Mothers singing for their infants generates positive impacts

CORAL GABLES Family Mothers around the world sing to their infants in remarkably similar ways, and infants prefer these specialized songs, says Shannon de lEtoile. The tempo and key certainly dont need to be perfect or professional for mothers and infants to interact through song. In fact, infants may be drawn to the personalized tempo and pitch of their mother, which encourage them to direct their gaze toward and ultimately communicate through this gaze, added de lEtoile.

As one of the first records of human music, infant-directed singing permeates cultural boundaries and parenting traditions. Unlike other forms of caregiving, the act of mothers singing to infants is a universal behavior that seemingly withstands the test of time.

On the surface, the exchange between mother and child may seem standard, but to Shannon de lEtoile, professor of Music Therapy and associate dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Miami Frost School of Music, there is much more to the infant-directed song than meets the eyeand ear.

We know from previous research that infants have the innate ability to process music in a sophisticated manner, explained de lEtoile. Initially, I set out to identify infant behaviors in response to live infant-directed singing compared to other common maternal interactions such as reading books and playing with toys. One of the main goals of the research was to clarify the meaning of infant-directed singing as a human behavior and as a means to elicit unique behavioral responses from infants, she added.

Additionally, de lEtoile explored the role of infant-directed singing in relation to intricate bond between mother and infant. In an initial study, she filmed 70 infants responding to six different interactions: mother sings an assigned song, stranger sings an assigned song, mother sings song of choice, mother reads book, mother plays with toy, and the mother and infant listen to recorded music. The results were promising, but also raised additional questions.

High cognitive scores during infant-directed singing suggested that engagement through song is just as effective as book reading or toy play in maintaining infant attention, and far more effective than listening to recorded music, said de lEtoile. But what did the infant engagement tell us about the mothers role during the interaction? she questioned.

de lEtoile continued the study by focusing on the role of the caregiver during infant-directed singing by measuring the make-up of the song and the mothers voice.

Findings revealed that when infants were engaged during song, their mothers instincts are also on high alert, said de lEtoile. Intuitively, when infant engagement declined, the mother adjusted her pitch, tempo or key to stimulate and regulate infant response.

While the intuitive adjustment of the song or singing voice seemed natural to most of the mothers, de lEtoile was inclined to dig further. In a study published in theJournal of Music Therapy, she explored the acoustic parameters in the singing voices of mothers with post-partum depression.

The extraction and analysis of vocal data revealed that mothers with post-partum depression may lack sensitivity and emotional expression in their singing, stated de lEtoile. Although the infants were still engaged during the interaction, the tempo did not change and was somewhat robotic.

According to de lEtoile, for mothers with postpartum depression, infant-directed singing creates a unique and mutually beneficial situation. Through song, the infants are provided with much-needed sensory stimulation that can focus their attention and modulate their arousal. Simultaneously, mothers experience a much-needed distraction from the negative emotions and thoughts associated with depression, while also feeling empowered as a parent.

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Infant Directed Singing Universal Behaviour with Positive Impacts - Net Newsledger

One of the most amazing things about dogs is that they seem to have at least a small sense of morality.Besides looking totally guilty when they realizethey did something bad, a recent study suggeststhat dogs give preference to people who treat others kindly.

Previous research demonstratedthat babies younger than a year old could already learn to judge people by how they interacted with others. That finding led researchers at Kyoto University to investigate whether other animal species might use a similar, innate sense of morality to evaluate social situations. They decided to use dogs and capuchin monkeys by observing their reactions to third-party social evaluations.

In oneexperiment, the researchers made a group of dogswatch their owners struggleto open a container that contained a toy. After struggling with no success, the dogsthen watched their owner turn totwoactors one who either helped them or refused to help, plusanother who acted passively.

The dogs were then offered food by the actors. They didnt seem to show a preference if they were exposed to a helpful actor and a passive actors, but if they were exposed to an unhelpful actor and a passive actor, then the dogs were more likely to accept food from the passive one.

Its possible that the long history and evolution of dogsmay have something to do with their ability to negatively respond topeople who are unhelpful to their owners. They may be more sensitive than expectedto humanbehavior both of their owners, as completely strangers.

As for the monkeys?The researchers discovered that they also negatively evaluate people who refuse to help others. The monkeys were involveda similar experiment, watching an actor struggle to open a container as they turnedto another actor who would either help or refuse to help.

When the monkeys were offered food from both actors, they didnt show a preference between the actorwho struggled to open the container and the actor who helped. If the actor refused to help, however, the monkeys were more likely to take the food from the actor who struggled to open the container.

