Weve become a culture that prides itself on excessive behavior. We boast of being totally OCD about how we arrange our desks, we humblebrag that we check our social media feeds addictively. And in a world of such overload, its hard to tell what truly constitutes overdoing it. Science writer Sharon Begley is here to help. In her new book Cant. Just. Stop: An Investigation of Compulsions, she examines the compulsive mind and she separates disorders from impulses, anxieties from addictions. Its a fascinating history and exploration of a particular bent in the human psyche, and how it can manifest in everything from video-game playing to hoarding. Salon spoke recently to Begley about how technology plays with our brains, and the upsides of anxiety.

This is not just a book about a single kind of mental disorder. Tell us what the impetus for exploring compulsion was.

I looked around at my friends, my colleagues and the world in general and was seeing that a lot of us are engaged in one or another compulsive behavior. Im not surprised, given the industry where I work. A lot of us deal with compulsions. None of us can go anywhere without our phones any more. It wasnt just the ubiquity of that behavior but it was a suspicion about what underlies it that we dont love it. Its not that its making us joyful and satisfied or excited or it instillspositive emotions. But it all has to do with avoiding the negative function.

When youre a reporter and you cant go to the bathroom without your phone, its not because you love your phone. Its because youre terrified that youre going to miss something. That little germ of an insight made me look at other compulsions. It turns out that so many of them indeed are also driven not by, Well, I love this. This is really making me feel good, but by Oh my God, if I dont do this, Im going to feel totally horrible.

It was really interesting for me when I began to understand OCD as an anxiety disorder.

When I started this, I was on the fence about including an OCD chapter partly because I thought that it might be more insightful to look at the compulsions that are not recognized as mental disorders. Of course, so much has been written about OCD. But then as I got into the research, it was clear that OCD provided many insights psychologists and psychiatrists have, and that could be the jumping-off point for a lot of discussion about other stuff. Im glad I included it, but I still think that it should not overshadow everything else just because itsthe one compulsion that I think most people are familiar with.

You also demonstratetwo of the points that are really crucial to your book and make it really special. One is establishing the distinction in our very often fluid conversation between compulsion and addiction: what those both are and how those things really boil down. And you really do keep coming back again and again and again to the fact that with compulsive behaviors, people dont do them because they make them feel good; they do them because its about responding to fear and anxiety. I use the same analogy when I talk about medication, and people who take antidepressants. Theyre not taking them because it makes them feel great. Theyre taking them because it makes them feel not as bad.

Yeah. Theyre just getting you up to the baseline of zero. Getting into positive territory is a wish that we all look for but its just really, really tough. So many of us are just settling for, just please get me out of negative territory.

The other point that you make throughout the book is that concept you hear people say: Were all a little mentally ill. We all have a little bit of mental illness. You talk about the fact that compulsion and compulsive behaviors are very prevalent but you flip it. That doesnt mean that were all mentally ill because it doesnt mean that all compulsive behavior is mentally-ill behavior.

Exactly. I think that was a consequence of covering psychology and psychiatry for a few years and just listening to the conversation and the debate. So many of the things that psychiatrists are really, really quick to try to find the diagnosis on are just, I think, somewhere along the spectrum of human behavior and human quirks and not necessarily mental disorders.

As you point out in the book, there is an ancestral and genetic reason for us to have anxieties and for us to have fears. There is an argument to be made that those are the kinds of genes that get successfully passed down because people who have that enhanced ability to sense danger or to be aware of danger are more likely to survive.

Absolutely. Those who didnt get an adrenaline rush and a sense of fear and anxiety when they heard twigs cracking did not survive to be our ancestors. Theres absolutely an evolutionary case for why anxiety is adaptive.

I think one reason why were seeing so much compulsive behavior now is emblematic of this age. Of course, I wrote thisbook before Jan. 20, beforeNov. 8. When you are living in the time that we are, it really makes sense that people go to any kind of behavior or way of thinking that can drain away just enough of that anxiety so that they can operate.

Its hard to not feel anxiety. Its hard to manage our own level of participation in it. How do we have any measure of control? Sometimes the only measure of control one has is to compulsively keep refreshing the New York Times page.

Talking about this now, many things in the book were not in my original plan but in retrospect Im glad theyre there. There are some benefits to anxiety that are helpful to the individual and the world. We do what we can. Theres only one Steve Bannon or Paul Ryan, and those of us who are mostly on the sidelines are motivated by anxiety to go out and do something. Lets be appreciative of what anxiety can push us to do.

