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I would, except for this:
https://www.psychologicalscien...

Most of the stuff I read is of the form of 15-30 page articles in The Atlantic or The Economist.

The Economist doesn't publish 30-page articles, though I know what you mean. Sometimes a feature topic is fairly bulky.

I read roughly one heavy, non-fiction book a week from the local library. If a book doesn't force me to slow my reading speed down to Big Think, I soon toss it aside.

Chapter one, paragraph one of Tim O'Reilly's What's the Future (2017):

In the media, I'm often pegged as a futurist, I don't think of myself that way. I think of myself as a mapmaker. I draw a map of the present that makes it easier to see the possibilities of the future. Maps aren't just representations of physical locations and routes. They are any system that helps us see where we are and where we are trying to go. One of my favorite quotes is from Edwin Schlossberg: "The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." This book is a map.

I'm sure as hell not fully adjusting my giant mental map of reality at 1000 words/minute. I can cruise along at 600 WPM on fairly heavy material and not miss the arrival of something worth reading properly. Once good fortune arrives, then my preferred reading speed is 200 WPM at 200% comprehension, or 100 WPM at 300% comprehension (the one true goal of reading is to comprehend more than the writer delivered; all of the best writers have a giant multiplier effect).

If the purpose of writing is to create a context in which the reader can think, then reading is the process of fully entering into that context with your own mind. This simply can not be done at 1000 WPM. That's the reading speed of a future Jeopardy champion. (There's a damn good reason why IBM's robot has already won.)

Speed Reading Promises Are Too Good to Be True, Scientists Find — January 2016

While some may claim prodigious speed reading skills, these claims typically don't hold up when put to the test.

Investigations show that these individuals generally already know a lot about the topic or content of what they have supposedly speed-read.

Without such knowledge, they often don't remember much of what they've read and aren't able to answer substantive questions about the text.

That one guy from my high school who could achieve 85% comprehension at 1000 WPM was pretty much a know-it-all to begin with (actual rocket-scientist father, older brother 1600 SAT score & Caltech admission). He was mainly just slotting minor facts into a large, shallow matrix of what he already knew. What a great use of time.

By far the largest multiplier on my own reading efficiency is careful selection of source materials, and curating reading contexts where the different books and articles read in the same week spark off each other in interesting and useful ways (sometimes grouping like with like, other times grouping polar opposites).

My gut estimate is that I read about 150,000 words per day of organized language (a metric which excludes most Slashdot story submissions, and most recipe websites). That works out to about four hours at my standard reconnaissance speed of 600 WPM.

I probably have my eyes oriented toward text for twelve hours on any busy day, or about 3500 hours per year (since I turned ten). Let's just call it 150,000 hours, which works out to perhaps 5 billion total words impinging on my consciousness in some small way.

Thus I have mastered the skill of reading at 100 WPM with 300% comprehension.

Final thought:

If a website tells you that something was posted "11 months ago" it's pretty much guaranteeing that the content is not worth revisiting 11 months hence.

The recent shift from absolution time (e.g. "January 2016") to relative time (e.g. "two years ago") correlates with fly-by-night reading skills.

I work in higher ed with a background in software engineering and ed psych.

With the exception of necessary assistive technologies (e.g. JAWS for a blind student) your argument is absolute horse shit.

Please see the following: Psychological Science in the Public Interest

Most people would get insulted, not just the old ones. If I recall correctly, studies have shown that most of us believe that we are above average (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/everyone-thinks-they-are-above-average/, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/motr/when-it-comes-to-driving-most-people-think-their-skills-are-above-average.html#.WWEcscbMzdQ, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority) and tend to be incapable of recognizing when our performance is declining (sorry, couldn't find the references I was thinking of for this second effect).

Add to that a tendency to be defensive about the things you fear may be happening to you as you age, and... it's not surprising that an elderly person reacts badly to being told that they aren't as good as others or as they used to be.

Well, one way to reply to a post calling out confirmation bias ... is to double down on the confirmation bias. Apparently I get to represent all liberals now (or at least the ones you don't like, with that bit of no-true-scotsman mixed in under cover of "I didn't mean everybody").

