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This article is part ofDemystifying AI, a series of posts that (try to) disambiguate the jargon and myths surrounding AI.

Last week, Lee Se-dol, the South Korean Go champion who lost in a historical matchup against DeepMinds artificial intelligence algorithm AlphaGo in 2016, declared his retirement from professional play.

With the debut of AI in Go games, Ive realized that Im not at the top even if I become the number one through frantic efforts, Lee told theYonhap news agency. Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.

Predictably, Se-dols comments quickly made the rounds across prominent tech publications, some of them using sensational headlines with AI dominance themes.

Since the dawn of AI, games have been one of the main benchmarks to evaluate the efficiency of algorithms. And thanks to advances in deep learning and reinforcement learning, AI researchers are creating programs that can master very complicated games and beat the most seasoned players across the world. Uninformed analysts have been picking up on these successes to suggest that AI is becoming smarter than humans.

But at the same time, contemporary AI fails miserably at some of the most basic that every human can perform.

This begs the question, does mastering a game prove anything? And if not, how can you measure the level of intelligence of an AI system?

Take the following example. In the picture below, youre presented with three problems and their solution. Theres also a fourth task that hasnt been solved. Can you guess the solution?

Youre probably going to think that its very easy. Youll also be able to solve different variations of the same problem with multiple walls, and multiple lines, and lines of different colors, just by seeing these three examples. But currently, theres no AI system, including the ones being developed at the most prestigious research labs, that can learn to solve such a problem with so few examples.

The above example is from The Measure of Intelligence, a paper by Franois Chollet, the creator of Keras deep learning library. Chollet published this paper a few weeks before Le-sedol declared his retirement. In it, he provided many important guidelines on understanding and measuring intelligence.

Ironically, Chollets paper did not receive a fraction of the attention it needs. Unfortunately, the media is more interested in covering exciting AI news that gets more clicks. The 62-page paper contains a lot of invaluable information and is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the state of AI beyond the hype and sensation.

But I will do my best to summarize the key recommendations Chollet makes on measuring AI systems and comparing their performance to that of human intelligence.

The contemporary AI community still gravitates towards benchmarking intelligence by comparing the skill exhibited by AIs and humans at specific tasks, such as board games and video games, Chollet writes, adding that solely measuring skill at any given task falls short of measuring intelligence.

In fact, the obsession with optimizing AI algorithms for specific tasks has entrenched the community in narrow AI. As a result, work in AI has drifted away from the original vision of developing thinking machines that possess intelligence comparable to that of humans.

Although we are able to engineer systems that perform extremely well on specific tasks, they have still stark limitations, being brittle, data-hungry, unable to make sense of situations that deviate slightly from their training data or the assumptions of their creators, and unable to repurpose themselves to deal with novel tasks without significant involvement from human researchers, Chollet notes in the paper.

Chollets observations are in line with those made by other scientists on the limitations and challenges of deep learning systems. These limitations manifest themselves in many ways:

Heres an example: OpenAIs Dota-playing neural networks needed 45,000 years worth of gameplay to reach a professional level. The AI is also limited in the number of characters it can play, and the slightest change to the game rules will result in a sudden drop in its performance.

The same can be seen in other fields, such as self-driving cars. Despite millions of hours of road experience, the AI algorithms that power autonomous vehicles can make stupid mistakes, such as crashing into lane dividers or parked firetrucks.

One of the key challenges that the AI community has struggled with is defining intelligence. Scientists have debated for decades on providing a clear definition that allows us to evaluate AI systems and determine what is intelligent or not.

Chollet borrows the definition by DeepMind cofounder Shane Legg and AI scientist Marcus Hutter: Intelligence measures an agents ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments.

Key here is achieve goals and wide range of environments. Most current AI systems are pretty good at the first part, which is to achieve very specific goals, but bad at doing so in a wide range of environments. For instance, an AI system that can detect and classify objects in images will not be able to perform some other related task, such as drawing images of objects.

Chollet then examines the two dominant approaches in creating intelligence systems: symbolic AI and machine learning.

Early generations of AI research focused on symbolic AI, which involves creating an explicit representation of knowledge and behavior in computer programs. This approach requires human engineers to meticulously write the rules that define the behavior of an AI agent.

It was then widely accepted within the AI community that the problem of intelligence would be solved if only we could encode human skills into formal rules and encode human knowledge into explicit databases, Chollet observes.

But rather than being intelligent by themselves, these symbolic AI systems manifest the intelligence of their creators in creating complicated programs that can solve specific tasks.

The second approach, machine learning systems, is based on providing the AI model with data from the problem space and letting it develop its own behavior. The most successful machine learning structure so far is artificial neural networks, which are complex mathematical functions that can create complex mappings between inputs and outputs.

For instance, instead of manually coding the rules for detecting cancer in x-ray slides, you feed a neural network with many slides annotated with their outcomes, a process called training. The AI examines the data and develops a mathematical model that represents the common traits of cancer patterns. It can then process new slides and outputs how likely it is that the patients have cancer.

Advances in neural networks and deep learning have enabled AI scientists to tackle many tasks that were previously very difficult or impossible with classic AI, such as natural language processing, computer vision and speech recognition.

Neural networkbased models, also known as connectionist AI, are named after their biological counterparts. They are based on the idea that the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) that turns experience (data) into behavior. Therefore, the general trend in deep learning has become to solve problems by creating bigger neural networks and providing them with more training data to improve their accuracy.

Chollet rejects both approaches because none of them has been able to create generalized AI that is flexible and fluid like the human mind.

We see the world through the lens of the tools we are most familiar with. Today, it is increasingly apparent that both of these views of the nature of human intelligenceeither a collection of special-purpose programs or a general-purpose Tabula Rasaare likely incorrect, he writes.

Truly intelligent systems should be able to develop higher-level skills that can span across many tasks. For instance, an AI program that masters Quake 3 should be able to play other first-person shooter games at a decent level. Unfortunately, the best that current AI systems achieve is local generalization, a limited maneuver room within their own narrow domain.

In his paper, Chollet argues that the generalization or generalization power for any AI system is its ability to handle situations (or tasks) that differ from previously encountered situations.