Youre bringing up the point of anxiety as an agent for good and compulsiveness as an agent for good as well. Certainly it bears mentioning that these impulses can be part of a brain that is reaching to make things good.

For many of us, even in these milder forms, its a reaction and its a way of trying to make order and sense of things and trying to make them good and just also trying to alleviate anxiety.

Because this is such a fluid and plastic concept, how does one really know when something is a disorder and when its just your basic, run of the mill, modern life compulsive behavior?

One of the many difficulties that psychiatry has is that it has no blood test. At the end of the day, theres a huge amount of subjectivity involved. However, the basic answer is, in order for something to be a mental disorder, it has to cause either distress or impairment. It has to impair your ability to function in the world, which means relationships, school, job, wherever you are in your mind. It has to cause distress, which again is a subjective thing. So if instead the behavior is helping you and not causing distress or impairment, then youd really better think twice before labeling it a mental disorder. In the case of OCD, it tends to be impairing if you have to keep running back to your house to see if you locked the front door or go to the restroom 50times a day to wash your hands. I would say psychiatry has a way to go before it can figure out how to make accurate, objective diagnoses.

We seem to have not just with anxiety disorders, because we certainly seem to do it with addictions a kind of Aw, isnt that cute? attitude around certain mental disorders. What do you think about this primal attraction or inability to see the line between normal or interesting eccentric and, Oh, this is actually disordered behavior?

Ive observed the same thing, like that show Monk. That was portrayed exactly as you said: romanticized with a little bit play for humor. But the message was, this is cute and eccentric and it makes him more interesting. Of course, the way hoarders are depicted on some of the cable shows, thats less sympathetic in its portrayal, but theresjust an inability to perceive that so much is really, really about suffering or struggling. I dont know why we tend to romanticize some of these things, because the the flip side, of course, is the stigma of mental illness. Could it be that we dont want to recognize when people are suffering because then that might make us think that especially if its someone were close to then I have an obligation to try to help? Its just easier to say, Oh, charming, cute, interesting, whatever. Honestly, its a puzzle.There is nothing fun or charming or cute about it. For people who are really suffering, they are suffering.

Why do you think it feels like we are a more compulsive culture than ever before?

One of the reasons, I think, is technology. Because the digital stuff that we now have is set up, especially in terms of its reward structure, to tap into the part of our brain that cant resist acting compulsively. But just because you have a compulsive behavior doesnt mean that your brain is broken. Instead, if its social media or tweeting or email or checking, texting and all the other things, its because these things have a structure that exploits the way our brains work.

The important phrase that really struck me is the concept of intermittent reward, and how seductive that is.

Also, just so many of us cannot stand to be alone with our own thoughts that we have that crutch so that we dont have to think. A reporter interviewed me last week asking something about why people, when theyre out on social occasions dinner parties, dinner with friends, bar, or whatever have their faces always attached to their screen. That is a lot easier to do and that drives away anxiety from what would otherwise be an anxiety-provoking social situation.The reason I think so many of us are acting compulsively is the technology. It just exploits something that we all have within us.

Read more from the original source:
Author Sharon Begley on why we Can't. Just. Stop. being compulsive - Salon

Hello. My name is Bandit. As you can see, Im a robot.

When we picture robots providing care, we tend to assume it must be physical care. Human illness, however, is hardly constrained to the body. Thus computer scientist Maja Matari is developing socially assistive robots that focus on the psychological.

Bandit, a computerized rolling torso with a gingerbread man-like face, can help with physical therapy by demonstrating the correct movements and performing them right alongside the patient. But it also goes into the realm of emotional support, creativity, and companionship.

Hey, lets do something a little more fun, Bandit tells the man its working with at Mataris University of Southern California laboratory. Lets play the imitation game. Move your arms. Show me what do to.

The man begins to lead, stretching his arms. And Bandit mirrors him.

Im having fun, Bandit says in a cheery voice. I can play this game all day long.

For people with debilitating conditions physical trauma to Alzheimers to autism Matari says that socially responsive robots are uniquely positioned to supplement human caregiving. Their automated nature lends itself to encouraging necessary, repetitive tasks. Coupled with their physical presence, they could prove a vital resource in helping patients manage or recover from their respective conditions. A paper describing her recent research was published Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics.