Let's get back to your original claim, which can be distilled to 'liberals conform more than conservatives'. A few minutes of googling turned up no shortage of studies which appear to have reached the exact opposite conclusion. Here are a few studies and some related articles:
http://www.scientificamerican....
http://link.springer.com/artic...
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu...
https://www.researchgate.net/p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.psychologicalscienc...

Respect Matters More Than Money for Happiness in Life
http://www.psychologicalscienc...

Certainly students vary in ability and interests, but learning styles, in the sense that some learn visually, some aurally, etc., don't seems to exist. In increasing levels of rigor, see

• "Learning Styles Don't Exist"
• "The Myth of Learning Styles," Riener and Willingham, Change Magazine, 2010, September-October
• Pusher, McDaniel, Rohrer, & Bjork, (2009). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119. The authors are leading cognitive scientists.

Although I mostly agree, I would say just because treat people differently based on their race doesn't make you a racist (ok it does), but it is all about degrees, it is totally natural for people to affiliate more with there family, then social group, ...

How long do first impressions take? According to this article http://www.psychologicalscienc... 1/10 of a second. There is not much you can do about that, the key is to realize that you are doing it and attempt not to let it influence you too much.

I also think that blacks face greater challenges because these stereotypes, but I do not think providing positive discrimination help them in the long run. For the following reasons:

1. It builds resentment whether it founded or not in the dominant class. Too many times have I seen schemes that probably return only minor benefit to a minority get overblown ire from people.
2. It diminishes the achievement of those who do succeed, since they will have been seen to have not achieved on there own.
3. I think this is the most important. It builds a sense of being a victim, oh poor me, I can't do it. You start believing that you are entitled to a hand out. Once you give up your chances of success reduced to almost zero. I believe black people are just as smart and capable as any other race, I think it is time they started believing it too.

Don't get me wrong I think we should help poor people (not based on race), with supplying education, health care, food, shelter, otherwise the obstacles can become insurmountable, but we should not be forcing employers to hire people based on race, or sex.

So, ultimately, the whole thing is self-defeating in general. Crunch times may be one thing, but on a regular basis, productivity declines even as people look busy.

One example:
http://www.inc.com/jessica-sti...
"The most essential thing to know about the 40-hour work-week is that, while it was the unions that pushed it, business leaders ultimately went along with it because their own data convinced them this was a solid, hard-nosed business decision....
Evan Robinson, a software engineer with a long interest in programmer productivity (full disclosure: our shared last name is not a coincidence) summarized this history in a white paper he wrote for the International Game Developers' Association in 2005. The original paper contains a wealth of links to studies conducted by businesses, universities, industry associations and the military that supported early-20th-century leaders as they embraced the short week. 'Throughout the '30s, '40s and '50s, these studies were apparently conducted by the hundreds,' writes Robinson; 'and by the 1960s, the benefits of the 40-hour week were accepted almost beyond question in corporate America. In 1962, the Chamber of Commerce even published a pamphlet extolling the productivity gains of reduced hours.'
What these studies showed, over and over, was that industrial workers have eight good, reliable hours a day in them. On average, you get no more widgets out of a 10-hour day than you do out of an eight-hour day."

With software, it is so easy to introduce a bug when you are tired or distracted (one reason team programming often saves money). A bug (especially a conceptual one) might be very expensive to debug down the road, especially if it makes its way to production. How many times have programmers spent days chasing a bug that was a one line fix? So, it may well be the case that longer hours mean *negative* productivity and higher costs for the extra hours worked past 40 per week even when the employee is not paid for the hours.

There is another complicating factor. Big companies in the 1970s such as HP or IBM invested in actually training employees, creating the pool of workers that Silicon Valley drew from initially. Investing in employee training is now rare, due in part due to little loyalty on either side of the employee/employer relationship in many companies. So, given that the tech industry moves so fast, where does the training time come from (including to read Slashdot :-)? Ideally, training should happen during those 40 hours. But in practice, many people working in IT have to keep current on their own time.

