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Human Behavior

How social media and the tech industry shapes human perception and behavior – The Snapper

Holdan HitchcockAssociate Opinion Editor

In my senior year of high school, my classmates and I were given a task from our English teacher to persuade our audiences about anything. It wasnt meant to be a political assignment although Im sure a few other students presented political ideals. However, I went with a more topical discussion. I remember seeing news reports around this time in high school that social media was in fact causing more harm than good. This notion I certainly didnt believe, so I set out to persuade my peers that these reports were bogus. And if you were in that first period English class with me at Wyalusing Valley, I would have told you the true blessings that social media and tech has provided. A few examples I poured out were ideas of being able to get news from reputable sources within a few button presses, the connections created with one another that increased dopamine levels, and entertainment content found on the web. I argued that social media and other ventures in the tech social space brought about good, systemic changes in human interaction. Yet this piece isnt about how I got an A- in a high school presentation. I reference this story because after viewing the Netflix Original documentary The Social Dilemma; I do not believe Id give the same optimistic type of presentation today.

The Social Dilemma interviews tech industry engineers and insiders about some hidden truths of the tech industry at large. The documentary opens with Tristan Harris a, former engineer at Google and Co-Founder of Center for Humane Technology who is propped up as the catalyst for the whole documentary itself. Tristan Harris states at the beginning of his interview, that he was working at Google at a time in which they were working on a new design for how email notifications work and was feeling burnt out. Harris says that even he was addicted to his email and he began to question the integrity of what Google was doing, Shouldnt we be making this less addicting? He asked. This idea gained traction with hundreds of employees at Google and was even brought to attention by Larry Page, one of the Co-Founders of Google.

Ultimately the idea would never come to fruition at Google. When most people think of social media and other tech ventures, they are usually broken down to the simplest bits of what they are. Google is a search engine, while Facebook is where I interact with my friends, and Twitter is where I see a feed tailored to me and my hobbies and interests. YouTube is where I go to get short-form entertainment. The reality is that really isnt the case. All of these companies are in the advertising business and they all compete for your time and attention. Tristan Harris says a common phrase in the industry is If you dont know what the product is, then you are the product. This is a sentiment that author and computer scientist Jaron Lanier doesnt fully get on board with. Lanier is considered a founding father for virtual reality. Lanier in his interview in the documentary, says that the idea that you are the product is too simple, its the gradual slight in change of perception and behavior that is the product.

Being able to obtain your data and understand what data you would like to see through forms of what an algorithm is telling you is what is called surveillance capitalism. In fact, surveillance capitalism is still a prominent force of revenue for advertisers. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang has stated on Twitter that users should be able to profit off of the data that is being collected from them.

So how do they do it? How is all the data tracked, and what is being tracked? Its not something I really thought about until watching the documentary, then it all became quite clear as I was writing this. While writing this article I received several notifications from apps I have not used in quite some time and Ill preface that I have a Google Pixel phone that Ill get back to here shortly. The apps that notified me were: Moes Southwest Grill notifying me that I can get double the reward points today (the nearest Moes from where I live currently is 2 hours away) and the ESPN app notifying me about tennis matches the following day. The ESPN tennis match thing is bizarre because Im not a fan of tennis, but I have a brother who is very into tennis and has mentioned it recently in a group chat I have with two of my older brothers and my dad, that group chat is run through Google Hangouts messaging app. More commonly youll see ads pop-up through a Twitter feed or before a YouTube video that is usually tailored to your data.

This time, though, it had backed into tailoring the data from a group chat into my feed. And Moes Southwest Grill just misses me and notices I havent had Moes to eat in awhile. I miss Moes but that is beside the point. That is just an example of surveillance capitalism that I happened to notice because its not part of my niches. Notifications is just one of the many design aspects in the tech/social industry to try to gain our attention.

That design aspect may seem trivial and really doesnt bring about much concern that social media is harmful. A problem with some of the tools that social media has brought about is where there should be a serious concern. Dealing with perceptions with Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat in particular. Chamath Palihapitiya is a venture capitalist who was once a former Facebook executive who was in charge of user growth. In the documentary, Chamath Palihapitiya isnt interviewed but there is video footage of him giving a talk at Stanford in 2017 about how Facebooks tools and design deflated personal perceptions.

We compound the problem. We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in these short-term signals: hearts, likes, thumbs up. And we conflate that with value, and we conflate it with the truth. And instead what it really is is fake brittle popularity thats short term, and that leaves you even more, and admit it, vacant and empty [than] before you did it, because it forces you into this vicious cycle where youre like, Whats the next thing I need to do now? cause I need it back, said Chamath Palihapitiya.

Something as simple as the like button had created detrimental consequences to ones mental health. Unfortunately, this type of perception feeding loop is the most common and most predatory in sites like Facebook and Instagram. These perception feeding loops prey on Gen Z the most. As stated in the documentary Dr. Jonathan Haidt of NYU Stern School of Business Social Psychologist, shares that Gen Z, is the first generation to have social media since at least middle school (and before) and because of that, they are the generation that is most depressed, most anxious, most fragile, and the least likely to take risks. Dr. Haidt also goes on to cite the statistics gathered by The CDC on self-harm in preteen and teenage girls, in which girls ages 15-19 self-harm has increased 62 percent and suicides up 70 percent. Self-harm in preteen girls ages 10-14 had increased 189 percent and suicides were up 151 percent since 2009. We allowed these perception tools and mechanics to really mess with our perceptions of ourselves. Where we value happiness with ourselves with likes, and where we compare ourselves and how our self-esteem is set by unrealistic standards of beauty, that even I have fallen for.

