Robert Sapolsky (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Robert Sapolsky is a lot of things: a MacArthur Fellow who spent years studying a troop of baboons in Kenya, a neuroendocrinologist who changed the way we think about stress and the brain, an accomplished columnist and writer of popular science books. He is also a professor of biology at Stanford who has long been interested in what animals can tell us about our own behavior.

Most recently, Sapolsky has been reflecting on the origins of human behavior, starting deep in the brain moments before we act and working his way millions of years back to the evolutionary pressures on our prehistoric ancestors decisions, with stops along the way to consider how hormones, brain development and social structures shape our behavior. He also has been thinking about free will and comes to the conclusion, based on the biological and psychological evidence, that we do not have it.

On the occasion of his latest book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Stanford News Service interviewed Sapolsky about science, the need to be behavioral biologists and what to do about justice if, as Sapolsky argues, we do not have free will.

Youve advanced the idea that we cant understand human behavior by studying it at just one level that, for example, we cant understand politics without studying neurons, brain chemistry without studying psychology, or perhaps even humans without studying apes. Does that mean that weve been studying behavior the wrong way? Are university departments too compartmentalized to see the forest for the trees?

Well, theres nothing particularly special about the idea scientists thinking about the bases of behavior know that you have to be multidisciplinary. There are entire journals that enshrine that concept, for example, Psychoneuroimmunology or Brain, Behavior and Evolution, and every university of note is overflowing with interdisciplinary programs.

Where the contrast comes in is with individual scientists research. Of necessity, a scientist typically studies one incredibly tiny sliver of some biological system, totally ensconced within one discipline, because even figuring out how one sliver works is really hard. There are not many scientists who would argue that their sliver is the only thing that should be studied just that its the most important, which sure makes sense, if they just spent their last seven decades obsessing over that sliver.

Is that a problem?

Its not a problem if all they do is talk and think about sliver X. But potentially a definite problem if they think larger and their sliver X-centric view of the universe is distorted.

All roads in human behavior seem to lead to its complicated. Out of the mess of things that combine to create our best and worst and typical behavior, what do you think is most important for ordinary people to know? What about policymakers or other scientists?

I think its the same for both groups, which is that were all behavioral biologists when we serve on juries, when we vote for whether government funds should be spent to try to correct some societal ill, when we deal with an intimate with a mental illness, we are tacitly deciding how and how much our behavior is constrained by biology. So we might as well be informed behavioral biologists. And one thing that involves is being profoundly cautious and humble when it comes to deciding you understand the causes of a behavior, especially one that we judge harshly.

What does that suggest about judicial sentencing rules or the death penalty, for example?

Basically, that the criminal justice system is staggeringly out of date in incorporating neuroscience into its thinking. As one flagrant example, the gold standard for determining whether someone is so organically impaired that they cant be held responsible for their criminal actions the MNaghten rule concerning an inability to tell the difference between right and wrong is based on the case of a man by that name, almost certainly a paranoid schizophrenic, from the 1840s. The 1840s!

What are the most important questions that remain?

For me, the single most important question is how to construct a society that is just, safe, peaceful all those good things when people finally accept that there is no free will.

Thats a tall order, given that philosophers let alone politicians and activists have trouble deciding what justice and free will mean.

A tall order, indeed, because words like justice, punishment, accountability become completely irrelevant as irrelevant as if a car that has damaged brakes and is dangerous to drive is thought to be accountable for being dangerous, and that justice is served when the car is punished by locking it up in a garage and not driven.

And its equally important and challenging to realize that free will is also irrelevant to our best as well as our worst behaviors. And thus where praising seems as irrelevant as praising a car for having a strong work ethic and admirable gratification postponement when it makes it up the top of a steep road. Or if you give a car preferential treatment if it was manufactured with a really attractive hood ornament.

Yes, a very tall order, and Im not sure if it is achievable.

Sapolsky is also the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor, a professor of neurology and neurological sciences and of neurosurgery, and a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.

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Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky takes on human behavior, free will - Stanford University News

Last week, I wrote a bit about the dangers of passwords and the relationship with the Google Docs phishing scam that recently broke. Today, Im going back to the Google Docs issue, but to look at it from a different angle: how scammers continue to use social engineering so successfully.