Yet training produces many benefits:
http://www.psychologicalscienc...
"A new study from a team of European researchers found that job training may also be a good strategy for companies looking to hire and retain top talent. When workers felt like they had received better job training options, they were also more likely to report a greater sense of commitment to their employer.
For the study, psychological scientists Rita Fontinha, Maria Jose Chambel, and Nele De Cuyper looked at IT outsourcers in Portugal-who must constantly update their skills in order to keep up with the fast pace of new technology. The researchers hypothesized that when people were happy with the training opportunities their employer provided, they would be more motivated to reciprocate with an enhanced sense of loyalty to the company.
This kind of informal balance of expectations between employees and management is known as a "psychological contract." When workers feel that their employer has fulfilled their obligations under the psychological contract, they're more motivated to uphold their

Yeah...except I can find no shortage of peer reviewed studies proving that physiological differences, as well as psychological differences naturally make women less inclined in going into a STEM field. The same reason why there's no shortage of studies showing that even women who have a high math aptitude will go towards fields which are more verbally centered compared to men. Google and all that really do make it easy.

I advise caution investing much time/effort to the individual learning styles approach. There is actually extremely little (if any) scientific evidence that learning is enhanced by matching the method of presentation or study to an individual learner's style or preference. See the following scholarly review on the subject: Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2009). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 3, 105-119. [PDF]

Yes, because of course people will do hundreds of hours of work for free.

They will, as it turns out. You'll find countless examples on the internet. Not everyone is as selfish as you.

But many are being subsidized for their work online --- or hope to see a payoff down the road.

Writing a book of any kind is a major accomplishment that relatively few can claim. Anyone who learns that you're a published book author will be impressed. Similarly, if you use your textbook in one of your classes, your stature with your students will rise. You'll also gain name recognition among psychologists because most textbooks are referred to by the author's names rather than the title.

Writing Phase: 2 to 4+ Years. Writing has two meanings. Narrowly, it refers to composing the words in the text, including multiple drafts and several rounds of peer reviews and revisions based on the reviews. Broadly, writing also includes all the necessary reading of sources, compiling references, conceptualizing illustrations, and designing and writing features (e.g., boxed material), learning exercises, review sections, and further resources for students.

Writing a Psychology Textbook: Is It For You ?

> I personally reject the assertion that math scores predict future success

Who cares about your personal opinions? There is data to show that you are WRONG.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/early-spatial-reasoning-predicts-later-creativity-and-innovation-especially-in-stem-fields.html

> there might be a small relationship in certain nations, but not worldwide

Backup that claim... empirically.

> They don't even reach the level of western high school students even when compared against PHD's.

Nonsense. I know plenty of Asian PhDs. They are plenty creative. I schooled in Asia (Yes, they taught by rote... but education does not begin or end in school alone) and got a US PhD. My dissertation was considered fairly innovative by my mentors. My Asian friends in similar circumstances performed just as well. We got plenty of smart and creative American students as interns into our departments. But to compare the problem solving abilities of a trained researcher with a PhD against a high school student is just absurd.

Perhaps you are a programmer who has to deal with PhDs who reluctantly get programming jobs due to market and academia realities? They were not natural programmers and they were not particularly trained for the task in their PhD (even CS) and take quite a while to settle in. So you make these silly sweeping statements without any objective data to support it?

I could program better and better solve tech problems than the CS professor we worked with. That does not mean I was smarter or more creative than him. He was an award winning professor who forwarded CS theory. He just never bothered himself with low level tech stuff, while I needed to because that paid my bills.

Like the folks who want a Christian Theocracy in the States. They are under the assumption that ALL Christians think the same way they do.

Relevant recent research FTW

So for $30K you can discover how you learn, eh? Wonderful. The problem is that this knowledge is useless, because no-one knows how to teach to it anyway. It's like a diagnosis of hypercortisomal pneumocerbrebodoma. We don't know what effects this condition has, and we don't know how to treat it, but we know you have it. Thank you, come again soon.

revealing what was already there before imbibing.

So is it being sober that changes people's personalities?

I don't think either side in this discussion has presented any evidence one way or the other. Saying "I feel it is thus" is not evidence, for either camp. I googled a bit, and found these links, but I accept that they don't constitute evidence by themselves either;

http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/04/our-personalities-are-constantly-changing-even-if-we-think-theyre-not/
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/weight-gain-linked-with-personality-trait-changes.html

Part of the issue may be defining what 'personality' really means. Is there any basis to make a declaration that we all possess an unchanging and unchangeable personality, that we are always the same as we were yesterday? And if we do change, then surely at least some of those changes must be driven by triggers other than whatever happens between our ears?