The researchers also tested the monkeys ability to judge fairness by making them watch two actors interact together using three different balls. When one actor asked for all three balls from the other actor, the actor with the balls would either give all three balls to the other actor or give none at all.

The monkeys were then offered food by both actors and again showed no preference if the actor with the balls played fairly. However, if the actor had refused to give the balls to to the other participant, then the monkeys were more likely to accept food from the actor who had asked for the balls. Animal behaviorists suggestthat wild monkeys use these types of social evaluations to determine which other monkeys they can get along with in their groups.

The results of these experiments suggest that non-human species may have emotional reactions similar to those ofhuman infants, allowingthem to engage in third-party based social evaluations. By identifying whoexhibits antisocial behavior, they can make choices that serve them best.

So, dog owners and perhaps monkey owners too shouldnt expect their furry family members to judgethem based off how theyre treated. Theyknow when youre being rude or unhelpful to others when in their presence, and they probably dont like it.

These findings offer just another good reason to be kind to everyoneyou interact with in your everyday life.

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Can Dogs Evaluate Human Kindness and Generosity? - Care2.com

The Anthropology Department is celebrating the third annual Anthropology Day today. Anthropology Day is a global event hosted by the American Anthropological Association (AAA) as a way for anthropologists to celebrate our discipline while sharing it with the world around us, according to the AAAs website, http://www.americananthro.org. The AAA notes that it will be celebrated by over 150 colleges and universities this year, in addition to K-12 schools and other organizations. One of the original planners of the AAAs inaugural Anthropology Day in 2015 was MNSU alumnus Joshua Anderson.

Todays celebration at MNSU will be held at the Anthropology Department office, Trafton North 359 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It will feature prizes, a trivia contest, cake, snacks, and tours of the department at 10, 11, and noon. Community service is an important part of Anthropology Day and this year the departments goal is to collect $150 in donations and 150 pounds of food for the ECHO Food Shelf. Food donations can still be dropped off today and tomorrow outside Trafton North 359. This years Anthropology Day is being celebrated as part of MNSUs sesquicentennial celebrations.

Last years event featured a talk entitled Women and Power in African Communities: The Case of Tanzania by Dr. Rosemarie Mwaipopo.

Anthropology Day is aimed at creating awareness for the study of anthropology. Dr. Chelsea Mead says that a lot of times students [and] people in the general community have never heard of anthropology before. The point of the day is to share what anthropology is, get people to have an awareness of what the discipline is about, have some fun, share what we do, and celebrate our discipline.

Dr. Kathleen Blue explains that anthropology is the study of all humans in all times and places.

Almost anything has a human component, she says.

She notes that anthropology is divided into four subdisciplines: archaeological, cultural, biological, and linguistic. Archaeological anthropologists try to understand how humans lived in the past by analyzing the physical clues they left behind. Cultural anthropologists study contemporary human culture. Biological anthropologists, says Blue, study the biological aspects of the human. Linguistic anthropologists are concerned with how humans use language.

Dr. J. Heath Anderson puts anthropology this way: [It is] the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the social sciences.

Dr. Anderson, who has a focus in archaeology, is working on a site in central Mexico to understand the ancient Toltecs, a civilization that predated the Aztecs. His research focuses on how complex societies reorganize following collapse. He says that one of [his] favorite things [he] gets to do is speak at high schools about his research and the study of anthropology in general.

What distinguishes anthropology from other social sciences is that it is holistic, he says. Were not just interested in economic behavior like economists, were not just interested in whats going on in peoples heads like psychologists, were not just interested in things that are written down and things about the past like historians. We are interested in all aspects of human behavior, all aspects of humanity, and, crucially, we dont think you can understand human beings unless you take all of that into account.

More information on MNSUs celebration of Anthropology Day can be found at the Anthropology Departments webpage, http://www.sbs.mnsu.edu/anthropology.

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Anthropology Department hosts third annual Anthropology Day - MSU Reporter

All too often, people use intuition, along with trial and error, to devise social programs. Sometimes they guess right and the programs are effective. But many times they guess wrong and the programs fail to meet their goals.

Some fields, such as education, are fairly advanced in their knowledge about human behavior and have devised ways to incorporate that knowledge into their work (think schools and teacher education).

But most fields are not as sophisticated. They either havent taken the time to understand how knowledge of human behavior might impact their work. Or they are sloppy and inconsistent in applying that knowledge in the programs that they run. Consider some anti-drug campaigns. If it were really as easy as getting people to Just Say No, the United States wouldnt have the opioid epidemic that it now has.

