions, and that contributions generally were “positively associated with firm tax benefits.”40 Likewise, Atif Mian and his colleagues found that the voting patterns on the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act were strongly predicted by the amount of campaign contributions from the financial services industry.41 Not exclusively, but partially, and certainly enough for us to wonder whether the money is queering results more generally.


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Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Abraham Maslow, accelerated depreciation, agricultural Revolution, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 747, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, centre right, City Beautiful movement, clean water, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, data science, Donald Shoup, East Village, edge city, energy security, Enrique Peñalosa, experimental subject, food desert, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Google Earth, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, Induced demand, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, license plate recognition, McMansion, means of production, megacity, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mortgage tax deduction, New Urbanism, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, power law, rent control, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, science of happiness, Seaside, Florida, Silicon Valley, starchitect, streetcar suburb, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transit-oriented development, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, wage slave, white flight, World Values Survey, zero-sum game, Zipcar

The test consists of ten scales: Hypochondriasis, Depression, Hysteria, Psychopathic Deviate, Masculinity/Femininity, Paranoia, Psychasthenia, Schizophrenia, Hypomania, and Social Introversion. See Twenge, Jean M., “Birth Cohort Increases in Psychopathology Among Young Americans, 1938–2007: A Cross-Temporal Meta-analysis of the MMPI,” Clinical Psychology Review, 2010: 145–54. One in ten Americans: Olfson, Mark, and Steven C. Marcus, “National Patterns in Antidepressant Medication Treatment,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 2009: 848–56. “correlates of subjective well-being”: Wilkinson, Will, “In Pursuit of Happiness Research: Is it Reliable?


pages: 401 words: 119,488

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

Air France Flight 447, Asperger Syndrome, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Black Swan, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Brooks, digital map, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, framing effect, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, index card, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, meta-analysis, new economy, power law, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, statistical model, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, Toyota Production System, William Langewiesche, Yom Kippur War

Sullivan and Michael Lewis, “Contextual Determinants of Anger and Other Negative Expressions in Young Infants,” Developmental Psychology 39, no. 4 (2003): 693. freedom to choose Leotti and Delgado, “Inherent Reward of Choice.” Psychological Science in 2011 Ibid. autonomy and self-determination Erika A. Patall, Harris Cooper, and Jorgianne Civey Robinson, “The Effects of Choice on Intrinsic Motivation and Related Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis of Research Findings,” Psychological Bulletin 134, no. 2 (2008): 270; Deborah J. Stipek and John R. Weisz, “Perceived Personal Control and Academic Achievement,” Review of Educational Research 51, no. 1 (1981): 101–37; Steven W. Abrahams, “Goal-Setting and Intrinsic Motivation: The Effects of Choice and Performance Frame-of-Reference” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1989); Teresa M.


pages: 484 words: 131,168

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop, Robert G. Cushing

1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, big-box store, blue-collar work, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial cluster, Jane Jacobs, knowledge economy, longitudinal study, Maslow's hierarchy, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, music of the spheres, New Urbanism, post-industrial society, post-materialism, Ralph Nader, Recombinant DNA, Richard Florida, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, union organizing, War on Poverty, white flight, World Values Survey

"Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values." American Sociological Review 65 (February 2000). Inglehart, Ronald, and Christian Welzel. Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Isenberg, Daniel J. "Group Polarization: A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50, no. 6 (1986). Jacobs, Jane. Cities and the Wealth of Nations. New York. Vintage Books, 1985. ———. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. ———. The Economy of Cities. New York: Vintage Books, 1970. Jacobson, Gary C.


pages: 473 words: 124,861

Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, British Empire, carbon footprint, clean water, dark matter, illegal immigration, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, mass immigration, meta-analysis, oil shale / tar sands, phenotype, rewilding

(August 2013) http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2013/08/mycorrhizal-fungi-the-worlds-biggest-drinking-straws-and-largest-unseen-communication-system.html Sutton, M., et al. (eds). The European Nitrogen Assessment – Sources, Effects and Policy Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Van Groenigen, J. W., Lubbers I. M., et al. ‘Earthworms increase plant production: a meta-analysis’. Scientific Reports , vol. 4, article no. 6365 (2014) Woods-Segura, James. ‘Rewilding – an investigation of its effects on earthworm abundance, diversity and their provision of soil ecosystem services’. MSc thesis, Centre for Environmental Policy, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College London.


pages: 412 words: 128,042

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits by Richard Davies

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Anton Chekhov, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, big-box store, cashless society, clean water, complexity theory, deindustrialization, digital divide, eurozone crisis, failed state, financial innovation, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, gentleman farmer, Global Witness, government statistician, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, it's over 9,000, James Hargreaves, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, large denomination, Livingstone, I presume, Malacca Straits, mandatory minimum, manufacturing employment, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, pension reform, profit motive, randomized controlled trial, rolling blackouts, school choice, school vouchers, Scramble for Africa, side project, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, spinning jenny, subscription business, The Chicago School, the payments system, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, uranium enrichment, urban planning, wealth creators, white picket fence, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

.), Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective (Washington, DC: World Bank). Stephen, A. M. M. (2015), Stephen of Linthouse: A Shipbuilding Memoir 1950–1983 (Glasgow: IESIS). Valtorta, N. K., Kanaan, M., Gilbody, S., et al. (2016), ‘Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Longitudinal Observational Studies’, Heart, 102, 1009–16. Wainwright, O. (2018), ‘Charles Rennie Mackintosh: “He Was Doing Art Deco Before It Existed”’, Guardian, 7 June. Walker, F. (2001), The Song of the Clyde: A History of Clyde Shipbuilding (Edinburgh: John Donald). Walpole, S. (1878), A History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815.


pages: 473 words: 121,895

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski Ph.d.

cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, delayed gratification, meta-analysis, nocebo, placebo effect, Skype, Snapchat, spaced repetition, sugar pill, the scientific method, twin studies

“An Item-Response Theory Analysis of Self-Report Measures of Adult Attachment.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 2 (2000): 350–65. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.350. Frühauf, Sarah, Heike Gerger, Hannah Maren Schmidt, Thomas Munder, and Jürgen Barth. “Efficacy of Psychological Interventions for Sexual Dysfunction: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 42, no. 6 (2013): 915–33. Fulu, Emma, Xian Warner, Stephanie Miedema, Rachel Jewkes, Tim Roselli, and James Lang. Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It? Quantitative Findings from the United Nations Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific.


pages: 441 words: 124,798

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America by Beth Macy

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Apollo 11, centre right, crack epidemic, David Sedaris, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, fulfillment center, invisible hand, labor-force participation, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, McMansion, medical residency, meta-analysis, obamacare, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pill mill, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, single-payer health, urban renewal, War on Poverty, working poor