“Despite the fact that the United States, Denmark and Argentina have very different welfare systems, we still see that — at the psychological level — individuals reason about welfare redistribution in the same way,” says Petersen. “In all three countries, physically strong males consistently pursue the self-interested position on redistribution.”

However, I think there is a third rational option that eludes our current left-right political spectrum in the US. The Founding Fathers were philosophers, thinkers. They worked hard to examine the historical basis for the every choice they made, disagreed often, and concluded on a system that granted individuals rights and refused the government power. I think the psychological make-up of individuals makes it difficult to see the third option, but I believe that makes a reasoned approach to politics invaluable.

Many migrants lack https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Social_mobility in their native countries and hence move to USA.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/respect-from-friends-matters-more-than-money-for-happiness-in-life.html

because no other country respects & admires immigrants. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/respect-from-friends-matters-more-than-money-for-happiness-in-life.html

My point specifically was about creating a save zone for the off-spring which is quite common accross all mammals and is often also directed against male sexual aggression.

http://www.mendeley.com/research/functional-aspects-of-maternal-aggression-in-mammals/

To the extend that it is established that human children can suffer from depictions of violence this is an extension of this principle.

And yes, the detrimental impact on children by violence depicted in visual media is well established as illustrated by the various references that I already included in the other comment:

http://www.apa.org/research/action/protect.aspx

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2003/03/media-violence.aspx

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1986.tb00246.x/abstract

http://mediasmarts.ca/backgrounder/kids-net-seven-and-eight-year-olds

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/pr040527.cfm

Oh my! You are a father?

And you don't even bother with a quick search to double check if maybe your initial statements might be false.

Two minutes of web search:

http://www.apa.org/research/action/protect.aspx

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2003/03/media-violence.aspx

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1986.tb00246.x/abstract

http://mediasmarts.ca/backgrounder/kids-net-seven-and-eight-year-olds

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/pr040527.cfm

BTW I am not concerned about simple nudity or a normal sex act, it is very specifically the mixture of aggression and sex that is most concerning. That is why I repeatedly cited "Fisting" and "Ball Torture".

Your comment has certainly ruined my day and is very depressing. I originally chalked this nonsense up to teenage immaturity. If you are in fact a parent and yet so proudly display your ignorance on this topic, then this is disturbing on many levels.

And yes, you are also entirely wrong about learning. You are essentially negating decades of neurological, psychological, AI and educational research. The key here is how category learning works and the path towards more abstract thought processes.

Don't think though that any of this will penetrate you pre-conceived notion.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3403200097.html

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1641285

http://web.cs.dal.ca/~sraza/papers/Malay_journal.pdf

http://www.alternet.org/health/68043

it's an advertiser's job to make you unhappy. if you are content with what you have, and only wish to buy things you need, a lot of worthless junk would never get sold. think about how your (imaginary?) girlfriend/wife goes shopping to make herself feel better. materialism is condemned by just about every religion that preaches happiness through the "denial of the crystalline" -- to quote a Meshuggah song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IiP-Vdx_F8). advertisers want to create depression in you because it's proven to drive sales. you spend to fill the void, and the void is created by attachment to status and the expensive crap required to get it. all of this was true for tv, and now it's our interactive tv, the internet.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/consumerism-and-its-antisocial-effects-can-be-turned-onor-off.html

For a more general set of suggestions on study skills based on cognitive science, see "How to Get the Most Out of Studying Video Series". This is by Steve Chew, who was recently named a "U.S. Professor of the Year" for his teaching ability. For something printed, but not as detailed, see his "Improving Classroom Performance by Challenging Student Misconceptions About Learning". I recommend the video to all my students (I'm a college economics professor).

Here you go. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=1804 http://faculty.som.yale.edu/keithchen/articles/YaleBulletin%20text%207_15_05.pdf (pdf) Funny thing is that the pdf (which is published by Yale) dosen't mention the prostitution and favours. Maybe another study?

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/full-bladder-better-decisions-controlling-your-bladder-decreases-impulsive-choices.html Thanks better. I've just relieved my eyes.

