The Telegraph looks at Why We Scream:
We all have a core set of five facial muscles that control our ability to produce standard expressions which convey anger, happiness, surprise, fear, sadness and disgust. But there are up to 19 muscles present in the face, and many people do not possess all of them.
The risorius muscle, which controls expressions of extreme fear, is found in only two thirds of people.
via Mind Hacks
The Yahoo! Design Patterns Library is what you could call a series of best practices for web interaction designers. Of particular note are the ‘Reputation’ Solution Patterns:
A person participating in a social structure expects to develop a reputation and hopes for insight into the reputations of others, but each designed model of participation and reputation embodies its own set of biases and incentive structures. Balancing these forces determines in large measure the success or failure of a social system.
All released under a Creative Commons attribution license.
When I read that political philosophers vote less often than other philosophers (and political scientists) I was reminded of the book Can a Robot be Human?.
This book touches on the logic behind voting, and comes to the conclusion that – for an individual – it is pointless because no election has ever been decided on one person’s vote. Of course, this is negated if you announce this to the world or persuade others not to vote too.
My first thought was that political scientists believe in the ideal democracy and therefore vote; political philosophers realise the truth, so don’t waste their time. Then again, rational choice theory says that voter turnout should be zero!
Also from The Splintered Mind: Ethics books are more widely stolen from libraries than other philosophy books.
via Mind Hacks
FT Predict is more than just a game. Predictive markets collect the wisdom of the crowd in a single dynamic price unit that can be far more sensitive to changes in the market than standard survey-based research. And a growing number of today’s leading companies embrace predictive market models in order to harness the wisdom of their own crowds to improve decision-making.
In The Wisdom of Crowds, prediction markets are praised for being a useful application of crowd intelligence. They sounded interesting when I read about them, now I’m going to be part of one.
(Side note: the book has an excellent Wikipedia entry.)
Times Higher Education reports that there is a strong correlation between a high IQ and a lack of religious belief, according to Richard Lynn, the controversial psychologist.
In the past Lynn has performed research into what he believes is the existence of race and sex differences in intelligence, and has called for the “phasing out” of what he calls “incompetent cultures”. Controversial indeed!
Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but it’s interesting nonetheless and the article itself contains some interesting comments from noted academics.
via Mind Hacks
How to Nap is an informative graphic from The Boston Globe detailing how we should nap effectively during the day.
Power naps enhance memory consolidation is an accessible article on why we should nap, drawing on research from Harvard Medical School’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory.
via Neurophilosophy