Forty to 60 percent of addicted opioid users: George E. Woody, “Advances in the Treatment of Opioid Use Disorders,” National Institutes of Health, Jan. 27, 2017: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5288680/#ref-1; M. J. Fleury et al., “Remission from Substance Use Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Nov. 1, 2016; studies interpreted by Harvard Medical School’s John Kelly, author interview, Aug. 31, 2017. “Among the remedies which it has pleased”: Meier, Pain Killer, 42. makers of the painkiller Talwin: C. Baum, J. P. Hsu, and R. C. Nelson, “The Impact of the Addition of Naloxone on the Use and Abuse of Pentazocine,” Public Health, July-August 1987: 426–29.


pages: 371 words: 122,273

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency by Vicky Spratt

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, edge city, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, garden city movement, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, housing crisis, Housing First, illegal immigration, income inequality, Induced demand, Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Corbyn, land bank, land reform, land value tax, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mass immigration, mega-rich, meta-analysis, negative equity, Overton Window, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, quantitative easing, rent control, Right to Buy, Rishi Sunak, Rutger Bregman, side hustle, social distancing, stop buying avocado toast, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

Available at housingevidence.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/R2018_06_01_Frustrated_Housing_Aspirations_of_Gen_Rent.pdf what renting is actually doing: Amy Clair and Amanda Hughes, ‘Housing and Health: New Evidence Using Biomarker Data’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 73:3 (2019), 256–62. what this protein can tell us: Amanda Hughes et al., ‘Unemployment and Inflammatory Markers in England, Wales and Scotland, 1998–2012: Meta-analysis of Results from 12 Studies’, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity 64 (2017), 91–102. ‘Larger, more spacious homes … people living in detached houses’: Amy Clair, ‘Homes, health, and COVID-19: how poor housing adds to the hardship of the coronavirus crisis’, Social Market Foundation, 2 April 2020, www.smf.co.uk/commentary_podcasts/homes-health-and-covid-19-how-poor-housing-adds-to-the-hardship-of-the-coronavirus-crisis/ ‘The challenges brought on by Covid-19 … particularly affecting women and children’: Ibid.


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Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs by Lauren A. Rivera

affirmative action, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, classic study, Donald Trump, emotional labour, fundamental attribution error, glass ceiling, income inequality, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, meritocracy, messenger bag, meta-analysis, new economy, performance metric, profit maximization, profit motive, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, tacit knowledge, tech worker, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, unpaid internship, women in the workforce, young professional

Monroe, Kristen, Saba Ozyurt, Ted Wrigley, and Amy Alexander. 2008. “Gender Equality in Academia: Bad News from the Trenches, and Some Possible Solutions.” Perspectives on Politics 6:215–33. Montoya, Matthew, Robert Horton, and Jeffrey Kirchner. 2008. “Is Actual Similarity Necessary for Attraction? A Meta-Analysis of Actual and Perceived Similarity.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 25:899–922. Morgan, Harriet. 1990. “Sponsored and Contest Mobility Revisited: An Examination of Britain and the USA Today.” Oxford Review of Education 16:39–54. Morton, Samuel. 1839. Crania Americana; Or a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America.


pages: 436 words: 141,321

Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness by Frederic Laloux, Ken Wilber

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, different worldview, driverless car, Easter island, failed state, fulfillment center, future of work, hiring and firing, holacracy, index card, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kenneth Rogoff, meta-analysis, ocean acidification, pattern recognition, post-industrial society, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, radical decentralization, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, systems thinking, the market place, the scientific method, Tony Hsieh, warehouse automation, zero-sum game

Our knowledge about the stages of human development is now extremely robust. Two thinkers in particular—Ken Wilber and Jenny Wade—have done remarkable work comparing and contrasting all the major stage models, and have discovered strong convergence. … The way I portray the stages borrows mostly from Wade’s and Wilber’s meta-analysis, touching briefly upon different facets of every stage—the worldview, the needs, the cognitive development, the moral development.” Laloux rightly invites us to be extremely careful what we mean by “a stage.” As Howard Gardner made popular, and virtually every developmentalist agrees, there is not just one line of development with its stages or levels, but multiple lines or multiple intelligences, and each of those lines are quite different, with different characteristics and different stage structures.


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Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard H. Thaler

3Com Palm IPO, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrei Shleifer, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black-Scholes formula, book value, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, clean water, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, constrained optimization, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Glaeser, endowment effect, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, George Akerlof, hindsight bias, Home mortgage interest deduction, impulse control, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, late fees, law of one price, libertarian paternalism, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, market clearing, Mason jar, mental accounting, meta-analysis, money market fund, More Guns, Less Crime, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, New Journalism, nudge unit, PalmPilot, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, presumed consent, pre–internet, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, systematic bias, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transaction costs, ultimatum game, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, zero-sum game

“Capital Market Seasonality: The Case of Stock Returns.” Journal of Financial Economics 3, no. 4: 379–402. Russell, Thomas, and Richard H. Thaler. 1985. “The Relevance of Quasi Rationality in Competitive Markets.” American Economic Review 75, no. 5: 1071–82. Sally, David. 1995. “Conversation and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Meta-Analysis of Experiments from 1958 to 1992.” Rationality and Society 7, no. 1: 58–92. Samuelson, Paul A. 1954. “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure.” Review of Economics and Statistics 36, no. 4: 387–9. ———. 1963. “Risk and Uncertainty: A Fallacy of Large Numbers.” Scientia 98, no. 612: 108. ———. 1979.


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The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy by Seth Mnookin

Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, disinformation, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, illegal immigration, index card, Isaac Newton, John Gilmore, loss aversion, meta-analysis, mouse model, neurotypical, pattern recognition, placebo effect, precautionary principle, Richard Thaler, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions

American Journal of Public Health 2008;98(2): 244–53. ———. “The Pertussis Vaccine Controversy in Great Britain, 1974–1986.” Vaccine 2003;21(25–26): 4003–10. Bakir, F. “Methylmercury Poisoning in Iraq.” Science 1973;181(4096): 230–41. Balicer, Ran, et al. “Is Childhood Vaccination Associated with Asthma? A Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies.” Pediatrics 2007;120(5): e1269–77. Ball, Philip. “Predicting Human Activity.” Nature 2010;465: 692. Banerjee, Abhijit. “A Simple Model of Herd Behavior.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 1992;107(3): 797–817. Barquet, Nicolau, and Pere Domingo. “The Triumph over the Most Terrible of the Ministers of Death.”


pages: 428 words: 136,945

The Happiness Effect: How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost by Donna Freitas

4chan, fear of failure, Joan Didion, Jon Ronson, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Skype, Snapchat, TED Talk, Year of Magical Thinking

