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Discriminate, prejudge, get carried away by stereotypes... all are useful strategies to address the complexity of a world full of information when we do not have the keys and necessary information.

These strategies would be something like compasses or even more or less accurate signs of the place where some paths end. We will discover reality when we tread those paths. Furthermore, although these strategies are not the best way to get to know someone (it is better to do it through a long interaction), given the limited time we have to form an idea of the other, they can be very effective strategies: It would be enough, for example, for the other person to say seven words.

The 7 words

Given that there is an enormous amount of information around us and processing it would require more time than we have in our own existence, we allow ourselves to be carried away by hunches, by prejudices, by emotional inertia. This is not necessarily bad (it allows us to live), what is worrying is that we use wrong or too superficial shortcuts. Or that we get stuck in those first impressions and are unable to overcome them when new information arrives..

In Xataka Science

The entelechy of equality or why we focus more on some discriminations and not others

When classifying social class, ethnicity, age or gender, in fact, little is needed. Just seven words, as suggested This studio of 2019.

In one of the five experiments carried out, a group of 27 people were asked to pronounce 7 words chosen at random. On the other hand, other volunteers were asked to listen to them and classify the speakers according to these four categories, obtaining the following success rates:

• 55.5 % for social class
• 64.1 % for ethnicity
• 66.3 % for age
• 92.4 % for gender

In Xataka Science

The mathematical impossibility of not discriminating at work

Additionally, college-educated volunteers They correctly identified almost all of the people in the experimental group with university studies.

As you can see in the following video, which details this study in more detail, these heuristics can also feed a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy; It is inevitable to prejudge, it is inevitable to make mistakes. The avoidable thing is that, once we know the other person, we are flexible enough to adjust our opinion of them based on these new input data (by the way, the thumbnail image is from Ivana Trump):

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You only have to say 7 words to be classified according to your social class, ethnicity, gender and age

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Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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A published study earlier this year in Journal of Research in Personality suggests that a personality trait, openness to experience, changes what people see in the world. The worldview in the literal sense of the word. Makes them more likely to experience certain visual perceptions.

The Big 5

In the study, researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia recruited 123 volunteers and gave them the Personality Test. Big Five, which measures extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Specifically:

• Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
• Awareness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless)
• Extraversion (sociable/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
• Kindness (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/uncaring)
• Neuroticism (susceptible/nervous vs. resistant/confident)

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Depending on what you use your smartphone for, this is your personality.

Openness to experience is a trait that involves creativity, imagination, and a willingness to try new things. So they tested everyone who experienced a visual perception phenomenon called 'binocular rivalry'. This phenomenon occurs when each eye is shown a different image, in this case, a red patch in one eye and a green patch in the other.

Most people switch back and forth between the two incompatible images, since the brain can only perceive one at a time. But some people merge the two images into a unified red-green patch. Participants who scored higher on openness to experience were more likely to perceive this combined image.

In Xataka Science

Morphological and social cues on a human face provide clues to personality and behavior

This makes sense, according to the researchers, because openness to new experiences is linked to creativity: the ability to combine two images seems like a creative solution to the problem presented by the two incompatible stimuli.

Although research suggests that personality affects how we filter conscious experience, it is unclear exactly how this process works. The authors speculate that Overlapping neurochemicals in brain may link perception to personality.

In Xataka Science

The birth order of siblings was not as important in personality as was believed

A previous study also shows that those who score high on openness are less likely to experience inattentional blindness: inability to notice an unexpected stimulus that is in the visual field when the person is performing other tasks that demand attention.

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Personality traits not only affect your outlook on life, but the way you perceive reality.

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Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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If you profess a irrational faith, you will believe in things supported by few sources (generally authoritative), that are hundreds or thousands of years old and that are unquestionable (in fact, questioning them denotes disrespect).

The problem is that almost all of our ideas are based on pillars of irrational faith, because we have no way of analyzing whether the data is correct or incorrect: we rely on our morals (or our moral disgust), which is the same as affirming that we rely on discretion.

Moral ideas

It is estimated that in Spain 19.5% of the population has had some type of mental disorder. Therefore, it is disturbing to think about the number of beliefs that have been born from sick minds, as the neurologist has explained. David Eagleman in a book of Michio Kaku titled The future of our mind:

It seems that a good part of the prophets, martyrs and leaders in history suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. Let us think of Joan of Arc, a sixteen-year-old girl who changed the course of the Hundred Years' War because she believed (and convinced the French soldiers) that she heard voices of the archangel Saint Michael, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Margaret and Saint Gabriel.

In Xataka Science

What would happen if physical illnesses were treated like mental illnesses

The point is that, leaving aside religious movements, our judgment (also moral) regarding almost all kinds of issues arises from assumptions, prejudices, fashions, authority biases, social contagion or, simply, as a way of fitting in. society. It doesn't matter if we talk about abortion, the death penalty, bullfighting, euthanasia, prostitution... except for the parts of our statements that we can measure scientifically (or at least objectively), such as, for example, how conscious a person may be or not through measuring instruments, the rest is just a capricious and capricious positioning.

In Xataka

Jonathan Haidt and how our moral differences hide the key to why we do not understand or convince others on the internet

The value of an idea must be measured with a ruler. That is, with objective experiments, with evidence. Not all things can be subjected to the rigors of the scientific method, either because we are analyzing subjective things. But not being able to measure certain ideas objectively should also inform us of something very important: that we have no way of knowing if those ideas are good or bad, better or worse..