Perhaps one day a robot like me may help you or someone you know, Bandit says.

Fifteen years ago, Matari created the field of socially assistive robotics (SAR). Its goal is to design robots that are intuitive, supportive, and ultimately able to help people without doing physical work.

So what can [assistive robots] do? Matari tells Inverse. All kinds of other things. Increasing situational awareness, reminding people of things getting them to do repetitive daily tasks that will help them get better and stay better. You dont see that being addressed even though its very badly needed.

We know that screen-based contact can be effective, but not as effective as actual physical presence. Our brains more engage better when we interact with the real thing, and the real thing doesnt have to be a person. It can be an animal; it can be a robot.

SAR is distinct from simple social robotics in that it aims to influence behavior. Its the difference between something that reminds a patient to exercise or take a pill or attend therapy and something that persuades them to do those things when they dont want to.

People say, Oh, why dont you use an app for that? Matari says. Because there are literally a gazillion and almost none are effective. Our brains are wired to interact with other physical creatures. And then once youve got this robot it what does it look like? And how does it behave? That all creates expectations on the part of the user.

People dont feel as embarrassed in front of machines as they do with human caretakers, or as guilty about asking for help. Were better able to process assistive robots for what they are when they look more classically robotic. If a robot looks too realistic too human users tend to perceive it as being smart.

To make patients comfortable, its imperative that the robots pick up on social cues, reading tone and body language and reacting neither too quickly nor too slowly. This is an ongoing challenge in the field, which is why Matari wants future SAR developers to collaborate with experts in social and psychological sciences, as well as with ones for conditions like autism.

All robots are on the autism spectrum, Matari says. They have no idea how to react to social cues appropriately.

Of course, for a child with autism, that may be an asset. Matari, who has worked with many different patient populations over the last 15 years, says that beyond what individual specifications people may need to accommodate their respective disabilities, the common thread is always the humanity the universal desire for dignity, positive feedback, and measurable progress that transcends age or gender or disease.

Matari predicts that the adoption of socially assistive robots will vary by specialty. Companies looking to introduce them to hospital settings will evolve them at a different pace than those suited for special-needs classrooms or Alzheimers homes. She figures the home market will be the most consumer-driven, and so the most profitable, which means that use might take off faster there, even though its arguably the most difficult to do well.

In the meantime, Matari says people who view her work as part of a robots-replacing-people narrative are missing the nuances of these situations. Socially assistive robots can supplement caregivers who are overtaxed, and they can provide a structure and reliability that humans cannot. But there are some things theyll never do.

It doesnt mean were ever looking at replacing human care with machines, she says. Theyre never going to be like people and that should never be the goal.

Photos via USC News Communications

Kastalia grew up in Littleton, Colorado, and has a journalism degree from the University of Southern California. She spent the past year and a half backpacking around the world and recently moved to New York. Her RTs = unwavering personal convictions.

Original post:
Futuristic Robot Helpers Can Influence Human Behavior - Inverse

As part of Infosecuritys Life of... series, this webinar will look at the role of consultants who specialise in social engineering and human behaviour as it relates to cybersecurity. The social engineer is often a highly-skilled, highly-motivated adversary. As people and their working environment become more connected, hacking the human rather than the network is often the most effective route for an adversary. As any information security professional knows, the human is the weakest link in any defense strategy and consequently it is essential to understand how social engineers manipulate individuals and exploit security weaknesses.

Cybersecurity behavior experts are able to analyze and detect human behaviors and advise organizations and individuals how not to get stung by the social engineers. In this roundtable webinar, we will bring together some leading experts to discuss this topic and talk about what its like to be a cybersecurity behaviour expert or social engineering consultant.

This session will include:

See the article here:
Life of: A Cybersecurity Behavior Expert - Infosecurity Magazine - Infosecurity Magazine

March 17th, 2017 by James Ayre

Humans may have played a very active role in the desertification of the Sahara, according to new research from Dr David Wright of Seoul National University.

The new findings directly contradict the earlier supposition that the rapid shift from a heavily greened landscape to the modern Sahara desert, over just a few thousand years time, was driven entirely by natural processes. (Obviously, if one considers human behavior to be natural, than there is no real distinction, but that doesnt change the fact that people may have played a major role in the desertification of the region.)