[sarcasm]
Yeah, like I'm going to pay any attention to a study by a guy who got his Ph.D. in 1974 whose brain has therefore been declining for at least 35 years...
[/sarcasm]

I think you fail to grasp the separation between the children's intelligence and the exam system. We should be able to criticise the latter without being bashed as belittling children. In fact a little more expectation setting could be a good thing.

Research findings, published in the November issue of Psychological Science claim that children today are overconfident.

"decades of relentless, uncritical boosterism by parents and school systems may be producing a generation of kids with expectations that are out of sync with the challenges of the real world. High school students' responses have crossed over into a really unrealistic realm, with three-fourths of them expecting performance that's effectively in the top 20 percent,"

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/ps/19_11_inpress/twenge.pdf

Actually, the authors found that the second guess was, on average, worse than the first guess. From the PDF study linked to by the economist article:

This benefit of averaging cannot be attributed to subjects' finding more information between guesses, because second guesses were less accurate than first guesses (see Fig. 1a) in both the immediate condition [ie. asked immediately after], t(254) = 3.6, p < .01, and the delayed condition [ie. asked 3 weeks later], t(172) = 2.8, p < .01.[1]

This suggests their result is not due to the subjects having had more time to think it over or (as they point out) incorporate new information. Rather, their result supports the idea that guesses are partly based on processing available information, and partly based on "feel". If you average the guesses, the "feel" element tends to get cancelled out, and you're just left with the information processing bit.[2]

They concluded that the increased accuracy from having a longer time span between guesses is because recent guesses will bias your subsequent guesses. Longer time between them reduces the bias effect, letting you arrive at a more accurate average. I think given their finding that second guesses are statistically worse than first guesses, this explanation is better than "maybe they just googled it".

I find it curious that they chose to split the group 60:40,[3] asking 60% of the participants to make a second guess right away.

----------

[1] Pg 4 of the PDF

[2] My spin on their conclusion that the result "suggests that responses made by a subject are sampled from an internal probability distribution, rather than deterministically selected", pg 5 of the PDF.

[3] Based on the degrees of freedom they used in their t statistics on pg 4 of the PDF.

Actually, the authors found that the second guess was, on average, worse than the first guess. From the PDF study linked to by the economist article:

This benefit of averaging cannot be attributed to subjects' finding more information between guesses, because second guesses were less accurate than first guesses (see Fig. 1a) in both the immediate condition [ie. asked immediately after], t(254) = 3.6, p < .01, and the delayed condition [ie. asked 3 weeks later], t(172) = 2.8, p < .01.[1]

This suggests their result is not due to the subjects having had more time to think it over or (as they point out) incorporate new information. Rather, their result supports the idea that guesses are partly based on processing available information, and partly based on "feel". If you average the guesses, the "feel" element tends to get cancelled out, and you're just left with the information processing bit.[2]

They concluded that the increased accuracy from having a longer time span between guesses is because recent guesses will bias your subsequent guesses. Longer time between them reduces the bias effect, letting you arrive at a more accurate average. I think given their finding that second guesses are statistically worse than first guesses, this explanation is better than "maybe they just googled it".

I find it curious that they chose to split the group 60:40,[3] asking 60% of the participants to make a second guess right away.

----------

[1] Pg 4 of the PDF

[2] My spin on their conclusion that the result "suggests that responses made by a subject are sampled from an internal probability distribution, rather than deterministically selected", pg 5 of the PDF.

[3] Based on the degrees of freedom they used in their t statistics on pg 4 of the PDF.

Actually, the authors found that the second guess was, on average, worse than the first guess. From the PDF study linked to by the economist article:

This benefit of averaging cannot be attributed to subjects' finding more information between guesses, because second guesses were less accurate than first guesses (see Fig. 1a) in both the immediate condition [ie. asked immediately after], t(254) = 3.6, p < .01, and the delayed condition [ie. asked 3 weeks later], t(172) = 2.8, p < .01.[1]

This suggests their result is not due to the subjects having had more time to think it over or (as they point out) incorporate new information. Rather, their result supports the idea that guesses are partly based on processing available information, and partly based on "feel". If you average the guesses, the "feel" element tends to get cancelled out, and you're just left with the information processing bit.[2]

They concluded that the increased accuracy from having a longer time span between guesses is because recent guesses will bias your subsequent guesses. Longer time between them reduces the bias effect, letting you arrive at a more accurate average. I think given their finding that second guesses are statistically worse than first guesses, this explanation is better than "maybe they just googled it".