An eSecurity Planet article touched on this:

Fidelis Cybersecurity threat research manager John Bambenek said by email that the attack is a stark reminder that criminals and nation states are targeting the one thing technology can't fix -- the user. "If you can trick the user into compromising themselves, you have no need for a zero-day," he said. "Security awareness and vigilance of end users are the key to the security of any system."

This echoes what Nathan Wenzler, chief security strategist at AsTech, told me in an email message. Hackers are using attacks such as ransomware and honed spearphishing campaigns to go after the weakest link: people, adding:

These attacks take advantage of social and emotional constructs to either fool the user into clicking on a link or a file that is malicious, or in the case of ransomware, appeal to the user's sense of ownership of their data and the desire to gain access to files which are important to them and may not be available anywhere else.

Someone recently asked what excites me about cybersecurity right now, and I said behavior analytics and how hackers use human behavior to manipulate their attacks, but also how security professionals can turn to behavior to better prevent attacks. In the Google Docs phish, the hackers not only turned to behavior to gain an edge, they also used the legitimate functionality within Google's infrastructure to provide a proper user login. They counted on the phishing recipients to simply react without thinking. And we should expect hackers to build on this type of attack vector, according to Simon Taylor, vice president of products at Glasswall, who told me in an email comment:

Cyber criminals know that productivity suites like O365 and Google, as well as dynamic documents and other types of shared files are the lifeblood of todays internet users. This includes consumers and employees of massive corporations, and oftentimes, theyre one and the same. While the threat has reportedly been mitigated by Google, this will not stop the ever-expanding theme of clever phishing tactics by malicious actors.

What can you do to help your employees avoid phishing scams that are using the tools they use every day to conduct ordinary job duties? You know Im going to say its time for security awareness training, specifically about this type of attack, and to always verify everything before clicking, especially if the request is out of the ordinary. In addition to that, Wenzler suggested that users should understand exactly how the software works:

Under normal conditions, Google Docs won't ask a user to provide access to Google Docs. It already has it, essentially, as that's the nature of signing up for the service. Users who know that something called "Google Docs" won't ask for access like this attack did would know that something is amiss and could stop before providing that access. Always take a moment to understand what your web-based applications are supposed to do, and if you see something abnormal, err on the side of caution and do not proceed.

Sue Marquette Poremba has been writing about network security since 2008. In addition to her coverage of security issues for IT Business Edge, her security articles have been published at various sites such as Forbes, Midsize Insider and Tom's Guide. You can reach Sue via Twitter: @sueporemba

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Google Docs Phishing Scam Takes Advantage of Human Behavior - IT Business Edge (blog)

(MENAFN Editorial)

Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Tony J. Selimi, Featured on NBC

Tony J. Selimi, Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Speaker, Educator and Internationally Published Author, was recently seen on ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX network affiliates around the country as a guest on The Brian Tracy Show

London, England May 2, 2017 Tony J. Selimi, Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, was recently a featured guest on The Brian Tracy Show. The show was hosted by Best-Selling Author and one of the country's leading business minds, Brain Tracy, and features business leaders and experts from around the world. Tony J. Selimi was one of Brian Tracy's recent guests, discussing his five step method to maximize human awareness and awaken people's innate healing faculties, the TJS Evolutionary Method.

Selimi's expertise and specialization in helping people realize their full potential led to an invite to the set of The Brian Tracy Show to tell the revolutionary story on how he went from living homeless on the streets of London to becoming a thought leader. His work has changed the lives of his clients by helping them align their highest values to their daily lives, build iconic ethical businesses, co-loving relationships, achieve work-life balance, and find inner peace and attain ultimate health. His feature has been seen by viewers across the country, and has undoubtedly inspired many.

The Brian Tracy Show, filmed in San Diego, California, is produced by Emmy Award-winning Director and Producer, Nick Nanton, Esq. and Emmy Award winning Producer, JW Dicks, Esq., Co-Founders of America's PremierExperts and The Dicks and Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency. The episode featuring Selimi recently aired on NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX affiliates across the country.

