From Economist http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13899022

Dr Nesse’s hypothesis is that, as pain stops you doing damaging physical things, so low mood stops you doing damaging mental ones—in particular, pursuing unreachable goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mechanism that identifies certain goals as unattainable and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

It is a neat hypothesis, but is it true? A study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests it might be. Carsten Wrosch from Concordia University in Montreal and Gregory Miller of the University of British Columbia studied depression in teenage girls. They measured the “goal adjustment capacities” of 97 girls aged 15-19 over the course of 19 months. They asked the participants questions about their ability to disengage from unattainable goals and to re-engage with new goals. They also asked about a range of symptoms associated with depression, and tracked how these changed over the course of the study.

Their conclusion was that those who experienced mild depressive symptoms could, indeed, disengage more easily from unreachable goals. That supports Dr Nesse’s hypothesis. But the new study also found a remarkable corollary: those women who could disengage from the unattainable proved less likely to suffer more serious depression in the long run.

Mild depressive symptoms can therefore be seen as a natural part of dealing with failure in young adulthood. They set in when a goal is identified as unreachable and lead to a decline in motivation. In this period of low motivation, energy is saved and new goals can be found. If this mechanism does not function properly, though, severe depression can be the consequence.

link

Do people with Asperger Syndrome understand intentional actions in a different way than people without Asperger Syndrome? Edouard Machery, a philosopher of psychology and an experimental philosopher in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, says they do:

    Consider the following probes:

    The Free-Cup Case

    Joe was feeling quite dehydrated, so he stopped by the local smoothie shop to buy the largest sized drink available. Before ordering, the cashier told him that if he bought a Mega-Sized Smoothie he would get it in a special commemorative cup. Joe replied, ‘I don’t care about a commemorative cup, I just want the biggest smoothie you have.’ Sure enough, Joe received the Mega-Sized Smoothie in a commemorative cup. Did Joe intentionally obtain the commemorative cup?

    The Extra-Dollar Case

    Joe was feeling quite dehydrated, so he stopped by the local smoothie shop to buy the largest sized drink available. Before ordering, the cashier told him that the Mega-Sized Smoothies were now one dollar more than they used to be. Joe replied, ‘I don’t care if I have to pay one dollar more, I just want the biggest smoothie you have.’ Sure enough, Joe received the Mega-Sized Smoothie and paid one dollar more for it. Did Joe intentionally pay one dollar more?

    You surely think that paying an extra dollar was intentional, while getting the commemorative cup was not. So do most people (Machery, 2008).

    But Tiziana Zalla and I have found that if you had Asperger Syndrome, a mild form of autism, your judgments would be very different: You would judge that paying an extra-dollar was not intentional, just like getting the commemorative cup (Zalla and Machery ms).

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/11/chart-of-day-gre-scores-by-academic.html

明報網站 2008年10月14日

江西男子指天發誓後遭雷擊

江西一男子指天發毒誓，轉身就遭電擊。因搶救及時，男子目前已脫離生命危險。

十三日上午，吉安縣黃某找到家住井岡山大市場的男子涂某稱，三年前一名朋友結婚時，涂某曾讓他代送了三百元禮金，此後涂某將此事遺忘一直未還錢。涂某聽後稱沒有此事。於是，黃某便對涂某說，如果涂某敢對天發誓，他就不要這錢了。

涂某聽後，走到門前指天發誓說，若欠了黃某的錢，他就遭天打雷劈或觸電死，黃某見狀就走了。

但五分鐘後，當涂某洗完米用電飯煲煮飯時，因未擦乾手上的水，手剛一碰到電飯煲插頭上已老化的電線，就被電擊倒在地，不能動彈。

所幸涂某的兒子此時放學回家，發現後趕緊報警。民警趕到後，立即將涂某送往醫院。

(中通社)

The full list of winners:

Nutrition: Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence for their study showing that food actually tastes better if it sounds crunchier.

Peace: The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

Archaeology: Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino for demonstrating that armadillos can turn the contents of an archaeological dig upside down.

Biology: Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert and Michel Franc for showing that fleas on dogs can jump higher than fleas on a cats.

Medicine: Dan Ariely for demonstrating that expensive fake medicine is more effective than cheap fake medicine.

Cognitive Science: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero, Akio Ishiguro and Agota Toth for demonstrating that slime moulds can solve puzzles.

Economics: Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tyber and Brent Jordan for discovering that the fertility cycle of a lap dancer affects her tip-earning potential.

Physics: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith for proving that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

Chemistry: Sheree Umpierre, Joseph Hill and Deborah Anderson for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide (it was shared with C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu and B.N. Chiang who showed the opposite).

Literature: David Sims for his passionately written study “You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations.”

“in a murder case in Pune, in Maharashtra State, that a judge explicitly cited a scan as proof that the suspect’s brain held “experiential knowledge” about the crime that only the killer could possess, sentencing her to life in prison.

…

This latest Indian attempt at getting past criminals’ natural defenses begins with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, in which electrodes are placed on the head to measure electrical waves. The suspect sits in silence, eyes shut. An investigator reads aloud details of the crime — as prosecutors see it — and the resulting brain images are processed using software built in Bangalore.

The software tries to detect whether, when the crime’s details are recited, the brain lights up in specific regions — the areas that, according to the technology’s inventors, show measurable changes when experiences are relived, their smells and sounds summoned back to consciousness. The inventors of the technology claim the system can distinguish between peoples’ memories of events they witnessed and between deeds they committed.”

Reading Hidden Intentions in the Human Brain, Current Biology

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.11.072

《商業周刊》採訪:

(索羅斯) 答：投資之前，我會預先有一套假設，根據假設判斷未來事件怎麼發生，然後提出一套論點，也算是一種想法，然後挑選符合假設的投資環境。

進場後，我會比較實際情況和論點之間的差異，進一步檢驗原先的假設。這其中牽涉到直覺，但我還是有一套理論架構的。

問：如果你是錯的，接下來你會怎麼做？

答：我有投資假設，我會重新檢視想法與現實，如果不一致，我才確定我方向錯誤。

問：但有時候行情暫時脫軌演出，然後又回到正軌。你要如何判斷？這需要點天分吧？

答：當現實與假設有所偏差，我會運用批判思考，找出偏差的原因；我或許會調整投資主題，也有可能找出突然出現影響的外力因素，所以最後有可能是加碼，而非賣掉。