In 2019, I had fallen into this trap of negative self-perception inadvertently through circumstances in life, and the things I would see on Twitter and Instagram and then later in YouTube video recommendations. Back in 2019, I had gone through a break-up in what was my first serious relationship. And as people know break-ups are sucky.

So as a dumb 20-year-old kid living by himself in Pittsburgh, I thought it would be in my best interest to buy a gym membership that financially made no sense. So why would I buy a gym membership? Its because of things I saw on Twitter and Instagram. I distinctly remember a tweet that showed up on my feed because of somebody I followed liking or retweeting it. I dont remember exactly what the tweet said but it was along the lines of Men under 58 are useless.

This tweet in particular had something over 30,000 retweets and over 100,000 likes. I bring this up because as a man thats well under 58; to know that the perception of me to over 100,000 people is that I am considered useless is incredibly jarring. The human brain isnt suited to comprehend what thousands of people may perceive us. This is something Ive learned to get over as I get older, but surely this type of thing is happening to teens all over the country on a daily basis.

The tools of social media sites not only are detrimental to the perceptions of ourselves but to societys perception of information. The example given in The Social Dilemma documentary is on if you were to type in climate change is and let the Google engine auto-complete youll get different information just based on where you are physically in the world. This is also the case in Facebook and Twitter feeds. Where each user has their own echo-chamber tailored to the user. The best examples of how people can receive totally different streams of information is based on how Facebook and Twitter algorithms read its users.

For example, Facebooks algorithm is designed in a way in which it has the ability to find users that are susceptible to believing in conspiracy theories and suggest different conspirator groups, such as Pizzagate and qAnon. A normal person wouldnt ever see this type of faux-information. Sometimes these conspiracy theories can be as frivolous as The Flat-Earth conspiracy or can be extremely dangerous with Pizzagate. Pizzagate conspiracy was rooted in the idea that buying a pizza pie would, in turn, mean a human being was being trafficked, this information allowed a gunman to try and take over a pizza shop to check out a basement that did not exist because he believed there was a pedophile ring. Facebook had essentially created a propaganda machine that has been used by countries in under-developed countries to control its citizens.

Towards the end of Netflixs tech documentary, the ideas that are being reflected about the threat of this disinformation age is that the existential threats are not using the phone itself, or advertisers getting you to watch one more video, or spend 5 more minutes on a site. The biggest threat is that misinformation is causing more polarization and more division. Creating more offline harm that is relatively violent. Tim Kendall, who was a former President of Pinterest was asked what he is most worried about happening in the near future. He responded with In the shortest-horizonCivil War. How horrifying is that? That some of the people who created the very tools of what technology and social media believe that at the current rate we will be in a civil war in the new future.

How do we stop this prospect? Well, the opinion shared with many of the tech engineers in The Social Dilemma and something I agree with; is that the problem isnt with the tech or social media. The real problem is within the business model. There is no regulation on data mining users for companies. The idea is that if you regulate the amount of data that is taken from users or tax it. There is now no incentive for companies to pursue all the data out there because it wouldnt fiscally benefit the company or the shareholders to do so. The reason none of it has changed is that the criticism hasnt reached the mainstream. Who knows if it even gets there? The failures expended upon the tools of these technologies are not widely known, and that is why this documentary was made, to shine a light on the failings of the tech industry. Not in the tools they have created but being negligent to the ways the tools are being used to do harm.

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How social media and the tech industry shapes human perception and behavior - The Snapper

Human Behavior

What to Read, Watch, and Listen to This Week: Nov 12 – Portland Monthly

This stressful year shows no signs of stopping, with reasons to panic so myriad we're not even gonna get into them here. One thing's clear: we all need places to put our eyes and brains that distract us, soothe us, and ready us to engage with the scary stuff more effectively. To that end, here's the stuff filling our queues atPortland Monthly this week, fromEater to Edith Bouvier.

You may not feel like picking upCasteby Isabel Wilkerson. And yes, this book documents some of the worst of human behavior, so dont expect some sweet distraction from our current ills. But if you have to read one book this year, I posit this should be it.Castebrings together so much of what we already know about the spine-chilling history of racism in America and gives us a new framework with which to examine it. From Nazis taking their cues from Americas Jim Crow laws to MLKs welcome in India as one of our countrys Untouchables, Wilkerson brings global comparisons and perspective to our national shame, reshaping the story in a way that denies resignation.