In East Asia there are long established theories of how Neolithic populations changed the landscape so profoundly that monsoons stopped penetrating so far inland, commented Wright. Wright then went on to note that evidence of human-driven climatic and ecological change has been documented in Europe, North America, and New Zealand as well, and that similar scenarios could well have occurred in the Sahara.

Nick Fraser, Journal Development Manager, Frontiers in Earth Sciences, provides more: To test his hypothesis, Wright reviewed archaeological evidence documenting the first appearances of pastoralism across the Saharan region, and compared this with records showing the spread of scrub vegetation, an indicator of an ecological shift towards desert-like conditions. The findings confirmed his thoughts; beginning approximately 8,000 years ago in the regions surrounding the Nile River, pastoral communities began to appear and spread westward, in each case at the same time as an increase in scrub vegetation.

Growing agricultural addiction had a severe effect on the regions ecology. As more vegetation was removed by the introduction of livestock, it increased the albedo (the amount of sunlight that reflects off the earths surface) of the land, which in turn influenced atmospheric conditions sufficiently to reduce monsoon rainfall. The weakening monsoons caused further desertification and vegetation loss, promoting a feedback loop which eventually spread over the entirety of the modern Sahara.

If true, that would make for simply yet another version of the age-old human story of unintended consequences. In other words, its yet another show of the fact that humans arent nearly as clever as most of uslike to thinkwe are.

To reiterate that last point, historical study clearly shows that soil erosion and desertification played a significant role in the collapse of many earlier civilizations. And since were talking about North Africa here it should be remembered that after the Roman Republic had more or less depleted the soils of Southern Europe (and entered into the civil war period that led to the birth of the Roman Empire), it colonized the region which still possessed good soil fertility at the time at the expense of the mostly Phoenician locals. (The Afri were one of the Phoenician groups living there at the time, and served as the basis of the name Africa.)

For many of the years that followed, this colonization of North Africa functioned as the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. The current state of North Africas depleted soils is partly the result of the mass-scale agriculture of the time, and partly the result of the overgrazing and abandonment of the aqueducts that followed Islamic conquest. (There was also a brief period when the Germanic Vandals had control of some parts of the region, before the Arabs then pushed them out.)

Commenting on what comes next, Wright stated: There were lakes everywhere in the Sahara at this time, and they will have the records of the changing vegetation. We need to drill down into these former lake beds to get the vegetation records, look at the archaeology, and see what people were doing there. It is very difficult to model the effect of vegetation on climate systems. It is our job as archaeologists and ecologists to go out and get the data, to help to make more sophisticated models.

Overall, Wrights work makes for an interesting interpretation of the available data. Personally, I wouldnt be surprised at all if humans were the primary driver of desertification in the region aided by the climatic turbulence of the times. Theres probably a parallel to be drawn there with modern times

The new findings are detailed in a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science.

Image bySidy Niang(some rights reserved)

Buy a cool T-shirt or mug in the CleanTechnica store! Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech daily newsletter or weekly newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: desertification, North Africa, overgrazing, Sahara Desert

James Ayre 's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy. You can follow his work on Google+.

Read more:
Humans May Have Played Very Active Role In Desertification Of The Sahara, Research Finds - CleanTechnica

Cyber Defense

As the Pentagons Joint Regional Security Stacks moves forward with efforts to reduce the server footprint, integrate regional data networks and facilitate improved interoperability between previously stove-piped data systems, IT developers see cybersecurity efforts moving quickly toward increased artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

I think within the next 18-months, AI will become a key factor in helping human analysts make decisions about what to do, former DOD Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen said.

As technology and advanced algorithms progress, new autonomous programs able to perform a wider range of functions by themselves are expected to assist human programmers and security experts defending DOD networks from intrusions and malicious actors.

Given the volume and where I see the threat moving, it will be impossible for humans by themselves to keep pace, Halvorsen added.

Much of the conceptual development surrounding this AI phenomenon hinges upon the recognition that computers are often faster and more efficient at performing various procedural functions; at the same time, many experts maintain that human cognition is important when it comes to solving problems or responding to fast-changing, dynamic situations.

However, in some cases, industry is already integrating automated computer programs designed to be deceptive giving potential intruders the impression that what they are probing is human activity.

For example, executives from the cybersecurity firm Galois are working on a more sophisticated version of a honey pot tactic, which seeks to create an attractive location for attackers, only to glean information about them.

