Category Archives: Human Behavior

Human Behavior

Survival Instincts and Lies from the Top: How Crises Alter Human Behavior – CBD Today

By now, you probably have experienced the long lines and empty shelves at grocery and warehouse stores. Or you may have tried to buy staples such as canned food and toilet paper online from companies such as Walmart, Target, and Amazon only to discover they are sold out.

This seems unprecedented, but a look back at our history helps explain the phenomenon.

Sander van der Linden, an assistant professor of social psychology at Cambridge University, said a fear contagion phenomenon has taken hold in America. When people are stressed their reason is hampered, so they look at what other people are doing, he said. If others are stockpiling, it leads you to engage in the same behavior. People see photos of empty shelves and regardless of whether its rational, it sends a signal to them that its the thing to do.

As humankind has become more civilized and technological advancements have changed our lives, the survival instinct can become dormant. However, as current events clearly indicate, this survival behavior quickly can be reignited and spread like wildfire.

A look back to the Great Depression can cast some light on human behavior during a crisis.

John Montgomery Ph.D., wrote about this human condition. When we live in environments, such as modern cities, that are drastically different from the environments that were biologically adapted for, we become subject to various evolutionary mismatch effects that can be extremely detrimental to our physical and emotional health, he wrote. Perhaps the most important consequence of this mismatch is that we become highly prone to being triggered repeatedly and unnecessarily into various states of survival mode.

A look back to the Great Depression can cast some light on human behavior during a crisis. As conditions worsened over the course of the Depression and people increasingly lost confidence in banks, they started withdrawing their money in large numbers. Recognizing the crisis, in 1932 President Herbert Hoover denounced traitorous hoarding and organized an anti-hoarding drive. He also delivered a radio address pleading for people to stop hoarding and cease converting bank deposits into cash. Few listened.

Why policy and leadership matter

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, many argued the financial sector was so important it needed to be closely monitored and regulated. For a while it was. But then Republican administrations continued to wind back many of the regulations that kept financial institutions from gorging themselves to death. The lack of oversight ultimately led to the Great Recession of 2007 2009.

After then-President George W. Bush left office, President Barack Obama implemented new regulations aimed at keeping the banking system healthy. However, those safeguards again were rolled back once Donald J. Trump took office.

Early in his administration, as if a thank you to Wall Street, Trump signed a directive aimed at dismantling the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, crafted by the Obama administration in response to the 2008 economic meltdown. Trump also signed a memorandum to reverse the fiduciary rule, which requires brokers to act in their clients best interest, rather than seek the highest profits for themselves, when providing financial planning advice.

Trumps action on the fiduciary rule, which Democrats and consumer groups immediately denounced, allows financial advisors to steer unsuspecting clients toward investments that may enrich the broker but not be in the clients best interest.

The great disconnect from the facts

The premise that the Republican party is the party of fiscal conservatives and the Democrats are fiscal numbskulls just doesnt fit with the facts. In fact, during the past thirty-nine years, all the United States recessions occurred under Republican administrations.

Moreover, Americas deficit spending, once anathema to Republicans, has increased more under recent Republican administrations than under Democratic presidencies.

Reagan took the federal deficit from $70 billion to $175 billion. George H.W. Bush took it to $290 billion. President Bill Clinton reduced it to zero. George W. Bush took it from zero to $1.4 trillion. Obama halved it to $584 billion. The Trump administration has raised it back to more than $1 trillion.

The U.S. is now in another crisis. The health of the countrys citizens and economy is under attack. People are hoarding supplies, and a survivalist mentality has infected the populace.

In this election year, voters can decide whether we have thoughtful, intelligent, compassionate leaders in Washington or boisterous, dishonest fools on the hill. The choice may be at the very heart of our survival.

Randall Huft is president and creative director at Innovation Agency, an advertising, branding, and public relations firm specializing in the cannabis industry. While working with blue-chip companies including AT&T, United Airlines, IBM, Walgreens, American Express, Toyota, and Disney, he discovered what works, what doesnt, and how to gain market share.

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Survival Instincts and Lies from the Top: How Crises Alter Human Behavior - CBD Today

Human Behavior

Public policy and human behaviour – Opinions – Business Recorder

ARTICLE: Trouble comes in threes. Extreme measures produce extreme behavior. Fear and panic are breeding grounds of reactivity. These phrases all seem to be true for today's world. Coronavirus may have reached its peak in some countries, and may be reaching peak in other countries as well, but its side-effects are already rearing their head. Economies are struggling to restart with so much restrictions, governments are still trying to find the right balance in saving lives and livelihoods, and public is finding it difficult to contain their frustration and anger. And nowhere is this trio of safety, economy and equity more on trial than in the United States of America.

Medicines may quell the immediate disease but their side-effects can spur other ailments that become even more problematic. To contain the virus human movement had to be contained. That was the safest solution. However, in doing so, human nature was cornered to a point where it was ready for a rampage given the opportunity. Public policy, governance and governments are key elements of dealing with a crisis. For public policy to be successful the cornerstone on which the effectiveness of the implementation of these policies depends upon is human behavior. That is why all successful public health issues are dependent not just on research of medical sciences but on research of behavioural sciences.

As discovered in the present pandemic, medicine is far behind preventing or finding a cure to this menace. The only way this virus can be contained is by adopting preventive and safety measures. The adoption of these safety measures is all dependent on how public becomes informed and engaged in behavioural change to follow the standard operating procedures. That is why all over the world we are seeing different results of the same policy. While all countries are trying to adopt similar curtailment strategies the results differ. South Korea has succeeded with partial lockdown while India is finding it difficult with total lockdown. Similarly, New Zealand has almost eradicated it while the UK and France are still on the downward trend of the peak.

With similar policies and dissimilar results the aspect of behavioural sciences needs more study and analysis. That is why public health policies are such a tricky element as response of public varies from country to country. The biggest example of this variance was how China effectively dealt with the Wuhan epidemic with a complete lockdown while in many other countries it failed. The policy and strategy were similar but public behavior differed. While Lockdown is the main strategy of the public health policy it has psychological and behavioural consequences. Lockdown word itself has negative connotations. Human beings are born with this instinct of freedom and freedom of choice. Anything enforced creates negative thinking, sometimes even at the risk of its own life.

Human behavior acts and reacts to external stimuli in a varied manner. Science of why and what people do in response to the good or bad happening around them should be an integral part of public health or for that matter any public issue. Behavioral science incorporates insights from psychology about what motivates people to alter their behaviour. Cass Sunstein, a distinguished American scholar at Harvard Law School has advocated the use of Nudge as a strategy of behavior compliance rather than bans or coercion. Sunstein, along with Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler, pioneered the use of "nudge" as a technical term in their acclaimed 2008 bestseller of the same name. In the book, they suggest that governments could do light-touch interventions to change people's behaviour for the better. Despite this, governments often use mandates, bans and incentives to coerce their citizens - an approach that, according to Sunstein, does not always fully address human behaviour.

