Absurdly Drivenlooks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

You need music to work to.

Just ask thehordes of wise tech people who sit all day at work with their headphones maskingtheir personality.

You also need music to sell.

How often, indeed, do stores and restaurants spend hours contemplating what sort of music will get people's credit cards to feel looser?

And then there's the ads that plague TV with seemingly every hit song ever created.

Surely, then, it would be good to know precisely what it is that makes a song popular.

Popular everywhere, that is. All brands want to be global, don't they?

Naturally, some extremely erudite types decided to discover just what makes certain types of music cross boundaries.

Even more naturally, the idea to do it came from Harvard types. Specifically, froma fellow of the Harvard Data Science Initiative,a graduate student in Harvard'sDepartment of Human Evolutionary Biology anda professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University -- who used to attend Harvard.

It's the very assumption that music is universal that these scientists wanted to question.

How, though, to make such a study unbiased?

Well, they persuaded 30,000 listeners -- found by crowdsourcing -- to participate.

They used an algorithm -- because of course all algorithms are unbiased -- to find notable patterns in different types of music.

They limited themselves to six questions:

Does music appear universally? What kinds of behavior are associated with song, and how do they vary among societies? Are the musical features of a song indicative of its behavioral context (e.g., infant care)? Do the melodic and rhythmic patterns of songs vary systematically, like those patterns found in language? And how prevalent is tonality across musical idioms?

Their conclusions were, perhaps, reassuring. Or, depending on your level of self-confidence, obvious.

Across the 60 societies they studied,they concluded that lullabies,healing songs, dance songs, and love songs share the same fundamental patterns.

As the researchers put it:

For songs specifically, three dimensions characterize more than 25 percentof the performances studied: formality of the performance, arousal level, and religiosity. There is more variation in musical behavior within societies than between societies, and societies show similar levels of within-society variation in musical behavior.

There's surely something soothing about knowing that, all over the world, people are merely human and have many of the same creative triggers and responses.

There's something uplifting to learn that we're all just humans trying to get by.

It would truly be bizarre to encounter a society that managed to do without music.

Still, now you can feel sure that the music in your your ads will likely work around the world.

You also have scientific permission to enjoy the most obscure music you can find on YouTube.

It may be K-Pop. It may be the classic Welsh stylings of Edward H. Dafis. It may be Mongolian throat singing or Indonesian Pop Minahasa.

Know that you are not alone.

In essence, if you're in a certain mood but in an unfamiliar place, you can still find music that'll harmonize perfectly.

Now, if only sciencecould solve some of the world's other problems.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

More here:
Science Can Explain Why People All Over The World Like The Same Songs, Says A New Harvard Study - Inc.com

Being reasonable[1], a criterion of common law, is used by many nations to conduct fair judgements[2] and to safeguard communities from non-balanced behaviors. This idea suggests that unreasonable behaviors are the ones that cause harm and injury. Integrating the reasonable man question to daily life, to behaviors in organizations and to education systems, allows one to awaken the notion of standard of care[3] as defined by law, which could be interpreted as that deeply embedded humanity in oneself. While creating rules and laws does put societies in order, and does give guidelines to whats lawful and to whats not, emphasizing this faculty is a building block to peace.

Commitment to the reasonable man theory, a building block to many constitutions, is a commitment to ones higher self, rather than to instinct. Training individuals to act in a way thats reasonable, makes checks and balances internal[4] as one consults with ones inner knowledge before acting. To many nations, the reasonable person theory serves as a judiciary guide as a jury generally determines whether a defendant has acted reasonably[5].

On many occasions, judges use this theory post-conflict to assess whether a persons behavior was justifiable or not. Though widely used, one may question its reliability as this concept seems to some both subjective and abstract. Despite those disadvantages, it makes sense to use this concept to differentiate whats considered to be normal, from whats considered to be radical. However, introducing this concept merely post-conflict may help in implementing justice, but will less likely prevent conflict from taking place, as an average citizen will probably have not heard that concept unless he or she has been involved in a case as a plaintiff or a defendant[6].

Given the above, it may make sense to try to integrate this concept to our societies to minimize conflict. At first glance, developing this quality, of being reasonable, seems difficult, for locating this attribute within oneself is like trying to find a thread within a knot. Unless it is nourished and mended over and over again, it will less likely grow and sustain. Yet, what makes that possible is that this thread, though hidden, does exist. Its that solid knowledge of its existence that pioneers of ethics ought to constantly seek and build upon, without suspicion.

Societys capacity to diffuse conflict, lies within mans ability to make reasonable decisions. There are three advantages for using the reasonable person test with oneself before acting:

1. Pacing oneself: While the reasonable man question is highly subjective, it may pace one and make people take calculated risks rather than jump into matters that could have consequences to themselves and to others. Asking oneself that central question if what one is doing is reasonable enhances both: focus and awareness. What shall most likely happen when one asks and contemplates that question is a state of slowing down and of becoming more contemplative and reflective rather than impulsive.