Interestingly, this is a missing component of both symbolic and connectionist AI. The former requires engineers to explicitly define its behavioral boundary and the latter requires examples that outline its problem-solving domain.

Chollet also goes further and speaks of developer-aware generalization, which is the ability of an AI system to handle situations that neither the system nor the developer of the system have encountered before.

This is the kind of flexibility you would expect from a robo-butler that could perform various chores inside a home without having explicit instructions or training data on them. An example is Steve Wozniaks famous coffee test, in which a robot would enter a random house and make coffee without knowing in advance the layout of the home or the appliances it contains.

Elsewhere in the paper, Chollet makes it clear that AI systems that cheat their way toward their goal by leveraging priors (rules) and experience (data) are not intelligent. For instance, consider Stockfish, the best rule-base chess-playing program. Stockfish, an open-source project, is the result of contributions from thousands of developers who have created and fine-tuned tens of thousands of rules. A neural networkbased example is AlphaZero, the multi-purpose AI that has conquered several board games by playing them millions of times against itself.

Both systems have been optimized to perform a specific task by making use of resources that are beyond the capacity of the human mind. The brightest human cant memorize tens of thousands of chess rules. Likewise, no human can play millions of chess games in a lifetime.

Solving any given task with beyond-human level performance by leveraging either unlimited priors or unlimited data does not bring us any closer to broad AI or general AI, whether the task is chess, football, or any e-sport, Chollet notes.

This is why its totally wrong to compare Deep Blue, Alpha Zero, AlphaStar or any other game-playing AI with human intelligence.

Likewise, other AI models, such as Aristo, the program that can pass an eighth-grade science test, does not possess the same knowledge as a middle school student. It owes its supposed scientific abilities to the huge corpora of knowledge it was trained on, not its understanding of the world of science.

(Note: Some AI researchers, such as computer scientist Rich Sutton, believe that the true direction for artificial intelligence research should be methods that can scale with the availability of data and compute resources.)

In the paper, Chollet presents the Abstraction Reasoning Corpus (ARC), a dataset intended to evaluate the efficiency of AI systems and compare their performance with that of human intelligence. ARC is a set of problem-solving tasks that tailored for both AI and humans.

One of the key ideas behind ARC is to level the playing ground between humans and AI. It is designed so that humans cant take advantage of their vast background knowledge of the world to outmaneuver the AI. For instance, it doesnt involve language-related problems, which AI systems have historically struggled with.

On the other hand, its also designed in a way that prevents the AI (and its developers) from cheating their way to success. The system does not provide access to vast amounts of training data. As in the example shown at the beginning of this article, each concept is presented with a handful of examples.

The AI developers must build a system that can handle various concepts such as object cohesion, object persistence, and object influence. The AI system must also learn to perform tasks such as scaling, drawing, connecting points, rotating and translating.

Also, the test dataset, the problems that are meant to evaluate the intelligence of the developed system, are designed in a way that prevents developers from solving the tasks in advance and hard-coding their solution in the program. Optimizing for evaluation sets is a popular cheating method in data science and machine learning competitions.

According to Chollet, ARC only assesses a general form of fluid intelligence, with a focus on reasoning and abstraction. This means that the test favors program synthesis, the subfield of AI that involves generating programs that satisfy high-level specifications. This approach is in contrast with current trends in AI, which are inclined toward creating programs that are optimized for a limited set of tasks (e.g., playing a single game).

In his experiments with ARC, Chollet has found that humans can fully solve ARC tests. But current AI systems struggle with the same tasks. To the best of our knowledge, ARC does not appear to be approachable by any existing machine learning technique (including Deep Learning), due to its focus on broad generalization and few-shot learning, Chollet notes.

While ARC is a work in progress, it can become a promising benchmark to test the level of progress toward human-level AI. We posit that the existence of a human-level ARC solver would represent the ability to program an AI from demonstrations alone (only requiring a handful of demonstrations to specify a complex task) to do a wide range of human-relatable tasks of a kind that would normally require human-level, human-like fluid intelligence, Chollet observes.

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Artificial intelligence: How to measure the I in AI - TechTalks

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Two opera singers who accused Placido Domingo of sexual misconduct said Tuesday that it was disappointing and disturbing that the opera legend recently claimed he has always behaved like a gentleman and never acted improperly toward women.

Angela Turner Wilson and Patricia Wulf were among more than 20 women who accused Domingo of sexual harassment or inappropriate sexually charged behavior in two Associated Press reports this summer.

Their new statement came in response to comments Domingo made in two recent interviews with European publications, in which he disputed the allegations against him and said he never abused his power. He said he always behaved like a gentleman but that gallant gestures are viewed differently nowadays.

There is nothing chivalrous or gallant about groping a woman in the workplace, in any country or era, Wilson and Wulf said in the statement issued through their attorney, Debra Katz.

The Grammy Award-winning singer is one of the most celebrated men in the opera world and regarded as one of the greatest opera singers of all time. The long-married, Spanish-born star also is a prolific conductor and longtime administrator, having served as the general director of both the Los Angeles Opera and Washington Opera.

In the AP stories, several singers, a dancer and backstage staff at opera companies accused Domingo of sexual harassment and other inappropriate, sexually charged behavior that included unwelcomed kisses, touching and late-night phone calls.

Many said Domingo tried to pressure them into sexual relationships and sometimes punished them professionally if they rejected him. The accusers and dozens of others interviewed said Domingos behavior was an open secret in the opera world.

Until recently, the 78-year-old had not spoken publicly about the allegations and had limited his reaction to statements from his lawyer and publicist. He had called the accusations in many ways, simply incorrect without elaborating.

Last week, Domingo gave an interview to Spanish online newspaper El Confidencial in which he again stopped short of flatly denying the womens allegations but insisted he had never behaved improperly. He added that Spaniards are by nature warm, affectionate and loving.

I have been gallant but always within the limits of gentlemanliness, respect and sensitivity, he said.

Domingo also spoke to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, denying he abused his power and saying casting decisions were not made by him but by a team of four or five people. He said that very offensive things were said about me as a human being.

Turner and Wulfs statement said Domingos continued failure to take responsibility for wrongdoing or to express any remorse is extremely disappointing and deeply disturbing.