Watch Selimi's appearance on The Brian Tracy Show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyeYlGrASdw

About Tony J. Selimi:

Tony Jeton Selimi went from being a teenage victim of war feeling hopeless, impoverished, and abandoned on the streets of London, to graduating with honors from one of London's most prestigious engineering universities UCL. He build a very successful IT career before following his hearts calling to follow the entrepreneurial path that led him to become No.1 Amazon bestselling and award-winning author, key note speaker, co-creator of Living My Illusion Documentary Series and the founder of TJS Cognition, a service educational institution dedicated to unravelling, advancing, and elevating human potential.

He specializes in assisting businesses owners from all market sectors and people from all professions find solutions to their personal and business problems, accelerate their learning, and achieve excellence in all of the eight key areas of life: Spiritual, Mental, Emotional, Physical, Business, Money, Relationship and Love.

Like a transparent mirror, Tony is known for his ability to see through people' problems, unconscious behaviors, thought patterns, skewed perceptions, and dis-empowering beliefs that prevent them from creating and delivering astronomical visions and living the lifestyle they dream about. He helps them break free from shame, guilt, expectations, control, fears, trauma, addictions and other mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual blockages by upgrading their 'cognitive operating system and teaching them how to tap into the infinite wisdom of their interstellar existence.

As a business consultant he globally provides answers to questions and practical solutions to life's challenges in talks, workshops, one to one coaching, mastermind groups, retreats, articles, radio and TV interviews as well as through his books and online downloads of Audio Books and the TJS Evolutionary Meditation Solutions.

His clients are entrepreneurs, leaders, and people from all walks of life who seek his help to manifest their highest vision, to be more healthy, wealthy, wise, spiritual and influential. They range from Coaches, #Sports Personalities, Musicians, Celebrities, MPs, Dr's, Scientists, to CEO's and Managers of FTSE 100 companies such as Microsoft, SAP, Bank of America, E & Y, Gayacards, Vandercom and Deutsche Bank.

Tony appeared in various national magazines including Soul and Spirit, Global Women, Science to Sage, Hitched, Migrant Women, Accelerate Your Business, Changing Careers Magazine, Consciousness Magazine, Your Wellness, Time Out, Pink Paper, Gay Star News, Key Person Influence, and Soul Mate Relationship World Summit.

Some of his recent TV appearance include Digging Deep Show for SKY TV, Top Channel, Klan Kosova, AlsatM, Jeta KohaVision, RTM, MTV2, Kanal 21, and Shenja.

Tony's unique wisdom is sought regularly by various radio broadcasters to inspire their listeners including Hay House Radio, Voice of America, Radio Macedonia, Radio Kosova, Beyond 50, Knowledge for Men, Love and Freedom, Empty Closet, Donna Sebo Show, News for the Soul, Channel Radio, Untangled FM, Self-Discovery, and Spirit Radio.

He loves travelling, consulting, researching, teaching, speaking, and coaching clients globally. Tony loves using his creative flair and in partnership with the owners of Vandercom, a leading telecommunication and IT service Provider Company, he is co-creating inspiring films and documentaries that share his clients' real life breakthrough stories that are emotionally engaging, mind illuminating, and heart awakening to move people into action.

He is known for creating amazing transformation and leaving his clients feeling revitalized, energized, and with a sense of inner peace.

If you would like to learn more about Tony J. Selimi and his services, connect with him at: http://TonySelimi.com

###

Contact:

Christine Enberg

Dicks and Nanton Celebrity Branding Agency

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Human Behavior and Cognition Expert, Tony J. Selimi, Featured on NBC - MENAFN.COM

Human beings are a mess of contradictions. A person might hate violence but love violent action movies. Someone else might consider certain people are inherently good yet refuse to believe in the idea of a soul. For a long time, scientists have attempted to account for the inconsistencies in human behavior and tried to find predictable patterns in them but theyve yet to come up with a simple explanation.

But neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky wants us to know that were never going to find one.

While we are a miserably violent species, were also extraordinarily compassionate and altruistic, said Sapolsky, a Stanford University professor, to a TED 2017 crowd on Thursday. So how do you make sense of the biology of our best moments, our worst, and all of the ambiguous ones in between?