Thus what has happened all across the world after prolonged lockdowns are scenes that are difficult to comprehend. Educated, sane people in developed world swarm beaches and parks with little regard to social distancing. In Pakistan, people jammed in shops and streets as if they were out of jails and as if there will be no tomorrow. In all cases whether developed or developing nations, whether educated or illiterate the violation of government rules was flagrant. The explanation lies in behavioural sciences. Whenever a private or public institution blocks choices or interferes with agency, some people will rebel, even if exercising control would not result in material benefits or might produce material harms. What is required is a mixed strategy of inducing voluntary behavioural change:

Communicate and Sell Change - Complete and sudden bans scare people. Yes, in China it worked because the Chinese society is trained to authoritative decrees. Elsewhere the reaction has been mixed. In Europe and the US the communication by leaders was first ridiculing the Chinese actions, the seriousness of the virus and then enforcing similar lockdowns without properly preparing the public. This extreme disdain and extreme curtailment created fear and non-adherence in some parts of the population.

Nudging Rather than Pushing - While government regulations are extremely important for behavior modification in the short run, in the long run it invites rebellion. Sunstein says that New Zealand unlike the UK and Italy went for nudging rather than kicking and that helped voluntary adherence. In the US, the current unrest over the tragic death of George Floyd has become not just an expression of injustice to blacks but an opportunity to evade the lockdown and express their caged frustrations.

Develop Community Influencers - The Local governments and neighborhood volunteers are a long-term replacement for monitoring adherence of SOPs. China used students, the UK has registered volunteers, Pakistan has created Tiger Force. This force should not be using force but relationship marketing in the community to connect, and relate to the community. This should be done in their language, their level and their style to make them understand the importance of practicing new behaviours.

Lockdowns are abnormal and create abnormalities of human behaviour. Dealing with them through normal public policy tools and regulations will not get endurable results. We have seen in countries such as Singapore and Japan that as soon as bans are relaxed people go back to their previous behaviours and the infection rates resurge. What is required is understanding behavioural responses, using pull strategies and interspersing them with sharp and friendly nudges to cover the period till the vaccine becomes available.

(The writer can be reached at [emailprotected])

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Public policy and human behaviour - Opinions - Business Recorder

Human Behavior

The Promise and Risks of Artificial Intelligence: A Brief History – War on the Rocks

Editors Note: This is an excerpt from a policy roundtable Artificial Intelligence and International Security from our sister publication, the Texas National Security Review. Be sure to check out the full roundtable.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently become a focus of efforts to maintain and enhance U.S. military, political, and economic competitiveness. The Defense Departments 2018 strategy for AI, released not long after the creation of a new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, proposes to accelerate the adoption of AI by fostering a culture of experimentation and calculated risk taking, an approach drawn from the broader National Defense Strategy. But what kinds of calculated risks might AI entail? The AI strategy has almost nothing to say about the risks incurred by the increased development and use of AI. On the contrary, the strategy proposes using AI to reduce risks, including those to both deployed forces and civilians.

While acknowledging the possibility that AI might be used in ways that reduce some risks, this brief essay outlines some of the risks that come with the increased development and deployment of AI, and what might be done to reduce those risks. At the outset, it must be acknowledged that the risks associated with AI cannot be reliably calculated. Instead, they are emergent properties arising from the arbitrary complexity of information systems. Nonetheless, history provides some guidance on the kinds of risks that are likely to arise, and how they might be mitigated. I argue that, perhaps counter-intuitively, using AI to manage and reduce risks will require the development of uniquely human and social capabilities.

A Brief History of AI, From Automation to Symbiosis

The Department of Defense strategy for AI contains at least two related but distinct conceptions of AI. The first focuses on mimesis that is, designing machines that can mimic human work. The strategy document defines mimesis as the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence for example, recognizing patterns, learning from experience, drawing conclusions, making predictions, or taking action. A somewhat distinct approach to AI focuses on what some have called human-machine symbiosis, wherein humans and machines work closely together, leveraging their distinctive kinds of intelligence to transform work processes and organization. This vision can also be found in the AI strategy, which aims to use AI-enabled information, tools, and systems to empower, not replace, those who serve.

Of course, mimesis and symbiosis are not mutually exclusive. Mimesis may be understood as a means to symbiosis, as suggested by the Defense Departments proposal to augment the capabilities of our personnel by offloading tedious cognitive or physical tasks. But symbiosis is arguably the more revolutionary of the two concepts and also, I argue, the key to understanding the risks associated with AI.

Both approaches to AI are quite old. Machines have been taking over tasks that otherwise require human intelligence for decades, if not centuries. In 1950, mathematician Alan Turing proposed that a machine can be said to think if it can persuasively imitate human behavior, and later in the decade computer engineers designed machines that could learn. By 1959, one researcher concluded that a computer can be programmed so that it will learn to play a better game of checkers than can be played by the person who wrote the program.

Meanwhile, others were beginning to advance a more interactive approach to machine intelligence. This vision was perhaps most prominently articulated by J.C.R. Licklider, a psychologist studying human-computer interactions. In a 1960 paper on Man-Computer Symbiosis, Licklider chose to avoid argument with (other) enthusiasts for artificial intelligence by conceding dominance in the distant future of cerebration to machines alone. However, he continued: There will nevertheless be a fairly long interim during which the main intellectual advances will be made by men and computers working together in intimate association.

Notions of symbiosis were influenced by experience with computers for the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), which gathered information from early warning radars and coordinated a nationwide air defense system. Just as the Defense Department aims to use AI to keep pace with rapidly changing threats, SAGE was designed to counter the prospect of increasingly swift attacks on the United States, specifically low-flying bombers that could evade radar detection until they were very close to their targets.

Unlike other computers of the 1950s, the SAGE computers could respond instantly to inputs by human operators. For example, operators could use a light gun to select an aircraft on the screen, thereby gathering information about the airplanes identification, speed, and direction. SAGE became the model for command-and-control systems throughout the U.S. military, including the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, which was designed to counter an even faster-moving threat: intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could deliver their payload around the globe in just half an hour. We can still see the SAGE model today in systems such as the Patriot missile defense system, which is designed to destroy short-range missiles those arriving with just a few minutes of notice.

SAGE also inspired a new and more interactive approach to computing, not just within the Defense Department, but throughout the computing industry. Licklider advanced this vision after he became director of the Defense Departments Information Processing Technologies Office, within the Advanced Research Projects Agency, in 1962. Under Lickliders direction, the office funded a wide range of research projects that transformed how people would interact with computers, such as graphical user interfaces and computer networking that eventually led to the Internet.

The technologies of symbiosis have contributed to competitiveness not primarily by replacing people, but by enabling new kinds of analysis and operations. Interactive information and communications technologies have reshaped military operations, enabling more rapid coordination and changes in plans. They have also enabled new modes of commerce. And they created new opportunities for soft power as technologies such as personal computers, smart phones, and the Internet became more widely available around the world, where they were often seen as evidence of American progress.

Mimesis and symbiosis come with somewhat distinct opportunities and risks. The focus on machines mimicking human behavior has prompted anxieties about, for example, whether the results produced by machine reasoning should be trusted more than results derived from human reasoning. Such concerns have spurred work on explainable AI wherein machine outputs are accompanied by humanly comprehensible explanations for those outputs.

By contrast, symbiosis calls attention to the promises and risks of more intimate and complex entanglements of humans and machines. Achieving an optimal symbiosis requires more than well-designed technology. It also requires continual reflection upon and revision of the models that govern human-machine interactions. Humans use models to design AI algorithms and to select and construct the data used to train such systems. Human designers also inscribe models of use assumptions about the competencies and preferences of users, and the physical and organizational contexts of use into the technologies they create. Thus, like a film script, technical objects define a framework of action together with the actors and the space in which they are supposed to act. Scripts do not completely determine action, but they configure relationships between humans, organizations, and machines in ways that constrain and shape user behavior. Unfortunately, these interactively complex sociotechnical systems often exhibit emergent behavior that is contrary to the intentions of designers and users.