See National Crime Prevention Council and Harris Interactive, “Teens and Cyberbullying: Executive Summary of a Report on Research,” February 28, 2007. 4.For more on this study, see Sarah Konrath, Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 15, no. 2 (2011): 180–198. 5.For many teens, there is a fine line between bullying and plain old drama, with cyberbullying occupying another category altogether. To read more on these distinctions and the importance of this terminology (and the ways that adults today tend to lump everything under the heading of “bullying” and “cyberbullying,” see Alice Marwick and danah boyd’s article, “‘It’s just drama’: teen perspectives on conflict and aggression in a networked era,” in Journal of Youth Studies 17, no. 9 (2014): 1187–1204.


pages: 476 words: 132,042

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 13, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, c2.com, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, charter city, classic study, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, computer vision, cotton gin, Danny Hillis, dematerialisation, demographic transition, digital divide, double entry bookkeeping, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, George Gilder, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, interchangeable parts, invention of air conditioning, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Conway, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, life extension, Louis Daguerre, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, out of africa, Paradox of Choice, performance metric, personalized medicine, phenotype, Picturephone, planetary scale, precautionary principle, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, rewilding, Richard Florida, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, silicon-based life, skeuomorphism, Skype, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, technological determinism, Ted Kaczynski, the built environment, the long tail, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, Vernor Vinge, wealth creators, Whole Earth Catalog, Y2K, yottabyte

Cataloged library with index (at Alexandria), a way to search recorded information 1403 Collaborative encyclopedia, a pooling of knowledge from more than one person 1590 Controlled experiment, used by Francis Bacon, wherein one changes a single variable in a test 1665 Necessary repeatability, Robert Boyle’s idea that results of an experiment must be repeatable to be valid 1752 Peer-review-refereed journal, adding a layer of confirmation and validation over shared knowledge 1885 Blinded, randomized design, a way to reduce human bias; randomness as a new kind of information 1934 Falsifiable testability, Karl Popper’s notion that any valid experiment must have some testable way it can fail 1937 Controlled placebo, a refinement in experiments to remove the effect of biased knowledge of the participant 1946 Computer simulations, a new way of making a theory and generating data 1952 Double-blind experiment, a further refinement to remove the effect of knowledge of the experimenter 1974 Meta-analysis, a second-level analysis of all previous analysis in a given field Together these landmark innovations create the modern practice of science. (I am ignoring various alternative claims of priority because for my purposes the exact dates don’t matter.) A typical scientific discovery today will rely on facts and a falsifiable hypothesis; be tested in repeatable, controlled experiments, perhaps with placebos and double-blind controls; and be reported in a peer-reviewed journal and indexed in a library of related reports.


pages: 455 words: 133,719

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte

8-hour work day, affirmative action, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, blue-collar work, Burning Man, business cycle, call centre, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, deliberate practice, desegregation, DevOps, East Village, Edward Glaeser, epigenetics, fear of failure, feminist movement, financial independence, game design, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, Great Leap Forward, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, income inequality, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, machine readable, meta-analysis, new economy, profit maximization, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sensible shoes, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, tech worker, TED Talk, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, Zipcar, éminence grise

Focusing on grit becomes more about them fulfilling their own potential rather than honing showy skills that look spectacular on a college admission application.” That’s because achievement, all that showy résumé building, does not necessarily lead to happiness. Instead, she says, feeling positive and happy in the first place is what fosters achievement. A meta-analysis of 225 studies on achievement, success, and happiness by the psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside, found that happy people, those who are comfortable in their own skin, are more likely to have “fulfilling marriages and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health and a long life”—in other words, success.13 And that positive, happy state, she says, arises from grit.


Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend by Barbara Oakley Phd

agricultural Revolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, Barry Marshall: ulcers, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, corporate governance, dark triade / dark tetrad, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, double helix, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, impulse control, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Mustafa Suleyman, Norbert Wiener, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, prisoner's dilemma, Richard Feynman, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Stanford prison experiment, Steven Pinker, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, twin studies, union organizing, Y2K

., “Common Pattern of Cortical Pathology in Childhood-Onset and Adult-Onset Schizophrenia as Identified by Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging,” American Journal of Psychiatry 155, no. 10 (1998): 1376–84. 48. John F. Clarkin and Michael I. Posner, “Defining Mechanisms of Borderline Personality Disorder,” Psychopathology 38 (2005): 56–63; A. C. Ruocco, “The Neuropsychology of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Meta-Analysis and Review,” Psychiatry Research 137, no. 3 (2005): 191–202. 49. Wilkinson-Ryan and Westen, “Identity Disturbance,” citing S. Akhtar, Broken Structures: Severe Personality Disorders and Their Treatment (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1992). 50. Putnam and Silk, “Emotion Dysregulation.” 51.


pages: 462 words: 129,022

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent by Joseph E. Stiglitz

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carried interest, central bank independence, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, DeepMind, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global supply chain, greed is good, green new deal, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, late fees, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, Peter Thiel, postindustrial economy, price discrimination, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, two-sided market, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, working-age population, Yochai Benkler

For role of diet in obesity, see https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-causes/diet-and-weight/. For an example of an academic study linking sugary drinks and weight, see Lenny R. Vartanian, Marlene B. Schwartz, and Kelly D. Brownell, “Effects of Soft Drink Consumption on Nutrition and Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” American Journal of Public Health 97 [2007]: 667–75.) 38.Perhaps the best website for data on inequality is that of inequality.org. There is some controversy both about the sources of wealth inequality and its future evolution. Thomas Piketty, in his justly praised 2014 book Capital in the 21st Century (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) has argued, for instance, that the passing on of inheritances from one generation to the next leads to ever-increasing inequality.


pages: 459 words: 138,689

Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration―and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives by Danny Dorling, Kirsten McClure

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, clean water, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Extinction Rebellion, fake news, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Greta Thunberg, Henri Poincaré, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, jimmy wales, John Harrison: Longitude, Kickstarter, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, negative emissions, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Overton Window, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, rent control, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, School Strike for Climate, Scramble for Africa, sexual politics, Skype, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, the built environment, Tim Cook: Apple, time dilation, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, very high income, wealth creators, wikimedia commons, working poor

“Activated Sludge—100 Years and Counting,” International Water Association Conference, June 2014, Essen, Germany, http://www.iwa100as.org/history.php. 22. Max Roser, “Human Height,” OurWorldInData.org, 2016, https://ourworldindata.org/human-height/. 23. Lisa Trahan, Karla Stuebing, Merril Hiscock, and Jack Fletcher, “The Flynn Effect: A Meta-analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 140, no. 5 (2014): 1332–60, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4152423/. 24. Ariane de Gayardon, Claire Callender, KC Deane, and Stephen DesJardins, “Graduate Indebtedness: Its Perceived Effects on Behaviour and Life Choices—A Literature Review” (working paper no. 38, Centre for Global Higher Education, June 2018), https://www.researchcghe.org/publications/working-paper/graduate-indebtedness-its-perceived-effects-on-behaviour-and-life-choices-a-literature-review/. 25.