Answering this, he says, means first accepting that human behavior cant be explained by one hormone or evolutionary mechanism. Human decisions, he explains, are influenced by multiple factors that operate on a vast timeline, ranging from the second before a choice is made to the moment thousands of years ago when a persons behavioral patterns began to be shaped by their ancestors. Heres how he broke down the moments that contribute to human behavior in his talk.

One second before the decision: Whatevers happening in your immediate environment seconds before you make a decision may activate your amygdala, the brain area central to fear and aggression. So, if your environment is stressful, then your amygdala will be more likely to elicit hostile emotions that may influence that choice.

In addition, if youre tired, youre hungry, youre in pain your frontal cortex is not going to work very well, Sapolsky advises. Thats the brain region whose job it is to get there just in time to stop the amygdala.

Hours to days before the decision: This span of time is most influenced by hormones, Sapolsky says. The levels of these natural chemicals constantly fluctuate, and their levels at any given moment can influence a decision made down the line.

Regardless of your sex, if your testosterone levels are elevated, youre more likely to mistake a neutral facial expression for a threatening one, says Sapolsky. Or, if you have elevated levels of stress hormones, your amygdala becomes excitable and your frontal cortex gets sluggish.

Weeks to months before the decision: This time frame is the realm of neural plasticity the changes to the brain that happen as neurons form new connections.

The brain can change dramatically over time in response to experience, says Sapolsky. If your previous months were filled with stress and trauma, your amygdala would have grown larger, and neurons would have grown new connections there.

Years before the decision: The decisions you make as an adult are also shaped by the way your brain forms as it matures during childhood and adolescence, Sapolsky says.

Thats the time that your brain is being constructed, and experiences can cause what are called epigenetic changes, says Sapolsky. Some genes are activated permanently, other ones are turned off. For example, if as a fetus you were exposed to high levels of stress hormones from moms circulation, epigenetic changes would have gifted you with an adult amygdala thats enlarged with elevated stress hormones.

Centuries before you were even born: Ultimately, your behavior and the decisions that arise from that behavior is also shaped by the decisions your ancestors made thousands of years before. For example, Sapolsky explains, if your ancestors were warriors, their attitudes still influence the values with which you are raised.

Its clear that if you want to understand a behavior a wonderful one, an appalling one, a confusing one in between youve got to understand what happened from the second before to millions of years before, Sapolsky said, summarizing his talk.

In other words, its complicated.

More:
Here's Every Moment That Influences Human Behavior - Inverse

Igo on the assumption that everyone is guilty.

This sentiment of a guilt that is assumed automatically through membership in the human race is expressed by Jewish master violinist Yehudi Menuhin at the beginning of The Memory of Justice, and its an assessment that is largely borne out over the course of the 4 1/2-hour HBO documentary that airs April 24.

Although publicists for the film make a point that the screening date was set intentionally for Holocaust Remembrance Day, the production deals with three examples of mans inhumanity during the 20th century.

The first and longest segment does focus on the Holocaust, but the second part covers Frances attempted suppression of the Algerian bid for independence, and the third on Americas role in the Vietnam War.

The Memory of Justice is a massive and masterful restoration of a film of the same title released in 1976 that was produced, written and directed by Marcel Ophuls. He and his father, Max Ophuls (nee Oppenheimer), were German-born Jews, who resumed their brilliant film careers after fleeing to France and then the United States.

The main part of the films Holocaust-themed segment deals with the postwar Nuremberg war crimes trials that began in 1945 and in which an international tribunal tried 22 top political and military leaders of the Nazi regime. (Hitler had cheated the gallows by shooting himself as Soviet forces closed in on his Berlin bunker.)

Interviews with 40 people, perpetrators and victims, form the backbone of this segment. The two main figures are Telford Taylor, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, and Albert Speer, an architect who served as Hitlers minister of armaments.

Taylor went on to cover the Vietnam War (1955-75) and his views on war crimes, as well as similarities between Nazi and American conduct during the war in Southeast Asia, were expressed clearly in the title of his 1970 book, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy. A considerable part of the film is based on Taylors book.

After a 20-minute intermission, both in the press screening and the TV presentation, Ophuls documentary moves on to the Algerian war (1954-62), in which France tried to squelch its colonys independence movement, and in which both sides systematically tortured their enemies. In French history, the conflict is known as the dirty war.