Even if you dont agree with her reframing of our racist systems as a caste structure, there is power in her nomenclature: people are not white here, they are from the dominant caste.And her crisp academic argument does not avoid the deep, human cost of the systems she describes. There is intellectual rigor here, and there is deeply empathic witness. TheNew York Timess Dwight Garner describedCasteas a book that changes the weather inside a reader. Be a reader.Fiona McCann, senior editor at-large

Maybe this is cheating, but who cares? Hulu just dropped this seven-episode series, produced by food news siteEater, which begins in Portland and expands in scope to Casablanca and beyond. Beautiful food, gorgeous landscapes, and narration by Maya Rudolphwhat more could a girl ask for. The showkicks off with a day in the life of PoMo's own Karen Brooks, and it winds around the world to satisfy both our collective wanderlust and our yearning for a time when bars were not a potential death sentence. Top-shelf escapism.Conner Reed, arts & culture editor

To celebrate this very strange and relieving week of 2020, I give you something stranger: the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens (now streaming on HBO Max),which follows the lives of Jackie Kennedys aunt and sister, who have willingly quarantined themselves in their decaying mansion. Follow it up with Fred Armisen and Bill Haders version in Documentary Now!on Netflixseason 1, episode 1.Ainslee Dicken, editorial intern

Im only midway through the first season, but already the show has provided some compelling looks into how gender, age, and disability can very differently shape our experiences of the same world. And from a food writers perspective, Im also in awe of how Ramys mother churns out plates of koshary and baklava night after nightand how Ramy continues to snub her home cooking in favor of scrambled eggs and burgers at his friends diner.Katherine Chew Hamilton, food editor

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What to Read, Watch, and Listen to This Week: Nov 12 - Portland Monthly

Human Behavior

WeatherTalk: Study links COVID spread to behavior, not weather – Grand Forks Herald

The weather has almost no direct influence on the spread of COVID-19, according to a study from the University of Texas published last month in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The study, which was reviewed in the Nov. 2 issue of Science Daily, shows influences human behavior, however. We get more colds and flu in winter because we spend more time inside and in poor ventilation, allowing airborne viruses the opportunity to spread person to person.

COVID-19 results have been different because we have behaved differently due to the various levels of lockdown. The study indicated traveling and spending time away from home have been the top two contributing factors to COVID-19 growth. The researchers said their findings are significant because the data were analyzed using actual humans living their lives rather than making assumptions from laboratory experiments.

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WeatherTalk: Study links COVID spread to behavior, not weather - Grand Forks Herald

Human Behavior

COVID-19, the State of the Vaccine, Fan Attendance, MLB’s Timeline, Baseball Budgets – bleachernation.com

Although the remains the case that the story of the pandemic and COVID-19 has import and consequences that stretch so much further than the sports world its hard to imagine too many of us havent yet been impacted personally in some way thats our lens. Sports, and the pandemics impact on sports.

Well circle to the sports in a moment. First, the state of things.

This week, Pfizer was the first vaccine manufacturer to reveal positive results (90% efficacy) from Phase 3 of its trials, and while we are waiting on the full data and peer reviews, people are very optimistic. It was never a lock that a vaccine would be successfully developed, much less at this pace, so these kinds of positive signs are heartening, to put it mildly.

Thats especially true given the state of the state of the pandemic, where deaths are again on the rise, hospitalizations are hitting a new peak, and new cases are exploding:

Unfortunately those spikes arent just going to stop on a dime, and I dont know to what extent human behavior is changing right now to create a top in the coming weeks. The election, important as it was, really distracted from the public messaging about trying to remain vigilant about the virus. Unfortunately, as more people cluster in the colder weather and with the holidays ahead, it could be a rough few months.

Still, the vaccine news is worth celebrating, in large part because if this version works, its a really good sign for the others in development:

Although the estimate of the efficacy of the vaccine could change as the study is completed, it is close to a best-case scenario. That also bodes well for other vaccines in the late stages of testing, including those developed by Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson.

If that headline really number really holds up, that is huge. That is much better than I was expecting and it will make a huge difference, said Ashish Jha, the dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University. He cautioned, however, that it is always difficult to evaluate science via press release and that researchers will need to see the full results. He noted that side effects are something to watch, because even if there are no serious long-term complications, people feeling sick for a day or two could lead some to be hesitant to take a vaccine.

As for the vaccine process, Pfizer is expected to apply for an emergency use authorization later this month, which would mean that front-line workers and the highest-risk individuals could start receiving doses before the end of the year. If other vaccine manufacturers follow soon thereafter, things *could* be looking good for the first half of next year.

To that end, Dr. Anthony Fauci who has been optimistic about the vaccine process, but who is guided by science and isnt prone to creating wild expectations says that his guess is the vaccine(s) could be widely available to low-risk individuals by late April 2021. In other words, while that doesnt mean the vaccine is IN EVERYONE by late April, it does mean, by his best guess, youd be able to schedule an appointment and go get it then, regardless of your risk level or front-line status or whatever.

So, in theory, if enough people got the vaccine, the pandemic could be broadly under control by May/June of next year. That presumes, of course, that the full data and medical science support that these are safe and effective vaccines. If that proves to be the case, however, then you better believe Im going to be an evangelist for everyone, everywhere going to get the vaccine not just to protect themselves, but because thats how you stamp out the virus from circulation. Cut off as many hosts as possible as quickly as possible. Theres a long time between now and April, so I hope the time is used wisely to (1) ensure that any vaccines are indeed safe and effective, and (2) convincing people on the fence that its worth getting the vaccine.

So, then, the sports angles.

The biggest that comes to mind, given the timeline here and what we know about MLBs fears in 2021, is that April happens to be when the 2021 MLB season is supposed to really get up and going. Lets imagine for a moment that, over the next month or two, it becomes all the more clear that effective vaccines are coming, and they can be widely deployed in April. If that happens, might MLB not try to have Opening Day pushed back a bit in the hopes that they can have significant attendance from day 1, rather than day 31? Or do that just eat that first month+ because they have more confidence that things will turn around eventually?