Competitive Advantages and Risks

Because models cannot adequately predict all of the possible outcomes of complex sociotechnical systems, increased reliance on intelligent machines leads to at least four kinds of risks: The models for how machines gather and process information, and the models of human-machine interaction, can both be inadvertently flawed or deliberately manipulated in ways not intended by designers. Examples of each of these kinds of risks can be found in past experiences with smart machines.

First, changing circumstances can render the models used to develop machine intelligence irrelevant. Thus, those models and the associated algorithms need constant maintenance and updating. For example, what is now the Patriot missile defense system was initially designed for air defense but was rapidly redesigned and deployed to Saudi Arabia and Israel to defend against short-range missiles during the 1991 Gulf War. As an air defense system it ran for just a few hours at a time, but as a missile defense system it ran for days without rebooting. In these new operating conditions, a timing error in the software became evident. On Feb. 25, 1991, this error caused the system to miss a missile that struck a U.S. Army barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 American soldiers. A software patch to fix the error arrived in Dhahran a day too late.

Second, the models upon which machines are designed to operate can be exploited for deceptive purposes. Consider, for example, Operation Igloo White, an effort to gather intelligence on and stop the movement of North Vietnamese supplies and troops in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The operation dropped sensors throughout the jungle, such as microphones, to detect voices and truck vibrations, as well as devices that could detect the ammonia odors from urine. These sensors sent signals to overflying aircraft, which in turn sent them to a SAGE-like surveillance center that could dispatch bombers. However, the program was a very expensive failure. One reason is that the sensors were susceptible to spoofing. For example, the North Vietnamese could send empty trucks to an area to send false intelligence about troop movements, or use animals to trigger urine sensors.

Third, intelligent machines may be used to create scripts that enact narrowly instrumental forms of rationality, thereby undermining broader strategic objectives. For example, unpiloted aerial vehicle operators are tasked with using grainy video footage, electronic signals, and assumptions about what constitutes suspicious behavior to identify and then kill threatening actors, while minimizing collateral damage. Operators following this script have, at times, assumed that a group of men with guns was planning an attack, when in fact they were on their way to a wedding in a region where celebratory gun firing is customary, and that families praying at dawn were jihadists rather than simply observant Muslims. While it may be tempting to dub these mistakes operator errors, this would be too simple. Such operators are enrolled in a deeply flawed script one that presumes that technology can be used to correctly identify threats across vast geographic, cultural, and interpersonal distances, and that the increased risk of killing innocent civilians is worth the increased protection offered to U.S. combatants. Operators cannot be expected to make perfectly reliable judgments across such distances, and it is unlikely that simply deploying the more precise technology that AI enthusiasts promise can bridge the very distances that remote systems were made to maintain. In an era where soft power is inextricable from military power, such potentially dehumanizing uses of information technology are not only ethically problematic, they are also likely to generate ill will and blowback.

Finally, the scripts that configure relationships between humans and intelligent machines may ultimately encourage humans to behave in machine-like ways that can be manipulated by others. This is perhaps most evident in the growing use of social bots and new social media to influence the behavior of citizens and voters. Bots can easily mimic humans on social media, in part because those technologies have already scripted the behavior of users, who must interact through liking, following, tagging, and so on. While influence operations exploit the cognitive biases shared by all humans, such as a tendency to interpret evidence in ways that confirm pre-existing beliefs, users who have developed machine-like habits reactively liking, following, and otherwise interacting without reflection are all the more easily manipulated. Remaining competitive in an age of AI-mediated disinformation requires the development of more deliberative and reflective modes of human-machine interaction.

Conclusion

Achieving military, economic, and political competitiveness in an age of AI will entail designing machines in ways that encourage humans to maintain and cultivate uniquely human kinds of intelligence, such as empathy, self-reflection, and outside-the-box thinking. It will also require continual maintenance of intelligent systems to ensure that the models used to create machine intelligence are not out of date. Models structure perception, thinking, and learning, whether by humans or machines. But the ability to question and re-evaluate these assumptions is the prerogative and the responsibility of the human, not the machine.

Rebecca Slayton is an associate professor in the Science & Technology Studies Department and the Judith Reppy Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, both at Cornell University. She is currently working on a book about the history of cyber security expertise.

Image: Flickr (Image by Steve Jurvetson)

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The Promise and Risks of Artificial Intelligence: A Brief History - War on the Rocks

Human Behavior

COVID-19: The after economy and developing appropriate responses – ZDNet

I'm in the midst of revamping a lot of projects and programs -- partially due to the new realities that we will face (though what they are remain to be seen to a large extent), and partially due to some changes I want to make in my business model and my life in general. So, I haven't written much, though you will see something from me very soon, and that will trigger quite a bit of content both here and elsewhere.

Also:China, Iran, and Russia worked together to call out US hypocrisy on BLM protests

In the meantime, I am going to provide a forum for some of the other thought leaders in their respective spaces to give you something to chew over that isn't just fat. Chewing fat is unhealthy, so that isn't a good thing. So, this is the chewing of the good proteins kind of content. And one of the best people I know to provide you with that is Marshall Lager. I'm sure that many of you know him.

I met this good man when he did a column for CRM Magazine, and I have watched him go on to a career as an analyst for at first Ovum, then G2, and now, as an independent analyst. He is incredibly cogent, bright, and funny, and what he says should be taken seriously, even when you might be laughing. It's not just his voice and style and ability to engage an audience; his content is meaningful. Look, I know I tend to think the best of people and thus wax effusively, but Marshall truly is one of the best writers I've ever known -- and that's for style and content.

So, take heed of what he's saying here. He is speaking to some of the needs and the expectations post-pandemic. It won't be post-COVID for a long time, but we may get it to the point of control, and Marshall is raising, as always, valid and straightforward concerns and some solutions for those concerns, and remains humble.

Take it away, Marshall! And I hope that everybody is staying safe and sane in this time of crisis.

The perpetual uncertainty of this extended wait-and-see pandemic response has really taken its toll on human behavior, and especially on businesses that rely on regular traffic. Health and safety, crowds and protesters, and shortages of goods have to be taken into account every time we want to buy something, to an extent most people in the developed world never thought possible. And it's not even nearly as bad as it could be.

At this point, two months into the first really bad phase of the pandemic (give or take; I'm not sure when this will go live), we appear to lack a cohesive plan. Not the action-stations drill that we executed (poorly) when the virus proved to be more than a minor concern. We need to develop ideas for what various facets of commercial life will look like after we crawl out from our bunkers for good.

This isn't a political column, so I'll refrain from giving my opinion of the response by local and national governments; what I'm looking for isn't something that can be handed down from there anyway, for the most part. Businesses, large and small, have got to look at their operations and figure out how to address the sort of disruption that comes from a lengthy period of time when customers can't do what is customary.

