Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Some people listen to health experts, others ignore them: What it means for America’s future with COVID-19 – USA TODAY

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he has "no problem" wearing a mask and urged Americans to wear theirs, too. The comments are a major change in tone for the president, who spent months resisting wearing a mask in public. (July 21) AP Domestic

Since COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. earlier this year, the virushas sickened more than 5 million Americans, claimed at least 167,000 lives and wrought financial ruin.

Some Americans have been dutifully following the recommendations of public health experts forgoingtouch, cancelling travel, holingup at home with young kids while attempting work. Others have balked at the most basic precautions, refusing to wear masks and continuing to gather in large groups.

Psychology and public health experts say variations in how people respond to public health recommendations can be attributed to differences in how theynavigate threats as well as social and cultural factors. These factors may also influence whether people are able to sustain behavior changes for the long haul ahead exhausted parents, frayed frontline workers, the millions of Americans worn down by isolation.

"It is easy to think that people dont follow the recommendations because they dont want to, but there are also systemic and situational issues at play that affect peoples behavior," said Stephen Broomell, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies judgment and decision making under uncertainty. "These can range from problems with communication, comprehension and personal risk assessment."

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While many countries have successfully halted the spread of COVID-19, the U.S. on Thursday reported the most COVID-19-related deaths in one day since May. Successfully fighting the pandemic, experts say, requires large-scale cooperation for much longer than anyone anticipated.

"Until we get a vaccine, our only real tools are behavioral. We have to think through the lens of behavioral science. What can we do to nudge and encourage and cajole and motivate people to do the right thing?"said Jay Van Bavel, an associate professor of psychology andneural science at New York University.

"I think many people were hoping we would shut everything down for two weeks ...and thengo back to normal. But since we didn't do it well enough originally, we are in this ongoing nightmare."

A 2016 study found that changinghealth-related behavior is neither obvious nor common sense, but rather "requires careful, thoughtful work that leads to a deep understanding of the nature of what motivates people and the pressures that act upon them."

Human behavior is complicated. Telling people what they ought to do to keep themselves and others safe seems basic,but behavior changes don't happen in a vacuum. They occur in the context of the societies in which people live and the groups to which they belong.

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In the U.S., health officials are asking people to think about the collective good in a country rooted in individualism. Countries thatemphasizethe importance of duty and obligation, such as Asian societies, have an easier time motivating people to do what's right over what's desirable.

"If you look at countries that are more collectivistic ... people feel more pressure to go along with what's good for the group," Van Bavel said. "Here we have traditions of individualism, which most of the time are great, but in a context of a pandemic are not so great, and often very dangerous for everybody."

Some people also may want to follow the recommendations but can't. They may live with someone who isn't adhering to CDC guidelines, or they have a job, particularly a low-wage one, where they can't social distance or take paid sick leave. People who are homeless can't shelter in place. Some trauma survivors may have a difficult time wearing masks.

Experts say what happens in the early days of a crisis can be key to how well people respond to what's being asked of them.

Earlier this year, Trump said the coronavirus is very much under control."In February he said cases were going to be down to close to zero.

Golf, handshakes, Mar-a-Lago conga line: Squandered week highlights Trumps lack of COVID-19 focus

Trump's statements often contracted ones from Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has repeatedly emphasized the need for behavior changes to curb the spread of COVID-19. Research shows people are more likely to adopt public health recommendations when they areclearly and consistently communicated.

Masks, for example, weren't initially a recommendation, and even once they became one, there were conflicting messages from the White House on their importance. The president wore a mask for the first time in July.

"Unfortunately, wearing a mask wasnt one of the behaviors that people adopted in the first weeks of the pandemic," Broomellsaid. "Because of this, most people experienced surviving the start of the pandemic without a mask. Only the small proportion that encountered the virus and got sick had the correct feedback that their behaviors were not actually as effective as they thought."

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, removes his Washington Nationals protective mask during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis hearing on July 31, 2020 in Washington, DC.(Photo: Pool, Getty Images)

America is deeply polarized. One of the most persistent gaps in adherence to social distancing, hand washing, masks, soonvaccines is the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

A recent Galluppoll found 81% of Democrats are willing to be vaccinated if a free and FDA-approved one were available, while 47% of Republicans say the same.

So-called filter bubbles where people only encounter information that aligns with their existing beliefs can create alternate realities around risks and actions necessary to mitigate them. Social media is ripe for conspiracy theories and misinformation, making it difficult for some people who get their news online to separate fact from fiction.

Van Bavel says to encourage cross-pollination of good health-related behaviors, people should focus more on their shared sense of national identity.

"To appeal to somebody who's different from you politically, appeal to ... your sense of shared purpose," he said.

Shame and humiliation are not effective tactics to change behavior, experts say.If you want to convince a Republican to wear a mask, Van Bavel said,show them the recent pictures of Trump wearing one, or the one of Dick Cheney that went viral.

Health experts say to win the fight against COVID-19, widespread vaccination is essential, but the Gallop poll found overall one in three Americans say they won't get the vaccine when it becomes available.

Different strategies will be needed to address different causes of vaccine hesitancy.People concerned about safety will need reassurance; people of color will need to be engaged in a process that builds trust; and people worried about government overreach will need to be heard, said MonicaSchoch-Spana, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Visible leadership will be key.

"You're going to need people like the president getting a shot of the vaccine in a press conference," Van Bavel said. "That's the type of leadership you need. Role modeling, showing the right norms, illustrating that it's easy and harmless, that he trusts the process."

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People are more likely to cooperate when they believe others are cooperating.

"Even if you don't agree with something like wearing a mask, if you see everybody around you in your community or in your neighborhood doing it, you're more likely to do it," Van Bavel said. "That's part of human nature, and there's lots of evidence that norms matter for our behavior in lots of different situations."

Everyone has the ability to exert influence the president, the media, individual community members. Peer pressure can be an effectivenudge.

"We all exert influence on others around us," Van Bavel said. "What we wear, how we act, what we post on social media, those provide clues for other people about how to behave."

Broomell says if people think about some changes as the new normalversus a responseto a temporary crisis it maypromote the healthy behaviors experts want to see.

"Exhaustion can come from, among other things, having to pay special attention to your behaviors, waiting for the day you no longer need to perform them, and not knowing when it will end. For certain behaviors, one way to help people maintain vigilance is to establish a norm for their performance," he said.

People are resilient, and experts say it's worth reminding Americans what the country has already survived, including two brutal World Wars.

To weather this crisis, people need to be reminded that their actions matter that those actions are whatwill see the country through the pandemic with fewer lives lost.

"If we all pull together for six more months, the vaccines look to be on track and we might be through this," Van Bavel said. "We might not have to lose our grandparents or colleagues or neighbors. Can you just pull through for six more months doing the right things? Because we're going to look back and be really devastated if we've lost loved ones because we just couldn't be patient enough."

Contributing: Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY

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Some people listen to health experts, others ignore them: What it means for America's future with COVID-19 - USA TODAY

Human Behavior

A year of historical significance – The Jakarta Post – Jakarta Post

On Aug. 17, 1945, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed the independence of a new nation state, the Republic of Indonesia. They did it on behalf of the peoples, the inhabitants of the vast archipelago, whose ancestors had lived in societies rich in cultures and knowledge.

Independence from what?

The preamble of the Constitution of the new republic states "freedom is truly the right of all peoples, and therefore colonial domination throughout the world should be abolished, because it is contrary to the principles of humanitarianism and justice" (Hattas translation inJournal Asian Survey, March 1965, pp. 139-143).

Independence means freedom, that is free from colonialism which by its very nature is inhumane. After the foundation of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) in 1602, for more than three centuries colonialism deprived peoples living in the archipelago known today as Indonesia of their human rights.

At gunpoint, the peoples were denied the right to enlighten themselves and determine their own course of development. They were exploited, oppressed and enslaved to satisfy the greed of a tiny kingdom located 12,000 kilometers away. Colonialism was indeed a project of greed which had revealed an ugly form of human behavior.

The project was not without resistance. The opposition had erupted into many wars of decolonization, spread over the archipelago over the time span of the more than 300 years of colonial domination. Streets in Indonesian cities are given names to remember leaders of the resistance and thereby the lives lost in the bloody purges by the colonial ruler.

Remarkably, in the beginning of the 20thcentury, when the colonial ruler introduced the ethical policy, inserting elements of humanity such as education into the society to co-exist with colonialism, another form of resistance emerged: nationalism.

Hatta identified it as a nationalism which was not determined by identical origin, identical language or identical religion, but formed by a common destiny and purpose.

The peoples of various ethnicities, being oppressed by one foreign entity occupying their lands, became aware of sharing the same destiny and purpose. This was awakened by enlightening messages transmitted throughout the archipelago by the privileged few, who were allowed to follow education up to the tertiary level. It is a nationalism based on intellectuality, leading to intellectual activisms marked by significant milestones such as Boedi Oetomo in 1908 and Soempah Pemoeda in 1928.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander (left) and President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo (right) address the press at the Bogor Presidential Palace on March 10. (Antara/Sigid Kurniawan)

The people of Indonesia will celebrate the 75-year jubilee of their independence. It must have caught the attention of the Dutch King Willem Alexander who made a four-day state visit to Indonesia last March. The king made the visit a remarkable one, by offering an apology. Apology for what?