I tend to think the owners will want as much revenue as possible and as little expense, so if they are projecting that April will be a lost month for attendance, they may simply ask the players to push Opening Day to May 1, and have the season be only 140 games. Not that the players have to just say yes, of course.

Even having this conversation, however, is really notable for baseball, sinceexpectations about the vaccine and attendance are what will drive budget projections for MLB teams. That is to say, as confidence in a vaccine and attendance increases (by the week? by the day?), you might see some MLB teams adjusting their 2021 budgets on the fly. The teams that have the most confidence or the most appetite for risk could try to move quickly while there is a perception that the market is still depressed. If theyre right, they could wind up with a haul of players on the relative cheap, AND a resumption of near-normal revenues after April. Big risk, yes, but significant upside potential.

Heres hoping the Cubs have a medical scientist on staff to help them with their projections on the vaccine and human behavior, eh?

Since the NBA elected not to push its next season back any further than December, they will be kicking off long before there is a serious chance of vaccine availability, and will not be in a bubble. So, that means questions about how to accommodate fans at the height of the pandemic.

Heres the reported plan for now:

The big question I have in that is about the availability of rapid tests. Its long been the case that if they were available widely enough, so much of normal life could return, but we havent seen them exploding in availability and usage. No, they arent quite as accurate as the full test, but if theyre 85-90% accurate, then that might be good enough for purposes like a socially-distanced basketball game. The rub would be whether youd see pushback from fans, in advance, not even wanting to bother making the drive (and buying tickets, paying for parking) if they might show up and test positive. Note that the NBA, unlike most MLB and NFL stadiums, has it a little tougher since they are entirely indoors. The level of transmission concern is a little higher.

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COVID-19, the State of the Vaccine, Fan Attendance, MLB's Timeline, Baseball Budgets - bleachernation.com

Human Behavior

Why Were the Pollsters Wrong Again in 2020? – The Globe Post

We all know that the pollsters got it wrong when they forecast a Hillary Clinton victory over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, their error was not trivial, and hence, post-2016, many in the polling industry appear to have done a lot of soul-searching and studying to ensure that a mistake of this magnitude is not repeated.

Now let us fast forward to 2020.

Once again, a variety of pollsters predicted a decisive victory for Joe Biden over President Trump. As The Times of London appositely pointed out, many of the pollsters who predicted that there would be a blue wave ended up with red faces.

To give one specific example, the vaunted Economists regularly updated poll suggested one day before the election on November 3 that Biden would win 350 electoral votes with greater than 90 percent probability and that the Democrats would get 52 seats in the Senate with higher than 75 percent probability. The presidential race has now been called broadly in favor of Biden but it is clear that the best that he will do is to get 306 electoral votes. So, why do pollsters keep getting it wrong?

One reason has to do with determining the degree to which a sample of contacted voters is representative of the larger group about which the pollster is seeking information.

For instance, does a randomly sampled list of 1,000 African-American women in Colorado that a pollster contacts truly represent all eligible African-American voters in Colorado? On a related note, is the number 1,000 sufficiently large, or should the sample size be increased?

The key point to comprehend is that these are sampling issues. As such, even if a pollster does not get the sample right in a given instance, there is an established body of work in sampling theory that can be drawn upon, at least in principle, to fix the underlying problem or problems.

A problem that is much harder to fix is well-known to economists and this concerns human behavior. Simply put, the issue is this: will an individual, when contacted by a pollster, truthfully reveal whether he or she plans to vote for Biden or Trump?

Because Donald Trump is a broadly unpopular candidate, many individuals do not have an incentive to answer truthfully and thereby reveal to the pollster that they plan to support an unpopular candidate and potentially be judged to be a racist or worse.

This kind of non-truthful response can certainly arise if a poll is conducted in-person and it can also happen over the phone.

Writing in Politico, Zack Stanton recently referred to this as the shy Trump voter phenomenon. Because of the presence of this phenomenon, it is certainly not axiomatic that even a carefully designed poll will lead to the truthful revelation of preferences.

When working with problems involving the design of, for instance, an auction to sell 5G airwave licenses, where the truthful revelation of preferences is important, economists insist that whatever mechanism is designed be incentive compatible.

This means that the incentives the mechanism designer (the Federal Communications Commission in the case of 5G airwave license sales) sets up must be such that the relevant players (mobile phone carriers) want to participate and that they also want to reveal their preferences (about how much they value the airwave licenses) truthfully.

So, with regard to polling, sampling refinements alone, although important, will not yield accurate results.

Until pollsters figure out how to make their polls incentive compatible, it is unlikely that they will systematically produce results deemed to be reliable by the general public. It sure looks like pollsters have something to learn from the practitioners of the so called dismal science.

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Why Were the Pollsters Wrong Again in 2020? - The Globe Post

Human Behavior

Election 2020 aftermath taught us a few things | Opinion – Foothills Focus

E

ven before the race for president was official, you could learn some early lessons from Election 2020.

Like: Our need for immediate gratification conflicts deeply with our need for election accuracy.