I have to admit that it took me a lot longer than I expected to write this article. Partly, it's because my original motivation came from a more personal place, the same one that most people are in right now. We are waiting to get back to the lives and jobs we remember, but we don't feel there has been much guidance in regard to how or when that will happen. Mostly, it's because I'm not the futurist that some of my colleagues are, and my expertise is more along the lines of assessing customer experience in the moment than in planning its shape for tomorrow.

Some businesses have proposed a few visions of the "new normal" (a phrase many of you have probably come to hate by now) for their post-lockdown operations, and that's at least a start. What we haven't really had yet is a come-together moment to show the public that there is organized thought being given to the issue. Modern economies run on confidence in the system, and we're fresh out.

A large number of industry working groups are devoting real skull-sweat to developing broader solutions to address any future crises; organizations of bakers, emergency services workers, and semiconductor manufacturers (to name just a few) have formed committees to develop appropriate responses. It's those groups who need to better communicate their efforts to the public in order to restore confidence. News isn't traveling quite as fast during the lockdown, and people want to know what to expect once it's safe to congregate in public again. It's great that businesses are considering the everyday experiences of consumers under pressure and finding ways to make the commercial world continue to function for everybody, from individuals to small businesses to mighty conglomerates, but it's not being communicated effectively yet. We need transparency.

We have learned that many of the people who receive minimum wage (or less) are essential workers, to use the current popular term. Economic disease recovery is going to have to include real recognition that these jobs are a true life buoy -- they keep families afloat, provide access to vital goods and services, and prevent financial ruin. They deserve better, and they deserve more, and sooner or later their employers will have to do something about that by redirecting some resources that would normally be taken as profit, turning them into higher pay and better quality of life..

I can already hear your voices from the future, talking about fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders and disproportionate burden on small businesses. Well, if we're trying to sculpt the future, maybe we should consider our history first. If you look at the progression of economic paradigms, there is a steady (if sometimes glacially slow) trend that more opportunity and wealth comes when people have greater access to the profits of enterprise. Mercantilism gave way to open trade; unrestrained capitalism was moderated by anti-monopoly laws and the rise of unions; each time, overall profits improved in step with the human condition.

I believe that we're due for another round of changes. Salaries for exempt employees have kept up with the cost of living, more or less; wages for non-exempt workers are not even close, and it's those essential hourly workers who are receiving much praise but little actual support. We prefer to do business with companies that share our values, right? Well, one of my values is knowing when extracting profit is not as important as taking care of the people who earn it, and giving them a reason to want the company to succeed.

Less confrontationally stated, executives and shareholders should have the enlightened self-interest to realize that improving wage-earners' situations improves employee loyalty, strengthens brand expression, and leads to continued success in the long run. The unfortunate image of workers who can barely support themselves, let alone a family, despite holding a full-time job and possibly a side job as well, has to change. Imagine how effective such a shift in prosperity and respect could be in motivating workers, not just because they need their jobs, but because they are proud of those jobs and can look at their paychecks without worrying about which bills they will and won't pay this month.

Earlier, I said this was the first really bad phase of the pandemic, and I meant it. I'm no epidemiologist, but some things follow a pattern, and the spread of disease is one that history allows us to track. Whether we're talking about the Black Death, typhoid, the flu of 1918 (which wasn't from Spain), or our new friend the coronavirus, care must be taken after the first round of outbreaks or there will be a second, often much larger one. Reopening society too soon might force us right back into isolation. That's going to be the first test of what we've learned. Will we return to lockdown with ease, or will we stumble again as we switch directions?

Here's something to think about regarding our eventual recovery from and adjustment to the pandemic: For years, we have been watching and lamenting the decline of bricks-and-mortar shopping as e-commerce has supplanted it. Yet the very thing driving the economy down, and the thing which has consumers most desperate to return to normal, is the inability of local, physical businesses to operate normally. Nobody is allowed to congregate at shops, but everybody wants to, and businesses are suffering -- especially small businesses. We get a different experience from local SMBs than we do from national chains, and it's what we seem to want, so that's the dollar they should chase

The emergency situation in retail does have at least one good side to it -- businesses such as grocery markets, department stores, and restaurants are our laboratories for developing effective coping strategies. When all the shops enforce social distancing and better hygienic behavior, it becomes the new mode of operation. This ties back into better pay and conditions for workers -- too many people treat workers with disrespect and even hostility because they believe wearing a name tag makes them powerless and disposable. An empowered workforce doesn't have to take that abuse, and it's more likely that patrons will have friends and family (even themselves) in similar dignified positions, creating empathy.

We can hope that businesses (and consumers) will know how to adapt once we start to work our way out without losing too many steps. Hope is not certainty. The less we prepare for what's to come, the more gaffes we'll make when it arrives. We need a clear and manageable crisis model for B2B and B2C before we're caught with our pants down again, and -- here's the important part -- the transparency to communicate it to the public in advance so we know what to expect. Businesses are so afraid of small losses in valuation that they don't manage consumer expectations, resulting in huge losses in valuation when things get bad. Be proactive, get the word out that you're monitoring a situation and are making plans to cope with what comes from it. This is not showing weakness or eroding confidence, it is leadership, and leadership strengthens brands.

Something as simple as Green - Yellow - Red statuses with attendant precautions would be a good start. Any protocol put in place will have to be mandatory, and if you aren't willing to follow company rules you can't do business there. We don't have a problem with No Shirt - No Shoes - No Service, so how hard can it be to add masks to the mix? Custom-printed paper face masks could be new merch for your brand.

A better understanding of which roles are essential on-site, and which are remote work-friendly, will also aid clarity -- and if businesses aren't able for some reason to provide higher general wages to the essential workers, they can at least institute generous hazard pay when we reach our next time of need. Government needs to do its part in making lengthy lockdowns less onerous for business owners as well. Leadership is about more than getting us through the current crisis; it's also about preparing us to tackle the next one.

Thank you, Marshall! As always, your writing is great.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The CRM Watchlist 2021 is now re-opening for registration. I had to make some changes to the questionnaire, and that took some time given the change in how impact is going to be "measured" going forward. So, even if you have registered, I will need you to re-register. Please send me an email at paul-greenberg3@the56groiup.com and ask for the registration form. The registration period and even to some extent the questionnaire submission period has been extended. Thanks for your patience. Because it is late, if I feel that we have an insufficient number of registrations by a certain date, I will suspend the Watchlist for this year and pick it up next year. I hope that isn't the case, but it would be certainly understandable.

Have a great one and be safe.

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COVID-19: The after economy and developing appropriate responses - ZDNet

Human Behavior

COVID-19, smell and taste how is COVID-19 different from other respiratory diseases? – fortworthbusiness.com

A health worker carries out an olfactory test to monitor smell loss to a resident 65 km from Buenos Aires city, on May 24, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. ALEJANDRO PAGNI/AFP via Getty Images

John E Hayes, Pennsylvania State University and Valentina Parma, Temple University

In March 2020, Google searches for phrases like cant taste food or why cant I smell spiked around the world, particularly in areas where COVID-19 hit hardest. Still, many of us have experienced a temporary change in the flavor of our food with a common cold or the flu (influenza). So, is COVID-19 the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus somehow special in the way it affects smell and taste?

We are researchers who study the relationships between human behavior and the sensations people experience from chemicals in daily life. Upon learning that COVID-19 might differentially affect taste and smell, we thought our expertise might be relevant, so we got to work.