I find it curious that they chose to split the group 60:40,[3] asking 60% of the participants to make a second guess right away.

----------

[1] Pg 4 of the PDF

[2] My spin on their conclusion that the result "suggests that responses made by a subject are sampled from an internal probability distribution, rather than deterministically selected", pg 5 of the PDF.

[3] Based on the degrees of freedom they used in their t statistics on pg 4 of the PDF.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/ps/19_7_inpress/vul.pdf

Let's just go back and read the results table on page 21, shall we?

Women identified friendliness as friendliness almost 9 times out of 10.
Yeah women, well done! But guess what,
Men identified friendliness as friendliness about 8 times out of 10.

Yes, women did better, but just a little better. Nevertheless, TFA chose to reinforce the stereotype that men are (a) sex hounds and/or (b) clueless by reporting that 68% of women report having been misinterpreted at some time in their lives. A cumulative statistic like that says nothing about the error rate of the median guy. For one thing, all those errors could have been produced by a small subset of really clueless guys. For another thing, no matter how good the guys are at this, a woman will experience an error if she interacts with enough guys.

In fact, given the women's error rate reported, if a guy is friendly towards 12-13 women in his life, there's a 68% chance that one of them will mistake it for sexual interest. Of course, women only have to be friendly towards about 9 guys to have a 68% chance of that.

Try this for a headline: Men Get it Right the Vast Majority of the Time. Or, if you must be negative, stick to the facts: Men Mistake Friendliness For Attraction ~40% More Often Than Women.

The sample size isn't the issue (it's a pretty good sample size, as surveys go). Rather, it's that the researcher is proposing to throw out a large body of research including randomized experiments and longitudinal followups, in favor of her own one-time survey study.

It's almost as though "you can't show cause-and-effect with a one-time survey." Wait a minute, where did I get that quote? From Dr. Cheryl K. Olson, quoted directly from TFA. It's almost unbelievable that she's apparently saying it with a straight face while asking us to draw causal conclusions (null ones) from her one-time survey.

Most of the studies present a violent image and ask you questions after. Partly because it'd be unethical to show them imagery and then attempt to induce violence. Thus they must use proxies which only prove a relationship from the imagery to the proxy.

Are you suggesting they should have tried to measure actual violence inside an MRI scanner?

Or are you speaking more broadly about research on media violence in general? Because plenty of studies have randomly manipulated media exposure and then measured real physical aggression. Check out this comprehensive review (pdf warning) of the research literature and see for yourself. The linked article notes that there have been (at least) 71 randomized studies of TV and movies which measured actual physical violence as an outcome; they overwhelmingly show a causal link. (There have also been similar studies on video games, though fewer.) The fMRI study, one presumes, is trying to help explain that causal process.

A lot of civil-liberties-minded folks get uptight about research on media violence, because they think it will lead toward government control. But that doesn't have to be the case. Research can help people make more informed, personal decisions about what media to consume and how to raise their kids, even while society still zealously guards the right to free speech. If you are worried about an erosion of rights, then your quarrel is with overreaching policymakers, not scientists.

First of all, the article I linked is not a single study. It is a comprehensive, peer-reviewed synthesis of numerous previous studies. I'll take that over a wikipedia article any day.

Second, "debatable" doesn't really rebut anything, because in science everything is debatable. (If you want to get philosophical, nothing in science is ever 100% settled.) But as a useful summary of the expert consensus, I stand by what I said. There is very little independent, peer-reviewed evidence that supports the Rorschach, even the supposedly "objective" Exner scoring system; and there is a lot of evidence that challenges its reliability and validity.

It's unlikely that they'll be able to learn anything "psychological" about their users in the sense most people would think about it. That's because the Rorschach isn't valid for inferring personality or other psychological states.

More likely it's for a technical analysis. My guess is they want to verify whether there's enough unpredictability in the passwords produced to mean this is a secure method.