The apology concerns a period of five years from 1945 to 1949, a tiny snapshot of the whole time span of 350 years of colonialism. While in Indonesian society this apology was almost unnoticed, the reactions in the Netherlands have been overwhelming, from many layers of society. A sense of approval, relief, cynicism and anger were all present in the reactions.

Interestingly, the apology has awakened a new voice in Dutch society, a voice presumably suppressed before, acknowledging the cruelty of colonialism, and therefore it should be apologized for. Others, including Prime Minister Mark Rutte, do not agree with this voice, arguing it is even farther away in the past and difficult to judge with the morals of the present, while there is no demand from the Indonesian side for a digging into the past and an apology.

It is not about whether or not there is a demand, as there was no demand whatsoever from the Indonesian side for the apology by the Dutch king. Colonialism, as Emmanuel Macron rightly put it, is a crime against humanity. There is no lack of academic findings and narratives that support this view. There is no need for extra digging into the past.

The contemporary Dutch have been vocal in condemning human rights violations committed by other nations of the world. While it may be genuinely well-intended, it accentuates the greatest irony in the history of mankind: The International Criminal Court sits in The Hague, but the host does not even dare to deal with severe cases of its own past committed during centuries of colonialism.

In the Dutch media, the Dutch kings apology was reported as a total surprise to Dutch politics. But, in the wake of the antiracism movement following the killing of Afro-American George Floyd last May, which has recalibrated the western norms and values praising the symbols and figures prominent in slavery and colonialism, the apology should be lauded as an exemplary gesture, a small step toward an ultimate apology. That is an apology to humanity for the 350 years of Dutch colonialism.

For the Dutch king to deliver the ultimate apology on Indonesias upcoming celebration of independence, it would be remembered in history as a noble service to mankind.

***

The writer is an Indonesian senior scientist residing in Leiden.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.

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A year of historical significance - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post

Human Behavior

The Junk Science Cops Use to Decide You’re Lying – The Intercept

The training session was billed as cutting edge, and dozens of law enforcement professionals signed up to learn about New Tools for Detecting Deception from a human lie detector who calls herself Eyes for Lies. Her real name is Renee Ellory, and she claims that shes one of just 50 people identified by scientists as having the ability to spot deception with exceptional accuracy.

A flyer for the event, hosted by Wisconsins High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area a federal program that supports law enforcement drug interdiction work was included among a trove of law enforcement documents that were hacked and posted online in June under the title BlueLeaks. The promo copy leans heavily into Ellorys skill at ferreting out deception in others. She is exceptional at pinpointing a liar and can tell you why she doesnt trust someone on the spot, it reads. Training participants would learn how to identify anger, contempt, and disgust before words are even spoken. Course objectives were broad: Learn to differentiate between real and fake emotional displays; recognize hidden emotions; identify the ways our subconsciousbrainleaks information when we lie; analyze body language that indicates deception; gain tips to use when interviewing a psychopath;identify the key features of expressions that reveal danger for you!

Participants spanned the law enforcement spectrum and included the chief of a small police department, corrections officers, university cops, state troopers, various members of the Milwaukee Police Department as well as individuals from the U.S. Probation Office and the FBI. In surveys filled out after the training, which took place in November 2015, the common complaint was that there werent enough structured breaks; as one participant put it, the mind can only absorb what the buttocks can tolerate. But otherwise, a majority of the 82 respondents gave the training high marks. Participants wrote that they would incorporate what theyd learned into their police work. A number of them said the most valuable thing they learned was the seven universal facial expressions that all people have all over the world as a good indicator of lying, as one trainee put it.

It might seem reassuring that so many law enforcement officers found a skills training so valuable. But not in this case. Thats because Ellorys lie detection training is based what many psychologists say are largely discredited theories, if not simply junk science. Its completely bogus, said Jeff Kukucka, an assistant professor of psychology and law at Towson University who studies forensic confirmation bias, interrogations, and false confessions. And whats maybe more alarming about it is that this isnt new. Weve known for quite a while that this stuff doesnt work, but its still being peddled as if it does.

The BlueLeaks documents contain numerous flyers for trainings offered to police agencies across the country. Many of them promote methods of interviewing and interrogation, lie detection, and detecting danger, such as Ellorys, that rest on unsteady scientific ground and have been linked to false confessions and wrongful convictions. The documents offer a window into how various training methods perpetuate myths subjective, hunch-based approaches to interpreting human behavior that are unreliable and have been discredited by leading psychologists that police are then encouraged to use in crime solving.

The documents offer a window into how various training methods perpetuate myths that police are then encouraged to use in crime solving.

The search for a foolproof method of lie detection has a long history, said Richard Leo, a professor of law and psychology at the University of San Francisco School of Law and an expert on interrogation practices. The search for some way to be able to read body language, demeanor, vocal pitch, gestures and then infer with a high degree of accuracy whether someone is telling the truth. It just doesnt exist, he said. He likens many of the claims about human lie detection to claimsof psychic ability. This reminds me of psychics and the lottery. If there was a psychic and they could see what the lottery numbers are, that would just be gold, right? Why wouldnt they win $400 million when the Powerball is up there?

As the country has become increasingly focused on police reform in the wake of George Floyds killing by Minneapolis cops, experts say the movement should include reforms to the way police are trained to interview and interrogate suspects, witnesses, and victims to ensure theyre grounded in best practices supported by science. Part of the distrust that you see between law enforcement and minority communities stems from the way that suspects, witnesses, victims, and family members are treated by detectives during the course of an investigation, said Steven Drizin, co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Universitys Pritzker School of Law, who studies false confessions. Law enforcement training that isnt based in science just furthers the deterioration of the relationship between case officers and people in the community.

Photo illustration: The Intercept, Getty Images

In addition to Wisconsins HIDTA, police agencies in California, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas have promoted Ellorys trainings, according to flyers found within the BlueLeaks files. One flyer boasts that Ellory has trained law enforcement in the largest U.S. cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Antonio, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Reno, Key West just to name a few. In an email to The Intercept, Ellory said she has been training as Eyes for Lies since 2009 and estimates shes reached between 2,500 and 3,000 law enforcement officers.

The problem is that what shes teaching them has been widely discredited an assertionEllory vehemently denies. According to Ellory, she was one of 50 individuals identified as an expert in deception as part of the so-called Wizards Project, run by researchers associated with Paul Ekman, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. The researchers studied thousands of people from CIA and Secret Service agents to regular folks to see who could best detect behavior associated with deception, a practice that relies heavily on the idea of universal facial expressions and so-called microexpressions that last mere fractions of a second. Ellorys trainings rely on the validity of both concepts.

While the theory of universal expressions dates back to Charles Darwin, research has been mixed, and Ekmans work in this area has been repeatedly challenged by scientists in recent years as unreliable, in part because of methodological issues.

Where microexpressions are concerned also an area of Ekmans studies subsequent research has found them rare and nondiagnostic, Kukucka said, and that training individuals to see them doesnt actually work.

Ultimately, Kukucka said, the individuals Ekman identified as exceptional human lie detectors were simply a result of chance. With the Wizards Project, the idea was to test thousands of people to identify those who scored unusually high on a lie detection test, Kukucka said. Out of 15,000 people, they found 50 who were unusually good. And they thought maybe from those peoples knowledge they could reverse engineer OK, well, what are these people doing thats working? And then use that to figure out what actually works, he explained. The problem with that is, its a total artifact of just having a bunch of people and how probability works. If you flip 15,000 coins 10 times, youre going to get a couple that come up heads all 10 times, but theres really nothing different about those coins than any of the other coins, just dumb luck.

Indeed, years of research has demonstrated that behavioral cues like eye-blinking, arm-crossing, a voice rising or dropping in pitch are simply not reliable indicators of deception. A lot of police science is really pseudoscience, Drizin said. Police officers do believe that theyre able to detect liars from truth-tellers at much higher rates that you and I are. And thats just been proven not to be the case. In fact, research has found that the odds of a person detecting deception in another are really no better than chance, and that while those whove been trained to do so feel more confident in their conclusions, theyre no more competent. When police are trained in this false and misleading stuff, they become more confident, so they become more prone to error, said Leo. Its just this loop, this dangerous loop.

In an email exchange, Ellory first wrote that she wouldnt have time to explain things to me unless I took one of her courses her master class is currently priced at $1,950 per person but then noted that shes not actively doing classes right now.

In a subsequent email, she defended her trainings as being rooted in science but wrote that as a rare expert, shes used to people not understanding that. I find at times with my gift, its akin to seeing color in a world where other people live in a colorblind world. Seeing color is real but trying to convince a color blind person color exists is nearly impossible, she wrote. I tell people in my classes what I teach will be common knowledge in 100 years, but we are still in the dark ages when it comes to understanding human behavior and deception, she continued. At a point, I learned, I cant change the world alone. But I can educate those who are open to learning and they have thanked me endlessly.

When asked whether it is appropriate to be training law enforcement officers who have power over individual liberty to use scientifically unproven techniques, Ellory retorted that she was scientifically validated by Ekmans research. I dont need to reprove it to anyone.