When people taste food, they are experiencing input from three different sensory systems that are knitted together to form a singular unified sensation. Strictly speaking, taste describes the five qualities we sense on the tongue, including sweet, salty, bitter, sour and savory/umami. Savory, also known as umami, refers to the meatiness of broth, cheese, fish sauce, or a sundried tomato.

Other sensations from food occur via our sense of smell, even though we experience them in the mouth. Volatile chemicals are released when we chew. These chemicals travel through the back of the throat to reach smell receptors found at the top of the nasal cavity, right behind the point where your eyeglasses rest on your nose.

The third sensory system involved in food flavor involves touch and temperature nerves that can also be activated by chemicals. This is known as chemesthesis. In the mouth, these sensations include the burn of chili peppers, the cooling of mouthwash or mints, the tingle of carbonation, or the vibrating buzz of Sichuan peppers. Together, these three chemosensory systems taste, smell and chemesthesis work to define our perceptual experiences from food.

Loss of smell is common with many viruses, including rhinoviruses, influenza, parainfluenza and coronaviruses, and it is normally attributed to nasal inflammation that restricts airflow.

If your nose is blocked, it is not surprising you are not able to smell much. Typically, the other two systems taste and oral chemesthesis are not affected, as a blocked nose does not alter our ability to taste sugar as sweet or feel the burn from a chili pepper. With time, most patients recover their senses of smell, but occasionally some do not. Causes vary, but in some individuals, inflammation from a viral illness appears to permanently damage key structures located around the smell receptors.

Since early spring 2020, firsthand reports have indicated that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, might affect the mouth and nose more severely than the common cold or the flu. Not only were the reports of loss more frequent, but they also differed from what is normally seen.

One British surgeon with COVID-19 posted a video to Twitter showing that he had lost the ability to feel the burn of chilies. Others, like Penn State undergraduate Caela Camazine, reported losing their sense of smell and taste completely without any nasal congestion.

Based on the spike in Google searches, and these atypical accounts of chemosensory loss, more than 600 researchers, clinicians and patient advocates from 60 countries formed the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research.

The Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research launched a global survey in 32 different languages to better understand what COVID-19 patients are experiencing. Initial results from our survey support the idea that COVID-19 related losses are not limited to smell, as many patients also report disruption of taste and chemesthesis.

Our understanding of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus can affect multiple sensory systems is still quite limited, but is advancing daily. Initial work suggests that smell disturbances in COVID-19 patients are caused by the disruption of cells that support olfactory neurons. In our noses, we have nerve cells called olfactory sensory neurons, which are covered with odor receptors tuned for certain volatile chemicals. When a chemical binds an odor receptor, the olfactory sensory neuron fires a signal to the brain which we perceive as a smell. Notably, it does not appear that the virus targets olfactory sensory neurons directly.

Instead, the virus seems to target specialized supporting cells that cradle the olfactory sensory neurons. These support cells are covered with a different receptor, the ACE2 receptor, which acts as an entry point for the virus. In contrast, the way SARS-CoV-2 might directly affect taste and chemesthesis remains unknown.

We just dont know yet whether COVID-19 patients will recover their sense of smell, taste and chemesthesis. Many patients have reported recovering completely within two or three weeks, while others report their sensory loss lasts for many weeks. To connect with other individuals who are experiencing smell and taste loss related to COVID-19, consider reaching out to organizations advocating on behalf of those who suffer from smell and taste loss, such as AbScent and FifthSense.

Because more data are needed, we are asking for your help in our research. If you know anyone who is (or recently has been) coughing and sniffling, invite them to complete the Global Consortium for Chemosensory Research survey, which takes about 10 minutes.

We want anyone who has had any upper respiratory illness (COVID-19 or not) recently so we can compare individuals with COVID-19 to individuals with the flu or the common cold. By volunteering for our study, or by spreading the word on this research study, you can contribute to better understand how COVID-19 is special in its ability to affect smell, taste and chemesthesis.

[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research. Sign up for The Conversations newsletter.]

John E Hayes, Associate Professor of Food Science, Pennsylvania State University and Valentina Parma, Research Assistant Professor, Temple University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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COVID-19, smell and taste how is COVID-19 different from other respiratory diseases? - fortworthbusiness.com

Human Behavior

COLUMN: Securing the future is our job – Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

They are asking why racism and sexism even exist. And they are expressing grave uncertainty about their future.

They are also demonstrating how to fix it.

One of my sons wanted to talk about all of this. To offer perspective I told him about 1968 and the assassination of Martin Luther King, then Robert Kennedy. About riots and Vietnam. We didnt know how long that war would last, and I told him how I wondered if Id have a future past 18.

It wasnt to say the current situation is canceled out by past struggles, but rather to suggest that the future will be determined by his equal fortitude.

As adults were not doing our jobs. Weve defiled their environment and codes of civility. We mock justice, and weve allowed the scourge of racism to expand into power. We cannot simply brush this mess into their dustpan and hope for the best; it is incumbent upon us to own our part.

Recently I got into a Facebook argument with some (mostly) young people who were correcting my interpretation of a meme. My intention was different from what they perceived, and I was called some horrible things. My impulse was to defend myself and I fired back, calling them virtue-signalers, sanctimonious and mewling antagonists.

And I was wrong. Not because self-defense was wrong, but because I counter-attacked. All I did was alienate young people who are trying to make that necessary difference. Defensiveness is within the arsenal of human behavior, but it belies experience and wisdom.

See the article here:
COLUMN: Securing the future is our job - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

Human Behavior

The Curse of racism Part 1 of 2 – Daily Times

The color of the skin is determined by the pigmentation just underneath it. More pigmentation means darker complexion. Hence the analogy color is only skin deep. Yet color determines race. Racism is one of the three leading causes of conflicts and wars in human history. Other two being religion and territorial grab.

Tracking the evolution of racism is a challenge for those who study human behavior. It creates prejudice, discrimination and antagonism against those who look different. It is based on the faulty belief that lighter skin is superior to those who look darker. This belief gave birth to slavery.

Racism is a virus that consumes multiple societies, even our own. It can be traced back to the Greek and Roman Empires. Extremely intolerant, they treated all non Greeks as slaves. Their brutality knew no bounds. Hollywood classic cinema captured some of it.

The modern cycle of racism and enslavement started in the late 15th century. Fair skinned Europeans, the whites started it. Portugal and Spain emerged at that time as maritime powers dominating the seas. They set sail to enrich themselves by looting the wealth from the Old world to the East. They accidently discovered the New world. Rather than fighting amongst themselves they created the earliest World Order in 1494 by signing the Treaty of Tordesillas between themselves.

The modern cycle of racism and enslavement started in the late 15th century

They carved up the world for exploitation and plunder. The dividing line was drawn west of Brazil. Both countries burst onto the scene of insulated societies living simple lives with bows and arrows as their weapons. Throughout the 16th century all the plundered wealth was shipped back to king and country.

It was the start of the colonization era of the Americas. Armed with cannons, gunpowder and muskets they occupied large swaths of rich and fertile land. The Natives were overrun by superior firepower. Europeans caused environmental damage through deforestation to till and harvest crops not grown at home. A tragedy that continues till today, endangering our earth. With limited populations back home, there was a severe shortage of labor.

Seeing the affluence in Portugal and Spain, England, Holland, and France jumped into the fray. They developed their maritime capabilities to grab their share of the new found wealth. British East India Company was founded in 1600 followed by Dutch East India Company in 1602. Supported by their royalties they set out to colonize, grab power and exploit resources and wealth.

