If you’ve ever wondered why so many prices end in 0.99, you can blame the left-digit effect. The left-digit effect is a cognitive bias which causes people to focus more on the first digit of a number than the rest of the value. Because most people read numbers from left to right, the brain processes…
It might feel good when AI is a sycophant but it’s potentially dangerous. A sycophant describes a person who uses insincere praise and excessive agreement to win the favor, protection, or approval of someone, usually for personal gain. The leading AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini, clearly have been designed to…
As ice cream is my favorite indulgence, I’ve repeated the ice cream origin story which claims Marco Polo brought a recipe back to Italy after his travels to the Far East. I’ve heard the story from others; even an organization as reputable as the International Dairy Food Association makes that claim. It turns out it’s…
For most of our adult lives, a good friend and I have debated “best of” lists. Whether it’s the best songs to play on Halloween or the greatest movie quotes, we seemingly never get tired of revisiting previous lists and creating new ones. One of our favorite debates is songs with the best opening lines….
A few weeks ago, I got an SMS message from a former colleague saying “Did you know that disguising brands is the new flex in marketing?” He linked to this nameless billboard with a red swirling background and the words ‘It Has To Be Fries.’ Color me confused. After a closer look, I realized the…
Ever heard of the buttered cat paradox? The buttered cat paradox is a humorous thought experiment which combines two common adages: While you may think it’s an urban legend, experiments have shown 81% of the time buttered toast lands on the floor butter side down. Also, a phenomenon known as the cat righting reflex has…
Whatever happened to the mantra: Work Smarter, Not Harder? Silicon Valley is flush with stories about tech companies adopting the 996 work schedule which refers to working 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week; a 72-hour work week. The 996 phenomenon originated in China a few years ago but has resulted in mass protests, with…
What happens if we relook at predictions from 100 years ago? Futurists usually aren’t judged on the accuracy of their predictions, and people rarely revisit the predictions many years later. Futurists can be wrong and unaccountable; just like meteorologists… The exception might be Ray Kurzweil who some have claimed to have a stunning 86% accuracy…
At the recommendation of a friend, I watched the Hindi-language film Shakuntala Devi about a woman who could make complex mathematical calculations in her head very quickly. Born in 1929 in India, Devi grew up to a poor family who couldn’t afford to formally educate her but, by the age of 5 years old, she became…
During my technology career, the phrase ‘the Russians used a pencil’ was a vivid reminder that the simplest solution is often the best one. For those who may not have heard the story about the Russian pencil, it goes something like this: When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered ballpoint pens did…