Back when I was younger, I literally taught the course on decentralization at university. We didn’t call it that, of course, because we were not trying to sell a ponzi scheme, but it meant that every year, I’d have 100 or thereabouts students up for oral exam in distributed algorithms and the like. I had […]
Tag: Psychology
Covid Vaccine Mortality
One of the headlines in Dutch papers today is that 15 people have died after receiving the Covid vaccine. That sounds bad, but is it? According to the RIVM, a total of 571361 vaccinations have been given (with a certain 414858). Since the Dutch government has decided to ignore the recommendation to give people the […]
Temptation Bundling
Temptation bundling is the idea that in order to motivate you to do something you would like to do more, bundle it with something you would like to do less so you only ever do the two together. The thing you would like to do more it typically something you want to do “tomorrow” or […]
Why Do I Know and They Believe?
According to a tired cliche, the victors write history. Similarly, classifying an event as a protest, a coup, or a riot also depends on one’s perspective. But why don’t we try walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes for once… Last night, tens or hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Congress and interrupted […]
What if Fox News/CNN aren’t completely bonkers?
Did you know that BuzzFeed does quite good investigative journalism? Yes, that BuzzFeed, the one with listicles and click-bait quizzes. If not, here’s a BuzzFeed, the shit site everybody should block, listicle of genuinely good journalism for maximum irony. If BuzzFeed can do proper journalism, why can’t Fox News/CNN? According to associate professor of psychology, […]
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The Real Trolley Problem for Self-driving Cars
On March 18, 2018, Uber murdered a women with one of their (apparently not) criminally dangerous “self-driving” cars. The reason was that she was crossing the road outside a pedestrian’s crossing, so the car did not recognise her as a pedestrian (it didn’t expect people outside of walkways). Instead, it fluctuated between recognising her as […]
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