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We Experiment On Human Beings! « OkTrends
maybe our matching algorithm was just garbage and it’s only the power of suggestion that brings people together. So we tested things the other way, too: we told people who were actually good for each other, that they were bad, and watched what happened. Here’s the whole scope of results (I’m using the odds of […]
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Meet the Italian Who Beat Google to Web Search — and Gave It Away – Bloomberg
“After the speech, Marchiori returned home in the hopes of realizing his ambitious design. “When I came back to Italy, I asked the university for 20,000 euros to develop a search engine, but instead, they financed a project about the history of copper metallurgy in Italy,” he says. Meanwhile, Page got his first $100,000 check […]
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Wine-tasting: it’s junk science | Life and style | The Observer
“Experiments have shown that people can’t tell plonk from grand cru. Now one US winemaker claims that even experts can’t judge wine accurately. What’s the science behind the taste?” Wine-tasting: it’s junk science | Life and style | The Observer.
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A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder.
“It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated […]
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If you pay them money, partisans will tell you the truth
“Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth and Jason Reifler of Georgia State found that Republicans presented with news articles pointing out that there were no WMDs in Iraq were more likely to say that such weapons were found than Republicans who didn’t read those articles. [..] Answering incorrectly, under this view, is just a way to register an […]
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Evolution helps cockroaches lose their sweet tooth, increase survival | Ars Technica
“A team of researchers from North Carolina State University published research this week looking at how the German cockroach,Blattella germanica, was able to adapt so quickly when surrounded by tasty insecticide. Sweet baits became popular for roach control in the mid-1980s, but several years later scientists began noticing a new behavioral trait: aversion to glucose, […]