You are saying that I shouldnt teach because I cant make people like me? Does that mean that Nobel prize winners, acclaimed scientists and researchers who achieve great things shouldnt teach other people because other people may not reach the same success? she asked. Like Lance Armstrong should never coach because he could sustain a heart of 32 beats per minute and consume freakishly low oxygen, but others cant so its useless?

I dont get that reasoning on any level, she wrote. I have insight into human behavior that most people have never considered, dont understand and when I share it with them through demonstration and example it changes their world for the better. I dont teach interrogation techniques. I teach people how to seek and find the truth.

Kukucka called Ellorys response bizarre. Theyre selling snake oil. I mean, lets be honest, he said. Theyre raking in money by selling snake oil to, unfortunately, people who have a lot of clout.

Ellorys is not the only training program found among the BlueLeaks documents that sells questionable science to law enforcement. Theres a California-based group that has provided training in neurolinguistic programming, which teaches that deception can be detected by tracking eye movements, a theory that has been widely discredited. And theres a suite of programs from the Subconscious Communication Training Instituteand Spotting Lies,outfits headed by Steven Rhoads a former police chief, current sheriffs department investigator, and retired Christian rodeo clown.

The leaked documents indicate that Rhoadss group has provided anumber of trainings over the last decade for law enforcement across the country, including individuals from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The trainings feature lessons in how body language including facial gestures and human emotions, eye movement and gaze behavior, and gestures involving the torso can be used in interrogations and reveals not only deception but danger for officers. As a very general rule of thumb the left side of the body is more apt to reveal known deception than is the right side of the body, reads material for a 2018 training called Subconscious Communication for Detecting Danger, found in files connected to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center.

Leo says the subconscious communication training is disturbing. I mean, anything can be said to be subconscious, he said. So the cops can just make it up. Its not based on any research.

And Kukucka finds the documents related to detecting danger particularly troubling. I would be very concerned that the context of those trainings would just exacerbate the implicit, especially racial, biases that already exist, he said. We know from very clever shooting simulation research that people already hold an implicit bias where their reaction time in shooting unarmed black individuals is faster. So I would wonder from a training like that, the cues that theyre teaching people to look for are those same cues perceived as threatening in black individuals and not in white individuals, for example.

Rhoads says hes been teaching interrogation techniques for more than four decades. Im still a police officer and use it regularly, he said. The techniques Im teaching work extremely well. That includes focusing on behavioral cues including eye movements, like the ones used in neurolinguistic programming. Rhoads, who has a doctorate in behavioral science, said he was one of the original researchers into eye movements back in the 70s, which hes been able to prove are 98 percent accurate in determining deception.

But he agrees that researchers are correct to say that you cant just go into an interview and immediately rely on nonverbal cues to determine deception. Rather, he said, you first have to establish a baseline for a person before you can infer deception from their behavior or speech. He says he can do this with high accuracy, usually after asking no more than 20 questions.

Rhoads dismissed the idea that things in a persons life that an interrogator wouldnt know like their cultural norms or past interactions with law enforcement might influence their behavior during an interview or interrogation. He said his approach for establishing a baseline is similar to what a polygrapher does by measuring physiological responses. Its the same science that the polygraph is based on except this is strictly based on verbal and nonverbal leakage versus physiological factors. Of course, polygraph results are generally inadmissible in court precisely because theyre unreliable.

The approaches that seem to work better to determine whether a person is being deceptive, Kukucka said, are the ones where the interviewer takes the initiative to be an active participant in the interview and questions a person in a way that draws out things that are diagnostic. Kukucka said hed love to see the research that demonstrates Rhoadss claim of over 90 percent accuracy with his techniques, which he says is just astronomically higher than anything that any study has ever found.

In the end, he said, resolving the conflicting claims between trainers like Rhoads and Ellory and researchers like himself should be easy. If you can do this, prove it. Thats really what it boils down to, he said. If you can get 98 percent accuracy with whatever technique youre using, and you can prove to the scientific community that you can actually do this: A,people are going to throw money at you, and B,we will all gladly be the first to say, You know what? We were wrong, you were right.

Photo illustration: The Intercept, Getty Images

Although there are dozens of documents related to deception detection and interrogation trainings by Ellory, Rhoads, and others, the single largest number of documents on the topic that The Intercept identified are for trainings by John E. Reid and Associates, purveyors of the so-called Reid technique. Essentially the granddaddy of interrogation methods, the Reid technique replaced the third degree, and while it does not employ physical torture, it is nonetheless controversial in its approach, which scholars agree has led to false confessions a persistent problem in the criminal justice system. Roughly 12 percent of the 2,654 exonerations since 1989 involved a false confession, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Of those who were wrongly convicted of murder and later cleared by DNA, 62 percent had confessed, reports the Innocence Project.

The Reid technique is guilt-presumptive, confrontational, and includes an emphasis on nonverbal behaviors. It begins with an accusation, a confrontation, Drizin said. The police officers have conducted an investigation, and theres no question in their mind that you were the person who committed the crime. Interrogators will often lie about evidence linking a person to the crime. Props are used: big, thick files filled with paper. Claims of DNA or other evidence. Every time the suspect asserts their innocence they are interrupted and redirected to the idea that theyre guilty. Reid interrogators also use themes, minimizing the crime in a way that makes a confession more likely offering sympathy, downplaying the severity of the offense, or offering an excuse for it, like you didnt know what you were doing because you were drunk. Its a justification or an excuse that operates as an implied promise of leniency, said Drizin. Over time, the message that resistance is futile begins to carry more weight. And then the suspects will agree to confess.

Over time, the message that resistance is futile begins to carry more weight. And then the suspects will agree to confess.

Joseph Buckley, president of Reid and Associates, takes exception to the criticisms heaped on the technique by academics and lawyers and insists that it is supported by science. In response to a series of emailed questions, Buckley directed me to the companys YouTube channel and a paper he wrote that seeks to clarify what the company calls misrepresentations about the practice, though many of them read like distinctions without a difference.

Consider the clarification regarding nonverbal cues. Like Rhoads, Buckley says they shouldnt be used on their own as an indication of deception, only in context. He offers an example. Say a suspect is asked if hes ever stolen from his employer. Yes, the suspect says, as he crosses his legs, looks down at the floor, and dusts his shirt sleeve, a couple years ago he stole from the hardware store where he worked. But what if a suspect is asked directly, did you steal that missing $2,500? His response as he crosses his legs, looks at the floor, and dusts his sleeve: No, I did not.

These two subjects displayed identical paralinguistic and nonverbal behaviors during their responses, Buckley wrote. However, the interpretation of the behaviors is completely different. In the first example, the guy is telling the truth, but he feels embarrassed and possibly even threatened in revealing his prior theft. But in the second example, the verbal content does not explain the accompanying nonverbal behaviors, so the investigator should consider these behaviors as reflecting possible fear or conflict emotional states that would not be considered appropriate from a truthful subject.

A 2018 flyer for a four-day Reid training in Austin, Texas, specifically talks about teaching investigators to read behavioral cues the verbal and nonverbal behavior symptoms that are displayed by a person who is telling the truth during a non-accusatory interview, as well as those displayed by a person who is withholding or fabricating relevant information, including posture changes, grooming, and eye contact. On days three and four, the training covers the interrogation process, beginning with how to initiate the confrontation; develop the interrogational theme; stop denials; overcome objections and ask questions to stimulate the admission.

Though Reid still dominates the market, there are encouraging signs that may be changing. In 2017, the police-training equivalent of a bomb dropped when Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, one of the countrys leading law enforcement training organizations, announced that it would no longer teach the Reid technique because of the risk of false confessions. Confrontation is not an effective way of getting truthful information, Shane Sturman, the companys president and CEO, told the Marshall Project. This was a big move for us, but its a decision thats been coming for quite some time. More and more of our law enforcement clients have asked us to remove it from their training based on all the academic research showing other interrogation styles to be much less risky.

While science doesnt support the efficacy of subconscious communication techniques, lie detection, or even the Reid technique, there is ample research to support a different approach: one that is decidedly nonconfrontational, encourages open conversation, and emphasizes rapport-building. Support for this approach in the U.S. comes in part through the work of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, a federally funded interagency effort created by the Obama administration as a means of advancing the science and practice of interrogation and to end Bush-era torture practices against terrorism suspects. The group, known as the HIG, also funded research to develop the science of police interrogation. Empirical observations have found that police in the U.S. regularly employ poor interview techniques that either reduce the amount of information elicited or entice subjects to provide incorrect information, reads a 2016 HIG report. (The HIG was basically abandoned by the Trump administration.)

Increased research in the field, including what has come out of the HIG, has been paramount, said Dave Thompson, partner and vice president of operations at Wicklander-Zulawski. Actually, he says, the research has always been there, it just hasnt always been embraced by practitioners. Weve got a lot of these companies that are teaching police practices, regardless of what they are, but theyre teaching it off of being police officers for 30 years. And then you have a lot of academics who are running studies and coming up with great research results but have never been in a practitioner environment. So, I think the really important revolution weve had the last few years is the practitioner and the academic working together to make sure that were applying research in a practical setting. Thompson says thats what his company is trying to do in moving away from what he calls traditional interrogation methods.

If the practices that research finds are effective arent being incorporated into what law enforcements being trained, said Thompson, then were headed in the wrong direction.