2. Moderation: It is more likely for that faculty, to give middle non-extreme answers. After asking that question to oneself, answers will mostly neither harm oneself nor others. In that way, one will less likely find oneself, pulling oneself or others to places that are neither necessary nor safe. Middle and less emotionally charged solutions that create and duplicate hate will less likely emerge. Nevertheless, this moderation, makes matters negotiable. What usually makes matters negotiable is two things: firstly, the related person will become approachable, having consulted with that moderate part of oneself, and Secondly, the related person will get further from extreme points of view.

3. Social stability: Last but not least, consulting with this faculty makes one stray away from decisions that are merely interest-based. While no reasonable person will self-sabotage oneself on purpose, one will be less likely to take rash decisions to save oneself, while being totally non-mindful of others, unless the main intention is to harm others. Thats why, it is safe to say that most decisions that do not require self-defense, as self-defense sometimes may cause inflicting harm on others, will be peaceful and much less likely be offensive.

Having determined that being reasonable is a necessary quality for building a healthy society, this quality could be enhanced among people through three ways:

1. Integration to Education Systems: While there has been controversy whether classes of ethics are important, and would make any difference in human behavior, it can at least, with time, create a new norm[7]. Integrating ethics into education systems helps youth and adults get acclimated to that concept and to that way of thinking[8]. For this sense, the sense of reasonability, to become solid, and easily extractable, it ought to be constantly mended through repetition and practice[9]. The more this faculty gets trained and used, the more it becomes second nature.

2. Inclusion in Assessment Tests: Ethics assessment tests for entrance to any institution, whether educational or not, are as important as any non-ethics assessments. Through ones career, it has been proved by some research[10] that good performance impacts ones ethical behavior. For ethics to not be the mere result of good performance, entrance assessment tests are necessary. This way, one will have ethics ingrained deeply independent of ones situation. While some research[11] have been done on the effectiveness of assessment tests for the recruitment process, few have been made for the purpose of directing the general behaviors of employees and students to embrace ethical behaviors through their career or through study at the university. Creating assessment tests that involve material on ethics when recruiting new individuals in public and private institutions emphasizes to candidates the significance of this criterion, and reminds them of its importance. Repetition of this material within assessment tests, whether in public or private institutions, and to educational institutions or work-related institutions, shall create that state where individuals constantly prepare to pass those tests, and independently train themselves on how to achieve desired results.

3. Creation of Ethics Departments: Furthermore, an ethics department in public and private organizations should be seen as a necessity and not a luxury. Such departments may conduct constant trainings and assessments, to ensure that being reasonable and dealing with conflict effectively are becoming well-rooted traits among its members. While business institutions at times are reluctant to emphasize or invest in ethics linking ethics with financial losses, doing so may create opposite results. Ethics could minimize short term results but more likely ensure the type of constancy which most likely allow organizations to thrive and flourish[12].

In conclusion, training individuals to act in a way thats reasonable, creates checks and balances within oneself. Some may argue that its a very abstract approach to create such decisions in such a manner and thats why those decisions may not be accurate. With practice and integration, this faculty becomes more and more reliable. The reasonable person theory ought to not only be used post-conflict by judges after catastrophes arise, but also could be used for conflict prevention and to create humans that are moderate, objective and humane.

[6] The plaintiff is the party filing the lawsuit. The defendant is the party upon which the lawsuit is filed.

Continued here:
Conflict Prevention: Utilizing the Historical Reasonable Person of Common Law - Mediate.com

It is an indisputable fact that we are the products of our surroundings to a certain extent. It is often unclear why we make the decisions that we do. This fact is illustrated by the accident of birth phenomenon, the idea that the biggest predictor of religious affiliation is the geography which one is born into. Our decisions are largely the result of genetic, sociological, and psychological factors. While the task can seem overwhelming, trying to understand these factors and their influences can provide one with greater clarity into ones life and enables them to have a level of agency that would be unattainable otherwise.

I knew a young man who was planning to serve a mission for his church to Europe. This mission, a two-year trip in the young mans religion and culture served as a rite of passage, and some young women within his religious paradigm would not even consider the thought of dating a member of their church who did not serve one. One of this young mans friends asserted that the motivation behind this young mans decision to serve a mission was his desire to reproduce. The friend said that the mission was a reproductive strategy, and that this young mans religious beliefs were only a means to that end. Regardless of what this young mans motivations actually were, his friend brought up an interesting point. The psychologists Sigmund Freud and Arthur Schopenhauer believed strongly that the desire for self-propagation was the fundamental motivator of human behavior, often referred to as Schopenhauers Will. While not entirely applicable to every situation, to view ones own behavior and the behavior of others through this or other lenses can be incredibly enlightening. If this young man was really serving a mission for the sake of reproduction, his cognitive mind would never realize it, unless he first questioned the validity of his own consciousness.