pages: 544 words: 134,483

The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars by Jo Marchant

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Arthur Eddington, British Empire, complexity theory, Dava Sobel, Drosophila, Easter island, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Eratosthenes, founder crops, game design, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Harrison: Longitude, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Nicholas Carr, out of africa, overview effect, Plato's cave, polynesian navigation, scientific mainstream, scientific worldview, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Searching for Interstellar Communications, Skype, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, technological singularity, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, trade route

sensitive to lunar light: For example, Maxim Gorbunov and Paul Falkowski, “Photoreceptors in the Cnidarian Hosts Allow Symbiotic Corals to Sense Blue Moonlight,” Limnology and Oceanography 47 (2002): 309–15. Arnold Lieber, who claimed: Arnold Lieber, The Lunar Effect: Biological Tides and Human Emotions (New York: Doubleday, 1978). the term “lunatic”: Raible et al., “Monthly Rhythms and Clocks.” furious backlash: James Rotton and Ivan Kelly, “Much Ado about the Full Moon: A Meta-analysis of Lunar-lunacy Research,” Psychological Bulletin 97 (1985): 286–306; Daniel Myers, “Gravitational Effects of the Period of High Tides and the New Moon on Lunacy,” Journal of Emergency Medicine 13 (1995): 529–32; Foster and Roenneberg, “Human Responses”; Hal Arkowitz and Scott Lilienfeld, “Lunacy and the Full Moon: Does a Full Moon Really Trigger Strange Behavior?


pages: 510 words: 138,000

The Future Won't Be Long by Jarett Kobek

Berlin Wall, British Empire, Donald Trump, East Village, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, Future Shock, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, means of production, Menlo Park, messenger bag, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, quantum entanglement, rent stabilization, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, thinkpad, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, urban decay, wage slave, War on Poverty, working poor, young professional

Suicide rates, always high after the installation of worldwide euthanasia centers in 2731, skyrocket among those who visit the past. The biggest such center, located on the south side of Nueva Washington Square between Wooster Street and South Fifth Avenue, reports a massive spike. The Time Travel Commission takes notice. Many studies are conducted. Following a meta-analysis, it emerges that the only demographic of time travelers with a statistically significant variation away from suicide is the Jews. Theories are floated, several containing an atavistic resurgence of anti-Semitism, but the one with the most currency suggests that the Jews are culturally inculcated to think of history as a horror with no answer but survival.


pages: 453 words: 132,400

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Bonfire of the Vanities, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, double helix, fear of failure, Gregor Mendel, Herbert Marcuse, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, longitudinal study, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, Necker cube, pattern recognition, place-making, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Vilfredo Pareto

The first two quotations are from Csikszentmihalyi (1975), p. 129, the next two from ibid., p. 136. The ESM study that looks at how much flow American workers report on their job and in leisure was reported in Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre (1987, 1989) and LeFevre (1988). Dissatisfaction. The low percentages of dissatisfied workers were computed by a meta-analysis performed in 1980 on 15 national surveys between 1972 and 1978; see Argyle (1987, p. 32). Our studies of American workers. In addition to the ESM studies, here I am drawing on data I have collected over a period of five years (1984–88) on about 400 managers, from different companies and all parts of the country, who have attended the Vail Management Seminars organized by the Office of Continuing Education of the University of Chicago.


pages: 1,737 words: 491,616

Rationality: From AI to Zombies by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, anthropic principle, anti-pattern, anti-work, antiwork, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, backpropagation, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Build a better mousetrap, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, correlation does not imply causation, cosmological constant, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dematerialisation, different worldview, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Douglas Hofstadter, Drosophila, Eddington experiment, effective altruism, experimental subject, Extropian, friendly AI, fundamental attribution error, Great Leap Forward, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker News, hindsight bias, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, John Conway, John von Neumann, Large Hadron Collider, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Pasteur, mental accounting, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, money market fund, Monty Hall problem, Nash equilibrium, Necker cube, Nick Bostrom, NP-complete, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), P = NP, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peak-end rule, Peter Thiel, Pierre-Simon Laplace, placebo effect, planetary scale, prediction markets, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Saturday Night Live, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific mainstream, scientific worldview, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, SpaceShipOne, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, strong AI, sunk-cost fallacy, technological singularity, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the map is not the territory, the scientific method, Turing complete, Turing machine, Tyler Cowen, ultimatum game, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

The last sentence is important—it’s a much weaker claim of disagreement than, “Oh, I see the optical illusion—I understand why you think it’s C, of course, but the real answer is B.” So the conforming subjects in these experiments are not automatically convicted of irrationality, based on what I’ve described so far. But as you might expect, the devil is in the details of the experimental results. According to a meta-analysis of over a hundred replications by Smith and Bond:2 Conformity increases strongly up to 3 confederates, but doesn’t increase further up to 10–15 confederates. If people are conforming rationally, then the opinion of 15 other subjects should be substantially stronger evidence than the opinion of 3 other subjects.

Paul Crowley reminds me to note that when subjects can respond in a way that will not be seen by the group, conformity also drops, which also argues against an Aumann interpretation. * 1. Solomon E. Asch, “Studies of Independence and Conformity: A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority,” Psychological Monographs 70 (1956). 2. Rod Bond and Peter B. Smith, “Culture and Conformity: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) Line Judgment Task,” Psychological Bulletin 119 (1996): 111–137. 118 On Expressing Your Concerns The scary thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that you can get many people to say black is white, if you put them in a room full of other people saying the same thing.

., Stuart A. Karabenick, and Richard M. Lerner. “Pretty Pleases: The Effects of Physical Attractiveness, Race, and Sex on Receiving Help.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 12 (5 1976): 409–415. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(76)90073-1. Bond, Rod, and Peter B. Smith. “Culture and Conformity: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) Line Judgment Task.” Psychological Bulletin 119 (1996): 111–137. Bostrom, Nick. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14, no. 1 (2005): 1–25. http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/history.pdf. ———. “Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards.”


pages: 487 words: 151,810

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

“I don’t think there is any single thing in an impoverished environment that is responsible for the deleterious effects of poverty.” Turkheimer had spent years trying to find which parts of growing up with a poor background produced the most negative results. He could easily show the total results of poverty, but when he tried to measure the impact of specific variables, he found there was nothing there. He conducted a meta-analysis of forty-three studies that scrutinized which specific elements of a child’s background most powerfully shaped cognitive deficiencies. The studies failed to demonstrate the power of any specific variable, even though the total effect of all the variables put together was very clear. That doesn’t mean you do nothing to alleviate the effects of poverty.


pages: 863 words: 159,091

A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Eighth Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers by Kate L. Turabian

Bretton Woods, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, illegal immigration, information security, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Steven Pinker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, two and twenty, W. E. B. Du Bois, yellow journalism, Zeno's paradox

If the table or figure consists of material that cannot be presented in print form, such as a large data set or a multimedia file, treat it as an appendix, as described in A.2.3. 26.1.3 Source Lines You must acknowledge the sources of any data you use in tables and figures that you did not collect yourself. You must do this even if you present the data in a new form—for example, you create a graph based on data originally published in a table, add fresh data to a table from another source, or combine data from multiple sources by meta-analysis. Treat a source line as a footnote to a table (see 26.2.7) or as part of a caption for a figure (see 26.3.2). Introduce the source line with the word Source(s) (capitalized, in italics, followed by a colon). If the source line runs onto more than one line, the runovers should be flush left, single-spaced.