There is some suggestion within the BlueLeaks files that newer methods of interrogation might be seeping in, albeit slowly. The documents include at least one flyer from the Savage Training Group advertising a modern way of interviewing suspects, victims and witnesses that is highly effective and in harmony with the latest research. The training was organized by the San Mateo County, California, Sheriffs Office in March. You might have heard those old-school interview techniques have been shown to cause false confessions (Yikes!), it reads. Youve probably been frustrated and thought there ought to be a better way. Well, now there is.

Link:
The Junk Science Cops Use to Decide You're Lying - The Intercept

Human Behavior

Economic Intuitions Behind The Q-Factors – Seeking Alpha

In their groundbreaking paper "Digesting Anomalies: An Investment Approach," published in the March 2015 issue of The Review of Financial Studies, Kewei Hou, Chen Xue and Lu Zhang proposed a new four-factor asset pricing model that went a long way toward explaining many of the anomalies that neither the Fama-French three-factor model nor subsequent four-factor models could explain. The authors called their model the " q-factor" model. Specifically, their four factors are:

The market excess return (beta). The difference between the return on a portfolio of small-cap stocks and the return on a portfolio of large-cap stocks (size). The difference between the return on a portfolio of low-investment stocks and the return on a portfolio of high-investment stocks. The difference between the return on a portfolio of high return-on-equity (ROE) stocks and the return on a portfolio of low ROE stocks.

In our book Your Complete Guide to Factor-Based Investing, Andy Berkin and I established five criteria that should be required before you consider allocating to a factor. The criteria are: persistence across long periods of time; pervasiveness across industries, countries, regions and even asset classes; robustness to various definitions; implementability (survives transactions costs); and intuitive risk- or behavioral-based explanations that provide reasons for believing the premium should persist in the future. We prefer risk-based explanations because risk cannot be arbitraged away, although popularity and the resulting cash flows can reduce premiums. However, we are willing to accept behavioral explanations because of limits to arbitrage which, along with the tendency for human behavior to remain unchanged, allow anomalies, such as the poor performance of small growth stocks with high investment and low profitability, to persist.

Given that one of the five required criteria is having an intuitive explanation for the persistence of the premium (with a preference for a risk-based explanation), it is important to note that Hou, Xue and Zhang provided theoretical underpinnings for the investment and profitability factors. They explained: "Intuitively, investment predicts stock returns because given expected cash flows, high costs of capital mean low net present values of new projects and low investment, and low costs of capital mean high net present values of new projects and high investment. Profitability predicts stock returns because high expected cash flows relative to low investment must mean high discount rates. The high discount rates are necessary to offset the high expected cash flows to induce low net present values of new projects and low investment."

Among their important findings was that the investment and profitability (ROE) factors are almost totally uncorrelated, meaning that they are independent, or unique. In addition, the authors found that the alphas of the value and momentum factors in the q-factor model are small and insignificant. These two factors, and the role they play, have been replaced by the investment and ROE factors. They also found that the q-factor model outperforms the Fama-French three-factor and four-factor models in its ability to explain most anomalies. In fact, most anomalies become insignificant at the 5 percent level of statistical significance. In other words, "Many anomalies are basically different manifestations of the investment and ROE effects."

The authors did acknowledge, however, that "the q-factor model is by no means perfect in capturing all the anomalies." Like all models, even the q-factor model is flawed, or wrong. If a model were perfect, it would be called a law (as we have in physics).

Because of its empirical success, the use of the q-factor model by practitioners for performance evaluation and portfolio management has been increasing. In addition, Eugene Fama and Kenneth French built on the concepts from the q-factor model, incorporating a profitability factor and an investment factor into their five-factor model (market beta, size and value being the other factors) and a six-factor model, which added momentum.

Given the risks of data mining, it's important that any factor model has intuitive explanations for why the factors explain the variation in returns across diversified portfolios. Otherwise, there will be questions about the theoretical soundness of the model.

Suresh Rajput and Muhammad Ilyas contribute to the literature on factor models with their January 2020 study "Do the Q-Factors Proxy for Surprises in Economic State Variables? They investigated whether the q-factors of ME (size), I/A (investment/assets) and ROE correlate with surprises in economic variables within the framework of the intertemporal capital asset pricing model (ICAPM). They ask if the q-factors are in line with the intertemporal asset pricing theory, which theorizes that average returns are explained by the responsiveness of returns to the changes in expected investment opportunities. They chose a set of important economic state variables that have been shown in the literature to help explain the mean and variance of stock returns, such as term spread, short-term T-bill yield, default spread and dividend yield, to describe the changes in expected investment opportunities. The term spread is the spread of 10-year and one-year government bonds. The dividend yield is the sum of the last 12 months' dividends divided by the level of the index. The default spread is the spread of long-term Baa and long-term government bonds. And the risk-free rate is the yield of a one-month Treasury bill. Their data sample covered the U.S. market over the period January 1967 to December 2018. Following is a summary of their findings, each of which was significant at least at the 5 percent confidence level:

There is a significant correlation between q-factors and shocks in state variables. ME correlates with the surprises in default spread, term spread and Treasury bill yield. I/A is related to the surprises in aggregate dividend yield. ROE correlates with surprises in term spread and default spread.

These findings led the authors to conclude: "These findings suggest that the q-factors may act as a proxy for the surprises in economic state variables that describe the changes in the investment opportunity set."

Summarizing, Rajput and Ilyas provide evidence that the q-factors are related to surprises to economic variables that have been shown in the literature to help explain the mean and variance of stock returns, providing the important theoretical risk-based explanation for why investors should expect the premiums to persist, as risk cannot be arbitraged away.

Through their research, financial economists continue to advance our understanding of how financial markets work and how prices are set. The Fama-French three-factor model was a significant improvement on the single-factor capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Mark Carhart moved the needle further by adding momentum as a fourth factor. The authors of the q-theory made further significant advancements, which in turn motivated the development of the competing Fama-French five- and six-factor models.

The competition to find superior models is what helps advance our understanding not only of the markets but also our understanding about which factors to focus on when selecting the most appropriate investment vehicles and developing portfolios.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

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Economic Intuitions Behind The Q-Factors - Seeking Alpha

Human Behavior

FAMILY MATTERS: Trait talk: What’s inherited and what’s created – Andover Townsman

Dear Doctor,

I ran across your article after having a discussion with my fiance. She has a teenage son who is exhibiting some very selfish behaviors. Long story short, I feel that he can be set on the right path by reinforcing more altruistic behavior and creating more opportunities for these positive actions. She thinks that selfishness is a trait passed on from her sons fathers side in that some of their behavior is on the selfish side and, as such, nothing we do will change his behavior. I ran across your article because I was looking for something that would prove or disprove her mindset. I am not looking at the human nature survival point, but rather whether something like selfishness is a trait that can be passed on through the gene pool from parent to child. Your thoughts?

Future Stepdad

Dear Future,

Thank you for your provocative email. We are a combination of genetics and experience.

Personally, it seems to me there is ample evidence for traits. Being more selfish may be one, but is more likely a combination of inheritance and experience. For example, suppose ones neurology predisposes toward caution or awareness of the reaction of others. Then, through a variety of experiences, which might include overindulgence, a behavior of self-entitlement is created.

You allude, for example to altruism. In my opinion, no human behavior, no matter how saintly, is completely altruistic. There is always some degree of self-centered reward in any human act. This is healthy narcissism.

Of course, there is such a thing as malignant and character-disordered narcissism, but that is another column.

Dr. Larry Larsen is an Andover psychologist. If you would like to ask a question, or respond to one, email him at lrryllrsn@CS.com.

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FAMILY MATTERS: Trait talk: What's inherited and what's created - Andover Townsman

Human Behavior

Pop Life The Rise of True Crime – WAER

The rise in popularity of the true crime genre has given us some memorable and moving content focusing on bizarre crime cases ripped straight from the headlines. These shows and documentaries often introduce new theories, new evidence, and fresh perspectives on cases from the little known to those that gripped the nation.

What is driving this obsession? Why do we love to consume stories about the dark side of human behavior?

Joe Lee chats with Patrick Hinds about his podcast "True Crime Obsessed" and how it blends true crime with pop culture.

On this episode of Pop Life, Joe Lee, and guest Patrick Hinds, discuss the HBO docu-series, Ill Be Gone in The Dark, based on the book by Michelle McNamara and explore the lure of the true crime genre. Patrick Hinds, along with co-host Gillian Pensavalle , is the host ofTrue Crime Obsessed- a true crime meets pop culture podcast that focuses on recapping popular true crime series.

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Pop Life The Rise of True Crime - WAER

Human Behavior

Is Speciesism Driving the Coronavirus Pandemic? – Sentient Media

Reluctance to question humans exploitation of animals creates a dangerous disconnect in the publics understanding of COVID-19 and its ongoing risks. Lorelei Plotczyk shares her perspective.

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Reluctance to question humans exploitation of animals creates a dangerous disconnect in the publics understanding of COVID-19 and its ongoing risks. Lorelei Plotczyk shares her perspective.