Paul Tillich, a Protestant theologian, once said that you could learn all you needed to know about a man by asking one question: What do they worship? In my own life, Ive started to ponder what I worship and I have learned a lot. I realized very quickly that some of my motivations were not what I thought they were. Immanuel Kant defines enlightenment as the individuals emergence from their self-imposed minority, meaning the inability for one to think for themselves. This form of transcendent thought can only be attained by understanding the processes that motivate our decisions and behavior. I'll end my article with a quote that my English high school teacher had plastered in his classroom, a reference to Platos allegory of the cave: Wake up, it's time to leave the cave!

Story continues below video

Excerpt from:
Wake up, it's time to leave the cave - The Herald Journal

Getting its world premiere at documentary festival IDFA in Amsterdam, Tonje Hessen Scheis gripping AI doc iHuman drew an audience of more than 700 to a 10 a.m. Sunday screening at the incongruously old-school Path Tuschinski cinema. Many had their curiosity piqued by the films timely subject matterthe erosion of privacy in the age of new media, and the terrifying leaps being made in the field of machine intelligencebut its fair to say that quite a few were drawn by the promise of a Skype Q&A with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who made headlines in 2013 by leaking confidential U.S. intelligence to the U.K.s Guardian newspaper.

Snowden doesnt feature in the film, but it couldnt exist without him: iHuman is an almost exhausting journey through all the issues that Snowden was trying to warn us about, starting with our civil liberties. Speaking after the filmwhich he very much enjoyedSnowden admitted that the subject was still raw for him, and that the writing of his autobiography (this years Permanent Record), had not been easy. It was actually quite a struggle, he revealed. I had tried to avoid writing that book for a very long time, but when I looked at what was happening in the world and [saw] the direction of developments since I came forward [in 2013], I was haunted by these developmentsso much so that I began to consider: what were the costs of silence? Which is [something] I understand very well, given my history. When you see the rise of authoritarianismeven in Western, open societiesand you see how closely it dovetails with the development of technology that create stable states rather than free states, I think that should alarm us, and that drove me quite strongly in my work.

Snowden used the example of the changing nature of surveillance. Before 2013, he noted, there were specialists, there were insiders, there were intelligence officers, there were academics and researchers who understood all too well the possibility of mass surveillance. They understood how our technologies and our techniques could be applied to change the world of intelligence gathering from the traditional methodwhich was, you name a target and you monitor them specifically. You send officers into their homes. They plant a camera or a listening device. You have officers on the street who follow them to meetings, in cars and on foot. It was very expensive. And that created a natural constraint on how much surveillance was done. The rise of technology meant that, now, you could have individual officers who could now easily monitor teams of people and even populations of peopleentire movements, across borders, across languages, across culturesso cheaply that it would happen overnight.

At the NSA, he continued, I would come to my desk in the morning and all the information was already there. This was the burden of mass surveillance. Now, as I said, specialists knew this was possible, but the public was not aware, broadly [speaking], and those who claimed that it was happening, or even that it was likely to happen, were treated as conspiracy theorists. You were the crazy person [in] the tin foil hat. The unusual uncle at the dinner table. And what 2013 delivered, and what I see the continuation of today, is the transformation of what was once treated as speculationeven if it was informed speculationto fact.

Returning to the theme of whistleblowing, Snowden reaffirmed his belief that mostly it is a moral obligation. Its not about what you want, he said flatly. Its about what we must do. The invention of artificial general intelligence is opening Pandoras Boxand I believe that box will be opened. We cant prevent it from being opened. But what we can do is, we can slow the process of unlocking that box. We can do it by days. We can do it by decades, until the world is prepared to handle the evils that we know will be released into the world from that box. And the way that we do that, the way that we slow that process of opening the box, is by removing the greed from the process, which I believe is the primary driver for the development of so much of this technology today.

He continued: We should not, and we must not, ban research into machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques that have human impact. But we can, and we should, ban the commercial trade in these technologies at this stage. And what that will do is it means that academic researcherspublic interest organizations, the scientists and researchers who are driven by the public interest [and] the common goodwill continue their work. But all of the companies that are doing this now hold it from these that are pursuing these capabilities to amplify their own power and profits, they will be deterred, because they will have less incentive to do these things now.

Warming to his theme, Snowden reserved the full blast of his disdain for the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook and companies such as Cambridge Analytica, that track our digital footprints and use algorithms to grab our attention. What is happening is that we are being made prisoner to ghosts, he said. We are being imprisoned by models of [our] past behavior that have been determined by machines. We are being used against the future. Our past actions and activities are being used to limit the potential of human behavior, because decisions are being formed based on past observations and these models of past lives.

[This kind of information] cant be misused, he stressed. It must not be misused to decide who gets a job, who gets an education, who gets a loan, who gets [medical] treatment. But if we dont change the direction that we see today, if we allow Facebook and Google and Amazon to pursue these models and to apply these models to every aspect of human decision-makingas they are very, very aggressively striving to [do] today. We will find [that] we have become prisoners of a past that no longer exists.