He did not behave like a gentleman when he repeatedly propositioned women for sex in the workplace ... and when he groped them and kissed them over their objections, the statement said. He did not behave respectfully when he offered to assist with the careers of aspiring female opera singers if they came to his apartment and had sex with him.

The most serious allegation lodged against Domingo came from Turner, a soprano, who told the AP that he forcefully grabbed her breast in a makeup room at the Washington Opera in 1999 after she rejected his advances for weeks.

Wulf, a mezzo soprano, said Domingo persistently propositioned and harassed her during performances at the Washington Opera in 1998, when he was general director.

Another singer said when she worked with Domingo at the Los Angeles Opera in the mid-2000s, he stuck his hand down her skirt after asking her to sing for him at his apartment. Others said he forced wet kisses on their lips.

U.S. opera houses canceled Domingos upcoming performances following the accusations, and he resigned from the LA Opera, where he had been general director since 2003. Its investigating the allegations.

European theaters have supported Domingo and maintained his appearances.

It is deeply upsetting and unfair that Mr. Domingo can retreat to another world without having to come to terms with what he has done to many, many women here, Wulf said.

The womens statement said Domingos comments show an attempt to absolve his misconduct by blaming cultural differences and changing rules and standards.

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Domingo's accusers: Nothing 'chivalrous' about groping women - The Associated Press

Over the past quarter century, the internet has transformed human existence, dramatically altering everything from daily life, societal interactions and economic exchange, to political debates and geopolitical rivalries. In 1996, only 36 million people were online. Today, 3.7 billion are, and the remaining half of humanity will soon join them in the connected world. Although the benefits of cyberspace are undeniable, malicious state and criminal actors often use it to further their nefarious ends, while at times endangering its digital infrastructure. Hoping to protect this vulnerable domain, the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace recently issued its final report, Advancing Cyberstability.

The commission, co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and former Indian Deputy National Security Adviser Latha Reddy, toiled for three years, consulting globally with governments, international organizations, private corporations, technical experts and members of civil society. According to Foreign Minister Stef Blok of the Netherlands, which helped underwrite the commissions work, one overriding conviction animated its efforts: Cyberspace cannot be an ungoverned space where bad guys can do what they want, he said in issuing the report at last months Paris Peace Forum. The rules-based order and international law must extend into cyberspace. ...

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Can New Norms of Behavior Extend the Rules-Based Order Into Cyberspace? - World Politics Review

Besides genre films, Another Hole In The Head Film Festival often finds films that skillfully break social and cultural prejudices. One such prejudice involves sexual desire in senior citizens. Its presumed such desire doesnt matter much when a person gets old. Alternately, such desire gets subtly ridiculed, most notoriously in the older man chasing younger woman trope. An affiliated prejudice is the attitude that senior citizens bodies cannot be objects of sexual desire.

Senior Love Triangle from director Kelly Blatz excellently laughs at that attitude and prejudice without undercutting the realities of its central trios lives. Its one of Another Holes unexpected gems.

William (Tom Bower) is an 84-year-old World War II veteran who lives with would-be-poet Adina (Anne Gee Byrd) in an upscale Los Angeles senior housing facility. They love each other despite Williams frequent requests for money to help close a deal in Bermuda. However, Adinas son forces William to find a cheaper senior facility elsewhere. The senior facility he settles on is one where he catches the eye of resident Jean (Marlyn Mason). Yet William still loves Adina in his way and wants to maintain his ties to the rich older woman without losing Jean. Equally importantly, hes counting on his windfall from the Bermuda deal to liberate both Adina and Jean from a dull future in their senior facilities.

Blatzs film works because it strikes the right balance between validating the sexual desires of its central trio and acknowledging that all three characters are in their 80s. The director recognizes that such sexual longings arent about boning. Theyre about showing the weight of decades hasnt dimmed their emotional spirit. Whether its Williams aggressiveness or Adinas attempts at becoming a poet (despite a noticeable lack of talent), theyre expressing a desire for life greater than the limited circumstances provided by where they live now.

The scene that makes the titular love triangle emotionally real comes when the three have a tense lunch together. Adina and Jean regard each other with concealed suspicion and try to cut each other down. Adina in particular uses her barbs about the food served to put down Jeans lower class nature. The familiarity of the tone of this strained conversation resonates with viewers whove seen far younger people talk in the same way.

Yet Senior Love Triangle doesnt shy away from addressing the more earthy aspects of senior sexuality. A facility resident praises Jean as someone whom hed be happy to have sex with while the lights are on. Later, when Jean unbuttons her blouse for a threesome with William and Adina, that moment is shot in such a way that any ick reaction at seeing the old womans intimate wrinkled flesh is minimized.

But even artful lighting cant hide the mental problems that each member of the central trio display. Adinas not skeptical enough of the soundness of Williams big deal. Jean has moments where she thinks shes back in New York City and married to her long-dead husband Richard. And Williams enthusiasm for this big deal with John Collins seems more delusion than sound business practice.

Of the three central actors, Mason has the emotionally meatiest role. She smoothly goes from a woman with still strong sensibilities to someone lost in her memories. Bower manages to capture both the charm of his characters confident air and the hair-trigger anger that lurks not far away.

The films ultimate tragedy comes from the huge gap between Williams pipe dream and reality. William may say he wants to take care of the two women in his life. But such a dream depends on his overlooking that his current perks come from access to Adinas wealth. Jean ultimately realizes that William lacks the resources to take care of anyone, even himself. The tragedy of the final phone call doesnt come from confirming what sharp-eyed viewers had already noticed. It comes from realizing why William was so eager to delude himself.

***

How can a hypnotherapy record become a source of horror? The answer to that question lies in the events recounted in Adrian Garcia Boglianos Swedish tale Black Circle.

Sisters Isa and Celeste could not be more different from each other. Isa is a successful businesswoman with a corner office. College student Celeste has become a walking disaster area with her uncompleted graduate thesis, a messily ended relationship, and a recently lost job. Yet the successful sister was like Celeste only a year ago. What turned Isas life around was the hypnotherapy record Splits By Magnetic Hypnosis. Celestes use of the record also starts unleashing her better self. But bizarre visions start tormenting her. Then the formerly focused Isa becomes erratic and fears someones stalking her. Magnetic hypnosis expert Master Lena Carlsson might have a cure. But are the sisters too late?