During a global pandemic, likely caused by the exploitation of animals, humanitys relationship with other species continues largely unchanged: meat flies off the shelves and a docu-series trivializing the plight of captive wild animals is an Emmy-nominated success. What makes it possible for most humans to continue as normal instead of questioning our relationship with or use of non-human animals? Perhaps its thanks to the social construct we call speciesism.

Speciesism is defined as the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals. It is an implicit bias that spans across cultures and renders humans unable or unwilling to connect animal exploitation to the resulting consequencescurrent catastrophe included. Diseases originating from animals, called zoonoses, have caused nearly every pandemic in human history per TIME Magazine, yet that causal relation is largely relegated to scientific and activist discussions that dont permeate the popular conversation. Widespread reluctance to examine the root cause of the pandemic is creating a disconnect in the prevailing discourse.

Humanitys relentless exploitation of animals, especially for food, dramatically increases opportunities for zoonoses to infect people. Given the scope and scale of that undertaking, the truly shocking thing about the COVID-19 pandemic is that it didnt happen sooner. By exploiting animals, humans willfully perpetuate the largest vector for zoonotic disease that would not otherwise exist. And while no longer interfering with animals is logically the best approach to prevent future zoonotic pandemics, many people are reluctant to give up the resulting pleasures, especially animal products. Societys collective failure to change accordingly would be akin to continuing to smoke after a lung cancer diagnosiswith the whole world obligated to pay the price.

Zoonoses outbreaks, which are mediated by human action in most cases per 2012 research, have quadrupled in the past 50 years. A 2013 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) report calls much of this surge directly related to the human quest for more animal-sourced foodyet speciesism guides the narrative away from human culpability. Zoonotic pathogens are often described as jumping to humans due to contact or mixing with animals, while humanitys role is neutralized to detectives figuring out where problematic interactions occur. Such framing serves to mystify the primary reason for the interactions while masking their exploitative nature.

Humans predatory dominion over non-human animals is the reason why zoonoses now account for 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases. We annually breed, rear, and slaughter domesticated animals by the billions while destroying biodiverse habitats for grazing and feed crop production; we hunt, fish, trade, and even farm trillions more so-called wild animalsall while exploiting countless others for clothing, entertainment, experimentation, and sport. Worse, we do so despite having the tools and technology to phase out animal exploitation altogether. Widespread aversion to examining avoidable yet normalized violence against animals prevents honest discourse, and therefore meaningful conclusions, about the resulting scourges.

Zoonoses rose in prevalence whensurprise!humans began forcing wild animals into domestication, largely to serve as our own species living stock, around 10,000 years ago. Since then, researchers note, so-called livestock use has continued to present new health challenges and new opportunities for emergence of zoonotic pathogens. One such opportunity resulted in losing up to 90 percent of the Native American population to livestock-derived zoonotic diseases brought over by European colonists. Today, slaughterhouse workers and animal farmers are at the leading edge of the human-animal interface and more likely to become infected with a zoonotic virus per CNN. Yet ending that cycle by phasing out livestock use altogether is largely excluded from the general conversation. Politicians are unwilling to risk their popularity and scientists refuse to draw the logical conclusions to which their own research points, with rare exception.

Humanity has long focused on prevention and response measures for pandemics that avoid any honest reevaluation of the human behavior that is primarily driving them: animal exploitation. Instead of challenging the status quo, mainstream news organizations continue to reinforce this disconnect by omitting, or even distorting and blocking, vegan advocacy linking animal consumption to zoonoses. A recent Sentient Media survey finds that nearly all trending COVID-19 coverage omits the connection between animal exploitation and pandemics, at best using vague language like it came from animals. Like other oppressive mindsets, speciesism creates an insidious alternate reality in which we blame the victims (when we bother to consider them at all) instead of the victimizers.

The wildlife trade is widely implicated in unleashing the novel coronavirus, but conventional animal farming may have played an equally crucial role. Leading virologist Christian Drosten tells the Guardian that humans create opportunities for coronaviruses to switch hosts through our non-natural use of animalslivestock. At the China food market linked to early COVID-19 cases, wild animals mixed with livestocksomething TIME calls a big risk and the National Review a deadly combination. Per 2014 research, domesticated animals like livestock serve as amplifiers of pathogens that emerge from wild animals and are the central ones in the network of zoonotic disease transmission. A July 2020 UN report on preventing the next pandemic reiterates that although wild animals may harbor zoonotic diseases, livestock act as a bridge for transmission between the animal hosts and humans.

The novel coronavirus may have originated in bats, but it required an intermediary host to infect its first human. Farming advocacy group GRAIN calls farmed pigs an obvious candidate given their human-like immune systems, and Scientific American reveals that an earlier strain of coronavirus likely crossed from bats to pigs. The latter cites infectious disease epidemiologist Gregory Gray in warning that looking for novel coronaviruses in pigs should be a top priority due to the massive global scale of pig farming. Ceasing to breed and consume pigs and other animalsthese activities being the actual root of the problem, versus the bats or pigs themselveswould be far more effective. Whether or not COVID-19 is ever traced to humanitys bacon obsession, it appears inevitable that our appetites for animals will continue to unleash other diseases like swine flu and avian flu (despite the livestock sectors denial).

Science links zoonotic diseases to animal exploitation and especially to animal farming. A 2004 joint report by groups including the World Health Organization identifies increasing demand for animal protein as a common theme among the risk factors for zoonoses emergence. The Lancet published research in 2007 linking zoonoses to the environmental degradation associated with livestock and in 2012 to animal production systems. Reuters coverage of another 2012 study warns most human [zoonotic] infections are acquired from the worlds 24 billion livestock, adding that exploding global demand for livestock products means the problem is likely to get worse. Now that COVID-19 is here, the July UN report on pandemic prevention makes clear that increasing global meat demand only exacerbates future pandemic risk. Referring to the Spanish Flu of 1918-20 and the novel coronavirus, a group of doctors writing for the Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention points out that the two largest pandemics in the past 100 years revolve around our food choicesspecifically, the consumption of animals. Sadly, such credible scientific research continues to prompt little meaningful action.

Experts have articulated for decades that livestock production risks catastrophic pandemics; Dr. Michael Greger, author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, details as much in an eerily prescient 2008 presentation. That same year, a GRAIN report on emerging viruses notes governments unwillingness to confront the dominant powers of industrial livestock farmingan unwillingness that evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace implicates as causing the current pandemic. He says that the likelihood of the livestock industry unleashing a virus that might kill a billion people is regarded as a worthy risk. A social media poll shows that many animal consumers willingly accept those terms.

The pandemic risk posed by meat and dairy production is not exclusive to the most intensive forms of animal farming (often referred to collectively as factory farming). Per the UN FAO, suggestions claiming otherwise are misleading. Its 2013 report states that disease emergence in livestock is not specific to large-scale, intensive systems and includes animals roaming freely over large areas. The 1918 influenza pandemic, after all, may have originated from pig and poultry barns predating todays highly-mechanized and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Modern subsistence farming remains anything but industrial, yet it still contributes to the emergence of zoonoses; 2012 research finds a strong correlation among dependence on livestock, poverty, and zoonotic disease. Either way, planetary boundaries dictate that the vast majority of current global demand for animal products can only be met by CAFOs, which are known breeding grounds for pathogens.

Whether free-range or intensive, animal farming also unleashes zoonoses by destroying habitats. Despite dominating global land use, livestock production provides just 18 percent of humanitys calories and 37 percent of our protein. Extensively transforming forests for grazing and growing feed encourages emerging diseases by causing unnatural overlap of domestic and wild species, amplified disease activity in displaced animals, and disruptions in species populations that, when balanced, naturally keep diseases more contained. Livestock production is the single largest driver of habitat loss, a 2015 study states. A 2018 study finds that shifting to plant-based farming has the extraordinary ability to offset habitat loss by freeing up an area of land equivalent to the U.S., China, the European Union, and Australia combined. An evolution away from livestock reliance is an unparalleled solution for mitigating habitat loss.

Of the many experts connecting habitat loss to zoonoses, several specifically implicate livestock farming. One Health initiative co-founder Laura H. Kahn links livestock production with the widespread deforestation that has contributed to the emergence of zoonotic diseases. Pandemics expert Sonia Shah points out that replacing wild habitats with animal farming ratchets up the risk of disease emergence, yet, weve razed an area around the size of the continent of Africa to raise animals for slaughter. Global health expert Alanna Shaikh says that zoonotic outbreaks are encouraged by pushing into the last wild spaces on our planet, including when we burn and plow into the Amazon rainforest so that we can have cheap land for ranching. Againdespite the misleading vilification of vegan-associated foods like soy or even mainstream favorites like almonds and avocadosongoing large-scale deforestation and corresponding habitat destruction are unavoidable without a widespread dietary shift to plant-based foods.

Incredibly, the extreme biosecurity risks of animal use are not limited to zoonoses. Livestock production is also driving the rise of foodborne pathogens like salmonella and E. coli as well as worsening human antibiotic resistancecategorized by the U.N. as a developing crisis on par with AIDS and Ebola. Livestock vaccinations are now being touted as a solution to prevent zoonotic diseases, yet they only help to stop the spread of existing rather than novel viruses. In the words of bioethicist Jan Deckers, As high populations of farmed animals are maintained only because of human demand for their products, many consumers of animal products are more likely to impose diseases upon other human beings compared to those who refrain from such consumption. The prevalence of speciesism prevents most people from taking even a shred of ownership for the collective consequences of animal exploitation, no matter how extreme.