More here:
Edward Snowden on the Dangers of Mass Surveillance and Artificial General Intelligence - Variety

Thanks to his new attorney filing a motion appealing his conviction, former teacher Norman Achin is currently free on bond. But on Nov. 15, he was sentenced to seven months in jail for using a communication device to solicit a minor.

For 30 years, Achin, 52, was a respected FCPS teacher. He taught Latin at Westfield and West Springfield high schools in 2017-2018; before then, he did so at Chantilly and McLean high schools. He even tutored often in students homes. But when he solicited an undercover police office online, thinking he was a teenage boy, Achin was arrested, July 23, 2018, and suspended from his job without pay. He was later convicted, Aug. 21, following a nonjury trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court, and returned Nov. 15 for sentencing.

Up until these events began, you lived a pretty decent life, said Judge Michael Devine. But then your life took a different turn. Its difficult to reconcile you acting completely out of character, but people do that, all the time.

During Achins trial, a male police detective with the FCPDs Child Exploitation Unit testified against him. When they connected via the Grindr app, the detective was posing online as a teenager named Alex, hoping to catch predators preying on children. To protect his undercover status, this newspaper is not revealing his identity.

THE DETECTIVE told Achin his father was gone, his mother lived out of state, and his aunt who worked nights watched him. He also said he was in high school and would be 15 very soon. I used abbreviations, misspellings and emojis, like teens do, and was kind of emotional. The court heard a phone call between them, saw transcripts of their text messages and Grindr exchanges and also saw a 2-1/2-hour video of the detectives interrogation of Achin following his arrest.

Achin used his middle name, Mike, during their online conversations, which ran from July 11-23, 2018. Im very concerned about your age, Achin told Alex. Achin also asked if they could meet and talk in person. Just talk? asked Alex? Replied Achin: Well, maybe more.

Ive never done this before, so Im nervous, said Alex. To which Achin answered: Me, too. I could get in trouble, even for what weve done so farIm taking a big risk. They arranged a meeting in a park where, instead, police arrested Achin.

Achin said he wanted to tell Alex he was too young to do this. I was also talking with other people [on Grindr and Tinder] and I got confused between the sites I was on. I didnt want anything from him 18 or 19 years old, fine but not a kid. He said he worried that Alex might kill himself, so he wanted to talk to him, maybe as a father figure, because I thought this was a fragile, young man.

However, Achin also sent two photos of himself to Alex one showing his bare torso and abs, and the other, his penis. Saying he could only access Grindr on his phone, not his computer, he told the detective, I couldnt see the pictures I sent, at times, so sent the wrong pics to the wrong people at the wrong time.

He said he thought hed sent the penis photo to a man, not Alex. But Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Elena Lowe noted that Achin never apologized to Alex or said hed sent it by mistake. When he sent the picture, he knew who he was talking with, consistent with their text messages, she said. His statements [about] trying to help this boy were just a cover.

At Achins sentencing, defense attorney Thomas Walsh said hed filed a motion to set aside the courts verdict regarding his client. But, said Devine, Im satisfied Mr. Achin was properly convicted of the offense and is guilty as charged.

The state sentencing guidelines for this case were three to six months in jail, and Lowe requested Achin serve at least three months because the offense includes sending a pornographic picture to a minor and arranging to meet him. It shows no good intention. His actions were inconsistent with normal, human behavior with a child.

Walsh read statements from some teachers and a student saying what a good teacher Achin was and his interest in helping students. I dont believe incarceration is necessary in this case, said Walsh. And the probation and sex-offender registry will be a nightmare for him, for the rest of his life. Seeking a suspended sentence, Walsh added, Hell never be a teacher again, and losing his profession after 30 years has been a pretty hard sanction.

THEN, VOICE BREAKING, Achin stood and told the judge, Much has been made about the fact that this is not normal behavior. But it is normal behavior for me to care, just like my teachers cared about me when I was growing up. I want to protect children, too. I would never do anything to harm anybody.

Devine, however, was unmoved. I believe you cared about students, but I dont believe you felt that way about Alex, he said. Its not how you see yourself, but your actions were not to save this person and vulnerable kids like this are exploited. After he said, I will be 15, you told him, I dont want you latching onto me. That tells me you were looking for your own gratification at the exploitation of a vulnerable minor.

You had plenty of chance not to do this kind of offense and you did it anyway, continued the judge. You knew the risks and even said so. And I dont think you should be treated any differently from any other person who commits this same crime.

Devine then sentenced Achin to three years in prison, suspending all but seven months and placing him on two years active, supervised probation. Achin must also register as a sex offender and comply with whatever his probation officer requires him to do. Devine said he could continue his supervised release while his case is being reviewed by the state court of appeals.

Read this article:
'You Knew the Risks and Did It Anyway' - Virginia Connection Newspapers

News releases | Research | Science

November 27, 2019

When in a large group of mostly anonymous members, such as in social media, people make decisions in a more calculated way than they know.Priscilla Du Preez/Unsplash

The choices we make in large group settings such as in online forums and social media might seem fairly automatic to us. But our decision-making process is more complicated than we know. So, researchers have been working to understand whats behind that seemingly intuitive process.