The final segment focuses on the Vietnam War. The centerpiece is the 1968 My Lai Massacre, in which U.S. soldiers killed, mutilated and raped up to 500 unresisting men, women and children.

The Memory of Justice has been widely acclaimed as a masterpiece of documentary filmmaking, which it is, but the mass of material can at times overload the attentive viewer, who also may have difficulties in quickly adjusting to the films shifts in tone from gruesome depictions of death camp atrocities to merry songs of the era.

Ophuls, now 89, did not take an active part in the films restoration. Instead, the living link between the 1976 original and the current version is Hamilton Fish, a personality worth his own biographical film.

He is the descendant of an old American family of Anglo-Saxon and Scottish extraction. Formally named Hamilton Fish V, during a phone interview he invited a reporter to address him as Ham.

The Fish dynasty produced a series of rock-ribbed Republican politicians, including a former governor of New York. Another member of the clan, Hamilton Fish III, was a congressman from New Yorks Hudson Valley for 25 years and the nemesis of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Ham, 64, however, has flipped in the opposite direction, and as publisher of The Nation, is credited with preserving and upgrading Americas premier liberal magazine.

In 1975, he partnered with Ophuls to produce the original version of Memory of Justice and, in 2011, embarked on the excruciatingly difficult six-year project to restore and revive the documentary.

Some of the challenges called for scanning 50 reels of the 16 mm original negatives, frame by frame, eliminating dirt and scratches, restoring the soundtrack and adding new subtitles in English, French and German.

What I take away from the film are the continuing questions of justice and accountability, of a system of international law to counter rogue behavior by government leaders, Fish said.

However, looking at the present state of the world in general, and in Washington, D.C., in particular, Fish sounded a pessimistic note: We see a renewed emphasis on military power at the expense of meeting human needs at home.

The Memory of Justice will air at 5 p.m. April 24 on HBO2, HBO Now, HBO Go and HBO on Demand.

See more here:
Film focuses on how war warps human behavior - Jewish Journal

Sat., April 22, 2017, 1 p.m.

Humans routinely underestimate the intelligence of other animals, according to Frans de Waal, one of the worlds leading primatologists.

We look at intelligence as one way to solve problems in the environment, and animals can do things we cannot do, de Waal said in an interview with The Spokesman-Review.

Echolocation used by dolphins and bats is just one example of how some animals are capable of advanced intelligence.

Humans tend to judge things based on what were good at, and were really not impressed by echolocation, but really it is as complex (a form) of communication, de Waal said.

The Dutch/American biologist and author will discuss themes from his best-selling book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? at a public lecture and book signing at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox in Spokane. The free event is part of the Presidents Forum for Critical Thought lecture series at Eastern Washington University. He will also speak at a special event for students, faculty and staff earlier in the day on the EWU campus.

De Waal is the C.H. Candler professor of primate behavior in the Emory University psychology department, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. His numerous books, which include The Primate Mind and Evolved Morality, have drawn parallels between animal behavior and perceived human morality.

Chimpanzee Politics compared power struggles between chimpanzees with that of human politicians. The term alpha male was used to describe leaders that would enforce the power dynamic within a group, though de Waal said popular culture oversimplified the term when applying it to human behavior.

People have the impression that alpha male just means being a bully and ordering people around, de Waal said. Alpha males become leaders through diplomatic efforts, and it is rare they become alpha just by their physical strength.

The alpha male breaks up fights, consoles victims of aggression and a has a lot of different roles, he said.

Still, de Waal said political grandstanding often resembles animal behavior, citing some of last years preliminary presidential debates.

It was very chimp-like, because they were posturing, making anatomical connections, insulting each other, de Waal said.

His studies on empathy in chimps have also led to how people perceive emotional capabilities within the animal kingdom.

Its something we see in all mammals and even some bird studies, de Waal said.

While anyone with a loyal dog wouldnt be surprised by emotional awareness in animals, de Waal said there are some who still push back on the idea of animals being capable of complex human behaviors.

I think it helps placing us in a biological context, especially when it comes to positive behavior, de Waal said. As soon as humans do bad things, like kill each other, we call them animals. As soon as we do good things, thats our humanity. But in both the positive and the negative, we are animals.