The Matter of the Heart: A History of the Heart in Eleven Operations by Thomas Morris

3D printing, Albert Einstein, Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Strangelove, Easter island, Edward Jenner, experimental subject, Great Leap Forward, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, meta-analysis, New Journalism, parabiotic, placebo effect, popular electronics, randomized controlled trial, stem cell

David Reekie, ‘Federico Benetti, champion of beating heart surgery’, cited 20 April 2016: http://cxvascular.com/cn-archives/cardiovascular-news-issue-2/federico-benetti-champion-of-beating-heart-surgery 91. Harold L. Lazar, ‘Should off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting be abandoned?’ Circulation 128, no. 4 (2013), 406–13 92. A. C. Deppe et al., ‘Current evidence of coronary artery bypass grafting off-pump versus on-pump: a systematic review with meta-analysis of over 16,900 patients investigated in randomized controlled trials’, European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery 49, no. 4 (2016), 1031–41 93. ‘Interview with René G. Favaloro’, in Stoney (ed.), op. cit., 367 94. ‘La última carta de Favaloro antes de morir: René Favaloro, Fernando de la Rúa, Cristina Kirchner – Infobae’, cited 10 April 2016: http://infobae.com/2013/10/09/1514794-la-ultima-carta-favaloro-antes-morir 8.


pages: 527 words: 147,690

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection by Jacob Silverman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, Brian Krebs, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, context collapse, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, fake it until you make it, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, game design, global village, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, life extension, lifelogging, lock screen, Lyft, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Minecraft, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, payday loans, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, pre–internet, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, real-name policy, recommendation engine, rent control, rent stabilization, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, social intelligence, social web, sorting algorithm, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telemarketer, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yottabyte, you are the product, Zipcar

Each exchange requires a complex cost-benefit analysis, one which, for anyone who has experienced this for himself, may seem wildly disproportionate to the conversation at hand. Just as metadata (that is, the number of retweets or likes) can matter more than the message itself, this process of meta-analysis, of deciphering the uncertain power dynamic between two people, can seem more important than the conversation on which it’s based. PHOTOGRAPHY AS A MEANS OF CONSUMPTION Maybe Alford would be more comfortable with photographs, which, in their vivid particularity, seem to demand less of a response.


pages: 385 words: 117,391

The Complete Thyroid Book by Kenneth Ain, M. Sara Rosenthal

active measures, Dr. Strangelove, follow your passion, medical residency, meta-analysis, place-making, placebo effect, post-materialism, randomized controlled trial, Recombinant DNA, upwardly mobile

Gharib, H. “Changing Concepts in the Diagnosis and Management of Thyroid Nodules.” Endocrinology and Metabolism Clinics of North America 26, no. 4 (1997): 777–800. Grozinsky-Glasberg, S., et al. “Thyroxine-Triiodothyronine Combination Therapy Versus Thyroxine Monotherapy for Clinical Hypothyroidism: Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (2006) 91:2592–99. Gruters, A., H. Biebermann, and H. Krude. “Neonatal Thyroid Disorders.” Hormone Research 59, suppl. 1 (2003): 24–29. Hegedus, L., S. J. Bonnema, and F. N. Bennedbaek. “Management of Simple Nodular Goiter: Current Status and Future Perspectives.”


pages: 462 words: 150,129

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, air freight, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, dematerialisation, demographic dividend, demographic transition, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, food miles, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, hedonic treadmill, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kula ring, Large Hadron Collider, Mark Zuckerberg, Medieval Warm Period, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, packet switching, patent troll, Pax Mongolica, Peter Thiel, phenotype, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, Productivity paradox, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, spice trade, spinning jenny, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, technological singularity, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, wage slave, working poor, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

ISAAA 2009. The Dawn of a New Era: Biotech Crops in India. ISAAA Brief 39, 2009: http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/downloads/The-Dawn-of-a-New-Era.pdf. p. 152 ‘the use of insecticides is down by as much as 80 per cent’. Marvier M., McCreedy, C., Regetz, J. and Kareiva, P. 2007. A meta-analysis of effects of Bt cotton and maize on nontarget invertebrates. Science 316:1475–7; also Wu, K.-M. et al. 2008. Suppression of cotton bollworm in multiple crops in China in areas with Bt Toxin-containing cotton. Science 321:1676–8 (doi: 10.1126/science.1160550). p. 152 ‘the leaders of the organic movement locked themselves out of a new technology’.


pages: 504 words: 147,660

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction by Gabor Mate, Peter A. Levine

addicted to oil, Albert Einstein, Anton Chekhov, corporate governance, drug harm reduction, epigenetics, gentrification, ghettoisation, impulse control, longitudinal study, mass immigration, megaproject, meta-analysis, Naomi Klein, PalmPilot, phenotype, placebo effect, Rat Park, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), source of truth, twin studies, Yogi Berra

“Recovering Church: The 2005 Greenfield Lectures,” St John the Baptist Episcopal Church, Portland, Oregon; http://www.st-john-the-baptist.org/Greenfield_lectures.htm. CHAPTER 12 FROM VIETNAM TO “RAT PARK” 1. G.M. Aronoff, “Opioids in Chronic Pain Management: Is There a Significant Risk of Addiction?” Current Review of Pain 4(2) (2000): 112–21. 2. A.D. Furlan, “Opioids for Chronic Noncancer Pain: A Meta-analysis of Effectiveness and Side Effects,” CMAJ 174(11) (23 May 2006): 1589–94. 3. S.R. Ytterberg et al., “Codeine and Oxycodone Use in Patients with Chronic Rheumatic Disease Pain,” Arthritis and Rheumatism 14(9) (September 1998): 1603–12. 4. L. Dodes, The Heart of Addiction (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 73. 5.