In recent years, however, the behavioral sciencespsychology, cognitive science, neurology, behavioral economics, and other disciplineshave advanced significantly. We now have a large and growing body of knowledge about how people interact with their environment and with each other in a wide variety of settings. And its time we begin applying that knowledge more consistently in the social sector.

The spring 2017 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review has several feature articles that do just that. The first is our cover story, The New Science of Designing for Humans, by Piyush Tantia, the co-executive director of ideas42, arguably the leading consultancy on how to use behavioral economics to solve social problems. Tantia argues that organizations should adopt a scientific approach to designing social programs. Byputting behavioral science and impact evaluation together we can design more like engineers than like artists, writes Tantia. He goes on to propose an approachdubbed behavioral designto help create programs in a variety of settings.

The second feature article on behavioral science is Stop Raising Awareness Already, written by two University of Florida scholars. The authors argue that all too often organizations focus their eff orts on raising awareness about an issue, with little thought about how to get people to then act on that awareness. If the goal were to raise awareness among new parents of the importance of immunizing children, you wouldnt be satisfied if parents were simply aware, write the authors. Youd want to be sure that they were also having their children immunized for the right diseases at the right age.

The third article that addresses this subject is Embedding Education in Everyday Life, by three Harvard University scholars. They propose embedding education in everyday experiences, such as having barbers who cater to African-American men provide customers with information on hypertension. Embedded education, they argue, is a more reliable way to reach certain groups of people, and its more effective because the education takes place between people who have a pre-existing relationship and capitalizes on what we know about lifelong learning and behavior change.

But it takes time to learn about behavioral science and then more time to incorporate that knowledge into a program. Its hard work, and not as fun as brainstorming with Post-it Notes. But it is time well spent because the difference between a program that is well-designed and one that isnt can be significant.

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Thumbs Up for Science - Stanford Social Innovation Review (subscription)

By now the health deficits of sitting all day are so widely studied and well-documented that they're impossible to ignore. Studies show that sitting increases lower back pain, slows our metabolisms, and shortens our life-spans, among a host of other things. Not even daily exercise is enough to offset the damage. What's a health-conscious person to do?

The End of Sitting. [Photo: Ricky Rijkenberg via RAAAF]

One answer: Eliminate chairs altogether. At the interdisciplinary Dutch design studio RAAAF (Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances), brothers and cofounders Ronald and Erik Rietveld have been studying how radically redesigning the workplace and home might affect how sedentary we are. Their installations The End of Sitting, which debuted in 2014, and Breaking Habits, opening at the Mondriaan Fund for Visual Arts in Amsterdam February 16, present chair-free environments that encourage people to get up and move. As Erik puts it, "As long as there are chairs present, people will sit in them habitually."

Though grounded in scientific research, the Rietveld's installations are mostly conceptual; they're about researching how we can manipulate an environment's design to impact sedentary behavior. But they bring up an interesting idea: What if we did banish chairs altogether? Is that even possible? And would that solve our societal sitting problem, or just open up the door to new problems?

The design of the structures in the Rietveld's project are the result of years of research and a series of experiments. Ronald is a practicing architect, and Erik is a philosopher, whose research project "The Landscape of Affordances: Situating the Embodied Mind," funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), forms the basis for the design work. The pair's research revolves around the scientific concept of affordancesput simply, the idea that human behavior is learned by picking up the information that is relevant to survival, and ignoring the rest. Throughout history, trees have afforded climbing on, for example, and holes have afforded hiding in. And for centuries in Western society, chairs have afforded sitting in. The easiest ways to change human behavior is to radically change our surrounding environment.

Working together, Erik and Ronald have taken the idea of affordances and applied it to the prospect of a chair-less and table-less future. "The easiest ways to change human behavior is to radically change our surrounding environment," says Erik. Three years ago, the studio reimagined the office as a labyrinth of concrete and plywoodwithout traditional desks or chairsfor The End of Sitting. In Breaking Habits, they expanded the scope to include the home, with a futuristic and surreal "domestic landscape."

The cut-away office space in The End Of Sitting structure was rigid and confining. Based on feedback from participants in a study they conducted in the installation, the Rietvelds determined that softer material would make the act of not sitting more comfortable. As a result, the new installation is made from large swaths of carpet-like materiala proprietary mix of wool threads and a felt basethat are draped over stainless-steel rollers suspended from the ceiling.

In Breaking Habits, the spareness of the environment eliminates more than just chairs: There are no desks on which to put a laptop, thereby discouraging sitting and working at home. There are no hard surfaces for a TV to watch Netflix from bed. Visitors to the installation are invited to use the spaceto interact with it, and to lean, stand, or lie against the soft surfaces. In turn, the Rietvelds will observe those interactions in an informal manner. They also invite behavioral scientists to bring study groups to the installation, and use it as a place for more formal scientific study on how people might use and adapt to this type of new environment. (Though no scientific studies are scheduled at the moment, the Rietvelds say the Mondriaan Fund appears open to letting scientists use the space in that way.)