Black Circles power comes from its unsettling spin on a familiar wish, bringing forth the supposedly truer and better self buried beneath ones messed up surface personality. The record helps unleash that better self. But Boglianos film asks what happens when this supposedly improved personality winds up not being much better than the old personality.

This low-fidelity horror mystery works by anchoring itself in plausibility. The Stockholm Institute For Magnetic Research, which made the record, has a credibly pseudo-scientific yet authoritative name. Excerpts from an Institute video recreates the look of self-improvement videos from the proverbial Me Decade. The viewer sees Celestes post-record change from being easily distracted and scattered into being tightly focused and organized.

So why does Carlsson later regret the manufacture of the record? Making the record and having a correspondence course associated with it probably made the Institutes work popularly accessible and provided a good source of income. However, what happens to Isa and Celeste reveals that undergoing the records hypnotherapy treatment had unintended consequences. Dreams of mysterious menacing figures and displays of drug withdrawal-like symptoms undercut the benevolent nature of this splitting process.

Introducing some new and apparently unrelated characters more than halfway into Black Circle does throw the storys pacing off a little. What do a pair of young backpackers possessing a telepathic link and the old woman whose home they invade have to do with Isas and Celestes problems? But things start making sense once the viewer learns the old woman is Master Lena Carlsson. Blocking the young couples mind link suggests Carlssons mental powers are far greater than suggested by the Institutes video.

Also, introducing Carlsson and the telepathic backpackers makes the problem facing the two sisters feel a lot more serious. The hypnotic and methodical rituals Carlsson performs to repair the damage done by the record creates suspense thanks to viewer uncertainty about the rituals effectiveness.

The film smartly ends on multiple ambiguous notes. What does normality now mean for both sisters? Was what the viewer saw in the film an actual accounting of events or simply a what if scenario? Are there other Institute hypnotherapy records which havent been accounted for?

Boglianos film may go for a more subtle horror than the expected standards of gore or jump scares. That creative choice doesnt diminish the films disturbing effect.

***

A person usually sees the Stay Out Stay Alive warning near the entrances of abandoned mines or caves. This message hopefully discourages the curious and foolhardy from entering such subterranean spaces and risking their lives. Dean Yurkes feature debut Stay Out Stay Alive shows what disastrously happens after one small group of campers ignores this advice. Yet to Yurkes credit, the films moral message proves a bit different from viewer expectations.

Five friends have come to Yosemite for a camping weekend. Theres Amy, whose thesis-writing has become creatively stuck; Donna, a nurse; Bridget, a hairdresser; Reese, Bridgets unemployed boyfriend who dreams of being a park ranger; and Kyle, Amys boyfriend. Donna accidentally falls down a hole during a night-time walk. When the other camping party members find their missing friend, they make two discoveries. First, one of Donnas legs is pinned under a rock. Second, the hole she fell into is part of a forgotten mine shaftand the mine has a large unworked vein of gold available. But the groups dreams of profiting from this sudden financial windfall fail to account for Chief Tenayas curse, one placed on this land over 150 years ago as retaliation for his sons murder.

Impatient viewers may claim Chief Tenayas curse doesnt seem to amount to much given the lack of overtly hostile acts directed towards the unwary campers. Theres a quiet snuffing of candles near the trapped Donna. Two bags of mined gold mysteriously go missing. On the other hand, the appearance of shadowy figures indicate that persisting in taking the gold out of the mine would have been met with more aggressive retaliation. And is an approaching rainstorm really a simple freak meteorological event?

Viewers familiar with the classic Twilight Zone episode The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street will see in Yurkes film that the real curse holding sway over the campers is that of human greed. Reese turns out to be the most obviously affected, but even the studious Amy pays a price for initially refusing to leave the gold underground. What happens to the campers feels more disturbing given the sense that viewers in the characters situation would probably have made equally bad choices. Economic desperation, systemic humiliation, and jealousy in various proportions are very relatable weaknesses.

Seeing the worst of human behavior on display provides better horrific impact than depicting full-on gore. When the bodies start falling, such skillful allusions as blood-soaked clothing and abrupt soundtrack silence before striking a killing blow make the deaths more horrifying than the visual cliche of plentiful fake blood.

How disturbing a viewer will find the films final twist will depend on individual taste. It could underscore the emotional teeth behind Chief Tenayas curse. Or else it could be considered a weak fallback on a familiar moralistic punishment.

***

Does Victor Dryeres 1974: La Posesion De Altair do anything interesting or novel with the found footage horror genre? It follows such genre tropes as the film subjects disappearing under mysterious circumstances and the resulting film being the record of the terrible fate that befell them. Provenance is especially hand-wavey here. The viewer knows the films rough look comes from being shot on Super 8 film principally by subjects Miguel and Callahan. Yet the presumption that the entire sequence of events was pieced together from many bits of Super 8 film dodges the question of who went to the trouble of assembling the story. The semi-arrogant Dr. Canseco character clearly prefers to keep the unfortunate tale under wraps.

It also doesnt help that the viewer never becomes attached to any of the principal characters. Miguel, in particular, comes off early as a macho jerk as the camera unflatteringly captures his refusal to lift a finger to help his new wife Altair. Keeping the camera gratuitously running on a good shot of Altairs cleavage only earns him sexist pig points.

Fortunately, vague hints regarding the fates of Miguel and Altair help. They mysteriously disappeared, but was the cause of their disappearance an explosion? Also, the spooky stuff happens soon enough to engross the viewer. Minor occurrences such as an unexpected delivery of bricks soon assume a more sinister air. By the time the mass die-off of birds occurs, questions about the angels Altair dreams of start gaining urgency.

To Dryeres credit, theres a good reason why the film is set in 1974 (which wont be spoiled here). However, even that knowledge wont prepare viewers for the films disturbing finale, which feels terrifyingly logical. On the other hand, that feeling of disturbance will not last long after the viewer leaves the theater.

