Do people actually learn from failure?
Do people actually learn from failure? Although lay wisdom suggests people should, a review of the research suggests that this is hard.
Alarmist narratives about the flow of misinformation and its negative consequences have gained traction in recent years. If these fears are to some extent warranted, the scientific literature suggests that many of them are exaggerated. We find that the strongest, and most reliable, predictor of perceived danger of misinformation is the third-person effect (i.e., the perception that others are more vulnerable to misinformation than the self) and, in particular, the belief that ‘distant’ others (as opposed to family and friends) are vulnerable to misinformation.
Some psychotherapeutic approaches are not only ineffective, they’re actively harmful. We’re now starting to identify them
When a male cockroach wants to mate with a female cockroach very much, he will scoot his butt toward her, open his wings and offer her a homemade meal — sugars and fats squished out of his tergal gland. […] In response to pesticides, many cockroach females have lost their taste for sweet stuff […] It seems we created these new, health-conscious cockroaches by accident, after decades of trying to kill their ancestors with sweet powders and liquids laced with poison. The cockroaches that craved sweets ate the poison and died, while cockroaches less keen on glucose avoided the death traps and survived long enough to breed, thus passing that trait down to the next cockroach generation. […] The good news for consumers is that pesticide manufacturers share Dr. Wada-Katsumata and Dr. Schal’s enthusiasm for understanding cockroach evolution, and they are actively changing their cockroach-killing formulations to move away from glucose. But given how new this research is, it will take some time for those changes to make their way to the products on our shelves. [NY Times]
Polyester went from being the world’s most hated fabrics to one of its favorites.
Navy Ships Swarmed By Drones, Not UFOs, Defense Officials Confirm
‘Smoke-Free’ Cities and Islands — Sponsored by Philip Morris