Here's how this stuff works. Step 1, scientist do incremental, meaningful, but boring (to those outside their specialty) work. Step 2, media picks up on story and puts overreaching spin on story. (Alternatively, the scientists, the journal, or the university's PR office puts out a press release supplying overreaching spin to credulous journalists.) Step 3, everybody sits back in wonderment at a finding that essentially establishes what we already knew: that mental processes take place in the physical brain.

Parent poster is right about the special demands of individual prediction. The basic science might be incrementally useful - trying to ultimately understand how future planning/intentions take place in the brain. (And given the breadth of mental operations that could be considered "intentions," there are probably hundreds of more studies that need to be done before that question can begin to be answered.) But going from a scientific explanatory mode, where you have potentially large samples and budgets and cooperative subjects, to prediction of individual behavior is a huge leap. Just look at a much older psychometric approach, the TAT, which is okay for research but lousy for individual prediction. Brain scanning may well turn out to be the next TAT, for precisely the same reasons.

Part of the problem is that a lot of this work is being done by medical researchers and neuroscientists who have no basic training in psychometrics. They're just reinventing old mistakes (but wasting a hell of a lot more money this time around).

Here's how this stuff works. Step 1, scientist do incremental, meaningful, but boring (to those outside their specialty) work. Step 2, media picks up on story and puts overreaching spin on story. (Alternatively, the scientists, the journal, or the university's PR office puts out a press release supplying overreaching spin to credulous journalists.) Step 3, everybody sits back in wonderment at a finding that essentially establishes what we already knew: that mental processes take place in the physical brain.

Parent poster is right about the special demands of individual prediction. The basic science might be incrementally useful - trying to ultimately understand how future planning/intentions take place in the brain. (And given the breadth of mental operations that could be considered "intentions," there are probably hundreds of more studies that need to be done before that question can begin to be answered.) But going from a scientific explanatory mode, where you have potentially large samples and budgets and cooperative subjects, to prediction of individual behavior is a huge leap. Just look at a much older psychometric approach, the TAT, which is okay for research but lousy for individual prediction. Brain scanning may well turn out to be the next TAT, for precisely the same reasons.

Part of the problem is that a lot of this work is being done by medical researchers and neuroscientists who have no basic training in psychometrics. They're just reinventing old mistakes (but wasting a hell of a lot more money this time around).

I'm sorry, but WTF does Gates spending his personal fortune on charitable causes have to do with the company?

One of the founders. The public face of the company.

I.e. something like "fuzzy loging" or "intuitive decisions" or "estimate" or whatever: great feature of our mental powers but also source of fataly wrong decisions in some cases.

Links to follow: The Cerebral Symphony, We're Only Human..., ...

Those links may not be the best for this topic but I'm unable to quickly find the one I was wanting for this. Sorry. :/

NelRo, what you say simply isn't a fair characterization of the scientific literature. The methods used in studies are quite diverse, and yes, some studies use analog measures of outcomes like what you describe. But there are also randomized experiments that measure actual, honest-to-goodness physical aggression.

I'd highly recommend you read this report in its entirety. It's a good review of the research literature on media violence written by scientists for a non-expert audience.

Mod parent up! The question of whether videogames lead to violent behavior (probably yes) is entirely separate from the question of what government should do about it (very little).

The whole reason freedom of speech is encoded into the US constitution is that speech can be dangerous. Why do totalitarian regimes suppress the work of artists? Because art is a tool that can incite people to action. Like any tool it can be used in morally good or bad or ambiguous ways, but the founders were smart enough to know that government cannot be trusted to decide which is which.

I'd add to the parent post that if people are supposed to make good choices about how to raise their children, we need good, objective science, not the FUD offered by the Jack Thompsons (on one side) and game-mag editorialists (on the other). That science is actually being done, though you wouldn't know it from the partisans.

I found something right off the bat that speaks to the same general issues but isn't specifically the study I was referring to. Check this out:

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getAr ticle.cfm?id=1900

It speaks of a study by 1970's graduate student Barbara Bragg about children's attention patterns. It wasn't just about Sesame Street, but the Electric Company as well. I urge you to read this, it's a great place to begin. I will find the original study and provide you a source though. I have it around somewhere.

Cheers.