Breaking Habits

RAAAF's futuristic landscapes aren't necessarily homey and comfortable, but they aren't supposed to be. They are meant to explore new possibilities for our spaces, not represent the exact blueprint of our house.

One of the most important aspects of RAAAF's experimental environments is that they encourage the user to shift positions frequently. In Breaking Habits, for instance, some pieces of fabric are configured into pyramids or perpendicular walls on which to lean; others are suspended like a hammock for lying down on when your legs muscles inevitably get tired. The goal was "temporary comfort, not permanent comfort," says Ronald.

This idea addresses one of the main health risks of sitting: the slow-down of our metabolism. When we sit for a prolonged amount of time, our skeletal muscles remain inactive and the metabolic pathways linked to these muscles that regulate how we store fats and break down sugars become less efficient. Moving around, stretching, oscillating between standing up and sitting back down againthese are things that scientists recommend to help combat the onset of metabolic-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and heart disease. The rungs hanging from the ceiling and the more flexible landscape in Breaking Habits were built to aid and allow for stretching, the brothers say, and since leaning against fabric is only comfortable for so long, moving around is also a necessity.

According to Avi Biswas, PhD candidate at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto (who was not involved in the RAAAF project), the way environments are designed can make a significant difference in offsetting the metabolism slow-down. Biswas, whose post-doctoral work (he defends his dissertation at the end of the month) will focus on the influence of the workplace environment on sedentary behavior of workers, says that any place that encourages you to get up, take a walk, and move around is helpful in slowing down the health risks of sitting.

However, he also notes that not all movement is created equal: Tasks that require exerting more energy will burn more calories, and will have the greatest effect on your metabolism. In that regard, merely shifting positions is not as helpful as, say, taking a lap around the office. It's the same way that having a standing desk is beneficial, but not quite as much so as walking on a treadmill while working. Ultimately, we need to both exercise and move more to remove the risks of sedentary behaviorand while RAAAF's installations do encourage movement, they don't necessarily guide people in exerting the kind of energy that would be most helpful in counteracting slowing metabolisms.

The End of Sitting [Photo: Jan Kempenaers via RAAAF]

So eliminating chairs won't automatically get us to exercise, but will it encourage us to invent other resting positions out of necessity? And if so, will those positions be better than sitting?

From a behavioral perspective, people interact with the environment that we are exposed to, says Lucas Carr, an assistant professor and director of the Behavioral Medicine Lab at the University of Iowa (who is also uninvolved with RAAAF's project). But even without chairs, "humans are still going to rest for long periods of time," says Carr. "It's how we were designed."

So eliminating all chairs without replacing them with better resting options simply wouldn't work. Just like sitting all day is bad for your health, standing for too long is unhealthy, too. It causes fatigue and blood begins to pool in the legs, among other things. And leaning against something isn't necessarily much better.

As Carr points out, prior to being conditioned to sit still in chairs for long periods of time, young children instinctively sit in more natural resting positions that include sitting on their heels, sitting cross-legged, and sitting in a squatting position. The latter is an effective middle ground between standing and sitting, and it's actually a position that Carr would still recommend todaythough he acknowledges it's not a position most people want to take in public. (As a sidenote, Carr says he doesn't know of any products or environments that would normalize or support that position, but suggests it's an area that might be helpful if designers explored.)

Meanwhile, Breaking Habits gives designers something to mull over between now and 2025, the year that RAAAF set for its futuristic home. Our living rooms may never look like the installation, but it wouldn't hurt to drape a few carpets and get serious about chair alternatives just in casethe best way to kick a bad habit is to replace it with a good one.

Slideshow Credits: 01 / Photo: Jan Kempenaers via RAAAF; 02 / Photo: Jan Kempenaers via RAAAF; 03 / Photo: Jan Kempenaers via RAAAF; 04 / Photo: Ricky Rijkenberg via RAAAF; 05 / Photo: Ricky Rijkenberg via RAAAF;

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Sitting Is Deadly. Could Banning Chairs Help? - Co.Design (blog)

As the development of artificial intelligence continues at breakneck speed, questions about whether we understand what we are getting ourselves into persist. One fear is that increasingly intelligent robots will take all our jobs. Another fear is that we will create a world where a superintelligence will one day decide that it has no need for humans. This fear is well-explored in popular culture, through books and films like the Terminator series.