Every election cycle is a journey that takes four years. The cycle culminates in millions of pieces of paper marked with dozens of selections.

It should not be mystifying that it takes a few days to total those pieces of paper with zero errors.

The ranks of the impatient will scream absurdities like, If Chick-fil-A was counting this, it would have been done in an hour. This isnt whipping up a sandwich and waffle fries, people.

This is thousands of jurisdictions counting millions of ballots in thousands of races under extreme pressure.

If we want the count to be correcta premise many Americans seem to want only when the count goes their waythen we should give elections officials around the country a break.

If a once-every-four-years presidential election takes, say, four days to tabulate, youd think we might control ourselves for that brief interval.

We also learned stupid people will do stupid things and elections bring out the dummies.

On Wednesday night after Election Day, hundreds of angry pro-Trump folks gathered to protest outside the Maricopa County vote tabulation center downtownand even tried to force their way inside.

Naturally, an angry crowd of anti-Trump folks showed up for a tense standoff policed by sheriffs deputies in SWAT gear. Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Stupid, showed up to add to the clown show.

The mobs big concern? That we count every vote! Which is exactly what elections workers were doing inside the building at the time.

What next, an angry mob outside McDonalds demanding they make burgers and fries?

Speaking of pointless, its time for the media to stop calling races. On Election Eve, the Associated Press and Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden while the other networks and CNN did not. This led to widespread confusion and finger pointing.

This is great for the media, who love a dumpster fire, but not great for voters or democracy, which the media claims to serve.

Calling a race serves no official function and has no legal bearing; it simply exists to serve journalists need for suspense and to give reporters a chance to feel super important on election night.

Every race call is a predictiona sophisticated prediction, surebut still only as good as the underlying math about voter turnout, geography, political preference and human behavior.

Football broadcasters could call the Super Bowl early, too, and likely be almost perfect. But the games still get played to the final whistle and election workers still tabulate every ballot. If no one gets to call it quits, whats the point of calling the race?

We also learned pollsters also are a generally useless bunch. To be fair, the pollsters in Arizona were nowhere near as wrong on the presidential race as pollsters in other states and those making national predictions.

Most Arizona pollsters gave Joe Biden a lead in the range of three or four points on their final polls.

As we know in hindsight, that was wrongbut it was within most polls margin of error. Clearly, theres something pollsters dont understand about todays voter turnout and the behavior of Trump voters in particular.

As someone who has paid pollsters for campaigns Ive run, I think they can help provide insight into trends and the impact of certain messages. But do I believe them like I do my bank balance or a thermometer? Hell no. And neither should you.

Stay tuned, folks. Who knows, we might even have a president to discuss.

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Election 2020 aftermath taught us a few things | Opinion - Foothills Focus

Human Behavior

Coronavirus Vaccine Hopes Tempered by Caveats – The RoundTable is Evanston’s newspaper – Evanston RoundTable

News that a coronavirusvaccine might be available to our most vulnerable residents by the end ofDecember came amid a nationwide surge in cases, driven by rising numbers in theMidwest.

The drug company Pfizerannounced a vaccine candidate that is more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19,according to an early analysis of results from a phase III trial. Pfizer C.E.O.Albert Bourla appeared on major broadcast networks on Nov. 9.

Ninety-percent is a gamechanger. Now you are hoping to have a tool in your war against this pandemicthat could be significantly effective. How long this protection will last issomething we dont know right now, but its part of the objective of the study.We will follow up with the 44,000 people that are part of this study for twoyears. And during this follow-up, we will be looking at the durability of theimmune responses, Mr. Bourla said during an appearance on CNN.

The New York Times reportedon Nov. 9, If results hold up, that level of protection would put it on parwith highly effective childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles.

The promising results forthe Pfizer vaccine, now in late-stage clinical trials, were tempered by healthexperts who expressed cautious optimism. To date, no one, including Mr. Bourla hasseen the actual data, other than an independent data safety monitoring boardthat unblinded the data and informed Mr. Bourla of the results.

Science writer ClaireMaldarelli reported that Pfizers Phase III clinical trial enrolled 44,000people in July 2020, with about half of the cohort receiving the vaccine (intwo doses, given over the course of a month) and the rest getting a placeboToevaluate the vaccines effectiveness, the researchers had to wait for enoughpeople in the trial (in both the vaccine group and the placebo group) to catchCOVID-19. The first analysis is based on 94 participants who contracted thenovel viral illness.

But its worth noting thatPfizer hasnt been following participants for very long, so it remains to beseen how many people in the trail will contract the coronavirus in the long run,wrote Ms. Maldarelli in a Nov. 9 article titled Pfizer claims its COVID-19vaccine is 90 percent effective. Heres what that actually means, published onPopular Science Magazine.

Pfizer senior vice presidentKathrin Jansen told The New York Times that a 90% effectiveness rate means thatat most, nine people in the vaccine group of the trial have gotten COVID-19 sofar.

The vaccine trial is ongoingand results have not been peer reviewed. Pfizer has not reported any seriousside effects associated with the vaccine. The company says it will requestemergency use authorization from the FDA, possibly as early as the end ofNovember.

In addition to concernsabout durability, or long term effectiveness of the vaccine, scientists havevoiced concerns about distribution of a drug that needs to be stored at anextremely cold temperature of - 94 F and requires a second dose three weeksafter the first.