Now, new University of Washington research has discovered that in large groups of essentially anonymous members, people make choices based on a model of the mind of the group and an evolving simulation of how a choice will affect that theorized mind.

Using a mathematical framework with roots in artificial intelligence and robotics, UW researchers were able to uncover the process for how a person makes choices in groups. And, they also found they were able to predict a persons choice more often than more traditional descriptive methods. The results were published Wednesday, Nov. 27, in Science Advances.

Our results are particularly interesting in light of the increasing role of social media in dictating how humans behave as members of particular groups, said senior authorRajesh Rao, the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang professor in the UWs Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and co-director of theCenter for Neurotechnology.

In online forums and social media groups, the combined actions of anonymous group members can influence your next action, and conversely, your own action can change the future behavior of the entire group, Rao said.

The researchers wanted to find out what mechanisms are at play in settings like these.

In the paper, they explain that human behavior relies on predictions of future states of the environment a best guess at what might happen and the degree of uncertainty about that environment increases drastically in social settings. To predict what might happen when another human is involved, a person makes a model of the others mind, called a theory of mind, and then uses that model to simulate how ones own actions will affect that other mind.

While this act functions well for one-on-one interactions, the ability to model individual minds in a large group is much harder. The new research suggests that humans create an average model of a mind representative of the group even when the identities of the others are not known.

To investigate the complexities that arise in group decision-making, the researchers focused on the volunteers dilemma task, wherein a few individuals endure some costs to benefit the whole group. Examples of the task include guarding duty, blood donation and stepping forward to stop an act of violence in a public place, they explain in the paper.

To mimic this situation and study both behavioral and brain responses, the researchers put subjects in an MRI, one by one, and had them play a game. In the game, called a public goods game, the subjects contribution to a communal pot of money influences others and determines what everyone in the group gets back. A subject can decide to contribute a dollar or decide to free-ride that is, not contribute to get the reward in the hopes that others will contribute to the pot.

If the total contributions exceed a predetermined amount, everyone gets two dollars back. The subjects played dozens of rounds with others they never met. Unbeknownst to the subject, the others were actually simulated by a computer mimicking previous human players.

We can almost get a glimpse into a human mind and analyze its underlying computational mechanism for making collective decisions, said lead author Koosha Khalvati, a doctoral student in the Allen School. When interacting with a large number of people, we found that humans try to predict future group interactions based on a model of an average group members intention. Importantly, theyalso know that their own actions can influence the group. For example, theyare aware that eventhough they are anonymous to others, their selfish behavior would decrease collaboration in the group in future interactionsand possibly bring undesired outcomes.

In their study, the researchers were able to assign mathematical variables to these actions and create their own computer models for predicting what decisions the person might make during play. They found that their model predicts human behavior significantly better than reinforcement learning models that is, when a player learns to contribute based on how the previous round did or didnt pay out regardless of other players and more traditional descriptive approaches.

Given that the model provides a quantitative explanation for human behavior, Rao wondered if it may be useful when building machines that interact with humans.

In scenarios where a machine or software is interacting with large groups of people, our results may hold some lessons for AI, he said. A machine that simulates the mind of a group and simulates how its actions affect the group may lead to a more human-friendly AI whose behavior is better aligned with the values of humans.

Co-authors include Seongmin A. Park, Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis and Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, France; Saghar Mirbagheri, Department of Psychology, New York University; Remi Philippe, Mariateresa Sestito and Jean-Claude Dreher at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod.This research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Science Foundation, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

For more information, contact Rao at rao@cs.washington.edu.

Continue reading here:
A method with roots in AI uncovers how humans make choices in groups and social media - UW News

The choices we make in large group settings such as in online forums and social media might seem fairly automatic to us. But our decision-making process is more complicated than we know. So, researchers have been working to understand whats behind that seemingly intuitive process.

Now, new University of Washington research has discovered that in large groups of essentially anonymous members, people make choices based on a model of the mind of the group and an evolving simulation of how a choice will affect that theorized mind.

Using a mathematical framework with roots in artificial intelligence and robotics, UW researchers were able to uncover the process for how a person makes choices in groups. And, they also found they were able to predict a persons choice more often than more traditional descriptive methods. The results were published inScience Advances.

Our results are particularly interesting in light of the increasing role of social media in dictating how humans behave as members of particular groups, said senior author Rajesh Rao, the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang professor in the UWs Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology.

In online forums and social media groups, the combined actions of anonymous group members can influence your next action, and conversely, your own action can change the future behavior of the entire group, Rao said.

The researchers wanted to find out what mechanisms are at play in settings like these.

In the paper, they explain that human behavior relies on predictions of future states of the environment a best guess at what might happen and the degree of uncertainty about that environment increases drastically in social settings. To predict what might happen when another human is involved, a person makes a model of the others mind, called a theory of mind, and then uses that model to simulate how ones own actions will affect that other mind.