Another possibility is maybe the one that makes the most sense - since humans are the ones creating them, the machines and machine intelligences are likely to behave just like humans. For better or worse. DeepMind, Googles cutting-edge AI company, has shown just that.

The accomplishments of the DeepMind program so far include learning from its memory, mimicking human voices, writing music, and beating the best Go player in the world.

Recently, the DeepMind team ran a series of tests to investigate how the AI would respond when faced with certain social dilemmas. In particular, they wanted to find out whether the AI is more likely to cooperate or compete.

One of the tests involved 40 million instances of playing the computer game Gathering, during which DeepMind showed how far its willing to go to get what it wants. The game was chosen because it encapsulates aspects of the classic Prisoners Dilemma from game theory.

Pitting AI-controlled characters (called agents) against each other, DeepMind had them compete to gather the most virtual apples. Once the amount of available apples got low, the AI agents started to display "highly aggressive" tactics, employing laser beams to knock each other out. They would also steal the opponents apples.

Heres how one of those games played out:

The DeepMind AI agents are in blue and red. The apples are green, while the laser beams are yellow.

The DeepMind team described their test in a blog postthis way:

We let the agents play this game many thousands of times and let them learn how to behave rationally using deep multi-agent reinforcement learning. Rather naturally, when there are enough apples in the environment, the agents learn to peacefully coexist and collect as many apples as they can. However, as the number of apples is reduced, the agents learn that it may be better for them to tag the other agent to give themselves time on their own to collect the scarce apples.

Interestingly, what appears to have happened is that the AI systems began to develop some forms of human behavior.

This model... shows that some aspects of human-like behaviour emerge as a product of the environment and learning. Less aggressive policies emerge from learning in relatively abundant environments with less possibility for costly action.The greed motivation reflects the temptation to take out a rival and collect all the apples oneself, said Joel Z. Leibo from the DeepMind team to Wired.

Besides the fruit gathering, the AI was also tested via a Wolfpack hunting game. In it, two AI characters in the form of wolves chased a third AI agent - the prey. Here the researchers wanted to see if the AI characters would choose to cooperate to get the prey because they were rewarded for appearing near the prey together when it was being captured.

"The idea is that the prey is dangerous - a lone wolf can overcome it, but is at risk of losing the carcass to scavengers. However, when the two wolves capture the prey together, they can better protect the carcass from scavengers, and hence receive a higher reward, wrote the researchers in their paper.

Indeed, the incentivized cooperation strategy won out in this instance, with the AI choosing to work together.

This is how that test panned out:

The wolves are red, chasing the blue dot (prey), while avoiding grey obstacles.

If you are thinking Skynet is here, perhaps the silver lining is that the second test shows how AIs self-interest can include cooperation rather than the all-out competitiveness of the first test. Unless, of course, its cooperation to hunt down humans.

Here's a chart showing the results of the game tests that shows a clear increase in aggression during "Gathering":

Movies aside, the researchers are working to figure out how AI can eventually control complex multi-agent systems such as the economy, traffic systems, or the ecological health of our planet all of which depend on our continued cooperation.

One nearby AI implementation where this could be relevant - self-driving cars which will have to choose safest routes, while keeping the objectives of all the parties involved under consideration.

The warning from the tests is that if the objectives are not balanced out in the programming, the AI might act selfishly, probably not for everyones benefit.

Whats next for the DeepMind team? Joel Leibo wants the AI to go deeper into the motivations behind decision-making:

Going forward it would be interesting to equip agents with the ability to reason about other agents beliefs and goals, said Leibo to Bloomberg.

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Google's AI Learns Betrayal and "Aggressive" Actions Pay Off | Big ... - Big Think

According to a new study, dogs judge humans too, especially when they are behaving rudely.

The human behavior has officially gained a new judge. According to a new study, dogs judge humans too, especially when they are behaving in an inappropriate manner.

Our canine friends are not the only ones to judge us. Another species of the animal world does so as well. Research confirmed the fact that primates judge our behavior.

And apparently, mans best friend does so too. Research on the matter was led by James Anderson. He is a comparative psychologist. Study results were released earlier this year. They were published in the Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews journal.

The study paper was titled as follows. Third-party social evaluations of humans by monkeys and dogs Initially, Anderson and his team started out by testing monkeys. More exactly, Capuchin ones.

Their initial experiment went as follows. An actor was asked to try and get a toy out of a box. A second actor was asked to respond in two ways to this event. At first, this second member helped open the box. But the other variant had the second actor completely ignoring the toy struggle.