Honey pots are an early version ofcyberdeception. We are expanding on that concept and broadening it greatly, said Adam Wick, research head at Galois.

A key element of these techniques uses computer automation to replicate human behavior to confuse a malicious actor, hoping to monitor or gather information from traffic going across a network.

Its goal is to generate traffic that misleads the attacker, so that the attacker cannot figure out what is real and what is not real, he added.

The method generates very human looking web sessions, Wick explained. An element of this strategy is to generate automated or fake traffic to mask web searches and servers so that attackers do not know what is real.

Fake computers look astonishingly real, he said. We have not to date been successful in always keeping people off of our computers. How can we make the attackers job harder once they get to the site, so they are not able to distinguish useful data from junk.

Using watermarks to identify cyber behavior of malicious actors is another aspect of this more offensive strategy to identify and thwart intruders.

We cant predict every attack. Are we ever going to get where everything is completely invulnerable? No, but with AI, we can change the configuration of a network faster than humans can, Halvorsen added.

The concept behind the AI approach is to isolate a problem, reroute around it, and then destroy the malware.

About the Author

Kris Osborn is editor-in-chief of Defense Systems. He can be reached at kosborn@1105media.com.

Go here to read the rest:
Pentagon sees more AI involvement in cybersecurity - Defense Systems

The worst cliche in pop culture is the suggestion that platonic friendship is just true love waiting to happen. I don't say worst only because it's lazy, which it is, but because it's a dangerous, false and cruel idea for entertainment to promote.

Chuck Klosterman, in his 2003 book "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," described this as the "When Harry Met Sally" problem, referring to the romantic comedy that "made it realistic to suspect your best friend may be your soul mate, and it made wanting such a scenario comfortably conventional."

Plenty of movies and shows before and since have validated the notion that a friend you happen to develop romantic feelings for is just a future lover who doesn't realize it yet. Almost every long-running television series featuring an opposite-sex friendship has at some point fallen back on the "let's hook them up" storyline. It makes sense you can't fill 11 seasons of "Friends" or "Cheers" without eventually pairing off some of the leads.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the best and most important show ever created seriously, fight me on this had a clever way of handling the inevitable sexual tension between its lead female and male characters: it abstained.

Fans of the show last week celebrated the 20th anniversary of its premiere on the WB network. Plenty has been written in the media about this milestone, and there is a lot to say about the Joss Whedon series' formal inventiveness, its fierce feminist message, its powerful LGBT advocacy, its subversion of narrative tropes and its role in normalizing geek culture.

But what I remember most from the shows seven-year run is a warning about mixing friendship and more-than-friendship. In the finale of the first season, Xander (Nicholas Brendon) finally musters the courage to confess to his best friend Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) that he loves her. He delivers a well-rehearsed speech asking her to a school dance, but she says no.

Buffy, taken aback by the unexpected advance, feels terrible about rejecting her friend. Xander, his pride wounded by the rebuke, says something mean and stomps off, leaving her hurt and confused even though she didnt do anything. Later in the episode, Xander recognizes that his friendship with Buffy, and all the demon-fighting they do together, is more important than his precious feelings and saves her from death at the hands of a vampire master, as one does.

Its a delicate handling of something almost everyone encounters, some of us more than others. An even better episode in the second season found Xander empowered by a misfired love spell that made him the object of lust for every girl in school, including his onetime friend-crush, Buffy, where he learns that getting what you think you want might actually be a nightmare.

The show should be mandatory viewing for every high-school student. If Id seen and internalized it when it originally aired, instead of when I fell into a Netflix rabbit hole at about age 30, I might have avoided years of dumb behavior.

For the longest time, I was one of those dudes who would always fail romantically, blame everyone but himself, then use the failure as an excuse to become embittered instead of addressing an underlying terror of intimacy. I was a Xander, which is to say, a jerk.

A Xander will complain about the friend zone as if its some dark corner of the Buffyverse to which all nice guys are banished. He'll will read an embarrassing number of books by self-described pick-up artists (any number above zero is embarrassing) not to learn about human behavior but to gain tools of revenge. He'll act like a victim even though hes the one ruining relationships.

Age cured this self-affliction, but not soon enough. There arent many things from my teens and 20s I want to do over, but I would go to the Hellmouth and back for a few more youthful years uncursed by Xanderness.