While this act functions well for one-on-one interactions, the ability to model individual minds in a large group is much harder. The new research suggests that humans create an average model of a mind representative of the group even when the identities of the others are not known.

To investigate the complexities that arise in group decision-making, the researchers focused on the volunteers dilemma task, wherein a few individuals endure some costs to benefit the whole group. Examples of the task include guarding duty, blood donation and stepping forward to stop an act of violence in a public place, they explain in the paper.

To mimic this situation and study both behavioral and brain responses, the researchers put subjects in an MRI, one by one, and had them play a game. In the game, called a public goods game, the subjects contribution to a communal pot of money influences others and determines what everyone in the group gets back. A subject can decide to contribute a dollar or decide to free-ride that is, not contribute to get the reward in the hopes that others will contribute to the pot.

If the total contributions exceed a predetermined amount, everyone gets two dollars back. The subjects played dozens of rounds with others they never met. Unbeknownst to the subject, the others were actually simulated by a computer mimicking previous human players.

We can almost get a glimpse into a human mind and analyze its underlying computational mechanism for making collective decisions, said lead author Koosha Khalvati, a doctoral student in the Allen School. When interacting with a large number of people, we found that humans try to predict future group interactions based on a model of an average group members intention. Importantly, they also know that their own actions can influence the group. For example, they are aware that even though they are anonymous to others, their selfish behavior would decrease collaboration in the group in future interactions and possibly bring undesired outcomes.

In their study, the researchers were able to assign mathematical variables to these actions and create their own computer models for predicting what decisions the person might make during play. They found that their model predicts human behavior significantly better than reinforcement learning models that is, when a player learns to contribute based on how the previous round did or didnt pay out regardless of other players and more traditional descriptive approaches.

Given that the model provides a quantitative explanation for human behavior, Rao wondered if it may be useful when building machines that interact with humans.

In scenarios where a machine or software is interacting with large groups of people, our results may hold some lessons for AI, he said. A machine that simulates the mind of a group and simulates how its actions affect the group may lead to a more human-friendly AI whose behavior is better aligned with the values of humans.

Please Donate TodayDid you enjoy this article? Then please consider donating today to ensure that Eurasia Review can continue to be able to provide similar content.

Here is the original post:
Method With Roots In AI Uncovers How Humans Make Choices In Groups And Social Media - Eurasia Review

The first person I talked to in Sword and Shields Wild Area gave me a three-day-old loaf of bread be careful with it, they said. The next person was German and greeted me with a Guten tag! before passing along a tin of beans, a food item they said fell from the sky and hit them in the head.

Interactions like these are plentiful in Sword and Shield; youve probably heard similar stories, too.

Sword and Shield, released for Nintendo Switch on Nov. 15, introduced an open multiplayer space called the Wild Area, where high-level Pokmon roam free. When youre online, plenty of other players inhabit the world, all running around, or riding bikes, doing their own thing. Some players stand in front of trees, as if theyre about to shake berries from their branches. Others are stuck in a seemingly perpetual search for looking for others to help in their Max Raid Battles.

Theres a feeling of social presence in Sword and Shield despite a lack of transparency on how the multiplayer features work. Its not entirely clear if these interactions are happening in real time, or if theyre snapshots of player behavior in the world.

I suspect the latter is the case: I often find myself chasing other players around as they zig-zag through the Wild Area a hint that, perhaps, theyre chasing others that I cant see. Responses from these echoes of players are pre-programmed, a series of messages that are chosen randomly by the game itself. You cant tell, necessarily, if someones interacting with you. Theres never a pop-up window or conversational choice about what response to send. If Im not speaking directly to other people, neither are they.

And yet, despite this understanding of the Wild Area and the players within it particularly, the limitations to engagement the characters darting around the open space feel real to me. I got choked up when I first connected online and interacted with another player. I had spent the majority of the game playing by myself in an empty world before Nintendo switched on the games online servers. It caught me by surprise to suddenly see a Wild Area teeming with life or, at least, the idea of it. It felt like a huge improvement.

Theres a certain presence to the Wild Area, something so perfectly constructed to feel alive, even when its not.

Scholars who study games and other virtual worlds often talk about the concept of presence, Dr. Katharine Ognyanova, assistant professor of communication and information at Rutgers University, told me. This includes ideas such as self-presence, feeling as if your avatar was really you. There is also spatial presence, feeling as if you were really inside that virtual world.

But in Sword and Shield, social presence is the most apt, the feeling as if there are real people interacting with you in the game world. Social presence is felt through two ideas: a perception of agency, as if theres another human controlling the avatars around you, and realistic human behavior, Ognyanova said.

Realistic human behavior is where Sword and Shield both works and somewhat fails the erratic way characters move makes it clear theres a real person behind it. Theres no way a non-player character would be programmed like that. But actual engagement is limited; there are no dialogue options, no way to verbally communicate with another player.

Ognyanova said communication is critical in forming relationships, which means we arent necessarily developing bonds with other players in Sword and Shields Wild Area. Rather, were connecting with them through the in-game options we are given.