Their domination of the world scene gave birth to extreme arrogance and racial superiority. They all sought labor and found a bonanza in Africas west coast. Steeped in the ways of intrigue and bribery, these colonial powers formed unholy alliances with local chiefs and greedy kings. The warlords would go out on a hunt. Instead of hunting animals they captured innocent citizens. They caged and shackled them and sold them to slave traders operating out of Slave Coast in West Africa. Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ghana being the main harvesting areas.

During the next century 10 to 15 million Africans were shipped to North and South America, Caribbean and some to Europe as slaves. 6 million were shipped to North America; 2 million on ships under the British flag, starting 1619. These innocent victims were sold to work on sugar cane plantations and cotton fields.

European slave owners in the Americas had a sense of entitlement. Owning other humans was a birthright as a superior race. These dark skinned savages were meant for menial work. The first President of United States, George Washington was a proud owner of 123 slaves!

The cruel treatment meted out to these slaves is unimaginable. It is captured in books and films. A must read or watch to be sensitized to their sufferings. They included lynching, burning as human torches, whipping to death, rape, starvation and hair raising abuse. This continued for two hundred years. Finally in the mid 1800s it began to jar the conscience of white Americans in the Northeast.

The institution of slavery was challenged and finally defeated in the American Civil War in 1865. The same year it was abolished by President Abraham Lincoln. Blacks were set free but they were dehumanized, made to live in ghettos without education or opportunities. Their lynching and burning on the cross continued. It took black people another hundred years of struggle against discrimination and depravation of basic rights. They finally got a reprieve under the leadership of Martin Luther King.

Both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King met a violent end. In the last seven decades racism may have receded but it never went away. It kept lurking in the shadows to raise its ugly head whenever stoked by forces of negativity. It remains ingrained in the criminal justice system. Black people are assumed guilty because of the color of their skin leading to multiple killings on a regular basis.

The recent murder of George Floyd was caught on camera. Violent death is gruesome to watch but this incident of killing in slow motion is chilling. He was suffocated with a knee on his neck for 8 minutes 46 seconds by a white officer showing no emotions, while being held down by two other white officers. It is revolting; the cruelty towards black people can no longer be ignored. It is fast becoming the tipping point for the blacks and whites in USA. It happened under President Trumps watch. Since 2016 as the President he has sowed the seed of division. He never became the president for all Americans, only for his voter base. He is consumed by his desire for re-election. I will write on the emerging social revolution in the USA in part II of this article.

The writer is the director of CERF, a non-profit, charitable organisation in Canada

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The Curse of racism Part 1 of 2 - Daily Times

Human Behavior

The Problem of Racial ProfilingWhy it Matters and What Can be Done About it – Reason

The killing of African-American George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the resulting protests have called new attention to a longstanding issue with American law enforcement: widespread racial profiling. In this post, I would like to consider why racial profiling is a serious problem, why it's so hard to end, and what nonetheless can be done to reduce it.

As I use the term, racial profiling denotes a situation where law enforcement officers treat members of one racial group worse than they would be treated in the same situation if they belonged to another group. If a police officer stops, searches, or arrests a black person when a white person in the same situation would be left alone, that's a case of racial profiling. By no means all cases of abusive police behavior qualify as racial profiling. As Jason Brennan and Chris Surprenant describe in a recent book, American police too often use excessive force in cases involving white officers and white suspects, where race, presumably, is not an issue. Even abuses involving minority civilians are not always a result of racial profiling. The wrongdoing officers may sometimes be "equal-opportunity" practitioners of police brutality, who would have done what they did regardless of the suspects' race.

Ending racial profiling would not end all abusive law enforcement behavior. It wouldn't even end all abuses where minorities are victims. But racial profiling is a serious problem nonetheless. It causes real suffering, it's unconstitutional, and it poisons relations between law enforcement and minority communities.

I. Why Racial Profiling Matters

Though racial profiling is far from the only flaw in American law enforcement, it is nonetheless widespread. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that 59% of black men and 31% of black women say they have been unfairly stopped by police because of their race. Their perceptions are backed by numerous studies including many that control for other variables, including underlying crime ratesshowing that police often treat blacks and Hispanics more harshly than similarly situated whites.

Almost every black male I know can recount experiences of racial profiling. I readily admit they are not a representative sample. But as a law professor, my African-American acquaintances are disproportionately affluent and highly educated. Working-class blacks likely experience racial profiling even more often.

If you don't trust studies or survey data, consider the testimony of conservative Republican African-American Senator Tim Scott, who has movingly recounted multiple incidents in which he was racially profiled by Capitol police. Even being a powerful GOP politician is not enough for a black man to avoid profiling. Or consider the the experiences of right-of-center Notre Dame Law School Dean Marcus Cole. Scott and Cole are not easily dismissed as politically correct "snowflakes" who constantly see racism where none exists.

Most cases of racial profiling do not result in anyone being killed, injured, or even arrested. The police unfairly stop, question, or otherwise harass a minority-group member. But they then let him go, perhaps with a traffic ticket (if it was a vehicle stop). Conservatives are not wrong to point out that the average black person is far more likely to be killed or injured by an ordinary criminal than by a police officer.

But that doesn't mean that racial profiling is trivial or insignificant. Even if one isolated incident might qualify as such, it is painful and degrading if the people who are supposed to "protect and serve" you routinely treat you as a second-class citizen merely based on the color of your skin. And it gets worse if it isn't just about you, because your friends and family get the same treatment.

It is also painful and scary to know that, while racial profiling usually doesn't lead to injury or death, there is always a chance that such an incident could horrifically escalate. When a black man encounters a cop, he often has to worry that the officer might kill or injure him even if he did nothing wrong. Such fear is far less common for whites.

Widespread racial profiling also poisons relationships between police and minority communities. If you (with good reason) believe that cops routinely discriminate against your racial or ethnic group, you are less likely to cooperate with them, report crimes or otherwise presume they are acting in good faith. That creates obvious difficulties for both police and civilians.

Curbing racial profiling should be a priority for anyoneincluding many conservatives and libertarianswho believe government should be color-blind. I have long argued that anyone who holds such viewsas I do myselfcannot tolerate ad hoc exceptions for law enforcement.

If you truly believe that it is wrong for government to discriminate on the basis of race, you cannot ignore that principle when it comes to those government officials who carry badges and guns and have the power to kill and injure people. Otherwise, your position is blatantly inconsistent. Cynics will understandably suspect that your supposed opposition to discrimination only arise when whites are the victims, as in the case of affirmative action preferences in education.

Finally, you have special reason to condemn racial profiling if you are a constitutional originalist (as many conservatives are). Today, most cases under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment involve challenges to the constitutionality laws and regulations that discriminate on the basis of race, or are motivated by such discrimination. But the original meaning of the Clause was centrally focused on unequal enforcement of laws by state and local governments, including the police. That happens when authorities enforce laws against some racial or ethnic groups differently than others, treating some more harshly and others more leniently based on their group identity.

Racial profiling is a paradigmatic example of exactly that problem. Where it occurs, victims are denied equal protection because the very officials who are supposed to provide that protection instead treat them more harshly than members of other groups.