Troy Reimink is a writer and musician who lives in west Michigan.

Read more:
Troy Reimink: 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' helped me become less of a jerk - Traverse City Record Eagle

According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, depression and anxiety are major causes for illness and death. Maybe you're feeling a bit down this time of year. If so, you are not alone. A nationwide survey indicated that 6 to 8 percent of Minnesotans reported being depressed. Cold winters and long nights do not help matters. Those who study human behavior confirm the idea that if we do not take action, we will tend to stay "down in the dumps." Getting down occasionally is a normal human experience. Staying down is not.

In abnormal cases of depression, the individual wants to feel this way and tends to hold others responsible for it. He believes other people owe him special attention and sympathy. He does not know what has caused him to feel this way and fears that something worse may happen. This individual, with full support of family and friends, should get help right away.

In a more typical case of the "doldrums," we acknowledge that it is not good to be like this, and we do not want it to continue. We feel guilty about being depressed and are willing to admit that it is our own fault. We are not alone in this. Even people in the Bible suffered in this way. One person that stands out to me is the prophet Elijah who appears to be experiencing a temporary state of depression in I Kings Chapter 19. In that passage, three responses to depression come to my mind.

First, do a self-inventory and try to identify the possible causes for our depression. In Elijah's case, he wanted his life to be over because he did not believe he was better than his ancestors (I Kings 19:4). This was pride on his part. Other causes for depression might be selfish anger, refusal to carry out our responsibilities, or running from our problems. Honestly acknowledging our own sinful behavior is the first step to getting right with God.

Next, allow your feelings to motivate you to see what really matters. In I Kings 19:1-7, God sent an angel to encourage Elijah to look at the big picture. God used this down time in Elijah's life to guide the thoughts of his wayward prophet toward the task at hand an upcoming journey that he needed to prepare for. God provided food and water to refresh him. Thus strengthened with physical nourishment, Elijah could respond to God's wisdom and encouragement.

Finally, choose to get back up and do what God wants you to do. In I Kings 19:8, Elijah "arose, and ate and drank, and went..." The depressed feelings were real, but thankfully, only temporary. When Elijah stopped making excuses for himself and started listening to God, his life dramatically improved. Elijah had failed to distinguish between what he wanted and what God wanted.

Getting what we want seldom makes us happy. Obeying what God wants is the right response. God wants us to make it our goal to be pleasing to him and useful to others. Being depressed and self-focused is never pleasing to God. Our designer did not create us to live that way. However, when we get our eyes off ourselves and focus on what's important, as Elijah did, God will restore us and get us back on track.

The Rev. Joe Whiting makes his home in Two Harbors with his wife, two sons, and a standard poodle. On Faith is a weekly column in the News-Chronicle written by area religious leaders.

Continued here:
On Faith: Back on track - Lake County News Chronicle

Worried that all the volcanoes in the world will be set off by some nefarious supervillain? Concerned that we might be nearing a time of nuclear apocalypse? Well, if you are fretting to the extreme, then a brand new study currently sitting on the pre-print server arXiv has some additional information for you specifically, how would everyone react knowing its coming?

This, as you can imagine, is not an easy psychological phenomenon to study. Scientists cant really get ethical permission to fund a study where they convince a few human subjects that the planet is about to be destroyed.

Instead, theyve turned to ArcheAge, a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) thathas an open world, no concrete objectives, and a ludicrous degree of choice. Build an empire, raise an army, have your own private rave, become a trader, assassinate a few people, infiltrate an alliance as a spy, or create your own house, that sort of thing.

Given this much freedom, you would think that the countdown to nothingness would encourage dangerous hedonism and extreme violence but in fact, the players actually became more peaceful.

Lead by the University at Buffalo, the team created a server on the game that allowed any number of players to join and play the game as usual, but with two caveats. The first is that the players were aware that their data would be deleted after around 11 weeks. Secondly, all their actions in the game would be monitored by the researchers.

We believe that the end of the [game] is a relatively good approximation of an end times scenario, and thus the present work is not only useful for the understanding of players behavior but can also begin to shed light on human behavior in general under such conditions, the authors write in their study.

ArcheAge's launch trailer. GameSpot via YouTube

Normally, theres a strong degree of competition in MMORPGs to level-up individual characters more significantly and become more powerful than other players. Although cooperation features, there is generally a focus on self-improvement.