Rather than blaming those we otherize, both human and non-human, significantly decreasing the likelihood of future pandemics requires ceasing all forms of animal exploitation. Racist rhetoric blaming China for COVID-19 diverts attention away from humanitys collective behaviors that drive the emergence of novel zoonoses. Sam Scarpino, who advises public health agencies on controlling emerging epidemics, explains that despite the myopic public focus on Asia, new flu strains emerge from American livestock operations almost every summer. Farmed animals continue to be transported vast distances for slaughter in conditions that risk public health at facilities that prioritize profits over attempted disease reduction. Vested interests prompt some to decry any meaningful critique of animal agricultures necessity, instead invoking improved monitoring and regulationyet humanity has had over 10,000 years to get this right. The next zoonotic disease outbreak with the potential to infect humans is already spreading amongst farmed pigs.

The COVID-19 pandemic exemplifies the negative feedback loop often created when the powerful exploit the vulnerable. Using some animals for food subjects other animals to laboratory experiments in an attempt to control the resulting preventable zoonotic diseases and dooms others still to mass depopulation. Animals confined to fur farms and zoos for fashion and entertainment are even contracting this virus. As the human death toll continues to rise, the risk of exposure to COVID-19 compounds the routine exploitation of slaughterhouse employees. While no one is immune to the health and ecological consequences of animal exploitation, poor and marginalized people, primarily communities of color, are often hardest hit by its negative effects. COVID-19 is no exception.

Even in the midst of a pandemic linked to animal consumption, the U.S. government continues to favor animal farming over plant-based food production. As with already-existing farm subsidies, livestock producers are receiving the lions share of COVID-19 agricultural aid. Slaughterhouseswidely euphemized as meat plantsare now deemed critical infrastructure, prompting the Center for Biological Diversity to observe that Trump is willing to sacrifice workers lives to prop up the nations inhumane and environmentally destructive addiction to meat. Although its undeniably regressive to pretend as though abundant alternatives to animal products do not exist, this particular form of denial spans across the political parties.The media, in typical form,mischaracterized the predicted meat shortage as a crisis, rather than an uncannily-timed opportunity to socially distance ourselves from meat and dairy. A USA Today investigation has since exposed that the meat shortage scenario was highly exaggerated to keep slaughterhouses operating.

With so much of the current situation beyond our control, there is something humanity can do to avoid repeating history. The Lancets 2007 research advises that a reduction in livestock production would decrease human contact with new infectious agents, while its 2012 research finds wide-scale adoption of a plant-based diet may result in a decreased threat of zoonotic disease. Infectious diseases advisor Dr. Daniel Schar names mitigated risk from pandemic disease among the many planetary health dividends of plant-based diets, a sentiment that public health specialist Aysha Akhtar echoes in her 2014 TEDx Talk. One Healths Laura Kahn suggests consuming less meat (and raising fewer animals for food) and promoting meat alternatives or vegetarian diets. Among the lessons that can be gleaned from scientific documentation of how the novel coronavirus emerged, per Forbes Jeff McMahon, is that humanity needs to just eat plants. Scientist Liz Specht writes that plant-based and cultivated meat is helping to remove the food insecurity and zoonotic disease concerns inherent in animal-based food. A team of international wildlife and veterinary experts concludes in a June 2020 report that humanity can increase switching to plant-based foods to reduce consumption of, and demand for, animal products to reduce the risk of pandemics in a post-COVID-19 world. Ecologist Carl Safina argues, Whats needed to reduce the frequency of new diseases adapting to humans from animals is, basically, to stop farming and eating them. The group of doctors writing in the Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention agrees, urging a reevaluation of, or even a moratorium on, eating animals. Scientist and physician Vural zdemir considers COVID-19 as a wake-up call to embrace veganism and animal sentience, and stop wildlife trade and commodification.

Signs of an urgently-needed change in animal consumption are starting to surface. At the very least, reports NPR, COVID-19 has more people rethinking their relationship with meat. Sierra Club notes that because COVID-19 struck at a time when global meat demand was [already] declining, plant-based eating is now becoming more widely accepted as a form of environmental and political engagement. A Psychology Today op-ed contemplates a more dramatic shift to veganism emerging from this pandemic. The New York Times decisively names slaughterhouses as the food chains weakest link while declaring that the end of meat is here. A Harvard Political Review headline calls just as bluntly for the end of animal agriculture. Other mainstream outlets report that COVID-19 is catalyzing less reliance on animal protein and more demand for plant-based meat (for which U.S retail demand surged in March and April). July headlines report the UNs projection that the biggest global meat-eating decline in decades is now underway, due in part to increasing public distrust of animal products. Many experts recommend purchasing mostly plant-based foods to stock up pantries while limiting grocery store trips. Per Specht, taking animals out of our food system is easier than we may thinkand now, as many are experiencing firsthand, so is taking them out of our kitchens. Systemic roadblocks to veganism, such as food deserts, remain as deterrents for those in underserved communities, but various collectives and nonprofits are addressing dietary inequities to better establish veganism as a right for all. The global benefits to be gained by making plant-based diets more accessible, in concert with a widespread rise of both anti-racism and anti-speciesism, would be transformative.

Contemplating the pandemics aftermath, a renowned epidemiologist told the media that he hopes people will realize that humans are all much more alike than different. Anti-speciesism simply extends this realization to other sentient species. Those we use and kill with impunity are at our mercy; now, we all are at the mercy of a virus unleashed by that abuse of power. The single and shared beating heart begging us to change our ways, as depicted in Kristin Flyntzs viral poem, belongs to animals, too. A global pandemic is just one type of catastrophe on a long list of those related to animal use. Imagine that its potable water (the depletion of which animal consumption is driving) instead of just hand sanitizer that were fighting over. Or, to quote one Twitter user, If you think COVID-19 is scary, wait until antibiotics no longer work. Embracing safer, more eco-friendly, and more ethical alternatives to animal exploitation is our best defense against the next potential pandemic and countless other preventable emergencies in the making. The idea that anyone should willfully default to animal violence persists due to nothing but a stale social construct.

So lets aim to never get back to normal. The truly transformative wake-up call of COVID-19 would be for humanity to finally acknowledge the disastrous consequences of all oppressive hierarchies, including speciesism, and begin to dismantle them, together, for the benefit of all sentient beings.

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Is Speciesism Driving the Coronavirus Pandemic? - Sentient Media

Human Behavior

Vaccines undergo strict safety testing before they are licensed for use in the US and many other countries; no validity to the claim of a 33% death…

CLAIM

Would you take a vaccine with a 33% death rate to feel safe from a virus with a .06% death rate?

DETAILS

Inaccurate: The claim that a COVID-19 vaccine has a 33% death rate is not supported by scientific evidence. This claim is likely based on a separate false claim about a nonexistent COVID-19 vaccine trial from Ukraine.

KEY TAKE AWAY

More than a hundred COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in the midst of testing worldwide. The claim that a COVID-19 vaccine has a 33% death rate is false; there is no evidence to support it. The claim is most likely based on a separate false claim that five out of 15 volunteersamong whom were four Ukrainian soldiersdied in a vaccine trial in Ukraine, which was refuted by the Ukrainian military. Despite efforts to accelerate the usual timelines used in vaccine development, COVID-19 vaccines are not being approved by public health authorities until they undergo rigorous testing for safety and effectiveness. A vaccine with a demonstrated 33% death rate has not been and would never be approved for use in the U.S. or most other countries.

REVIEW Facebook posts (example) asking the question Would you take a vaccine with a 33% death rate to feel safe from a virus with a 0.06% death rate? began circulating in late July 2020, and have received more than 10,000 interactions on Facebook, according to the social media analytics tool CrowdTangle. The identity of the virus and the vaccine are not explicitly stated in the post, but it most likely refers to the virus SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 vaccine.

The question posed in the post introduces the false premise that a COVID-19 vaccine has been developed and found to cause death in 33% of people who receive it. Although the Facebook posts do not provide any information about the source of this figure, it is most likely based on a recent false claim that five of 15 test subjects died in a clinical trial conducted in Ukraine which tested a COVID-19 vaccine supposedly developed in the U.S. The claim, which was attributed to the Lugansk Media Centre (example) and the Lugansk Peoples Republic, was debunked in fact-checks published by Vox Ukraine and AFP Fact Check. Lugansk is a city in eastern Ukraine which is involved in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia. The claim was also published by News Front, an outlet known for publishing pro-Russia disinformation, according to PolitiFact.

PolitiFact reported finding no record of a COVID-19 vaccine trial taking place in Ukraine in ClinicalTrials.gov, a database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies conducted around the world, which is run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Similarly, the ISRCTN Registry, a clinical trial registry recognized by the World Health Organization and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, contains no record of any such study. Vox Ukraine also stated, There is no confirmed information on the beginning of the COVID-19 vaccination in Ukraine and The Ministry of Defence hasnt reported [about COVID-19 vaccination], either.

According to AFP Fact Check, the Ukrainian military has also refuted the claim, with spokesperson Oleksiy Mazepa confirming, There are no tests with our soldiers. This is obvious fake news. This is the way Russian propaganda works.