***

John Adams The Deeper You Dig is at its core the tale of a mother doing whatever it takes to reconnect with her dead daughters spiritand vice versa. But the viewer will not expect this path to reconnection to involve a radio seemingly stuck on Jazz Age standards, severed body parts, and symbolic snake swallowing.

In a rural community, Kurt and the Allen family are neighbors who are initially strangers to each other. Kurt is ripping out the interior of an old house hoping to rebuild and flip it. Mother Ivy Allen has let her intuitive psychic abilities fade in favor of running a faked Tarot card reading scam. Echo Allen is a 14-year-old Goth teen with a fondness for Jazz Age standards and hunting. The two households paths cross in a manner that ends fatally for Echo. As Ivy struggles to contact her daughters spirit, Kurt finds out just how far Echos spirit will go to let Ivy know what happened to her.

Kurts stripping of the old house and Ivys decision to try reconnecting to the old spirits are obviously symbolic attempts at digging. But Kurts attempting to bury his crime. Ivys digging, on the other hand, will let her reclaim the true power she had suppressed within herself.

Echo, meanwhile, shows that death hasnt quelled her capacity for snark. In a wonderfully grotesque moment, the teens partially decayed corpse chides her murderous neighbor for being too lazy to dig deeper to conceal her body. Kurts frequently violent responses to the prods of Echos spirit only makes her up her snarking game.

One such stunt sees Kurt coughing up a mixture of blood and still wriggling maggots, a moment which will arouse some viewers audible disgust. The grotesqueness of the vomiting shouldnt distract viewers from seeing it as a moment where the teens spirit has started to internally struggle with Kurt in earnest.

Condemning Echos actions towards Kurt ignore the reality of his crime. As it happened at night on a rural road, there are no witnesses. Nor does anybody but Kurt know how he disposed of Echos body. In earthly terms, unless Kurt confesses that Echos death was more than an unfortunate accident, its highly unlikely hell be prosecuted. So what Echos spirit does to Kurt feels like a grotesque form of poetic justice.

Ivys difficulties in understanding what the spirits are trying to tell her about Echos fate doesnt show her lack of intelligence. The symbolic images and sensations the spirits convey to her are often disconnected from context. Its almost as if the spirits want to torment her for her earlier apostasy.

Those enigmatic images sent by the spirits point to one of the strong suits of Adams film. The director employs a good sense of visual storytelling to fine effect. In an early sequence, the three main characters are in the same convenience store. Even though they dont exchange words, theres a sense of their intertwined fates. A later shot of Echos snowboard presages Ivys discovery of Kurts connection to her daughters fate.

Adams even manages to make the films gory and/or grotesque moments be visually arresting without stopping the storys momentum. The inevitable violent final clash between Ivy and Kurt turns out to involve more than just pent-up revenge at stake. Unless it was accidental, one particular moment during the final clash offers a gross visual pun on a particular revenge motif. But it can definitely be said the films final shot offers a darkly humorous coda.

(Senior Love Triangle screens at 7:00 PM on December 9, 2019. Black Circle screens at 7:00 PM on December 12, 2019. Stay Out Stay Alive screens at 7:00 PM on December 11, 2019. 1974: La Posesion De Altair screens at 7:00 PM on December 13, 2019. The Deeper You Dig screens at 7:00 PM on December 6, 2019. All screenings take place at the New People Cinema (1746 Post, SF). For further information about these films and to order advance tickets, go to http://www.ahith.com .)

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Reviews From 17th Another Hole In The Head Film Festival - Beyond Chron

Anyone who has ever owned a dog been greeted with a wagging tail and barks of delight would say, of course, their dog loves them.

But science has been more hesitant to attribute emotion to certain animal behavior. Maybe a dog only cares about the food they are about to get? Maybe a dog has been trained to behave in this way? What about dogs who dont have a friendly human in their life?

Behavioral scientist Clive Wynne was trained to think this way as well. But through his recent research, his thinking has evolved. He says a dogs ability to love is precisely what makes them a unique species.

Clive Wynnes new book is Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You.

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Proving What Dog Owners Already Know: Yes, Your Pooch Loves You - The Diane Rehm Show

Over centuries, Europeans have developed local traditions that define the economy, the arts and the rituals of daily life. Those traditions sometimes belong to nations or are spread across the entire continent. Sometimes they are very local and remain unknown beyond a small region. The institutions of the European Union have made an effort to regulate and even suppress some of those practices as well as preserve and protect many others, particularly those that have been endangered by modernity.

The Guardian highlights one example of a traditional hunting practice in the southeast of France called la chasse la glu or glue-trapping. The practice consists essentially of using the calls of encaged songbirds to incite unsuspecting members of the same species to land on sticks placed nearby that have been coated with glue. After landing, the birds become literal sitting ducks for the hunters to aim at. The practice turns out to be doubly cruel because the hunters capture and cage living birds whose calls attract the free birds that will be killed by the hunters.

As The Guardian reports, glue-trapping was banned in the EU by a 1979 directive, except in special circumstances where it is controlled, selective and in limited quantities. Since 1989, France has invoked these circumstances to permit glue-trapping in five south-east departments on the grounds that it is traditional.

Here is todays 3D definition:

Glue-trapping:

A traditional French hunting method for catching and killing birds, by which the victims are enticed through pleasurable and flattering messages to an area in the wilderness where sticks covered with glue are placed by hunters to prevent the birds from escaping, a strategy carefully imitated by the marketing minds of commercial social media

In the name of protecting the ecosystem and minimizing the degree of cruelty and suffering related to hunting, European law forbids the practice, but French law permits it as a recognition of a time-honored traditional practice linked to the local economy. The hunters claim glue-trapping dates back at least several family generations, and reject accusations of cruelty, The Guardian reports.

The avoidance of cruelty has become a cultural norm in the modern world, especially in Europe, where cruelty to humans is severely repressed, as witnessed by the disappearance throughout Europe of the death penalty. The glue-trapping hunters base their claim of legitimacy on three criteria: the universally recognized tolerance of hunting as a strategy for survival (even if modern hunters can survive without hunting), the consecration of time (tradition) and genealogy (family). The last two values tradition and family are specifically important in southern French culture. They have less impact or persuasive value in northern European countries.