How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight by Julian Guthrie

Albert Einstein, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Charles Lindbergh, cosmic microwave background, crowdsourcing, Dennis Tito, Doomsday Book, Easter island, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, fixed-gear, Frank Gehry, Gene Kranz, gravity well, Herman Kahn, high net worth, Iridium satellite, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, Jacquard loom, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, Larry Ellison, Leonard Kleinrock, life extension, low earth orbit, Mark Shuttleworth, Mars Society, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Murray Gell-Mann, Neil Armstrong, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, packet switching, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, pets.com, private spaceflight, punch-card reader, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Ronald Reagan, Scaled Composites, side project, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Strategic Defense Initiative, urban planning, Virgin Galactic

Carmack pored over NASA publications from the early sixties and seventies, impressed by the nuts-and-bolts descriptions of what worked and didn’t work for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The early NASA studies were dazzling in their details, right down to diagrams of welding procedures. NASA publications from more recent times proved the opposite: full of meta-analysis of surveys of simulations. During his embryonic phase of rocket study, Carmack also looked online for tutorials and signed up for all the right mailing lists. When Carmack got to the point where he felt like he could hold an intelligent conversation with industry types, he began attending space conferences.


pages: 487 words: 147,238

American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales

4chan, access to a mobile phone, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, collateralized debt obligation, Columbine, dark pattern, digital divide, East Village, Edward Snowden, feminist movement, Golden Gate Park, hiring and firing, impulse control, invention of the printing press, James Bridle, jitney, Kodak vs Instagram, longitudinal study, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, San Francisco homelessness, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, tech bro, TechCrunch disrupt, The Chicago School, women in the workforce

“Contribution of Media to the Normalization and Perpetuation of Domestic Violence.” Austin Journal of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science 1, no. 4 (May 16, 2014). Konrath, Sara H., Edward H. O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing. “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students over Time: A Meta-Analysis.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 15, no. 2 (2011): 180–98. Krischer, Hayley. “Meet the Instamom, a Stage Mother for Social Media.” New York Times, November 14, 2015. Lambert, Molly. “Nicki Minaj Reclaims the Twerk in the ‘Anaconda’ Music Video.” Grantland blog. Entry posted August 20, 2014. http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/nicki-minaj-reclaims-the-twerk-in-the-anaconda-music-video/.


pages: 523 words: 154,042

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks by Scott J. Shapiro

3D printing, 4chan, active measures, address space layout randomization, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, availability heuristic, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business logic, call centre, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Debian, Dennis Ritchie, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, evil maid attack, facts on the ground, false flag, feminist movement, Gabriella Coleman, gig economy, Hacker News, independent contractor, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Linda problem, loss aversion, macro virus, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Minecraft, Morris worm, Multics, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, pirate software, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, SQL injection, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, technological solutionism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the new new thing, the payments system, Turing machine, Turing test, Unsafe at Any Speed, vertical integration, Von Neumann architecture, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, young professional, zero day, éminence grise

Nigerian Astronaut: Katharine Trendacosta, “Here’s the Best Nigerian Prince Email Scam in the Galaxy,” Gizmodo, February 12, 2016, https://gizmodo.com/we-found-the-best-nigerian-prince-email-scam-in-the-gal-1758786973. “loss averse”: Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1991. Jack and Jill example from Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 275. promise gains: Teodor Sommestad and Henrik Karlzén, “A Meta-Analysis of Field Experiments on Phishing Susceptibility” (2019 APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research [eCrime]). inherent ridiculousness: Cormac Herley, “Why Do Nigerian Scammers Say They Are from Nigeria?,” Microsoft, www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/WhyFromNigeria.pdf.


pages: 558 words: 164,627

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen

Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Boston Dynamics, colonial rule, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Dean Kamen, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Fall of the Berlin Wall, game design, GPS: selective availability, Herman Kahn, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, John von Neumann, license plate recognition, Livingstone, I presume, low earth orbit, megacity, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Murray Gell-Mann, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Norman Mailer, operation paperclip, place-making, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, social intelligence, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Strategic Defense Initiative, traumatic brain injury, zero-sum game

“Canadian Soldiers Resume Mentoring Afghan National Army after Turbulent Spring.” Military World, October 28, 2010. “Moon Stirs Scare of Missile Attack.” Associated Press, December 7, 1960. Newman, Kevin. “Cancer Experts Puzzled by Monkey Virus.” ABC News, March 12, 1994. Ngo, Anh D., et al. “Association Between Agent Orange and Birth Defects: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Oxford Journal of Epidemiology, February 13, 2006. “1991 Gulf War Chronology.” USA Today: World, September 3, 1996. Nordland, Rod. “Iraq Swears by a Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless,” New York Times, November 3, 2009. NOVA. “Transforming Warfare.” May 4, 2004. Omohundro, Steve. “Autonomous Technology and the Greater Human Good,” Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, November 21, 2014: 303–15.


pages: 542 words: 161,731

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

Albert Einstein, Columbine, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, fake news, Future Shock, global village, Hacker Ethic, helicopter parent, Howard Rheingold, industrial robot, information retrieval, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, lifelogging, Loebner Prize, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paradox of Choice, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rodney Brooks, Skype, social intelligence, stem cell, technological determinism, technoutopianism, The Great Good Place, the medium is the message, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, Year of Magical Thinking

Today’s generation scored about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts did twenty or thirty years ago. Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, conducted, with University of Michigan graduate student Edward O’Brien and undergraduate student Courtney Hsing, a meta-analysis that looked at data on empathy, combining the results of seventy-two different studies of American college students conducted between 1979 and 2009. Compared to college students of the late 1970s, the study found, college students today are less likely to agree with statements such as “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”


pages: 680 words: 157,865

Beautiful Architecture: Leading Thinkers Reveal the Hidden Beauty in Software Design by Diomidis Spinellis, Georgios Gousios

Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, business intelligence, business logic, business process, call centre, continuous integration, corporate governance, database schema, Debian, domain-specific language, don't repeat yourself, Donald Knuth, duck typing, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, fault tolerance, financial engineering, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, functional programming, general-purpose programming language, higher-order functions, iterative process, linked data, locality of reference, loose coupling, meta-analysis, MVC pattern, Neal Stephenson, no silver bullet, peer-to-peer, premature optimization, recommendation engine, Richard Stallman, Ruby on Rails, semantic web, smart cities, social graph, social web, SPARQL, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, systems thinking, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, traveling salesman, Turing complete, type inference, web application, zero-coupon bond

Principles, Properties, and Structures Late in this book’s review process, one of the reviewers asked us to provide our personal opinion, in the form of commentary, on what a reader could learn from each chapter. The idea was intriguing, but we did not like the fact that we would have to second-guess the chapter authors. Asking the authors themselves to provide a meta-analysis of their writings would lead to a Babel tower of definitions, terms, and architectural constructs guaranteed to confuse readers. What was needed was a common vocabulary of architectural terms; thankfully, we realized we already had that in our hands. In the Foreword, Stephen Mellor discusses seven principles upon which all beautiful architectures are based.