II. Why Racial Profiling is Hard to Combat

While racial profiling is a serious problem, it's also a very difficult one to curtail. One reason why is that it's often hard to detect. With many types of illegal discrimination, the perpetrators leave a record of their decision-making process that can then be assessed by investigators or used as the basis for a lawsuit. In many, perhaps most, racial profiling cases, the relevant decision was made on the fly by a single person, or a small group. There is no record to refer to, and the officer can easily offer a benign explanation for his or her actions. Indeed, sometimes the officer himself won't know for sure whether he would have done the same thing if the race of the civilian involved was different. That makes racial profiling hard to address by using many of the traditional tools of anti-discriminitaion law, including lawsuits targeting specific discriminatory actions.

An additional problem is that racial profiling isn't always the result of bigotry, defined as hatred of a given minority group. Some officers really are awful bigots. But many, probably most, who engage in racial profiling are not. They are instead acting on the basis of what economists call "rational stereotyping." Police know that members of some racial or ethnic groups, particularly young black males, have relatively high crime rates compared to members of most other groups. In situations where they have little other information to go on, police therefore view members of these groups with heightened suspicion, and as a result are more likely to stop them, search them, arrest them, or otherwise take aggressive action.

If the officers who profiled Senator Tim Scott had known he was a senator, they would likely have left him alone. But all they knew just from seeing him was that he was a black male, and that led them to believe he was statistically more likely to be a threat than a woman or a member of some other racial group might be.

Racial disparities in crime rates have a variety of causes, including a long history of racism, and flawed government policies of many types. But there is little the average cop on the beat can do to alleviate these causes. He or she instead may focus primarily on the resulting differences in crime rates.

The fact that such behavior is "rational" in the sense used by economists does not make it right. Rather, this is just one of a number of situations where rational decision-making by individuals can lead to a harmful systemic outcome. Racial profiling resulting (in part) from rational stereotyping may be efficient from the standpoint of individual officers trying to cope with uncertainty under pressure. But it harms innocent people, and poisons police-community relations in the long run.

But the fact that racial profiling may often be rational makes it more difficult to root out. Police, after all, are far from the only people who use rational stereotyping as a way to cope with limited information. People of all races and walks of life routinely do so in a wide range of contexts. If you come to a party where you don't know anyone, there is a good chance you will make snap judgments about who to try to talk to, and that those judgments may be influenced by stereotyping based on appearance, including race and gender.

Jesse Jackson, the first prominent African-American presidential candidate, once said "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then (I) look around and see someone white and feel relieved." Jackson was relying on rational stereotyping: a white person (at least on that particular street) was statistically less likely to be a robber than an African-American.

The point here is not that rational stereotyping by Jackson or by a party-goer is the moral equivalent of racial profiling by police. Very far from it. The latter is far, far worse, because it causes vastly greater harm and injustice. Rather, these examples help us recognize that rational stereotyping is not confined to bigots, that it is very common human behavior, and that it is therefore very hard to avoid.

When we ask police officers to suppress their instincts and avoid racial profilingas we should!we are also asking them to exhibit a level of self-control that most of us often fall short of. The demand here goes well beyond simply asking them to avoid being bigoted thugs. It's asking them to refrain from using a decision-making heuristic that even otherwise well-intentioned people may often resort to.

III. What Can be Done.

While curbing racial profiling is difficult, it is not impossible. Many of the policy reforms that can curtail police abuses more generally will also indirectly reduce racial profiling. Abolishing or limiting qualified immunity can incentivize police to reduce abusive behavior of many kinds, including that which stems from profiling. Police who know they can be sued for wrongdoing are likely to be more careful about racial discrimination. Curtailing the War on Drugs and other laws criminalizing victimless offenses can eliminate many of those confrontations between police and civilians that are especially prone to racial bias. The same goes for curbing the power of police unions, which protect abusive officers of all types, including those who engage in racial discrimination.

If racial profiling is hard to detect, we can at least impose serious punishment in cases where it does get detected. If officers know that racial discrimination is likely to land them in hot water, they may try harder to avoid it, even if the chance of getting caught in any one incident is relatively low.

Perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit is getting rid of the policy under which the federal government explicitly permits the use of racial and ethnic profiling in the enforcement of immigration law in "border" areas (which are defined broadly enough to include locations where some two-thirds of the American population lives). This is by far the most extensive example of openly permitted racial discrimination in federal government policy. The Obama administration decided to let it continue, and Trump has perpetuated it as well. If we are serious about ending racial discrimination in law enforcement, it needs to go.

Laws and incentives are important. But ending racial profilinglike other forms of invidious discriminationalso requires cultural change. Survey data indicate that most white police officers believe current law enforcement practices treat blacks fairly (though the same polls show most minority officers disagree). Many of these officers probably believe racial profiling is justified, or at least defensible under the circumstances police face on the job. That needs to change.

History shows that progress against prejudice and discrimination often depends on changing social norms, as much as on laws. When I was growing up in the 1980s, it wasin most placessocially acceptable to display open bigotry against gays and lesbians. People routinely used words such as "fag" and "homo" as insultseven in liberal Massachusetts (where I lived at the time). People who behave that way today would be socially stigmatized in most settings, even though such expressions remain legal. The stigma is one reason why such behavior is a lot less ubiquitous than it used to be.

Police work is one of the relatively few settings in which widespread racial discriminationof a certain typeis still considered socially acceptable. If that changes, the behavior itself is likely to change, even if it remains difficult to challenge through formal legal processes. Consider what might happen if police officers known to engage in racial profiling were stigmatized by their peers or by respected authority figures in their communities. In that world, racial profiling would probably still exist; but it would likely be a good deal less common.

I don't have any brilliant suggestions for bringing about such a change in social norms. But history shows it can be done, and the issue is one that deserves more consideration by those with relevant expertise.

In sum, racial profiling is genuine problem that deserves to be taken seriously. There is no simple solution to it. We probably can't get rid of it entirely. But much can be done to make it less widespread than it is today.

Link:
The Problem of Racial ProfilingWhy it Matters and What Can be Done About it - Reason

Human Behavior

From education to telemedicine, Agora.io is disrupting consumer behaviour and how people collaborate – YourStory

The current scenario has brought with it a new set of challenges for organisations across all sectors. From providing individuals with the necessary healthcare, to ensuring that education continues undisrupted, organisations have adopted remote working tools to maintain the continuity of operations, and to meet necessary social distancing regulations.

A major facilitator of this much-needed continuity are platforms that provide voice, video and live interactive streaming. Agora.io is one such platform that has stepped up to meet this demand. Its voice, video, and messaging SDKs are embedded into mobile, web and desktop applications across more than 1.7 billion devices globally. The platform has seen a 300 percent growth in developer sign-ups from last quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2020, and the space is expected to bring the markets compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to more than 19 percent.

Agora is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and backed by venture capital firms Morningside, SIG, GGV Capital, ShunWei, and IDG.

To understand how such tools and platforms will influence consumer behaviour, their role in ensuring continuity and normalcy in these times, and the future of the industry, YourStory spoke to Tony Wang, Co-Founder at Agora.io and Ranga Jagannath, Director Growth, India for Agora.io

YourStory [YS]: Could you tell us how the growth trajectory of the real-time video, audio and live streaming has changed since the pandemic?

