David Graeber: Schuld de eerste 5000 jaar (Googletalk Video)

 Boeken, Economie, Video, Wetenschap  No Responses »
dec 252012
 

David Graeber: Schuld de eerste 5000 jaar

In tegenstelling tot wat de wetenschap altijd heeft gedacht, betoogt David Graeber dat ‘schuld’ al bestond, ver voordat geld en munten werden uitgevonden en dat de mens al 5000 jaar gebruikmaakt van uitgebreide kredietsystemen. Sterker nog: Schuld en de kwijtschelding daarvan hebben ons morele besef gevormd -het woord ‘schuld’ werd al vanaf het begin in zakelijke én in religieuze zin gebruikt. Slavernij, geweld, oorlogen en opstanden: ze hangen samen met ideeën over schuld.

In dit veelomvattende boek bestudeert Graeber onze opvattingen over beloftes, krediet, afbetaling enzovoort, van de vroegste beschavingen tot het moderne kapitalisme. Aan de hand van case studies analyseert hij helder en buitengewoon leesbaar hoe de wereldeconomie zich in de laatste 5000 jaar heeft ontwikkeld – en werpt hij een heel nieuw licht op de huidige economische crisis. Dit boek is nu al een klassieker.

David Graeber: Schuld de eerste 5000 jaar

Molly Crockett: Beware neuro-bunk

 Psychologie, Sociologie, Video, Wetenschap  No Responses »
dec 192012
 

marketing

Brains are ubiquitous in modern marketing: Headlines proclaim cheese sandwiches help with decision-making, while a “neuro” drink claims to reduce stress. There’s just one problem, says neuroscientist Molly Crockett: The benefits of these “neuro-enhancements” are not proven scientifically. In this to-the-point talk, Crockett explains the limits of interpreting neuroscientific data, and why we should all be aware of them.

Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational

 Boeken, Economie, Psychologie, Sociologie, Wetenschap  No Responses »
sep 152012
 

Dan ArielyDan Ariely: Predictably Irrational

Het boek dankt zijn titel aan het irrationele gedrag van de mens dat voorspeld kan worden aan de hand van experimenten. In het boek worden vele experimenten van Dan Ariely samengevat waarin hij het dagelijkse leven uit test om te kijken hoe voorspelbaar de mens is.

Dan Ariely
De auteur van het boek begon met het idee van zijn experimenten toen hij in het ziekenhuis was opgenomen met veel brandwonden. Elke dag moesten de zusters zijn verband om zijn hele lichaam vervangen. Het fenomeen waar Dan Ariely het meest tegen op keek omdat dit natuurlijk verschrikkelijk pijn deed. De zusters deden dit met snelle bewegingen, omdat zij erin geloofden dat dit het meest pijnvol was. Dan betwistte dit echter, maar het enige gehoor dat hij kreeg van zijn zusters was dat hij patiënt was en zij de zusters. Eenmaal uit het ziekenhuis begon Dan Ariely op de universiteit te experimenteren met pijn gevoelens. Uit zijn studie bleek dat mensen beter tegen pijn kunnen naar mate van tijd, en dus dat langzaam het verband van iemand afnemen gedurende een langere periode minder pijnvol aanvoelt dan een kortere periode met vluchtige stroken. Hierna vroeg hij af of niet alleen zusters ernaast konden zitten, of nog veel meer?

Tijdens zijn zoektocht komt Dan in aanraking met veel irrationeel gedrag dat voorspelbaar is. Zo vraagt hij zich af waarom alles in verhouding wordt vergeleken, wat de waarde is van geen kosten, waarom we soms te veel betalen, wat optie-attachment precies is, het placebo-effect, marktnormen vs social normen en vele andere vormen van gedrag.

Dan Ariely: de waarheid over oneerlijkheid (rsa animate)

 Economie, Psychologie, Sociologie, Video, Wetenschap  No Responses »
sep 152012
 

Dan Ariely (born April 29, 1967) is an Israeli American professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He teaches at Duke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight.Ariely’s talks on TED have been watched 2.8 million times. He is the author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, both of which became New York Times best sellers.

Are you more honest than a banker? Under what circumstances would you lie, or cheat, and what effect does your deception have on society at large? Dan Ariely, one of the world’s leading voices on human motivation and behaviour is the latest big thinker to get the RSA Animate treatment.

Documentaire: Giftig Europa

 Documentaire, Duurzaamheid, Economie, Politiek, Video, Wetenschap  No Responses »
apr 082012
 

“Toxic Europe” is the winner of the “Best International Organised Crime Report Award 2011” (BIOCR) and was one of the four documentary projects selected by FLARE network, Associazione Ilaria Alpi and Novaya Gazeta to enter the competition for the “BIOCR” and is co-produced by the online paper www.dailyblog.it and the Associazione di Giornalismo Investigativo. The documentary which won the BIOCR is 27 min long, but the project does not end with it. The authors aim at keep the investigation going, creating both a longer movie and a book.

The aim of the documentary is to uncover and show the quantities, the mechanisms, and the flows of the illegal hazardous waste trafficking in Europe. A business that, for the past 20 years, has been one of the main sources of profit of Italian organised crime within their own country, and that now is spreading, following the globalised economy fashion, throughout the rest of Europe.
Our investigation hypothesis is that a combination of phenomenons contributed to this expansion. The search for new clients, new transport routes and new illegal dumping sites, together with the growing of difficulties that Mafia found in trafficking waste to developing countries, turned Europe into a ping-pong table where tons of hazardous waste are moving around without proper control.

Cecilia Anesi, who studied journalism at City University of London, and Giulio Rubino, who studied journalism at Università La Sapienza, belong to the team of www.wasteemergency.com, a web platform for the documentary “The Regime of Emergency” and for news reporting and written inquiries on Campania’ waste emergency related issues. They both write for a number of Italian and British papers. Delphine Reuter reports on environment and european affairs in Brussels. She graduated from IHECS in Brussels and studied investigative journalism at Columbia University in New York.

Politieke orientaties zijn gecorreleerd met hersenstructuur in jong volwassenen (Ipaper/Studie)

 Ipapers, Politiek, Psychologie, Sociologie, Wetenschap  No Responses »
mrt 042012
 

Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [1]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [2, 3]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [4]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [4] and recognition of emotional faces [5] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [4, 6] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.

Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults

Geld & Gedrag: Merely Activating the Concept of Money Changes Personal and Interpersonal Behavior (Ipaper/Video)

 Economie, Ipapers, Psychologie, Sociologie, Video, Wetenschap  No Responses »
jan 212012
 

Money plays a significant role in people’s lives, and yet little experimental attention has been given to the psychological underpinnings of money. We systematically varied whether and to what extent the concept of money was activated in participants’ minds using methods that minimized participants’ conscious awareness of the money cues. On the one hand, participants reminded of money
were less helpful than were participants not reminded of money, and they also preferred solitary activities and less physical intimacy. On the other hand, reminders of money prompted participants to work harder on challenging tasks and led to desires to take on more work as compared to participants not reminded of money.

In short, even subtle reminders of money elicit big changes in human behavior.

Money Makes People Less Socially Focused

[scribd id=78937080 key=key-2eybwhwgqxu2478tvq59 mode=list]

Nieuwe buren? Kepler 22-b

 Video, Wal en Schip, Wetenschap  No Responses »
dec 062011
 

Calif. — NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets

Zie ook: Kepler 22-b: Another step closer to finding Earth-like worlds

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