pages: 574 words: 164,509

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, anthropic principle, Anthropocene, anti-communist, artificial general intelligence, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, bioinformatics, brain emulation, cloud computing, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, cosmological constant, dark matter, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data acquisition, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, different worldview, Donald Knuth, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Drosophila, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, epigenetics, fear of failure, Flash crash, Flynn Effect, friendly AI, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Gödel, Escher, Bach, hallucination problem, Hans Moravec, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, iterative process, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, longitudinal study, machine translation, megaproject, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, NP-complete, nuclear winter, operational security, optical character recognition, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, performance metric, phenotype, prediction markets, price stability, principal–agent problem, race to the bottom, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, reversible computing, search costs, social graph, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Strategic Defense Initiative, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, time dilation, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trolley problem, Turing machine, Vernor Vinge, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Science 324 (5932): 1298–1301. Price, Huw. 1991. “Agency and Probabilistic Causality.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (2): 157–76. Qian, M., Wang, D., Watkins, W. E., Gebski, V., Yan, Y. Q., Li, M., and Chen, Z. P. 2005. “The Effects of Iodine on Intelligence in Children: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Conducted in China.” Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition 14 (1): 32–42. Quine, Willard Van Orman, and Ullian, Joseph Silbert. 1978. The Web of Belief, ed. Richard Malin Ohmann, vol. 2. New York: Random House. Railton, Peter. 1986. “Facts and Values.” Philosophical Topics 14 (2): 5–31.


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The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert D. Putnam

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Arthur Marwick, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, correlation does not imply causation, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, financial deregulation, gender pay gap, ghettoisation, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Herbert Marcuse, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, income inequality, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, mega-rich, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, MITM: man-in-the-middle, obamacare, occupational segregation, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, plutocrats, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, trade liberalization, Travis Kalanick, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism

,” Behavioral Scientist, July 24, 2018, https://behavioralscientist.org/how-would-people-behave-in-milgrams-experiment-today/. 53 Knud Larsen, “Conformity in the Asch Experiment,” Journal of Social Psychology 94 (1974): 303–4; Steven Perrin and Christopher Spencer, “The Asch Effect—A Child of Its Time?,” Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 33 (1980): 405–6; Rod Bond and Peter B. Smith, “Culture and Conformity: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Using Asch’s (1952b, 1956) Line Judgment Task,” Psychological Bulletin 119, no. 1 (January 1996): 111–37, doi:10.1037/0033-2909.119.1.111. 54 Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). 55 Rand’s quote about “brother’s keeper” comes from “The Mike Wallace Interview, Ayn Rand,” March 12, 1959, https://www.youtube.com/watch?


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The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World by Adrian Wooldridge

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business intelligence, central bank independence, circulation of elites, Clayton Christensen, cognitive bias, Corn Laws, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, COVID-19, creative destruction, critical race theory, David Brooks, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, feminist movement, George Floyd, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, helicopter parent, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, intangible asset, invention of gunpowder, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jim Simons, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microaggression, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-industrial society, post-oil, pre–internet, public intellectual, publish or perish, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, sexual politics, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, spinning jenny, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech bro, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, three-martini lunch, Tim Cook: Apple, transfer pricing, Tyler Cowen, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators, women in the workforce

Allison Borroughs, the judge in the case, argued, amazingly, that giving less weight to athletics would mean that ‘Harvard would be far less competitive in Ivy League inter-collegiate sports, which would adversely impact Harvard and the student experience.’ 22 John P. Hausknecht et al., ‘Retesting in Selection: A Meta-Analysis of Practice Effects for Tests of Cognitive Ability’, Cornell University Digital Commons, 1 June 2006 23 Brian S. Connelly et al., ‘Balancing Treatment and Control Groups in Quasi-Experiments: An Introduction to Propensity Scoring’, Personnel Psychology 66 (2) (2013), pp. 407–42 24 Thomas Jefferson, ‘Notes on Virginia’, in Adrienne Koch and William Peden (eds.), The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, The Modern Library, 1944), esp. pp. 263, 265 25 Richard J.


Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media by Peter Warren Singer, Emerson T. Brooking

4chan, active measures, Airbnb, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, Comet Ping Pong, content marketing, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, global reserve currency, Google Glasses, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker News, illegal immigration, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jacob Silverman, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Mohammed Bouazizi, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, moral panic, new economy, offshore financial centre, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, Plato's cave, post-materialism, Potemkin village, power law, pre–internet, profit motive, RAND corporation, reserve currency, sentiment analysis, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social web, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, too big to fail, trade route, Twitter Arab Spring, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, Upton Sinclair, Valery Gerasimov, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, Yochai Benkler

Billion-dollar Wall Street hedge funds are interested in any hints of unrest that might move markets. U.S. intelligence agencies are interested in signs of looming terror attacks or geopolitical shifts. For instance, North Korean missile and nuclear bomb tests have been predicted by analysts studying the correlation between past tests and social media chatter, using meta-analysis of online conversations and website visits. The world of social media is becoming so revelatory that it can even help someone to anticipate what will happen next. TRUE BELIEVER “The exponential explosion of publicly available information is changing the global intelligence system . . . It’s changing how we tool, how we organize, how we institutionalize—everything we do.”


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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

See Appendix C for a sample incident document. This living doc can be messy, but must be functional. Using a template makes generating this documentation easier, and keeping the most important information at the top makes it more usable.Retain this documentation for postmortem analysis and, if necessary, meta analysis. Clear, Live Handoff It’s essential that the post of incident commander be clearly handed off at the end of the working day. If you’re handing off command to someone at another location, you can simply and safely update the new incident commander over the phone or a video call. Once the new incident commander is fully apprised, the outgoing commander should be explicit in their handoff, specifically stating, “You’re now the incident commander, okay?”