Moral tendencies are not just intellectual, he said.

Continued research on animal intelligence has had a major cultural impact in recent years, particularly in the treatment of animals in captivity, de Waal said.

Circuses are disappearing, killer whales in captivity are disappearing, there are all these movements where slowly and steadily we take animals more seriously and how we treat them, he said. It may have implications for the farm industry those are much bigger numbers of animals than the research labs and the zoos.

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Renowned primatologist to tout animal intellect at free Spokane lecture - The Spokesman-Review

In a research essay published recently in the Journal of Economic Entomology, Robert Owen argues that human activity is a key driver in the spread of pathogens afflicting the European honey bee and recommends a series of collective actions necessary to stem their spread.

As reported by the Entomological Society of America, in the search for answers to the complex health problems and colony losses experienced by honey bees in recent years, it may be time for professionals and hobbyists in the beekeeping industry to look in the mirror.

In a research essay published recently in the Journal of Economic Entomology, Robert Owen argues that human activity is a key driver in the spread of pathogens afflicting the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) and recommends a series of collective actions necessary to stem their spread. While some research seeks a magic bullet solution to honey bee maladies such as Colony Collapse Disorder, many of the problems are caused by human action and can only be mitigated by changes in human behavior, Owen says.

Owen is author of The Australian Beekeeping Handbook, owner of a beekeeping supply company, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis at the University of Melbourne. In his essay in the Journal of Economic Entomology, he outlines an array of human-driven factors that have enabled the spread of honey bee pathogens:

Regular, large-scale, and loosely regulated movement of bee colonies for commercial pollination. (For instance, in February 2016 alone, of the 2.66 million managed bee colonies in the United States, 1.8 million were transported to California for almond crop pollination.).

Carelessness in the application of integrated pest management principles leading to overuse of pesticides and antibiotics, resulting in increased resistance to them among honey bee parasites and pathogens such as the Varroa destructor mite and the American Foul Brood bacterium (Paenibacillus larvae). The international trade in honey bees and honey bee products that has enabled the global spread of pathogens such as varroa destructor, tracheal mite (Acarapis woodi), Nosema cerana, Small Hive Beetle (Aethina tumida), and the fungal disease chalkbrood (Ascosphaera apis).

Lack of skill or dedication among hobbyist beekeepers to adequately inspect and manage colonies for disease. Owen offers several suggestions for changes in human behavior to improve honey bee health, including: Stronger regulation both of global transport of honey bees and bee products and of migratory beekeeping practices within countries for commercial pollination.

Greater adherence to integrated pest management practices among both commercial and hobbyist beekeepers.

Increased education of beekeepers on pathogen management (perhaps requiring such education for registration as a beekeeper).

Deeper support networks for hobby beekeepers, aided by scientists, beekeeping associations, and government.

The problems facing honeybees today are complex and will not be easy to mitigate, says Owen. The role of inappropriate human action in the spread of pathogens and the resulting high numbers of colony losses needs to be brought into the fore of management and policy decisions if we are to reduce colony losses to acceptable levels.

Read the original:
Human Behavior Hurting Bees, Researchers Say - PCT Magazine

The term human terrain is often used within the military. Individual Marines are encouraged to understand more about a local population they interact with, either on a deployment or while on liberty.

At the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter course, we specifically dive into this topic to help Marines better understand, to identify, and most importantly to predict human behavior.

For several hundreds of years scientists have studied our behavior as a species. Unilaterally, they conclude that we are predictable as creatures of habit that set patterns and are driven, at times, by uncontrollable responses in the brain.

Combat Hunter highlights these patterns to help recognize and explain why we act or react in a specific predictive pattern. Behavior that is consistent becomes predictable, which directly relates to military operations overseas or while on leave and liberty at home.

Imagine a popular singer visits your local diner and the fuss that creates. People are swarming and asking for autographs and selfies. We call this a Proxemic pull: We are pulled into situations we are interested in or feel safe around.

Conversely, if a crowd of Marines having a smoke see the first sergeant walking toward them, they scatter quickly. This is a Proxemic push: We push away from encounters we dont like or when we sense danger.