I believe, with theimpressive nature of the data, if that should go through smoothly, by the timewe get into December, well be able to have doses available for people who arejudged to be at the highest priority, said Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a reportto CNN on Nov. 10.

Health care workers andfirst responders could start receiving the vaccine by the end of January, andwidespread vaccination could begin in a number of months, possibly as early asApril, 2021.

Pfizer developed the vaccinein partnership with the German drug company, BioNTech, which uses a moleculethat has never before been license for ruse in a vaccine. It relies on geneticmaterial call messenger RNA (mRNA), which occurs naturally in the human body.

It works like aninstruction manual for our cells. It essentially is introduced to a cell andinstructs it how to act, reported Willem Marx, NBC News and GlobalCorrespondent.

The technology allows forinjection of mRNA into muscle cells, making it an instruction manual for thecells, telling them to create a specific protein, which is found on the surfaceof the coronavirus. It encourages the cells to create spike protein, which inturn provoke an immune response in our bodies. Antibodies are created that canattack the virus if it shows up in the human body.

The New York Times hasreported that eleven vaccines are in late-stage trials, including four in theUnited States. The drug company Moderna uses similar technology.

Johnson and JohnsonsCOVID-19 vaccine has also entered Phase III in clinical trials. The Johnson& Johnson vaccine is called a viral-vector vaccine, which is the onlysingle-dose vaccine to enter late-stage studies, according to the MarketWatchwebsite.

More than 1.25 millionpeople throughout the world have died from COID-19, and there are more than50.5 million confirmed cases, according to data published by Johns Hopkins University.The novel coronavirus continues to surge throughout the U.S., with particularlyhigh numbers in the Midwestern states.

Experts have attributed thealarming surge in cases to human behavior, primarily pandemic fatigue and anunwillingness take precautions that have been proven to slow the spread of thecoronavirus. Research has shown that people throughout the world can fight thebattle against the novel coronavirus by following the three Ws: Wear a mask;Wash Hands; Watch distance.

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Coronavirus Vaccine Hopes Tempered by Caveats - The RoundTable is Evanston's newspaper - Evanston RoundTable

Human Behavior

Kamala Harris and the evolution of the birds: worldwide lessons – Salon

The United States has elected a woman and a woman of color to boot to the second highest office in the most powerful country in the world.

What's the big deal? You wonder, in having Kamala Harris as Vice President-Elect? After all, other democracies have long put women into the top political post in their country.

A big deal

We women know it is a big deal because for some reason men have always, the world over, predominated in such positions of power. And in earlier times, other women both in the U.S. and abroad have failed to attain that power.

Why is that so? Is there any biological, neurological and sociological reason that would explain that unequal development?

Let's take a truly intelligent look at this phenomenon by looking into it through the eyes of stay with me birds!

Our guide in this journey is an ornithology professor at Yale. In his 2017book,"The Evolution of Beauty, How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World" part of my summer reading he tells us that "being able to figure out what's going on when it's not obvious is perhaps the most fundamental advantage of intelligence." (p.69)

Richard O. Prum, whose full title is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University and the head curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, employs this "fundamental advantage of intelligence" to cast light on the behavior of birds and of human beings.

Where the males are prettier than the female

You see, among the birds, the male is usually brighter in color and prettier than the female. Of course, that fact usually assumed some kind of male superiority.

As it turns out, that's just another failure of thought. Having to rely on being colorfulness means you are essentially the beggar, not the one in the power position.

A feminist book, written by a feminist man

When I started reading this book, little did I know that the election of Kamala Harris, a woman of color, to the second-highest office in the United States was just months away. (It was long before Joe Biden announced his VP candidate).

And even more poignantly, I did not know that this is in some ways a feminist book, clearly written by a feminist man.

It is probably significant that Professor Prum grew up with a twin sister and dedicated his book to his wife, also an ornithologist.

There are big ideas in this book, presented against a complicated scientific background. Its reader, however, is in the hands of someone who knows the science so thoroughly that he can explain it clearly.

For now, it's best to start with a concrete example from the world of the birds which, lest you forget, are ex-dinosaurs.

The beautiful yardman

The Great Argus, which lives in the Far East, is "one of the most aesthetically extreme animals on the planet." (p. 54) Though living a largely bachelor existence, the male goes full throttle during courtship. The male Argus elaborately preps his court:

Assiduously picking up all the leaves, roots, and sticks in the space he's chosenhe carries them to the periphery of his court. Like a modern yardman, he employs his huge wing feathers as a leaf blower by beating them rhythmically, sending all the remaining debris flying from his court until it is completely clearOnce his court is ready for the business of mating, all he needs is a female visitor. (p. 56)

The female arrives

A female arrives in response to his carefully orchestrated calls and the male begins his amazing courtship ritual:

he rushes around her in wide circles with his wings hunched up at an angle that exposes their upper surfaces. Then, without warning, when he is just a foot or two away from the female, the male transforms himself instantly into an entirely different shape, revealing unimaginably intricate color patterns on his four-foot-long wing feathersthe male bows down to the femaleIn this extraordinary posture, the male tucks his head under one of his wings and peeks out at the female from behind the gap in his feathersto gauge her reaction to his display. (pp.58-59)

The even more amazing fact concerns the reaction of the female Argus. To this elegant, beautiful and precise display, the female's response is "completely underwhelming, or even undetectable." (p. 85)

Take it from the birds: The female as the decider

Yes, unlike the humans watching this wonder, the female fulfills her role as the decider, the discerning, responsible and privileged holder of selection aesthetic and sexual selection.

