Gambling on the Dark Side of Nudges
If the maxim of nudges is “Keep it simple,” it has a counterpart for self-interested choice architects: Make it complex.
Culture
More than a Game: What Sports Can Teach Us About Morality, Consciousness, and World Peace
On a winter day in 2013, it was so cold at Lambeau field, home of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, that the stadium’s beer and soda machines froze.
The Paradoxes of Creativity: Sensitive Rockers, Mindful Daydreamers, and Celebrated Outcasts
In their new book, Wired to Create, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman and author Carolyn Gregoire explore the contradictions of creativity. Creativity is never one thing or another, they find. It isn’t clean, it’s messy.
NPR Launches New Podcast Exploring the ‘Hidden Brain’
This is one of the questions NPR’s Shankar Vedantam takes up in an episode of his new podcast Hidden Brain, set to launch next week on September 22.
Google’s Psychedelic Art: This Is Your Computer Brain on Drugs
In the past week, a set of trippy images revealed on Google’s research blog brought the complexity of the human visual system—as simulated by an artificial neural network called GoogLeNet, developed by Google software engineers—to widespread attention.
Reality TV and Body Image: The Not So Real World
How real is the Real World? When it comes to breasts and biceps, not at all. Since 1992, the MTV reality show the Real World along with its “docusoap” progenies like The Hills, Laguna Beach, and the Jersey Shore have shown us a world full of lean bodies, large breasts, and chiseled abs.