A crowd of people conducting normal business in a market overseas will show the same pushes and pulls that can be recognized and observed. When these occur, they have meaning and are not just random.

Thats where the so what? comes in. Why did the locals grab their kids and bolt? What caused the men to congregate only around a car that just pulled up? How come yesterday the locals were smiling and shaking our hands, yet today they keep their distance and are quickly closing up the market?

Every one of us knows we like our space. We dont like strangers getting too close to us, so we move out of the way or cross the street to get away from them. Remember the last time you were in an elevator: Where did the next person stand when they entered? Typically they take a position furthest from another person, and so on as others enter the elevator.

This is another example of proximity or how we use the space around us. It is predictable, and a Marine can observe when a meeting takes place between more than one person: Do they know each other or not? Is one acting submissive or dominant over the other? Are they interested or uninterested? Are they acting comfortable or uncomfortable? This behavior can be seen in a crowd or in an individual and give a read to the others intent.

Anybody can practice this by taking the time to observe people around them in their daily life. The next time you are in a mall, for example, take a seat in the food court or a bench and just watch people. Pick out who is together, who are just dating, the loners, who seems to be in a hurry, how most patrons dress, who is acting a bit odd, and determine why they stand out to you. By practicing this, you will be surprised how quickly you build file folders, or memories, of specific behavior. When you notice it again during one of your future travels, you will key in on it instantly.

People across the globe are wired the same on the inside-the culture may be different, but understanding what to expect behaviorally from people will help you to predict what they will do.

Human behavior is consistent and predictable.Understanding and studying this behavior will equip a Marine with a better understanding of the human terrain they are faced with no matter where they are deployed.

Gus Mingus is a retired Force Recon Marine and infantry officer who currently teaches profiling as an instructor at Combat Hunter, Advanced Infantry Training Battalion, School of Infantry-East, Camp Geiger, North Carolina. Opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

Link:
OPINION: How Marines can better predict human behavior - Marine Corps Times

The only market-affecting factor that is truly constant, is Human behavior. It, never changes. Human behavior is behind sentiment readings which always show confidence at market tops, and fear as markets grind their way higher toward tops. Human psychology is also behind the fundamental underpinnings of markets; it is Humans who make the decisions that result in increasing metrics such as industrial production and GAAP earnings. All of this can be visualized as repetitive patterns throughout the past. In this piece, we present the historical patterns of both sentiment and fundamental indexes and how they correlate to the S&P 500 index.

Sentiment (Emotions)

The AAII investor sentiment survey correlates strongly with S&P 500 tops; Major tops occur when investor bullish sentiment is above 50%, and bearish sentiment is less than 30%. In other words, tops happen when investors are confident (not fearful) about the market, and at the moment, the bullish sentiment is only at 29% while the bearish sentiment is at 37%. This correlates more with the beginning of a bull market than it does the end of one (chart below).

The National Association of Active Investment managers (NAAIM) survey index, although exhibiting wide short-term swings, has its 50 MA rising which corresponds with a rising S&P 500 (chart below).

These levels of investor sentiment are not normally exhibited at market tops.

Fundamentals

While current PE ratios for the equity markets have produced much fearful digital ink, the more fundamental measure, GAAP earnings, is showing a renewed surge in strength (blue-colored oval on the chart below) which has coincided with the start of bull markets going back three decades (pink-rectangles on the chart below).

The chart below also dispels the myth that rising interest rates kill bull markets. Notice how the FED rate was increased during all bull markets since 1989, except for the last one (2009-2015). The latter was certainly an anomaly, but as the chart below shows, the FED is now starting to normalize rates once again just as a new bull market gets underway.

The chart above, also demonstrates how bull markets coincide with rising Industrial Production (dark-green line). Industrial production is now turning back up after a two-year slump, which is what would be expected at the start of a bull market---not at the end of one.

In conclusion, contrary to the majority of current popular market-analysis, we see evidence coming from both sentiment and fundamental metrics that point to the beginning of a bull market, not the end of one.