In fact, the male's display is so colorful and elaborate precisely because most males are not selected in this courtship process.

The experienced, well-educated connoisseur

The female is "more like an experienced, well-educated connoisseur evaluating one of the many extraordinary works available to her scrutiny."

Further, she is "rigid with highly focused attention as she casts her discerning eye over the displaying maleit's her cool-headed mating decisions over the course of millions of years that have provided the co-evolutionary engine that has culminated in the male Argus's display" (pp.63-64).

Proving Darwin right once again

What is at play here is proof of a theory of mate choice that Darwin himself actually put forth but which he couldn't really champion in his times and which other scientists since then have not wanted to embrace.

Proof has come through the work of Prum and his like.

As Darwin had intimated and scientists like Prum have now proved, aesthetic selection is critical to the progress of evolution and the choice lies with the female.

Goethe and Darwin

Prum goes on to show more about male behavior and female response in other species of birds, never over-simplifying but helping us see in nature what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called "das ewig Weibliche," or the "eternal feminine" that leads us onwards:

Darwin observed that in many of the most highly ornamented species the evolutionary force of sexual selection acted predominantly through female mate choiceit is female sexual autonomy that is responsible for the evolution of natural beauty. (p.27)

One must not fail to point out another part of Prum's account, namely, "the dynamic evolutionary history of penis morphology" (p. 244) and how female mate choice has contributed to the evolution of the human penis.

It is interesting to note that the anatomical part so important to males' identity and actions has evolved through choices made by the female of the species. If that story doesn't cause you to read this book, nothing will.

The dark side of bird sex

The story of bird sex is not an entirely pretty picture. Some avian species, particularly ducks, commit rape, even gang rape, such that females and evolution have had to work together to discourage such behavior and to stand on the side of female choice:

"sexual violence is a selfish male evolutionary strategy that is at odds with the evolutionary interests of its female victims and possibly with the evolutionary interests of the entire species." (p.159)Indeed.

The story of Lysistrata

Prum recounts Aristophanes's story "Lysistrata" in this context. This play of 411 BCE has it that women in the enemy states of Athens and Sparta withheld sex in order to restore peace to Greece. Prum muses:

"So, in answer to the question 'Under what conditions will males give up their weapons?' "Lysistrata" teaches us that the most efficient way to fight back against male violence is to hit men where they are most vulnerable below the belt." (p.292)

How to lower male aggression?

Prum concludes that desirable social behaviors like lower male aggression, cooperative social temperament and social intelligence are the result of females making their choice of mates through aesthetic sexual selection. (p. 292)

Given that, one is led to conclude in general that the more female choice that "cool-headed approach" the more acceptable behavior among males.

Women's task: Keeping cool

Any woman who has attempted to occupy any place of influence knows that this process can be a rocky road. Keeping a cool head does not guarantee that there won't be hot heads among one's male counterparts.

Hillary Clinton, for instance, ultimately kept a cool head and graciously conceded the election of 2016 to that ultimate hothead Donald Trump, who now refuses to concede the election of 2020, even to another man!

The defenders of patriarchy have it wrong

Timely for our current human conundrums, Prum explains that all those people who defend patriarchy "mischaracterize feminism as an ideology of power." That misses the point entirely: "feminism is not an ideology of power or control over others; rather, it is an ideology of freedom of choice." (p. 555)

In recent times we have witnessed, even in the supposedly advanced democracies, the age-old treatment of women as an underclass, as a threat, as a criminal, as a "monster."

Women and global crisis management

Women throughout the world bear the larger brunt of an international crisis like the pandemic.And whether they are "important" people or ordinary people, they endure inappropriate treatment.

U.S. vilifiers of women

In the United States, we have seen Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and many others, all unquestionably intelligent and competent, unjustly belittled and vilified.

We witnessed sickening schadenfreude by powerful men about the death of one of the country's great women and great jurists, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It goes on and on.

Kamala Harris and a smile as evolutionary choice

Even so, like the sovereign female Argus and like the black women in the novels of William Faulkner, they endure. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence tried to verbally run over Kamala Harris in their debate, and President Trump called her a "monster" afterwards, but she won the debate.

And she won in part with a method that was culturally derived, one may even say a product of evolution. As Michele L. Norris wrote in The Washington Post, "she smiled as she held her ground and of course they called it a smirkBut it was more than that. Harris gave Pence 'The Look.'"

Strong black women

Speaking of strong black women:

Black women have elevated the 'Mama don't take no mess' expression to a form of high art a narrowing of the eye, a lift of the eyebrow, a tilt of the head. Sometimes there is a sideways arch of the neck, a molasses-slow movement of the jaw that says, without speaking, 'You've got exactly 10 seconds to pick up your feet and run for the hills.'

Women's sovereignty matters

The teachings of this fascinating book on the evolution of birds have parallels in human behavior. The sovereign female Argus dispassionately makes her evaluation of the most suitable mate for the sake of her children's future, just as a sovereign American female politician skillfully employs a smile and "the Look" for the good of the United States.