At the same time, both actors were asked to offer food to the Capuchins. In the first scenario, the monkey accepted food from them both. But in the second case, they were more selective. The Capuchins took food from the actor struggling with the box. But they denied it when it was offered by the second actor, the unhelpful and rude one.

Tests also proved another fact. These monkeys also presented a sense of fairness and unfairness as well. This was shown through another test.

But the scientists also wanted to turn to another animal species. One that is closer to us. Which led to our canine friends. And also to a quite clear conclusion. Dogs judge humans based on their behavior.

They too were tested in a similar manner. But instead of using complete strangers, one study participant was their owner. They were also put in a struggling situation. More exactly, they were asked to try and open a container.

Two actors also joined the tests. And they were both presented with the box. Depending on the variant, one either accepted or declined to help. The other actor remained passive throughout both these scenarios.

As before, the actors were asked to offer them food. But this was no easy task. As the dogs judge humans too, they mostly did not accept any from the rude actor. Instead, they readily took food when the same participantwas helpful. The dogs response to the indifferent actor was somewhat neutral. Although they accepted the treats.

Just as with the monkeys, the dog tests showed the following. They too exhibit the ability to judge people based on their behavior. Essentially, they based their own response on the way the respective human acted.

Dogs were also noted to do the following. They seem to comprehend the differences between being rude or unpleasant and a helpful behavior. And they also seem to try and avoid the rude ones.

The tests, in general, pointed out an interesting fact. Both the monkeys and dogs recognized negativity. And also tried to shun it. As such, the researchers reached the following conclusion. These animals are socially aware of the behavior of both the humans and animals surrounding them.

As it is, you should remember this the next time someone asks for some help. Dogs judge humans and your canine friend may not be too happy if you deny it.

Image Source: Wikimedia

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Dogs Judge Humans When They Are Behaving Badly - Regal Tribune

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 7 a.m.

As our own Cory Garcia will attest, one of the things I actually do get paid for when working here is arguing on social media. It turns out one of the best ways to track and study human behavior in the online space is, well, to engage with people whose impulse control is poor enough that they let their unfiltered personality dangle out in the wind. Its not the healthiest way to spend ones time, but it does help you learn an awful lot about how people think and act online.

Recently I had a bad Internet dust-up with a local artist who has been on my friends list for years and a rather constant headache regarding his behavior involving women and minorities on my page, and it finally resulted in an unfriending and finally a block because boundaries were never his jam or jelly.

One of the gaslight-ier things he said to me before the blocking was Id take a bullet for you. Ive seen others say that to people who were trying to get them to modify their behavior and I now consider it a very red flag. Someone who says this to you, especially when its in response to a friendship being on the line because he acted in a way you asked him not to, is probably not your friend.

First, to get it out of the way, almost none of us need bullets taken for us. The odds, even in America, of me being in a situation where anyone would even have the chance to stop a bullet to save me are very small. Im not the President. Im not even a Nazi with a punchable face and a stupid frog pin. Offering to be my bodyguard for the fictional assassins out to get me is just dumb.

But lets get into the nitty-gritty of what the statement Id take a bullet for you as an accusation that youre being a bad friend actually says. It implies, for one, that the world is a dangerous place, that you are beset on all sides by dangers, and that the person saying it is the one you can really trust. Thats the sort of thing domestic abusers say to their significant others to alienate them from their friends.

More than that, though, its an attempt to instill a sense of obligation in the listener despite the fact that the person saying it hasnt actually done anything to earn the obligation. Its a case of I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today, an emotional debt against a future act of ultimate selflessness that will almost certainly never come to pass. By saying it first, the speaker implies that you wouldnt do this same heroic deed for him, or maybe you just havent thought about your friendship like he has.

If youre one of the people saying this sort of thing to friends youre having an argument over, you need to stop. It doesnt actually come out as a nice thing to say, even if youre sure you meant it. It definitely isnt a good way to stop an argument when the subject under discussion is your behavior right now, not in the possible future.

Like most people, I dont really need someone to take a bullet for me. I need people to stop calling women whores and cunts around me. I need a lot less queerphobia and transphobia in the world. I need folks to stop sharing every half-cocked conspiracy theory that proves they need a gun in an elementary school. These are actually helpful, and they require work and learning restraint, which is probably why jerks prefer to offer a pointless, manipulative and hollow martyrdom fantasy instead.

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Advice: Never Trust Anyone That Tells You They'll Take a Bullet For You - Houston Press

In this game two agents, a red and a blue dot, have to gather green-dot apples.

Image: Google DeepMind/YouTube

Scientists at Google-owned DeepMind have found its AIs behave almost the way humans do when faced with scarce resources.