Tony Wang [TW]: The pandemic has brought about a profound shift in human behavior. I wont say that this shift will be to a purely virtual platform, as it is not possible nor is it healthy. Earlier, people would take up to three or four video calls. Now, they make a lot more of these calls, and they get tired, mainly due to the latency. Face-to-face conversations are more fluid as the brain does need to process the latency, missed out words or even background noise.

Which is why for the first time, low latency, real-time (video calling) is on peoples agenda. Earlier, people were happy with good enough. But now, the real-time aspect is important as people are living in it. That is a fundamental shift in the expectations in the space, and Agoras SDKs will help platforms in building this ability.

YS: Globally, what new use cases has Agora.io seen emerging for the companys products and solutions?

TW: While people realize that video calling is great, it may not currently fit all use cases. The future may see more such platforms embedded inside workflows. Say you are working on a Google Doc. You are not going to get out the document and launch a stand-alone video call application. Instead, you use the embedded feature in those documents, like Google Hangouts to collaborate over the document.

We are also seeing more acceptance on remote teams. I believe that since we have been forced to do remote working for six months, people will actually innovate and adjust a customer to a remote team. Remote teams have some new requirements and I think you will see a lot of collaboration, and platforms such as Airmeet, or Remote HQ coming out.

In that vein, the face of education will also be forever changed. Overall, we will see the trend moving towards online. Take K-12 for example: You want to protect the kids from the virus, but at the same time, you cannot give them, one-way, pre-recorded videos as students need to constantly be engaged, and that comes from two-way real time communication. Currently, only few can afford to access quality education. So, to truly change the landscape of Indian education, affordability is a must, which is what we believe we are doing.

The other thing that could be interesting is live shopping. This is already popular in China for certain categories like gadgets, cosmetics, light jewellery, and fashion. Because of Agoras technology, the audience can participate as it is bi-directional and in real-time. I expect to see some breakthrough post the pandemic for one reason: the traffic is terrible. Rather than spend one hour on each way, just stay at home, save that trip and buy these things that will be delivered to your doorstep at a cheaper price.

I think all those things are very positive as they address the lack of physical infrastructure like roads, clean water, power, etc. We all have cellphones, and I think that is going to power the next generations progress.

YS: Could you tell us, from an Indian perspective, how various businesses and platforms are bringing much-needed continuity to the lives of people with voice, video and live interactive streaming?

Ranga Jagannath [RJ]: Education is definitely one sector where we saw platforms like Vedantu and upGrad as being able to reach out to the far-flung areas like the Northeast, which meant a lot of these states were able to continue education. There is a customer that is using our services to aggregate tuition centres across the country that were hit by the virus. And our platform enabled teachers to offer live, interactive classes.

A lot of Indian companies have started using our services for telemedicine. Currently the medical system is stretched, and priority is given to providing urgent care in hospitals and other care centres. But doctors are carrying out one-on-one consulting and diagnosing patients on our platform.

YS: Could you give us an example of new requirements that emerged in the pandemic and how Agoras capabilities have met them?

TW: We have always held the belief that people will eventually go virtual. Our roadmaps are well planned and the pandemic has accelerated our customers adaptation of the technology. We have deployed more servers and bandwidth to accommodate the spikes in usage as the number of customers has exploded with different use cases that are coming up.

More emphasis is being placed on AI. Take education for example. You are a teacher who is teaching 7- to 9-year-olds that rarely pay attention. AI will tell you exactly which student is absent-minded. Because in a real classroom, it is hard to keep an eye on all 50 to 60 of them. With AI, you get specific feedback including who is frustrated and if so, at what point is the class frustrated? When that feedback comes in, the online experience is going to be more efficient.

The other would be noise cancellation. AI is playing a role by making a lot of things possible and providing a better virtual experience.

YS: What should be the priorities for someone looking to build a platform that requires integrated video/audio communication capabilities to provide maximum impact?

TW: I would be looking at the sustainability of the enterprise, and not just roll out something for these COVID-19 times, and pretend the world is going to stop meeting face-to-face. The move to virtual will happen at a slower pace.

The other thing is looking at the monetisation model: Is this a vitamin, or a painkiller? I can make do without a vitamin, but I need painkillers at times. Having a painkiller mindset allows you to focus on the needs of a very small, narrow niche. If you categorise video tools: they are based around work, and off-work situations like entertainment and dating. And if you are doing something around work, you are competing with the likes of Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc., that have infinite funding and teams that are ready to bring out developments on the go. So you have to define your niche, and know how to defend it.

I believe there will be more Indian voices addressing Indian needs. There is time for Indian people after the pandemic abates to start thinking about this, and figure out how startups can do something that will address Made in India, built for India and address Indian concerns.

YS: How do you see the future of the voice, video and live interactive streaming space evolving in the future?

TW: We see apps and platforms are promoting each other. New apps demand more features like real-time capabilities, more people in one room, global coverage, and adult filtering. Such features are heavily based on AI, and those requests trickle down to the network leaders. We at Agora are improving those, and providing more abilities. We released a feature that provides beautification of your voice so that audiences will be attentive. And so this demand and supply influence each other to keep things pushing forward, which makes it very healthy and very exciting as you can then see technology evolve very fast. And at the end of the day, it is going to benefit all cultures as Agoras network is global, and that is going to be faster after the pandemic.

Want to make your startup journey smooth? YS Education brings a comprehensive Funding and Startup Course. Learn from India's top investors and entrepreneurs. Click here to know more.

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From education to telemedicine, Agora.io is disrupting consumer behaviour and how people collaborate - YourStory

Human Behavior

Four Ways to Overcome Bots on the Websites – The Boca Raton Tribune

There are lots of ways how bots may cause trouble to your website: the distortion of statistics, problems with security, search results, and, of course, users experience. Therefore, it is important to know how to prevent bots from damaging your website. We have at least four suggestions for you in this regard.

Perhaps the most common problem that page owners face is bots traffic. Unless the website is protected by cleantalk anti-spam plugin that can be obtained from the cleantalk platform or the similar software, a resource can be attacked for various purposes:

Moreover, it often happens that the owner may not know about serious problems with the web service. For example, if the page is infected with a virus that replaces content, new visitors will not know that they are being deceived. There are also smart bots that simulate user behavior in a given scenario. To detect them, invisible pixels are used: people will not click on a link that they do not see physically, and the bot will not distinguish it from the real one.

If weird traffic appears in your Google Analytics (GA) reports, you should figure out where it comes from. The difficulty is that some bots can imitate human behavior. However, they can still be identified and blocked. Therefore, we recommend you take the following actions:

To separate the natural traffic from the malicious one, GA data is compared by the sources of visits domains, geolocation, browsers, and IPs. If traffic from any source somehow differs from another, you should pay attention to it.

It must be remembered that blocking will not solve the security problems of the page. Therefore, to prevent new attacks, you should use reliable anti-spam services.

Webmasters know the lists of domains from which spam is sent, and you can use them to check for sources that have been found.

There are several ways to prevent bots from accessing the site. For example, you can try to block the domain, IP address, or remove the bots manually.

It is impossible to completely eliminate the possibility of bot attacks on the site. On the other hand, reducing risks is a possible task. You only need to take care of the protection against common attacks and regularly monitor the state of the traffic. In this and many other cases, preventive measures are much more effective than delayed treatment.

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Four Ways to Overcome Bots on the Websites - The Boca Raton Tribune