Maybe players use those options to adapt within the system, learning to create a language of its own, like in Hearthstone. Communication in Blizzards digital card game is limited in an attempt to restrict certain kinds of trash talk, but players have learned to get around it. Researchers at the University of Jyvskyl in Finland found that players intentionally misuse Hearthstone emotes to communicate with other players, like using Hello both as a greeting and as a sarcastic way to nudge a slow player through a long pause.

Sword and Shield doesnt have even these sorts of basic communications options, but there are a few moments wherein players have to click buttons to interact with others namely, the Pokmon camp and in Max Raid Battles.

Cooking curry at the camp feels like the most intimate interaction available with strangers in Sword and Shield. Once youve set up a camp in the Wild Area, others can visit your tent. Their Pokmon play with yours. You can invite them to cook with you.

Together, you both fan flames, stir a pot, and throw your heart into your curry. It does feel really intimate in a weird way, Pokmon player Cel10e who asked Polygon to use their handle told me. You get to see, at least a simulation of, their real, actual button inputs.

They continued: Its really impressive to me just seeing how other peoples motions, and what Pokmon they have, and what they cook like, is this tiny little snapshot of another person playing the game at the same time as you, even without a chat feature or emote animations or anything.

Its not much, but you can imagine a persons presence in these moments. Whats their cooking style? How are they stirring? What Pokmon are they using? Its a level of engagement that feels just right for a Pokmon game, letting people connect enough to feel that presence, but not enough to let the toxic elements of online gaming seep in.

Its enough to imagine your own little place in this big word in a way that Pokmon games havent let you experience yet. I said it in my review: Sword and Shield open up the world enough to spark wonder the Pokmon chasing me in the Wild Area are a part of that. The other part is existing in a dynamic, changing multiplayer area with both friends and strangers.

Players are using these systems to telegraph things to other players, to help curate these experiences, similar to how camps are constructed by NPCs in the Galar regions routes. Clips from Pokmon camps, some random encounters, others curated experiences like a gaggle of Ditto or Pichu and a Toxel daycare.

You can stumble into others camps randomly, but much of the social game here is going on social media, in clips posted to Twitter or Facebook. Communication and connection is pushed outside of the game, but in a way that still impacts the play experience; theres the idea that you could encounter those players have your own meme experiences to post in Sword and Shields multiplayer area.

Sword and Shields Wild Area has limitations, and players are adapting to work around them. Those limitations extend beyond how players interact; there are very real server problems in Sword and Shield. Digital Foundry noted that connecting to the internet in Sword and Shields Wild Area causes drastic performance drops.

The online interaction in Sword and Shield feels magical, but its still just the beginning. This isnt a massively-multiplayer online game, not even close. And yet, I finally feel like the Pokmon champion I always thought I was.

And Im still humble enough to wander around the world handing out sausages and beans to other players, too.

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In Pokemon Sword and Shield, you cant meet people, but youll feel them - Polygon

Across the globe, caring for loved ones is what matters most.

But, for decades this has not been the focus of many social psychology studies. An international team of researchers led by evolutionary and social psychologists from Arizona State University surveyed over 7,000 people from 27 different countries about what motivates them, and the findings go against 40 years of research. The study will be published on December 3, 2019, in Perspectives on Psychological Science.

People consistently rated kin care and mate retention as the most important motivations in their lives, and we found this over and over, in all 27 countries that participated, said Ahra Ko, an ASU psychology graduate student and first author on the paper. The findings replicated in regions with collectivistic cultures, such as Korea and China, and in regions with individualistic cultures like Europe and the US.

The study included people from diverse countries ranging from Australia and Bulgaria to Thailand and Uganda that covered all continents except Antarctica. The ASU team sent a survey about fundamental motivations to scientists in each of the participating countries. Then, the researchers in each country translated the questions into the native language and made edits so that all the questions were culturally appropriate.

For the past 40 years, evolutionary psychological research has focused on how people find romantic or sexual partners and how this desire affects other behaviors, like consumer decisions. But study participants consistently rated this motivation called mate seeking as the least important factor in their lives.

Evolutionary psychologists define kin care as caring for and supporting family members, and mate retention as maintaining long-term committed romantic or sexual relationships. These two motivations were the most important even in groups of people thought to prioritize finding new romantic and sexual partnerships, like young adults and people not in committed relationships.

The focus on mate seeking in evolutionary psychology is understandable, given the importance of reproduction. Another reason for the overemphasis on initial attraction is that college students have historically been the majority of participants, said Cari Pick, an ASU psychology graduate student and second author on the paper. College students do appear to be relatively more interested in finding sexual and romantic partners than other groups of people.

In all 27 countries, singles prioritized finding new partners more than people in committed relationships, and men ranked mate seeking higher than women. But, the differences between these groups were small because of the overall priority given to kin care.

Studying attraction is easy and sexy, but peoples everyday interests are actually more focused on something more wholesome family values, said Douglas Kenrick, Presidents Professor of Psychology at ASU and senior author on the study. Everybody cares about their family and loved ones the most, which, surprisingly, hasnt been as carefully studied as a motivator of human behavior.