The tolerance of hunting is universal and has always been regulated by complex laws. Despite its universal acceptance, in recent times anti-hunting movements have emerged, focusing on the question of unmerited cruelty to prey. The hunters argument based on time and tradition appeals to the psychological and sociological principle of cultural inertia that clearly influences law, as a factor of social stability and historical continuity. Time-honored practices that may grate against modern sensibilities can continue to survive, thanks to their perception as being rooted in what may be thought of as an ecology of human behavior. This is especially true if there is an economic dimension and the practices impinge on the struggle for survival.

Todays European political and economic news contains an extreme illustration of that principle, far more significant than the question of glue-trapping. An initiative against tax havens has been voted down by states who cannot afford to lose the revenue such status brings, The Guardian reports. The reason cited is the reliance of these countries on artificially favorable corporate tax rates granted by some countries to big US tech companies. These corporations thus find a way to avoid paying taxes in the countries where they do business. The article notes that too many influential countries are now utterly dependent on being tax discounters. It concludes that countries such as Malta, Cyprus and Ireland need to be compensated in some way to ease them through a transition period.

In the case of European tax evasion, it isnt clear who is luring whom to the trap, since the countries use their favorable tax policies to lure the corporations and glue them into their economic fabric. But the corporations are the big winners, unlike the caged birds. They use their economic clout to lure the countries into granting them favors. The countries remain glued to their sticks.

The solution that The Guardian proposes would be compensation for the loss of revenue. Its unlikely that a similar solution to glue-trapping could exist. Still, after so many years of failure, the critics of the practice might be wise to imagine an approach similar to the one recommended for the tax issue: These countries need a carrot and not just a stick. And certainly not a gluey stick.

The bird campaigners who seek a total ban on the practice appear to have turned their lobbying campaign into something of a tradition with its own cultural inertia. With their repeated forays over the past 30 years to gather evidence and present it to European courts having failed, they have now quite logically resorted to taking their case to the court of public opinion by offering journalists an opportunity to appeal to their readers shared sense of indignation at unnatural practices. The intention is good but the approach is bound to be ineffective. Weve concrete evidence that sometimes the bird is struggling for 20-30 minutes, says Yves Verilhac of Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO). Its the sometimes that hurts. Things that happen sometimes rarely justify changing behaviors rooted in tradition or passing laws that will only create local friction.

The discourse of the critics can appear to be less about cruelty than an attack on the very idea that tradition and cultural inertia can sometimes trump legal principles. One critic commented, This is what they call tradition, but its a practice from the middle ages and barbaric.

Hunting in the middle ages was most likely less barbaric than today. Apart from a few privileged aristocrats a tiny proportion of the population, who hunted only on rare occasions common people hunted, when it was permitted, for survival. Killing always involves cruelty, but anyone who isnt a vegan learns to live with it. With everyones survival now ensured by the existence of supermarkets, hunting has become a sport and a leisure activity.

And todays sport is possibly far less disciplined and regulated by tradition than the sport practiced by medieval aristocrats. US vice presidents, for example, have even been known to shoot their friends in the face, though the vice president in question, Dick Cheney, had few qualms about ordering the killing of thousands of people who werent his friends.

The glue-trap hunters, after all, have a point. I say to people: You dont like hunting, thats fine. I respect your view, but leave me alone. I probably dont like some things you do but thats your decision, your life. Its hardly a valid excuse for undue cruelty to animals, but if the courts have not found the detective work of the bird campaigners convincing enough to force the application of the law, their eagerness to expose the crime begins to resemble a form of harassment.

The real lesson of the story should come from seeing it as a parable rather than a serious social problem. Whether its the practice of certain social media seeking to lure people into a trap and glue them to a stick (e.g., your Facebook page) as repeat consumers who subsequently leave their feathers and much of their flesh (personal data) in the hands of the corporation that runs the media, or whether its the corporations that have cemented needy governments into their geopolitical tax schemes, glue-trapping can be seen as a metaphor for the most effective marketing schemes of modern times.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devils Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observers editorial policy.

The rest is here:
The Real Glue-Trapping Scandal - Fair Observer

In a sprawling gallery of the Royal Ontario Museum, curators and technicians crowded around two large coolers that had recently arrived at the Toronto institution. Wriggling inside the containers were live sea lampreys, eel-like creatures that feed by clamping onto the bodies of other fish, puncturing through their skin with tooth-lined tongues, and sucking out their victims blood and bodily fluids. Staff members, their hands protected with gloves, carefully lifted one of the lampreys and plopped it into a tall tank. It slithered through the water, tapping on the glass walls with its gaping mouth, rings of fearsome teeth on full view.

Having explored its new environment, the lamprey settled onto the pebbles at the bottom of the tank. It will remain on display until March as part of a new exhibition exploring the oft-reviled critters that bite, pierce, scrape and saw their way through flesh to access their favorite food source: blood.

The exhibition, called Bloodsuckers, includes displays of other live animalsmosquitoes, ticks and leechesinterspersed throughout the gallery. And dozens of preserved specimens, arrayed down a long, curving wall, offer a glimpse into the diverse world of the roughly 30,000 species of bloodthirsty organisms across the globe. Among these critters are vampire moths, which can pierce the thick skins of buffalo and elephants. Vampire snails target sick and dying fish, making for easier prey. The oxpecker birds of Africa pluck ticks and other insects off large mammalsand then slurp blood from their hosts sores.

Sebastian Kvist, curator of invertebrates at the Royal Ontario Museum and co-curator of the exhibition, knows that these animals are likely to make some visitors shudder. But to him, blood-feeders are the loveliest of organisms, the result of a refined evolutionary process. Leeches are a particular favorite of Kvists, and his research focuses on the evolution of blood-feeding behavior, or hematophagy, in these predatory worms. Sometimes he even affectionately lets the leeches in his lab gorge themselves on his blood.

When you have live animals in your care, they demand some respect, he says. I think that it is giving back to the leech what we're getting from them to donate our warm blood.