-AT

Fortunately, there is more evidence than Bhutan. Like this nice review of hundreds of controlled experiments and long-term outcome studies.

As a sidenote (not direct response to parent poster), I find it kind of amusing that people (a) gripe about there not being any controlled experiments, when in fact there are plenty, and then (b) ask for the ultimate uncontrolled nonexperimental test by saying "well why don't we see hundreds of GTA killers in the streets?" when they're presented with the controlled studies that they insisted, in the first place, were the only acceptible evidence.

Oh, and just because research supports a causal relationship between consuming violent media and behaving aggressively, that does not mean that ergo we must limit access to violent media, especially with adults. After all, we don't limit most forms of speech (short of direct incitement). It's just that you need to frame your defense in terms of the First Amendment, not by ignoring available evidence.

Laugh all you want, but textbook profiteering is a serious problem (sample article). But alas, even academics have offered little help in the area -- cf. this turkey blaming the resale of textbooks (perfectly legal under the right of first sale) for their high cost, a la Garth Brooks railing used CDs.

It's like the scene in The Freshman, where professor so-and-so says, "you simply must have the textbook 'Professor so-and-sos Film Studies' for this class!"

Yes, quite a few.

It's worth noting that all Hillary was quoted as saying in the article was that she wants to fund research to better understand the effects of violent games. If that research is carried out through legitimate scientific channels (peer review, etc.) and if it yields information that helps parents make better decisions about how to raise their kids - and stops there - that sounds neither unconstitutional nor particularly objectionable. How could it be a bad thing to have more, and better, information?

My guess is that Hillary is practicing classic Clinton "triangulation." She can condemn violent games and appeal to conservatives, without actually pushing for strong government controls. Or maybe I'm wrong, and she's coming to pry your joystick out of your cold, dead hands.

Lucky thing there are plenty of randomized trials so we can disprove those horribly confounded studies. Oh wait, the randomized trials show the same thing. (Link is to a review article, it cites randomized experiments as well as correlational and longitudinal studies.)

Look, I think you can make a very effective argument that video games are a free speech issue. But that means you need to be willing to defend them even if reality isn't all happy sunshine and roses.

It's what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy. In regards to this topic, perhaps study of the gender differences of academic subjects is important, but I feel it is a good idea to not publicize the findings beyond the scientific/education community, where it could help teachers to help female/male students cope with the subject matter. For more reference on this subject, you can google for psychology self fulfilling prophecy, or go to these links.

Try this instead. What are you going to trust - randomized controlled trials, including field studies and long-term followups, or some hack who makes up stuff that confirms your biases?

A randomized controlled trial might be nice, but that's not what you referenced. A randomized trial cannot have participants who self-select their category (i.e., choose for themselves whether or not they will be the violent video media experiencers). What you referenced is another example of the classic logical fallacy in most violent media research. The study you provided is a longitudinal study which shows that people who commit more violent crimes in life are more likely to have watched violent media as children. Then the study takes this data and makes the conclusion that it is "unequivocal" proof that violent media causes people to commit violent crimes.

This is completely false, and borders on incompetence. One of the first thing taught in every psychology research course is that correlation does not imply causation. The fallacy used here is called "post hoc ergo propter hoc", or "after this, therefore because of this", and it erroneously concludes that one thing caused another event because it came before the event. This is a fallacy because there are many alternate reasons things can be correlated.

There is a correlation showing that psychopathic killers are more likely to have tortured small animals when they were young. Does this mean that small animals cause people to become psychopathic killers later in life? Of course not, and it's bad science for anyone to suggest something of the sort.

So, given the choice between some hack who makes stuff up that confirms his bias, and some hack with a published study that made stuff up which confirms his bias, I'm going to go with neither, and stick with accurate science, which was not used here.

I have never seen a study which has legitimately concluded a causal relationship between violent video games and violent behavior later in life. I have seen a number of studies erroneously conclude this when their data does not support it, but I have never seen one which properly concludes causation from a randomized controlled trial.

Try this instead. What are you going to trust - randomized controlled trials, including field studies and long-term followups, or some hack who makes up stuff that confirms your biases?

Incidentally, I happen to believe, on free speech grounds, that the governor's proposal is bad policy. But I also am opposed to twisting or ignoring facts that don't fit my worldview.