This is what most women want: Fairness for their children and others' children, as for themselves. They want to be loving but also sovereign. They want to make their choices. They will insist on that.

Originally posted here:
Kamala Harris and the evolution of the birds: worldwide lessons - Salon

Human Behavior

Election Pollsters Got It Wrong Again. – wgbh.org

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

And theres plenty of shame to go around in this post-election postmortem especially for those who thought the polls predicted either a red mirage or a blue wave of victory.

Easy to get fooled when several polls said Texas was a dead heat, and even a possible flip to blue for former Vice President Joe Biden. Others claimed hed possibly win traditionally red Iowa, and many cited stats showing President Donald Trump was significantly behind in Florida. All of those were wrong, and some like the Florida surveys were way off. On election night, Trump had an early wide lead in his adopted home state.

Ive always been suspicious of political polls. That distrust was underscored after the 2016 presidential race, when the vote essentially turned predictions upside down. Now the pollsters will tell you that the final tally from four years ago did, in fact, prove them right; Secretary Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, as they said, topping Trump by 3 million ballots.

But I would argue if you are like the average news consumer, you heard the constant polling drumbeat of her potential for victory as confirmation of victory.

To be fair, there was frequent commentary about Clintons need to win the crucial Electoral College map. But expert pollsters told a twin tale, urging caution while at the same time pointing to past scenarios that seemed to indicate a win information that the ubiquitous pundits amplified ad nauseum.

I believe in data, but its clear that the science of gathering an accurate sense of Americans voting patterns is outdated, or at the very least critically flawed. Maybe the sample sizes are too small or too city-centered, or perhaps its still hard to surface voters through cell phone outreach. Bottom line: the survey sampling is not broad or deep enough.

In 2016, I bought the idea of large, hidden groups of so-called shy Trump voters who didnt want to publicly state their support for the brash candidate. But in 2020, there was no shortage of eager and enthusiastic supporters of the president who were loud and proud about voting for him again. Why werent more of their huge ranks reflected in the surveys? Im convinced it all comes down to human behavior, which psychologists and behaviorists will tell you is often unpredictable. Theres simply no amount of number crunching, algorithm juggling, and the best technology money can buy that can produce absolute results.

Like the human behavior I questioned David Plouffe about during the 2016 campaign. Plouffe was campaign manager for Sen. Barack Obamas successful 2008 campaign, and later a senior advisor to the president. He was an executive at Uber when I interviewed him. It was August, and then candidate Donald Trump was barnstorming the country as the Republican nominee. Enthusiastic voters were driving hours to his rallies, standing outside when the inside venues filled up. The polls all said Secretary Hillary Clinton had a strong lead.

'But what about those rally attendees?' I asked him. 'Couldnt they indicate a huge voter turnout for Trump?'

'Nope,' he said. 'They dont vote.'

I pushed back. 'Who drives hours to attend a candidates rally, if they dont intend to vote?'

He explained it was more complicated than that, and Id see.

Well, I did see. And the results then and now prove what the veteran politicos always say: The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day.

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Election Pollsters Got It Wrong Again. - wgbh.org

Human Behavior

Oddsmakers are pretty sure Joe Rogan won’t be the next host of Jeopardy! – Yahoo Lifestyle

There are few things on this planet that human beings wont place a bet on, given a volatile situation, a degree of uncertainty, and sufficient cash to burn. Game Of Thrones, national elections, the Puppy Bowl: All are beholden to the oddsmakers art, as these wizards of prediction try to figure out exactly how much money you should get if you bet that, say, Jon Stewart was going to give up his life of movie making and cattle rescuing to go host Jeopardy!, and then this improbable turn of events did, in fact, come to pass. (33-1, as it happens.)

Which is all to say: Washington Post entertainment writer Steven Zeitchik got our brains pumping with all the vigor of a Daily Double adrenaline rush today when he posted a list of sportsbook odds (provenance not entirely clear) on who the new Jeopardy! host will be, with names ranging from the obvious (long-time champion Ken Jennings, at 1-1), to That actually sounds delightful, like LaVar Burton (20-1), to Dear god, why would you even put the thought out into the world (Piers Morgan, at 40-1). The most outside shot that someone actually bothered to venture a number for was Joe Rogan, whose chances of a double reign as Fear Factor/Joepardy! host lands at a slim 66-1.

Other actual frontrunners for the position include sportscaster Alex Faust (18-1) and CNN legal analyst Lauren Coates (same), both of whom received a personal vote of confidence from the late Alex Trebek in recent years. Theres also the usual glut of current game show hosts like Drew Carey (33-1), Pat Sajak (16-1), Tom Bergeron (18-1), and our favorite, Steve Harvey (40-1)and also apparently George Stephanopoulos (7-2), whos reportedly been lobbying for the role.

All of which is, in its own weird way, a sort of tribute to Trebek, a man who made a very difficult job look easy, and who carried himself in a way that was funny but rarely mocking, dignified without ever seeming stiff. Finding someone to fill his shoes is a daunting, nigh-impossible taskto the point that not even the people whose job it is to predict human behavior for money might be up to spitting out a decent answer at the moment.

Continue reading here:
Oddsmakers are pretty sure Joe Rogan won't be the next host of Jeopardy! - Yahoo Lifestyle