Codex: increase creativity, safety regulation, social media & mental health, havana syndrome, wisdom of crowds
learn how to boost creativity, why safety regulations are bad, why crowds are not in fact wise, and the various impacts of cell phone usage on the human mind.
Dear learners,
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let’s dive into the codex!
April 1st, 2024 Learn Arena Codex
A proven way to increase creativity: go for a walk! Getting people to walk while taking a creativity test measurably impacted creativity scores for over 80% of people. Even cooler: we have no clue why this works! https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf
This article is a fantastic object lesson in why it’s always bad to require safety measures by law in new technology because it has unintended consequences and drastically reduces human agency. https://archive.is/mNNFG
These next two links are a fun one-two punch: psychologist Jonathan Haidt recently released a book claiming social media and technology are responsible for the increase in childhood depression and anxiety. Some researchers published an article in a very prominent academic journal saying Haidt is wrong about this. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2
Haidt responded and said no, I’m right and the data is on my side. You decide which one you think is right!
Touching the third rail of the Codex here, but you all might learn something as I sure did because this is a complex question: it looks like mandating the COVID vaccine for healthcare workers measurably increased the healthcare worker shortage. https://www.nber.org/papers/w32286#fromrss
Have you heard of Havana syndrome, where US officials abroad suddenly fall violently ill for no reason? Apparently it is a directed energy weapon used by Russian intelligence services. https://theins.press/en/politics/270425
In his final book, Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman (RIP) showed that “the wisdom of the crowds” isn’t really true, and crowds are often very wrong.
More data that explains why fertility is falling so rapidly: the older a woman is when she has kids, the less of a negative impact it has on her income. https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article-abstract/doi/10.1215/00703370-11218936/386279/Research-Note-New-Evidence-on-the-Motherhood-Wage?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Unsurprisingly, researchers find that coworkers who brag about how stressed and overloaded they are make the whole company worse and are deeply unpopular with other members of the firm. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/peps.12645
Pretty solidly designed experiment shows that cell phone usage decreases social trust in public with strangers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487024000229