The involvement of the Lugansk Media Centre and the Lugansk Peoples Republic in the propagation of this claim suggests that it may have originated as part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Outlets with links to the Russian government have had a track record of promoting misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19, among other topics. EUvsDisinfo, a project of the European External Active Services EastStratCom Task Force, which addresses Russian disinformation campaigns, has documented these ongoing campaigns here and here.

In a 2018 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from the George Washington University who studied more than 1.7 million tweets found that Russian trolls and bots contributed to online vaccine misinformation by promoting discord and false equivalency, fostering the appearance of a genuine public debate over vaccines, and driving vaccine hesitancy[1].

As of 9 August 2020, more than 165 COVID-19 vaccine candidates are in development around the world, according to the New York Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. A vaccine remains the only way to achieve herd immunity safely, as Carl Bergstrom, a biologist at the University of Washington, and Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, state in a New York Times opinion piece.

It is challenging to determine the exact percentage of immune individuals needed to achieve herd immunity to COVID-19 in a population because the number depends on many biological and social variables, as Marm Kilpatrick, an epidemiologist and professor at University of California Santa Cruz, explains in this Twitter thread. One study published in Science used a mathematical model that considered variations in human behavior to estimate that herd immunity would be reached when 43% of a population was immune to the disease[2]. In contrast, an article published in Immunity estimated that approximately 67% of the population needs to be immune[3]. However, this estimate is based on the model of classical herd immunity, and the authors cautioned that this model relies on simplifying assumptions, such as homogeneous population mixing and uniform sterilizing immunity in recovered individuals across demographic groups, which are unlikely to hold true [in real life].

Although there is pressure to develop a COVID-19 vaccine quickly, scientists emphasize that vaccine safety must remain a top priority. You really have to test a vaccine carefully, and not just roll it out because people are clamoring for it with an epidemic underway, said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, in a PNAS news article published 30 March 2020.

Shibo Jiang, a virologist at Fudan University, also warned of significant repercussions if vaccines and therapies reach the market before adequate safety testing. The publics willingness to back quarantines and other public health measures to slow spread tends to correlate with how much people trust the governments health advice. A rush into potentially risky vaccines and therapies will betray that trust and discourage work to develop better assessments, he wrote in a Nature article.

Vaccine candidates, including those for COVID-19, must pass several stages of clinical trials that demonstrate their safety and efficacy before they are approved for public use in the U.S. (see figure below), the U.K., Australia, the European Union, and other parts of the world.

A COVID-19 vaccine that kills one in three people would not pass clinical trials or be licensed by health authorities, as this would be considered an unacceptably high risk of serious adverse effects.

Overall, the claim that a COVID-19 vaccine has a 33% death rate is false and unsupported by scientific evidence. It is likely based on a separate claim, which was refuted by multiple sources.

Although it remains unclear which, if any, of the COVID-19 vaccine candidates currently undergoing testing will ultimately be licensed for public use, there has been a surge of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. Health Feedback reviewed some of these claims, including the false claims that RNA vaccines alter our DNA and that a volunteer died during a vaccine trial in April. The proliferation of such misinformation has left its mark. According to an article published in Science on 30 June, as few as 50% of Americans plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine, while in France more than 25% said they would not get a vaccine. In the United Kingdom, about 16% of people surveyed said they would refuse a vaccine and another 16% said they were uncertain.

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Vaccines undergo strict safety testing before they are licensed for use in the US and many other countries; no validity to the claim of a 33% death...

Human Behavior

Monkeys’ Attraction to Burned Grasslands May Offer Clues to Human Ancestors’ Mastery of Fire – Smithsonian Magazine

When human ancestors first made fire, they turned a force of nature into a handy tool. The pivotal breakthrough allowed our predecessors to cook, clear land and fend off fierce predators.

Scientists will never know with certainty the story behind that initial spark lit by homininsliving and fossil species on the human branch of the primate family tree. But some researchers assume clever hominins learned to control flames by watching wildfires that tore through their African homelands. Perhaps human ancestors tasted a naturally seared carcass and became determined to light their own paleo-cookout 1 million years ago or so.

Since scientists cant ask ancient hominins what drew them to fire, several years ago anthropologist Nicole Herzog turned to the next best thing. The professor at the University of Denver began studying primates who live near frequently ablaze habitats to see if our evolutionary cousins reap any benefits from scorched lands. Fire's a frightening and dangerous and scary thing, she says. What would motivate a critter to actually want to go near it or associate with it in the way that humans do?

One key benefit may be safety from predators, according to Herzogs latest study, published this month in the Journal of Evolution. For the study, the anthropologist tracked the behavior of South Africas vervet monkeys before, during and after fires. It turns out the monkeys sensed fewer predators in fire-swept savannah compared to unburned grasslands, where leopards and other stealth killers hide. The openness of burned ground may deter carnivores and offer a safe haven for these primates.

The finding that living primates benefit from blazes in this way means its possible ancient hominins did too, according to Herzog and her coauthors. The scientists think human ancestors initially ventured into fire prone grasslands, at least in part, to avoid predators. That could explain why hominins came to frequently encounter and eventually master fire.

Archaeologist Sally Hoare of the University of Liverpool praised the study for documenting primates that face multiple predator species in a savannah environment, which might be similar to the habitats of some hominin species. She says studying non-human primates is the only way we can actually look at how the early uptake of fire may have occurred, what may have attracted hominins to these environments.

Others show more skepticism. Its an important question how primates in general approach fire and fire areas, says biological anthropologist Rick Potts of the Smithsonians National Museum of Natural History. It may have relevance to human evolution.

Herzog conceived the study with colleagues from the University of Utah while she was a doctoral student there. They had read reports, mostly anecdotal, describing primates reactions to fire, but they had not seen any studies attempt to measure the benefits of burned lands.

To do so, Herzog focused on a troop of 25 vervet monkeys that roamed freely in South Africas Loskop Dam Nature Reserve. The plucky monkeys, with salt-and-pepper pelts and black faces, are famous among anthropologists for their language-like communications. Vervets sound distinct alarm calls for different predators and troop members respond with appropriate defensive moves. They climb high trees after the leopard call, scan the brush after the snake call, and dive into vegetation upon hearing an eagle call. They have this vocal repertoire, Herzog explains. When you hear those calls you have a good idea of what's going on.

In 2012, park staff lit controlled fires to improve habitat conditions and reduce the risk of natural wildfires. The researchers observed the animals during the two days the fires raged, plus 90 days before and after. Over that 6-month span, during 107 hours of logged observations, the scientists documented the troop members minute-by-minute locations and activities like feeding, resting and bickering. But the scientists were most interested in behaviors signaling the monkeys had either spotted or were looking out for predators. In addition to the alarm calls, when a vervet first senses danger, it may scale a tree or stand on its hind limbs and visually scan the surroundings.

During the study, Herzogs team didnt witness any lethal attacks. But they did glimpse vervet killers, including black mamba, python, viper snakes, leopards and baboonsbigger monkeys that sometimes eat vervets. The reserve is also home to African wildcats, jackals, eagles and crocodiles. Based on earlier research, vervets most common killers are leopards, which hunt by sneak attack in dense vegetation. Herzog predicted fire would transform treacherous grasslands into open ground, where monkeys could spot predators well in advance. What she didnt know is if the monkeys themselves would realize that charred earth offered protection in this way.

The results suggest the monkeys did in fact feel safer from carnivores in the burned zones. Of the 72 anti-predator behaviors observed, only 10 happened on burned ground. They logged eight scans of the surroundings, two instances of fleeing and zero alarm calls. This could mean there were actually fewer carnivores in the areas post-fire. Or, the monkeys relaxed their vigilance measures, knowing they could spot a predator before it posed serious danger. The vervets also entered grassy parts of the park, now charred, where theyd never been seen before. Generally the troop congregates near rivers lined with canopy trees. But, burning that grass was like turning this key and it opened up an entirely new area to them, says Herzog.

The troop appeared nonplussed near active, raging fires, says Herzog. She fondly recalls one decrepit old male that perched on a branch and watched a fire, seemingly for entertainment, until it nearly reached the trees base. This fits with observations of chimpanzees around brush fires in Senegal, previously reported by Herzog and Texas State University anthropologist Jill Pruetz. Both the chimps in Senegal and vervets in South Africa appeared to grasp fire safety. Near a blaze, they continued feeding, grooming and resting without signs of stress or fearfor example, having their hairs stand upright. When the flames came close enough to pose danger, the groups calmly relocated. They key into things about each particular fire that tell them whether they need to get out of there, or whether they can sit and watch it pass, says Herzog.

Herzog cautions that the new study tracked one troop of vervets for several months. She says more studies are needed on diverse primates in different environments before scientists can make any big claims about fire in human evolution.

Still, the vervet data adds one brick of support to a big idea posed by the study authors a few years back. According to their pyrophilic primate hypothesis, hominins faced frequent wildfires 2 to 3 million years ago. Eventually human ancestors adapted to and benefited from these conditions for several possible reasons: Burning made grasslands easier to traverse, exposed hidden food resources like seeds and tubers, or reduced predator risksas seems to be the case for vervets today.