Bloodsuckers opens in a corridor bathed in red light, where an installation featuring three strands of red blood cells dangles from the ceiling. Blood is a hugely abundant food source, so it makes sense that wherever vertebrates exist, animals would arise to steal their life-sustaining fluids. Blood-feeding likely evolved repeatedly over the course of our planets historyperhaps as many as 100 times, according to Kvist. Bloodsucking creatures have no common ancestor, as the behavior has cropped up independently in birds, bats, insects, fish and other animal groupsa testament to its evolutionary value.

I can think of no other system thats [so] intricate that has evolved separately, Kvist says. And it makes blood-feeding as a behavior even more beautiful.

Subsisting on a blood-heavy diet is tricky, however, and relatively few creatures have managed to retain this ability over time. Thirty thousand [bloodsuckers] out of the roughly 1.5 or 1.6 million species [of animals] that have been described is a very, very small number, Kvist says. But it turns out that being able to feed on blood puts tremendous strain on your physiology, on your morphology, and on your behavior.

For one, blood lacks B vitamins, which all animals require to convert food into energy. Many bloodsuckers thus host microscopic bacteria inside their bodies to provide these essential nutrients. Because blood is so iron-rich, its toxic to most animals in large amounts, but habitual blood-feeders have evolved to break it down.

Getting to the blood of a living creature is no mean feat either. Blood-feeding organisms have different ways of accessing their preferred snack. Mosquitoes, for instance, pierce the skin with their long, thin mouthparts, while certain biting flies boast serrated jaws that slash through flesh. But all of these methods risk being met with a deft swat from the host. To counteract this problem, some blood-feeders, like leeches, have mild anesthetics in their saliva, which help them go unnoticed as they feed. Certain creatures like vampire bats, lampreys and leeches also produce anticoagulants to keep their victims blood flowing, sometimes even after theyre done eating.

A leech feeds five times its body weight in blood, up to ten times sometimes, Kvist says. If that blood congealed or clotted inside its body, then the leech would fall to the bottom [of the water] like a brick.

Kvist and Doug Currie, the Royal Ontario Museums senior curator of entomology and co-curator of the exhibition, hope museum visitors gain a newfound appreciation for the elegance of bloodsucking organisms. Humans share a long and complicated relationship with blood-feeders. Leeches, for instance, were once seen as a life-saving force, and are in fact still used by medical experts today after certain types of surgery that overfull parts of the body with blood. But at the same time, we are unnerved by creatures that steal blooda wariness that has persisted for centuries, as suggested by the fearsome bloodsuckers that populate folklore traditions around the world.

A natural history and culture institution, the Royal Ontario Museum also explores how blood-feeding, a trait that exists in nature, has crept into the human imagination and morphed into something fantastical. Monsters abound within the gallery. There are models of the chupacabra, a beast rumored to drain livestock of their blood, and the yara-ma-yha-who, which originated in the oral traditions of Australia and boasts blood suckers on its fingers and toes.

These creatures do not directly resemble any real blood-feeding animal. Instead, they speak to our innate fear of something taking our life force, says Courtney Murfin, the interpretive planner who worked with curators to craft the exhibitions narrative.

Dracula, arguably the most famous of all the fictional bloodsuckers, may have a more tangible connection to the natural world. Legends of vampires predate Bram Stokers 1897 novelvisitors can see a first edition copy of the book at the exhibitionbut the notion that these undead beings could transform into bats originated with Dracula. Vampire bats, which live in Mexico and Central and South America, feed on the blood of mammals and birds. They were first described in 1810 and documented by Charles Darwin in 1839. The animals may have influenced Stokers supernatural count.

Depictions of vampires in todays popular culture run the gamut from cool to sexy to goofy. We can have fun with them now, Murfin says, because we know they arent real. But when vampire lore arose in eastern Europe in the early 1700s, the beasts were a source of true terror. Confusion about normal traits observed in decomposing bodies, like swollen stomachs and blood in the mouth, led to the belief that corpses could rise from their graves to feast on the blood of the living.

They started digging up graves and staking the people to the ground so they couldn't stand up at night, Kvist says.

Fears about losing their blood to vampires did not, however, dampen Europeans enthusiasm for bloodletting, an age-old medical practice that sometimes involved applying leeches to the skin. The treatment can be traced back to the ancient world, where it arose from the belief that draining blood helped rebalance the bodys humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Bloodletting reached its peak in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when a leech mania swept across Europe and America. Pharmacies stored the critters in ornate jarsone is on display at the museumand Hirudo medicinalis, or the European medicinal leech, was harvested to the brink of extinction.

Bloodletters also had other ways of getting the job done. One corner of the exhibition is packed with a grisly assortment of artificial bloodletting tools: scarificators, which, with the push of a lever, released multiple blades for opening up the skin; glass cups that were heated and suctioned onto the skin, drawing blood to the surface; smelling salts, in case the procedure proved a bit too overwhelming for the patient.

While medical professionals no longer believe that leeching can cure everything from skin diseases to dental woes, leeches are still valued in medicine today. Hirudin, the anticoagulant in leech saliva, is unrivalled in its strength, according to Kvist. Its synthesized in labs and given to patients in pills and topological creams to treat deep vein thrombosis and prevent strokes. Leeches themselves make appearances in hospitals. Theyre helpful to doctors who perform skin grafts or reattachments of fingers, toes and other extremities. Newly stitched arteries heal more quickly than veins, so blood that is being pumped into the reattached area doesnt flow back into the body, which can in turn prevent healing.

Stick a leech on, and it will relieve that congestion of the veins, says Kvist, who also studies the evolution of anticoagulants in leeches.

Earlier this year, Kvist received a call from Parks Canada asking for help with an unusual conundrum. A man had been apprehended at Torontos Pearson International Airport with nearly 4,800 live leeches packed into his carry-on luggage, and officials needed help identifying the critters. Kvist took a look at some of the leeches, which appeared to have been smuggled from Russia, and pinpointed them as Hirudo verbana. Because they are threatened by over-harvesting, this species is listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, meaning it cannot be transported without a permit. Just what the man was doing with the bloodsuckers is unclear, but Kvist says he claimed to sell them for New Age medicinal purposes.

There is a larger-than-we-think underground network of people that use leeches to treat a variety of ailments, Kvist says. The Royal Ontario Museum took in around 300 of the contraband critters, and a few dozen are presently lounging in a display tank at Bloodsuckers.