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Originally posted here:
Not Only Is This Not The End Of A Bull Market, We Think It Is The Beginning Of One - Seeking Alpha

When it comes to your brains ability to digest, process, and spit out a good decision in the fastest possible time, you peak at 25, according to a study published in PLOS on Thursday titled Human Behavioral Complexity Peaks at Age 25.

After that, our neural processing of rapid-fire, high cognition goes down, says Hector Zenil, a computer scientist at Stockholms Karolinska Institute and a co-author of the study. You decline very slowly, he assures Inverse. But at 60, you see a strong decline in cognitive tasks like solving programs, puzzles, and problems.

To be clear, what Zenil and his colleagues are measuring is not impulsivity or intelligence, but rather how quickly and well a person can recognize random patterns, what Zenil describes as an algorithmic nature of human behavior that had not been explored before. That might seem like a useless skill, but think about how much of your daily life relies on figuring out patterns memorizing phone numbers or addresses, figuring out which spot on a train you can stand in, zigzagging home in a storm, figuring out which portion of a crowded gym floor to claim as your own. These sorts of patterns play out in fields like cryptography, hacking, and yes, computer science.

The seemingly simple task of making fast decisions out of random pattern recognition is a key indicator of neural health, and Zenil says that the data clearly points to 25-year-olds as the possessors of peak behavioral complexity.

This is a sort of reverse Turing test, where we tested the likelihood of human-generated patterns versus the likelihood of computer program-generated patterns, Zenil says. At a certain age, people beat computer programs best, with some people generating the most random patterns at 25 that only the most diligent computer programs were able to generate.

This reverse Turing test asked 3,249 participants aged between 9 and 91 and recruited through social media, radio, and a popular science magazine ad to complete five tests that looked at how quickly and well participants performed random item generation tasks: creating a series of coin tosses that looked random to everyone else but wasnt; guessing which card would appear next after a shuffle; creating a random-looking sequence that resembled what a person would roll with dice; pointing to one of nine circles appearing repeatedly on a screen; and filling a grid that looked randomly patterned.

Heres a video of how scientists implemented the test.

Zenil says that these seemingly inane puzzles were a reflection of chaos theory, a branch of mathematics that deals with how sensitive, complex systems can drastically alter with the slightest change. They were all given the same instructions, Zenil says. No other factor other than age produced these patterns with statistic randomness.

Zenil and his team made sure to isolate other factors that might have played a role in pointing to behavioral complexity superiority. They checked to see if language and therefore culture played a role, testing in Spanish, English, French, and German with large swaths of people who spoke those languages natively and another group whose second languages were those languages. That didnt make a difference. The team isolated education, which is correlated with economic class, and found that that didnt make a difference either. They considered gender and found that, nope, that didnt make a difference either.

In other words, it really was age that correlated with behavioral complexity, and 25 emerged as the peak age for these sorts of random decisions.

So what purpose do fast pattern recognition skills serve? If youre an animal, it means you can outsmart predators who might try to hunt and devour you you can slip into brush, take an unexpected turn, hide in a crevice. For humans, there is some evolutionary advantage to thinking fast in randomness, Zenil says, arguing that despite us not having to worry about predators or other clans of traveling nomads attacking us at night, fast random thinking can be useful in a modern economy that values creativity. The more randomness you produce, the more access you have to more powerful tools to come up with something new, he says, pointing to jobs ranging from the stock market to advertising to even science. The ability to switch methods quickly in a fast-paced world in a creative way is helpful and can pay dividends down the line.

For those freaking out about the state of their neural decline right now, rest assured its not all bad news. At 25, after all, youre still growing out of the impulsiveness that probably defined your puberty and youre coming into your adult brain, going through a second puberty of sorts on a neurological level. The tradeoff of being able to make random decisions so effectively at 25 is the fact that you really dont know much about the world, Zenil points out. This isnt just because youre wiser as an older person; as you age, youre better able to corral your brain into creative zones and know where you excel in concentrating your efforts. At 25, this isnt the case. And thats a tradeoff thats not really bad, Zenil points out.

Photos via Derbeth / Flickr

Tanya Basu is the Science editor at Inverse. Her writing focuses on the social sciences and behavior. Now based in Brooklyn, she will always call Chicago home and never be too full for one more taco.

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Human Behavioral Complexity Peaks at Age 25 - Inverse