Knowing that the virtual world was going to end, however, appeared to have a huge effect on players behaviors. Players left quests uncompleted, and although leveling up did occur, far less seemed to focus on it so aggressively. Generally speaking, they banded together a lot more.

See more here:
Video Game Study Suggests Humans Get More Peaceful As The World Ends - IFLScience (blog)

Personality assessment and behavioral analysis company announces the release of new updates to its user platform.

Boardman, OH (PRWEB) March 16, 2017

PeopleKeys, the international personality and behavior experts, just announced new improvements to their user platform, PK3. As part of a continued dedication to improving customer experience, these changes will reflect PeopleKeys' new design and functionality upgrades. By putting users first, PeopleKeys allows users to have more options to control their user experience.These new updates will be available on March 20th. The redesign of the PK3 dashboard is part of their recent initiative to update all of their products and services to reflect a more contemporary aesthetic and improve user experience. Known for their highly customizable personality assessment and Behavioral Analysis products, PeopleKeys has extended this dedication to user-guided experiences by upgrading its user platform. This upgraded platform will incorporate even more Administrator-controlled functions. These functions will be thoroughly introduced and explained in instructional videos and downloadable documents, making them even easier to use.

PeopleKeys PK3 Administrators and Account Holders will be able to:

1- Enjoy a new dashboard layout with everything you need to know, all in one place 2- Send Assessments 3- Transfer Assessments 4- Take advantage of the new Recent Activity' window showing you pending tasks, membership requests, upgrades and reports all in one place 5- Invite someone to become an Admin directly

These new features and upgrades will improve the user's experience and allow them to take control of the organization of their account. It puts new account features firmly in the hands of the Administrator without having to consult with PeopleKeys' customer service, and a second round of updates and upgrades is already in the works.

How-to videos will soon be released showing Account Administrators how to utilize these exciting new features.

With these new changes to their PK3 Platform, PeopleKeys illustrates their continued dedication to going beyond their customer's expectations.

Want to hear more? Have any questions? Contact PeopleKeys at sales(at)peoplekeys(dot)com or customerservice(at)peoplekeys(dot)com. 330-599-5580 for more information

More about PeopleKeys:

For almost four decades, PeopleKeys has been the thought leader in cutting edge Behavioral Analysis and personality assessment resources. Throughout their expansion both domestically and internationally, PeopleKeys has sought to improve people's understanding of human behavior. Their knowledge of applied behavioral analysis has helped people to reduce stress, improve their relationships, increase workplace productivity, raise morale, and enhance interpersonal communication skills. With their DISC theory based reports, tools, resources, webinars and assessments, PeopleKeys seeks to help everyone unlock their people potential. They have products designed specifically for individuals, ministries, students, businesses, teams, coaches and more; and with over 33 languages available, they are uniquely suited to help everyone improve the human part of their lives.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/03/prweb14155382.htm

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Personality Experts Offer New User-Friendly Updates to Popular Platform - Benzinga

Luis Sentis will lead a session, A Developers Primer for Coding Human Behavior in Bots, at SXSW on Sunday, March 12, 2017.

Human-centered robotics hold a special place in the robotics field because they both mimic human sensing and cognitive behavior, and are designed to assist humans for safety and productivity. To explore human-centered robotics is to explore human beings and how we sense the world, analyze complex and often conflicting information, and act upon our findings, modifying perception, understanding, and action as new information is available.

Such machines could be of great practical benefit to humans on long space flights to Mars, for instance, or as human proxies in hazardous environments such as a chemical spill or even ordinary circumstances like education or elder care.

Obviously, creating human-centered robots poses many challenges in conception, design, and the hardware and software that support them. My own work in this burgeoning field focuses on designing high-performance series elastic actuators for robotic movements, embedded control systems, motion planning for dynamic locomotion, and real-time optimal control for human-centered robots.

Once we have a platform for human-centered robotics, and once we can create the hardware and software and the logic to drive them, we can turn to its real-world applications, which are many.

Most readers probably have only a passing acquaintance with human-centered robotics, so allow me to use this brief blog to introduce a few ideas about this topic and its challenges.

Humanoid and Human-Centered

Since perhaps the 1950s, television and the movies have often portrayed humanoid robotsrobots that take roughly human formentertaining us with how closely they mimic humans or by how far they fall short. Sometimes, in a dramatic plot turn, a humanoid robot becomes malevolent or uncontrollable by humans.