In a new study, DeepMind scientists plugged its AI agents, trained with deep reinforcement learning, into two multi-agent 2D games to model how conflict or cooperation emerges between selfish participants in a theoretical economy.

As DeepMind explains, they trained their AI agents to behave the way some economists model human decision making. That is, selfish and always rational.

"The research may enable us to better understand and control the behaviour of complex multi-agent systems such as the economy, traffic, and environmental challenges," DeepMind's researchers explain in a blog.

In one game two agents, a red and a blue dot, are faced with the task of gathering apples represented by green dots. The agents can simply collect apples together, suggesting cooperation, or they can 'tag' the other to prevent them collecting apples.

After several thousand rounds, they found that when there's an abundance of apples the agents collect as many as possible and leave each other alone. However, when DeepMind restricted the supply, the agents became more aggressive, figuring out that it may be optimal to block their rival to boost their chances of taking what's available.

"The Gathering game predicts that conflict may emerge from competition for scarce resources, but is less likely to emerge when resources are plentiful," they write in a new paper.

"These results show that agents learn aggressive policies in environments that combine a scarcity of resources with the possibility of costly action. Less aggressive policies emerge from learning in relatively abundant environments with less possibility for costly action," they note.

DeepMind also found that smarter agents with a larger network, enabling them to devise more complex strategies, tried to block their fellow gatherer more frequently, regardless of how much scarcity was introduced.

However, a second game called Wolfpack produced different behaviors when they were equipped to devise more complex strategies.

In this game, two wolves represented by red dots work together to capture the blue dot prey and face the risk of losing the carcass to scavengers.

If the wolves cooperate, they can get a higher reward since two wolves are better at protecting the catch than one. In this case, DeepMind found that a greater capacity to implement complex strategies resulted in more cooperation.

DeepMind found that in Wolfpack, cooperation behavior is more complex and requires a larger network size because agents need to coordinate hunting to collect team rewards.

Image: Google DeepMind/YouTube

They also found the wolves developed two different strategies for killing the prey and protecting the carcass.

"On the one hand, the wolves could cooperate by first finding one another and then moving together to hunt the prey, while on the other hand, a wolf could first find the prey and then wait for the other wolf to arrive before capturing it," they note in the paper.

DeepMind offers this explanation for why network size made the agents more competitive in the gathering game, yet more cooperative in the hunting game.

"In Gathering, defection behavior is more complex and requires a larger network size to learn than cooperative behavior. This is the case because defection requires the difficult task of targeting the opposing agent with the beam whereas peacefully collecting apples is almost independent of the opposing agent's behavior," they write.

"In Wolfpack, cooperation behavior is more complex and requires a larger network size because the agents need to coordinate their hunting behaviors to collect the team reward, whereas the lone-wolf behavior does not require coordination with the other agent and hence requires less network capacity," they write.

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Google's DeepMind: What can these battling AIs tell us about human behavior? - ZDNet

As part of their series on mobility, Deloitte explored how human behavior can cause delays in the adoption of new technology in the article Framing the future of mobility: Using behavioral economics to accelerate consumer adoption. Deloitte has predicted a shift in the automotive industry from personally owned, driver-driven cars to shared and self-driving vehicles. Despite the number of advantages generated from such a transformation, it could be met with skepticism because of limitations in our own human cognition.

Deloitte argues that the speed with which this future vision arrives likely hinges...on how quickly consumer expectations and behavior shift. The same research that revealed these change-prohibitive biases shed light on ways to overcome them and encourage consumers to welcome the future of mobility.

If/when the automotive shift that Deloitte anticipates comes to fruition, its not just the auto industry that will be majorly affected, but insurance, financing, technology, and energy industries as well. This isnt simply a change in how people use transportation, but one affecting government regulations and producing major infrastructure changes.

As ridesharing and self-driving transportation options become more prevalent, consumers of all ages could potentially benefit. The previously immobile generations who can not yet drive or are now unable to would no longer find themselves stranded, and families wouldnt have to worry about transporting them. Other societal benefits could result, like a decrease in traffic congestion and an increase in vehicle efficiency; resulting in reduced emissions and improved air quality.

Most importantly, autonomous vehicles would likely eliminate the element of human error, helping reduce the 30,000 deaths that occur each year during traffic accidents. A safer and more productive commutean average of 46 minutes per daycould reduce stress and be more affordable; Deloitte analysis shows that the cost of traveling per mile might decrease as much as two-thirds.

The positive results of an autonomous driving world could likely be abundant, but Deloitte cautions that just because a new technology offers benefits on paper does not mean customers will ultimately embrace it.