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The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker

Albert Einstein, Boeing 747, cloud computing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, David Attenborough, double helix, Drosophila, elephant in my pajamas, finite state, Gregor Mendel, illegal immigration, Joan Didion, language acquisition, Loebner Prize, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, MITM: man-in-the-middle, natural language processing, out of africa, phenotype, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Saturday Night Live, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, Strategic Defense Initiative, tacit knowledge, theory of mind, transatlantic slave trade, Turing machine, Turing test, twin studies, Yogi Berra

Genetics, linguistics, and prehistory: Thinking big and thinking straight. Antiquity 72:505–527. The SLI Consortium. 2002. A genomewide scan identifies two novel loci involved in Specific Language Impairment. American Journal of Human Genetics 70:384–398. Stromswold, K. 2001. The heritability of language: A review and meta-analysis of twin and adoption studies. Language 77:647–723. Tomasello, M. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. van der Lely, H. K. J. 2005. Domain-specific cognitive systems: Insight from Grammatical Specific Language Impairment.


pages: 651 words: 180,162

Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Air France Flight 447, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-fragile, banking crisis, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, business cycle, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discrete time, double entry bookkeeping, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, fail fast, financial engineering, financial independence, Flash crash, flying shuttle, Gary Taubes, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, Helicobacter pylori, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, high net worth, hygiene hypothesis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, Jane Jacobs, Jim Simons, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, language acquisition, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Andreessen, Mark Spitznagel, meta-analysis, microbiome, money market fund, moral hazard, mouse model, Myron Scholes, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, principal–agent problem, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, selection bias, Silicon Valley, six sigma, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, stochastic volatility, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, the new new thing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, Yogi Berra, Zipf's Law

Specific Medical Topics Note that the concern of this author is not evidence, but rather absence of it and how researchers manage such a problem. The focus is in detecting missed convexities. Effectiveness of low-calorie sweeteners: One gets plenty of information by looking at studies by defenders with vested interests. De la Hunty et al. (2006) shows “advantages” to aspartame, with a meta-analysis, but focusing on the calorie-in calorie-out method, not overall weight gains. But reading it closely uncovers that the core is missing: “Some compensation for the substituted energy occurs but this is only about one-third of the energy replaced and is probably [emphasis mine] less than when using soft drinks sweetened with aspartame.


Statistics in a Nutshell by Sarah Boslaugh

Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, Bayesian statistics, business climate, computer age, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, experimental subject, Florence Nightingale: pie chart, income per capita, iterative process, job satisfaction, labor-force participation, linear programming, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, p-value, pattern recognition, placebo effect, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, publication bias, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, selection bias, six sigma, sparse data, statistical model, systematic bias, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Two Sigma, Vilfredo Pareto

For instance, if a drug is intended to prevent death from prostate cancer, a surrogate endpoint might be tumor shrinkage or reduction in levels of prostate-specific antigens. The problem with using surrogate endpoints is that although a treatment might be effective in producing improvement in these endpoints, it does not necessarily mean that it will be successful in achieving the clinical outcome of interest. For instance, a meta-analysis by Stefan Michiels and colleagues (listed in Appendix C) found that for locally advanced head and neck squamous-cell carcinoma, the correlation between locoregional control (a surrogate endpoint) and overall survival (the true clinical endpoint) ranged from 0.65 to 0.76 (if results had been identical for both endpoints, the correlation would have been 1.00), whereas the correlation between event-free survival (a surrogate endpoint) and overall survival ranged from 0.82 to 0.90.


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The Transhumanist Reader by Max More, Natasha Vita-More

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Bill Joy: nanobots, bioinformatics, brain emulation, Buckminster Fuller, cellular automata, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, Conway's Game of Life, cosmological principle, data acquisition, discovery of DNA, Douglas Engelbart, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, experimental subject, Extropian, fault tolerance, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, friendly AI, Future Shock, game design, germ theory of disease, Hans Moravec, hypertext link, impulse control, index fund, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, Louis Pasteur, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, phenotype, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, presumed consent, Project Xanadu, public intellectual, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, reversible computing, RFID, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, silicon-based life, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, stem cell, stochastic process, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, the built environment, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, Upton Sinclair, Vernor Vinge, Von Neumann architecture, VTOL, Whole Earth Review, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Heroic rescue workers who endanger their lives on a dangerous mission are admired because we assume that they are putting at risk something that most people would be very reluctant to risk, their own survival. For some three decades, economists have attempted to estimate individuals’ preferences over mortality and morbidity risk in labor and product markets. While the tradeoff estimates vary considerably between studies, one recent meta-analysis puts the median value of the value of a statistical life for prime-aged workers to about $7 million in the United States (Viscusi and Aldy 2003). A study by the EU’s Environment Directorates-General recommends the use of a value in the interval €0.9 to €3.5 million (Johansson 2002). Recent studies by health economists indicate that improvements in the health status of the U.S. population over the twentieth century have made as large a contribution to raising the standards of living as all other forms of consumption growth combined (Murphy and Topel 2003; Nordhaus 2003).


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The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis by Jeremy Rifkin

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, animal electricity, back-to-the-land, British Empire, carbon footprint, classic study, collaborative economy, death of newspapers, delayed gratification, distributed generation, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, feminist movement, Ford Model T, global village, Great Leap Forward, hedonic treadmill, hydrogen economy, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, off grid, off-the-grid, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, Recombinant DNA, scientific management, scientific worldview, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social intelligence, supply-chain management, surplus humans, systems thinking, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, working poor, World Values Survey

Journal of Education Research Vol. 89. No. 5. 1996. pp. 289-290. 63 Twenge. Generation Me. p. 55. 64 Ibid. p. 63. 65 CBS News. The Class of 2000. Simon and Schuster eBook, 2001. p. 64. 66 Twenge, Jean M., and W. Keith Campbell. “Age and Birth Cohort Differences in Self-Esteem: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review. Vol. 5. pp. 321-344. 67 Newsom, C. R., et al. “Changes in Adolescent Response Patterns on the MMPI/MMPI-A Across Four Decades. Journal of Personality Assessment. Vol. 81. 2003. pp. 74-84. 68 Pew Research Center. “A Portrait of Generation Next: How Young People View Their Lives, Futures and Politics.”


Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom, Milan M. Cirkovic

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, anthropic principle, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, availability heuristic, backpropagation, behavioural economics, Bill Joy: nanobots, Black Swan, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charles Babbage, classic study, cognitive bias, complexity theory, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, death of newspapers, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, Doomsday Clock, Drosophila, endogenous growth, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, false flag, feminist movement, framing effect, friendly AI, Georg Cantor, global pandemic, global village, Great Leap Forward, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, Kevin Kelly, Kuiper Belt, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, means of production, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, mutually assured destruction, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, P = NP, peak oil, phenotype, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, South China Sea, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, The Coming Technological Singularity, the long tail, The Turner Diaries, Tunguska event, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, uranium enrichment, Vernor Vinge, War on Poverty, Westphalian system, Y2K

One intriguing direction for current and future human evolution that has received little or no attention is selection for intellectual diversity. The measurement of human intellectual capabilities, and their heritability, is at a primitive stage. The heritability of i Q has received a great deal of attention, but a recent meta-analysis estimates broad heritability of IQ to be 0.5 and narrow heritability (the component of heritability that measures selectable phenotypic variation) to be as low as 0.34 (Devlin et al., 1997). But IQ is only one aspect of human intelligence, and other aspects of intelligence need investigation. Daniel Goleman has proposed that social intelligence, the ability to interact with others, is at least as important as I Q (Goleman, 1995 ), and Howard Gardner has explored multiple intelligences ranging from artistic and musical through political to mechanical (Gardner, 1993).