I prefer the term human-centered robot, because it most closely describes my field of endeavor: How to create a robot that is focused on assisting a human being; sometimes guided by a human, but also learning on its own what action or behavior would be most helpful to that human.

In my view, we do not yet have sufficient evidence to say that humanoid robots are most effective when interacting with humans. They may well be, but we do not have definitive data on the question.

However, it appears anecdotally true that humanoid robots fire the human imagination and that has its benefits. In addition to their portrayal in popular media, I have found that humanoid robots draw the most, well, human interest. Soon after creating one we named Dreamer in 2013, in the Human Centered Robotics Lab (HCRL) at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, we generally received more attention from curious students, engineers, investors andwouldnt you know itmovie producers. (Dreamer eventually had a bit part in Transformers 4 in 2014.) If humanoid robots help draw attention and interest to human-centered robotics, so be it.

Applications and Productivity

The more important aspect of this field is how to create human-centered robotics that sense their surroundings and either respond to human directions or intuit what actions would best serve their human counterpart.

Ive mentioned the possible robotic applications of space travel, perhaps as a companion to astronauts on a space walk, as a human proxy in hazardous environments or as a caregiver to an elderly person. In each case, the notion of productivity is different.

If you think of productivity for robotics generally in a manufacturing setting, it can be measured in terms of hours of work performed and profits earned. But in a long space journey to Mars, productivity will be measured instead in terms of the astronauts enhanced safety and ability to accomplish difficult tasks. In a hazmat spill, productivity might be measured in terms of human lives saved. In elder care, how well did a robot perform in changing bandages or applying ointment to a sore, preserving the persons health?

Robot Knows Best

Another quest in human-centered robotics is to create the ability of a robot to not just predict human behavior, but to perform what I call intervention. Whatever its level of complexity, can we build a robot with logic that assesses a situation for optimal actions, whether directed by a human or not? This translates to a robots ability to say to itself, Well, the human is operating the system in such a way. We could do better if computationally I have a hypothesis about what would be best for the human and intervene with that particular behavior.

This ability requires pairing social cognitive theories with mathematics. And I have found that advances are possible for what I call self-efficacy, which is basically the self-confidence to achieve a certain behavior.

At this point, self-efficacy can be achieved in very simple scenarios. One potential application is to use a human-centered robot to motivate students to solve problems by sensing and reacting to students level of engagement, then producing an interaction that motivates the student and enhances learning. I hope to demonstrate this and give attendees a chance to code such behavior in a human-centered robot at SXSW.

Touch and Whole Body Sensing

One major way in which humans interact is through touch. We place a hand on a shoulder or grasp someones forearm to gain their attention. Robotsparticularly humanoid ones with mobilityare likely to be large and quick, so touch becomes an important element in the safety of their human counterparts. We do not want a robot that runs into an astronaut on a space walk or pins someone to a wall. Thus, we are developing what I call whole body sensing. Though some in this field are pursuing something known as sensory skin, at the HCRL we have taken a more economical approach to minimize the amount of electronics needed.

We use a distributed sensor array on the robots surface, but they number in the dozens, not the thousands employed in sensory skin. Instead, we combine different sensing modalities internal to the robot, such as accelerometers, which aid stabilization, and vibration sensors that enable the machine to triangulate information on whats happening in the immediate environment. This enables the robot to respond to human touch, but within the context of other information it is receiving from its environment. We call this whole-body contact awareness, a combination of internal and external sensing and awareness.

Spin-offs

I hope this mere glimpse into the world of human-centered robotics piques your curiosity. It may serve to attract those who wish to work in the field. But the general public should also understand that advances in this field will eventually make their way into human-centered robotics in our homes, our businesses, manufacturing, agriculture, smart cities, the Internet of Things, you name it. Well have systems somedaywe already do, with limited abilitiesto sense human behaviors and intervene to produce optimal conditions based on an understanding of whats best for the people involved in a particular situation.

Today, we have smart thermostats that learn our preferences for heating and cooling our homes. Tomorrow, we may have human-centered robotic systems that optimize our cities.

Luis Sentis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. He also leads UT Austins Human Centered Robotics Laboratory and is co-founder of Apptronik Systems Inc., a contractor for NASA's Johnson Space Center.

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The Future of Human-Centered Robotics - Electronic Design