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Studies in behavioral economics and social psychology have demonstrated that we as humans have a set of biases that affect the choices we make. Figure 1 in the article shows a list of these biases and their impact on how the future of mobility would be adoptedor, more specifically, why these biases could likely hinder the adoption of autonomous vehicles.

A loss aversion bias causes humans to overrate what we would lose compared to what we would gain from something new. This goes along with the endowment effect, where we overvalue things we already possess, and a status quo bias: a reluctance to change because we overvalue the current state.

These three biases together could cause individuals to feel like they are giving up more with their personally owned car than they would gain from a new autonomous driving state. To justify a change, the gain must overwhelm what is being giving up, so these biases make it even harder to achieve when you factor in the emotional attachment to a car. Trading a tangible good for a service also doesnt feel like a fair trade, so substituting personally owned vehicles for car/ridesharing may take longer than Deloittes initial time projections.

Three other types of biases related to risk would also predispose humans to resisting the change to a future mobility with autonomous driving. There is a risk miscalculation bias at play, which shows that humans are generally poor at assessing risk and assume the worst when faced with something new or unknown. In the instance of this new technology, there are no known effects as to how driverless vehicles will work, so it is perceived as more risky than it actually is.

The chart in figure 2 shows that the types of risk categorized as new, unknown, uncontrollable, involuntaryall of which would be associated with self-driving carsare viewed as the most risky. Regardless of the testing done by regulators or carmakers, the underlying technology of a self-driving car will likely remain mysterious to the average consumer. [T]he very nature of an autonomous vehicle makes it fundamentally uncontrollable (by the passenger, at least), which means customers are likely to see riding in them as particularly risky.

Likewise, an experience that can be controlled is an old risk, or is a known and observable technology that would automatically be viewed as less risky by the human brain. This is reflected in the optimism bias, where drivers overestimate their own ability and underestimate the probability of a bad event happening to them. Most drivers think they are better than the average driver and safer than they really are, which could reduce the likelihood that consumers will adopt self-driving cars due to safety reasons; they surely believe they are safer than trusting an unknown technology.

Another cognitive bias working against a future mobility system is the tendency to overemphasize a familiar or signature event that sticks out as the norm even though it may be an outlier. If a specific airline has a crash, people may easily associate that airline with crashing planes even though it may be a statistical anomaly and extremely rare. This tendency, known as the availability heuristic, might make a commuter focus on the few occasions when he was inconvenienced by ridesharing (by a long wait for his vehicle, for example) or a story of someone being harassed by a driver rather than the majority of instances when shared mobility was fast, convenient, and inexpensive.

After stepping into the psyche to see why we are predisposed to thinking in a certain way, Deloitte offers steps leaders can take to facilitate an accelerate adoption of autonomous driving technology. By manipulating the way a choice is presented or framed, we can overcome the aforementioned cognitive barriers.

Negative framing Using the loss aversion bias, we know losses are seen with more importance than gains. This method would involve making a consumer feel like they are missing out on something instead of gaining something. So a choice framed as costing time/money/lives instead of saving them would be more effective.

Aggregating When presenting data, expanding timeframes and aggregating costs over the longer period has more impact. Showing the amount of time or money that can be saved in a year seems a lot larger than the minutes or pennies from each day, so by changing the timeframe and forcing the consumer to look at the bigger picture can have a greater influence.

Creating social proofs Deloitte points out that we often look to the behavior of others for clues as to the correct course of action. As juvenile as it may sound, the saying everyone is doing it really does come into play here. By making it seem like our peers are participating, we are more likely to as well; especially in the case of a product that a consumer doesnt feel strongly about one way or another.

Using default options Pre-selected options give the illusion that something is the norm, so by making an option the standard selection, a consumer will be influenced to use it. Making an autonomous vehicle the default option could encourage consumers to use that technology like Uber does with the UberPool feature.

Packaging as an add-on According to Deloitte, research suggests that any new innovation is more readily accepted by consumers when it is packaged as an add-on to an existing, familiar item, rather than as a change to the central form and function of a product. By creating a familiar vehicle that has autonomous driving capabilities as an additional feature, it would mitigate the new-ness of such a technology and make it seem more acceptable.

How quickly the future of mobility takes hold in our society depends on a large number of factors; chief among them is the way it is marketed. By understanding the cognitive biases behind how consumers will perceive autonomous vehicles, decision-makers can alter their approach to make it more appealing and reduce the fear and hesitance that typically comes along with change.

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The Skeptical Consumer - How Behavioral Economics Can Influence the Adoption of Self-Driving Cars - Fox Business