While leeches have long been valued for their healing propertiesscientifically valid or otherwisesome bloodsuckers are better known for their ability to transmit serious illnesses. Certain species of mosquito, for instance, spread West Nile, Zika and malaria. Ticks transmit Lyme disease. The exhibition does not shy away from exploring the dangers associated with blood-feeders, and it offers advice on how to protect yourself from infection.

Some fears are real, Kvist says. Disease, unfortunately, is a necessary consequence of blood-feeding.

Most blood-feeding animals, though, do not pose a serious threat to humans. In fact, bloodsuckers are vital to the health of our planet. Mosquitoes are an important food source for birds. Fish eat leeches. Even sea lampreys, which are invasive to the Great Lakes, can bring essential nutrients to the aquatic habitats where they spawn. And like all species, blood-feeders contribute to the Earths biodiversitya richness of life that is fast declining due to factors like pollution, climate change and habitat degradation.

Many, many animal groups need to be part of conversations regarding biodiversity, Kvist says, but he and his colleagues opted to spotlight the bloodthirsty ones. The museum hopes to help visitors feel more comfortable living alongside these animalseven if they arent willing to volunteer an arm for a leechs next meal.

See the rest here:
Why the World Needs Bloodsucking Creatures | Science - Smithsonian

A distinction is often made between Judeo-Christian ethics and Islamic ethics. Judeo-Christian ethics are supposedly mild and compassionate, whereas Islamic ethics embrace aggressiveness and violence. Nevertheless, my decade-long experience in social media suggests that fundamentalist Christians can be no less aggressive than their Islamic counterparts in denouncing not only each other, but also homosexuals, abortion activists and progressive politicians.

Even though traditional Judaism is opposed to these practices,few practicing Jews indulge in the demonization of opponents which is so fashionable in other milieus. This reluctance to paint adversaries with a broad brush encompasses Jewish attitudes to Muslims, which, far from being as hostile as the latest eight decades might warrant, are remarkably nuanced.

In order to understand why in many respects Christians and Muslims seem to be on the same page in their reaction to hostile forces, I propose a distinction between the combative ethics dear to most Muslims and many Christians and the constructive ethics embraced by Jews.

A combative view of ethics calls upon us to fight evil wherever it is found. A constructive view of ethics calls upon us to fight for goodness whenever possible. Thus, the person devoted to combative ethics will fight poverty, injustice and oppression, whereas the person devoted to constructive ethics will fight for wealth-redistribution (or wealth-creation), justice and freedom. This is not an academic distinction, but a crucial difference based on our essential understanding of ethics as primarily a fight against evil or a struggle for goodness.

At first glance, it appears unfair to distinguish Christianity from Judaism in this regard. After all, the Christian Gospels are less militant than most books found in the Hebrew Bible. It is Jesus, not the Prophets who invites his followers to love their enemies and turn their cheeks to them. Nevertheless, it is clear that most Christians dont subscribe to the literal meaning of these words. This is not just a reflection of how hard and unrealistic such a course of action usually is. Tolerating evil also clashes with the Christian imperative to resist and oppose Satan.

In the Jewish tradition, Satan plays a very limited role. The Satan, or Ha-Satan, is merely the heavenly prosecutor who makes a case in the divine court against the sincerity of righteous figures like Abraham and Job. This is a far cry from the role that Christianity and Islam assign to Satan. Both in Christianity and in Islam the devil is a powerful force that opposes Gods designs and lures men and women to sin and perdition. In this regard, fighting and defeating the devil in Islam and Christianity is a prerequisite for Gods earthly will to be realized.

The importance attributed to the devil in a culture and religion is directly related to its inclination to engage in combative ethics vis--vis constructive ethics.The importance attributed to the devil in a culture and religion is directly related to its inclination to engage in combative ethics vis--vis constructive ethics. In a world where Satan is viewed as omnipresent, goodness can only be achieved by fighting evil. In a world where the devil does not exist, the temptation to view ethics as a fight against evil is less appealing. It is thus not surprising that in Islamic milieus where the devils presence is acutely felt, the lure of combative ethics is far stronger than in Judaism or contemporary Christianity.

During many centuries Christianity was also under the spell of Satan. The massacres of cats which facilitated the plague, the Salem witch trials and the rhetoric of clericalist parties which in the 19th and early 20th century labelled progressive adversaries as satanic, highlights the crucial role of the devil in the Christian consciousness and ethical worldview. This is the most plausible reason to explain why both Islamists and Christian fundamentalists tend to demonize opponents in a way that is alien to the attitude of most observant Jews.

Focusing on the devil in order to account for differences in human behavior and worldviews in the 21st century may appear absurd. Nevertheless, given that the Manichaean worldview of Islamists and fundamentalist Christians is not shared by people who do not believe in the devil, it makes sense to pursue further research that ascertains how individual and collective attitudes towards the devil and ethics interact and shape each other.

It would be therefore extremely interesting to research whether the role people accord to the devil correlates with their preference for combative vis--vis constructive ethics. A scientific demonstration of this relationship could shed light on a crucial cultural and psychological factorand on the malignant shade the devil casts to this day.

Researchers and academics are welcome to contact the author atrafaelcastro78@gmail.comto jointly pursue this research project.

Excerpt from:
The Ethics of the devil - Arutz Sheva

An international study that included 27 countries found that caring for loved ones is what matters most to people.

An international team of researchers led by evolutionary and social psychologists from Arizona State University surveyed more than 7,000 people from 27 different countries about what motivates them and the findings go against 40 years of research, according to the researchers.

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, a psychology graduate student at Arizona State University (ASU) 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 U.S.

The study included people from countries ranging from Australia and Bulgaria to Thailand and Uganda, covering all continents except Antarctica.

The ASU researchers 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.

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.

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.

Studying attraction is easy and sexy, but peoples everyday interests are actually more focused on something more wholesome family values, said Dr. 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, according to the studys findings.

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 now working on collecting information about the relationships among fundamental motivations and well-being around the world.

The study was published in Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Source: Arizona State University

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Read the original:
Around The World, Family May Be Most Important Motivator - PsychCentral.com

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