The motivations of mate seeking and kin care were also related to psychological well-being, but in opposite ways. People who ranked mate seeking as the most important were less satisfied with their lives and were more likely to be depressed or anxious. People who ranked kin care and long-term relationships as the most important rated their lives as more satisfying.

People might think they will be happy with numerous sexual partners, but really they are happiest taking care of the people they already have, Kenrick said.

The research team is currently working on collecting information about the relationships among fundamental motivations and well-being around the world.

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ASUs Michael Varnum, associate professor of psychology, along with Jung Yul Kwon, Michael Barlev, Jaimie Krems and Rebecca Neel also contributed to the study. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation.

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All Around the World, Caring for Family Is What Motivates People Most - SciTechDaily

Losing a job can be stressful and demoralizing. Seeing your role replaced by automation is an additional stressor that more workers will have to contend with and worry about in the future.

Robots are already replacing people in some jobs. Apps take orders in chain restaurants, and some supermarkets use self-checkout machines to replace checkers. This is the new reality. The Brookings Institution predicts that 36 million Americans face a high exposure to automation in the coming decades, meaning they will have more than 70% of their role at risk of being substituted by artificial intelligence.

If you had to choose between getting replaced in your job by a robot or by another human, which would you pick? Thats the hard choice that researchers at the Technical University of Munich and Erasmus University in Rotterdam posed to almost 2,000 respondents in a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Turns out, thanks to our egos, we take job loss harder when its our fellow human replacing us, not robots. Most of us would actually rather lose our jobs to robots than other humans if we were forced to choose.

Our egos prefer getting replaced by a bot we cant be compared to.

In a series of studies, researchers Armin Granulo, Christoph Fuchs and Stefano Puntoni asked participants to imagine scenarios in which they were employees being replaced by modern software.

In one study scenario, a large manufacturing firm was reorganizing and some of the existing employees were going to lose their jobs. To achieve the reorganization goals, participants were told, the company had two options: Replace existing employees either with new employees or by robots that could do the tasks automatically.

When they were observers of this scenario, 67% of participants preferred to see the employees replaced by fellow humans rather than by robots. But when participants were told that their own job was at risk, the stakes got more personal. The majority (60%) said they would prefer getting replaced by a robot rather than a fellow human.

In another exercise, researchers measured how sad, frustrated or angry participants felt about the replacement scenario. People losing jobs to robots got a more negative reaction when participants were observers, but when it was their own fictional job on the line, participants said they were more upset about getting replaced by a human.

Why does getting replaced by a fellow colleague seemingly upset us more than getting replaced by a robot? The researchers suggest this contradiction makes sense once you consider human egos.

Its much harder to compare yourself to a robot than to another person, Granulo, the studys lead author, told HuffPost. Your identity is really threatened if you are replaced by somebody else, because its easy to compare yourself to another person and think, Hey, why is he better? In other words, when a colleague with similar human skills is picked to replace you, you may question your own abilities in a way that you would not if replaced by software.

Fuchs said we may have different motives when we are given the opportunity to give someone else employment over a robot, without risking our own role. From a safe observational distance, we tend to think, Well, its better that humans have jobs, Fuchs said.

The technological replacement of human labor has unique psychological consequences, and these consequences should be taken into account, Granulo said. The psychological effects of peoples self-worth, how they think about their future and their skills... it matters why people lose their jobs.

Its important to remember that automation is not a faceless robot coming for your job.

Losing your job sucks. But research shows that we can handle hard business decisions like layoffs when we know that the process was fair and we could give input into the process and had ample notice. If you want to change someones job with automation, it shouldnt just happen out of nowhere.

But, unfortunately, thats what some workers who are actually experiencing automation feel is happening. A November report from the think tank New America was based on 40 in-depth interviews with grocery, food, retail and administrative workers on the frontlines of automation. For them, automation was not a faceless inevitability but a conscious decision made by human managers.

We heard, over and over, that employees felt that the companies they worked for were looking for ways to cut costs, that they were putting shareholder value over the wellbeing of their workers, said Molly Kinder, the lead author of the report and a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution. A lot of them, when they talked about a decision to put in a self-checkout lane, this was not inevitable. They felt there was a choice their employer made, and what was driving this choice was this emphasis on profits.

We dont necessarily have a beef with robots, in other words, but we do have one with managers who make us feel like our contributions dont matter. The technology itself is not the issue; its the extent to which workers are involved in the process and how it ultimately impacts their job satisfaction, their job quality and their job security, Kinder said.

Take it from Naomi, an assistant manager of an apartment complex who was interviewed in the New America report. She felt a lack of agency over software changes at her job. [New employees] wont come to me for benefit questions anymore because its all there through ADP, a human resources software program, she said. They could get rid of me and eliminate my job. The most annoying thing is that your fate is in someone elses hands.

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We Would Rather Lose Our Jobs To Robots Than Humans - HuffPost