The last point may have been especially important a few million years ago, when the African carnivore guild was far more terrifying that today. Archaeologist Sally Hoare points out that predators were bigger, like Pachycrocuta, the largest hyena to ever walk the earth, and Agriotherium, a carnivorous bear nearly twice the size of a lion. Hoare says predators were also more diverse. At least ten genera of large mammal predators stalked Africa then, compared to five today. As for hominins, roughly three-to-four feet tall Lucy-like Australopiths, Hoare remarks, You kind of wonder how any of them actually survived.

Potts takes issue with the timing of this scenario. Carnivore numbers begin to drop around 2.8 million years ago, whereas fire prone grasslands dont appear widespread until after 2 million years ago, he says.

The date when human ancestors mastered fire is hotly contested. Archaeologists identify hominin-made fires by using biochemical analyses to identify sediment, bones and artifacts that show signs of high-heat alteration. Using these methods, scientists have shown human ancestors built campfires by nearly 800,000 years ago, based on circular concentrations of burned wood, seeds and stone tools at the site of Gesher Benot Yaaqov, Israel. Some scientists think hominins mastered fire between 1 and 1.5 million years ago because of scattered burnt bone, plant ash or reddened sediments detected at African sites, including South Africas Wonderwerk and Swartkrans and Kenyas Koobi Fora and Chesowanja. But for these sites more than 1 million years old, researchers debate whether hominins ignited their own flames or wildfires burned the materials.

Some scientists push our lineages mastery of fire earlier than that in-the-dirt evidence. Harvard University anthropologist Richard Wrangham and others contend hominins became pyro-masters around 2 million years ago based on changes in the appearance of fossils. Around this time hominin body and brain size nearly doubled, while teeth and jaws got smaller. Wrangham and colleagues attribute these changes to the invention of cooking, which makes food easier to chew, explaining the smaller dentition, and more energy-rich, to fuel bigger bodies and brains. They say these hominins must have mastered fire for cooking.

I vigorously disagree about that because the must have argument is not evidence, says Potts. He sees direct physical evidence for hearths and burned artifacts as the only way to set the date for hominin control of fire. And other scientists propose the skeletal changes, which form the basis of Wranghams cooking hypothesis, were because hominins started hunting and regularly eating meat 2 million years back

Even if scientists do eventually settle when our ancestors mastered fire, that wont necessarily explain the how and why of it. Nor will watching vervets and other primates provide a definitive answer. But the hope is such studies will spark hypotheses about what drew our ancestors to the flames, and thats important because theres at least one point anthropologists agree upon: mastery of fire was a major milestone that set human ancestors apart from other species. The way that we take advantage of fire and dependence that we have on it says Herzog. Probably has been incredibly influential in shaping human evolution.

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Monkeys' Attraction to Burned Grasslands May Offer Clues to Human Ancestors' Mastery of Fire - Smithsonian Magazine

Human Behavior

Quietly waiting in the background of the pandemic, AI is about to become a big part of our lives – The Province

Way back in December, before the world started paying attention to the novel coronavirus, a Toronto-based company called BlueDot Inc. noticed the first hints that something was amiss.

By applying an artificial intelligence algorithm to analyze news reports and airline ticket data, BlueDot noted a significant disease outbreak brewing before even the World Health Organization raised the alarm.

An AI epidemiologist sent the first warnings of the Wuhan virus, a Wired headline reported in late January, flagging BlueDots achievement.

BlueDot earned another round of media coverage in March when the rest of the world caught up in understanding the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our weird behavior during the pandemic is messing with AI models

The companys use of artificial intelligence was the sort of application where the technology can shine: taking in large amounts of data to then find subtle patterns beyond what humans can come up with themselves.

But a couple of months later, the technology press was telling a different story.

Our weird behavior during the pandemic is messing with AI models, an MIT Technology Review headline declared.

AI systems designed to predict the rhythms of human behaviour based on historical data were no longer working, because those rhythms had been turned upside down by the pandemic-induced lockdown.

In spite of the hype and excitement among technologists in the past few years, AI has also been largely absent from the conversation about how to fight the coronavirus, with even the most ardent adherents acknowledging the technology has largely faded into the background during the pandemic.

The most significant public health measures have been decidedly low-tech, such as social distancing, cloth masks and track-and-trace epidemiology, but experts say the dip in attention wont last too long.

Indeed, the longer the pandemic lasts, the more important artificial intelligence will become, they say, and it will likely play a big part in the economic recovery.

I would tend to agree with you that the real-world impact has been relatively minimal, and theres different reasons for that, said Jean-Franois Gagn, chief executive of Element AI, a Toronto-based AI software developer.

Theres just only so much an algorithm can do in figuring out risk and uncertainty when things are so volatile.

Artificial intelligence is a hazily defined term for a collection of technologies, but most of the excitement in the past decade has been around deep learning, which uses computer programming structures loosely modelled on the neural networks in human brains.

Its possible to train an algorithm to identify patterns and make predictions by feeding vast amounts of data into these computerized neural networks.

This technology can be used for tasks such as image recognition. By showing a neural network a million photos, some with cats in the image and some without cats, you can train the system to recognize patterns in the data that look like cats. After a while, you have a computer that can reliably identify cats.

The same process can be applied to many different situations. For example, a neural network could take all the data about your internet browsing history, spot patterns in both your data and other customers data and then feed it into a recommendation algorithm so that an e-commerce company can show you products youre likely to buy.

Gagn and several other experts who spoke to the Financial Post said the success of AI is largely confined to such specific functions. He said that when you try to do something ambitious, such as running a whole shipping network with machine learning, it gets really difficult.

What we are all realizing is that describing the world and giving good examples to models is hard, he said. Most of our forecasting systems out there right now in the industry, broadly speaking, are very simple techniques that have been trained on a few months of data that often are at the daily level, with very few variables that describe the outside world.

In practice, this means that AI tends to work well as the special sauce inside a larger system.

For example, deep learning might improve your phone by analyzing the patterns in all your touchscreen inputs and then personalizing the sensitivity to better recognize a deliberate finger press as opposed to a palm brushing against the corner of the screen.

The vast majority of the time, (AI) is not transformative. The vast majority of the time, its a tool for a task that makes you more efficient, said Avi Goldfarb, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and co-author of Prediction Machines, a book about the economics of AI.

Sometimes that means cost reduction, but often it means serving your customers better than you were before because you can personalize something.

But its one thing to analyze inputs on a touchscreen, quite another thing when problems become bigger and more complex.

AI might be used for self-driving cars someday, but the algorithm to do so would need to consider a vast array of possibilities in order to navigate a vehicle through city streets, and the stakes are much higher because a mistake could kill somebody.

The big, ambitious ideas for AI, such as self-driving cars or robots that make better stock picks, tend to be the ones where marketing hype and grandiose claims attract investment dollars and customer interest. But those problems are difficult to solve and require enormous amounts of data.

The sci-fi vision of artificial intelligence, while good at attracting attention, misses the mark, because it makes AI seem like something that hasnt yet proven its worth. Similarly, its easy to think that AI is absent from the pandemic because its not being used in spectacular ways.

Goldfarb said AI is already present in many of the tools being used to fight COVID-19, but its embedded in larger technology systems.

Some thermal cameras and thermometers to test for fever have machine learning embedded in their software to give more accurate results, and can even aggregate anonymized data to predict future infection flare-ups.

The machine learning function makes the tools in those systems work a bit better, but its not flashy enough to get the same marketing hype a robot would.

But, eventually, AI will become just a routine part of software development whenever theres a task that can use data for pattern recognition, said Wally Trenholm, chief executive of Toronto-based Sightline Innovation Inc. and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Trenholm said deep learning will be embedded in everything and become so normal that nobody will even talk about it.

I look at AI as kind of a multipurpose technology, kind of like the databases of the 1970s, he said. If you look at every piece of software right now, its got a database in it, and probably 40 years from now, every piece of software will have AI in it.

The current pandemic might even accelerate the path to a future of ubiquitous AI.

Goldfarb said one of the side effects of the COVID-19 lockdown and the shift to remote work is that people are creating far more data than they were before.

The meeting that used to happen in an office conference room is now happening over Zoom, and in-person conversations between coworkers have shifted to Slack.

The last few months have led to a massive digitization of work. A lot of things that used to happen either face to face or in ways that werent recordable are now digitized, Goldfarb said. Once information is digitized, you can use machine learning to help.

Already, as the pandemic stretches on past the initial crisis phase and becomes an ongoing challenge, scientists and technologists are finding ways to use data and neural networks to fight the disease.

In July, the University of Toronto highlighted the work of two researchers who are using deep learning to identify molecules from previous drug candidates and therapies that might work well to fight COVID-19.

Instead of taking a slow, methodical approach, they can use data to predict which potential drugs are the most promising, thereby speeding up the typical research process.

We normally take a linear approach, going step by step, selecting a few candidate drugs or therapies and slowly moving them forward with testing over several years, Jean-Philippe Julien, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, said on the universitys website.

But now, with COVID, we all understand that this approach is not possible. Everyone accepts that we have to move much faster.

Email: jmcleod@nationalpost.com | Twitter:

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Quietly waiting in the background of the pandemic, AI is about to become a big part of our lives - The Province