And, therefore, they are mere opinions. And as such, be careful about defending them too fervently... because maybe, just maybe, you are defending them because they are your religion, or worse yet, you are defending them even though they can be proven false... with a simple rule.

The Seattle Chipped Windshield Epidemic of 1954 is a somewhat comical example of how social influence can affect what people think, even if no one has planned anything. You can see it in the following video:

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Ideas that cannot be measured with a ruler are only good or bad if we agree on them as such.

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Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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Previous research already suggests that being prosocial (or altruistic) rather than selfish has positive consequences for psychological well-being, physical health, and interpersonal relationships.

But if we talk at a purely economic level, then, according to this 2020 study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a prosocial person is more likely to make more money (and also have more children).

Money and children

The team of researchers, led by Kimmo Eriksson, from Stockholm University, compared factors such as annual income and the number of biological children. A large sample of responses from 5,294 Americans to the General Social Survey (GSS) of public opinion between 2002 and 2014, as well as European responses to the European Social Survey (ESS), were analyzed.

In Xataka Science

In the long term, being selfish would be more important to your happiness than being supportive, according to this study

The researchers identified the most selfish people by their responses to several survey questions. Overall, although the researchers found that, in public perception, 68 percent of people believed that selfishness was a common trait of those who made the most money, in reality, people with selfless attitudes and behaviors ​​they had higher incomes and also more children.

Human behavior can be motivated by both altruism and moral considerations. However, altruistic behavior may be the default option in our brains, as also suggested A study of 2017 carried out by a team led by Leonardo Christov-Moore, from UCLA. In it, an area of the prefrontal cortex was found that may be specifically affected so that people are less generous.

In Xataka Science

Attractive women behave more selfishly

What we cannot easily know, however, is whether altruistic people earn more money because they are altruistic or, by earning more money, they become more altruistic. In any case, this Christmas Eve, perhaps we should try to corner Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge a little.

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The most selfish people are not the ones who make the most money, they are the most prosocial people

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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He said Carl Sagan: "What an amazing thing a book is... One look and you are inside the mind of another person, perhaps someone who died thousands of years ago... Books break the shackles of time."

It's a good metaphor for what happens when we read a book. However, not all books are the same. Some are based on mere opinions, others on something more important. For example: Which of the two tables at the top of this entry is the longest?

From irrational faith to experiment

Irrational faith is based on believing without seeing. The next step, advocated by Saint Thomas of Aquino, it was "seeing is believing." In fact, many skeptics of any matter are often told "you haven't seen it" or "if you saw it, you would believe it."

However, since the 1640s, there has been another higher level of knowledge: eThe experiment, the scientific method (Indeed, we should not really expect to find reliable science before scientific communities began to take shape in the 1640s.)

In Xataka Science

The three postmodern ideas that are dynamiting the inheritance of the Enlightenment

It is a method so revolutionary that it relegates "seeing is believing" to oblivion, and in fact turns it completely on its head. Because if we take a look at the tables in the previous image, we will ensure that the table on the left is longer than the table on the right. However, if we perform the experiment (measure both tables with a ruler), We will discover that both are exactly the same. Suddenly, our “seeing is believing” has been relegated to the category of anecdote (and false at that).

So the process of arriving at an increasingly objective knowledge seems to have already gone through three levels: faith in what is not seen, faith in what I see, faith in what we can explain how we see guaranteeing that we will always obtain the same explanation for all people and all things. That is, religion, personal opinion and science.

So, while Sagan's metaphor is certainly inspiring, not all books are created equal. Because there are religious books. Books in which the author contributes his personal opinion. And books written about years, or decades, of experiments.

If the idea of Grace arises to differentiate human beings from animals (we are on a higher level than them), the idea of culture, as a shared set of ideas, was born to differentiate some peoples from others (some are on a higher level). above others). The next level was the birth of science, of the experiment, which no longer knows borders, which no longer belongs to people, which no longer belongs to peoples... transcends us all because it is more objective, reliable and accurate than all our individual and collective opinions.

He an opinionator's book would be like the imposture of the typical tweeter who is an anarcho-primitivist, his eyes shine with Thoreau, he winks at neo-Luddism, he intones the mea culpa for Pachamama... but 24/7 he is on social media with his smartphone. That is, it gives its opinion and criticizes what was born from experimentation, science and progress using tools resulting from experience, science and progress.

In the legendary series Doctor Who, in a double episode divided into two parts, “Silence in the Library” (4×08), the action takes place on a planet called Library, which has continents divided into genres (the equator is the biographies). I am convinced which continent I would like to live on without needing to appeal to my personal opinion. And in case it is not yet clear enough, in the following video I use another analogy (that of climbing mountains):

The image of the tablesBy the way, it is the work of Roger Shepard (1990), psychologist and artist.

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Seeing is not enough to believe: your opinion is not worth as much as you think

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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According to the analysis From the China National Space Administration (CNSA), China's Chang'e-5 space probe brought to Earth around 1,731 grams of samples taken on the Moon. It is the third country to achieve this, after the US and Russia.

The Chang'e-5 probe, comprising an orbiter and landing, ascent and return modules, was launched on November 24. The return capsule landed in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region three weeks later, bringing the lunar samples with it.

Mons Rümker Moon Rock

China's Chang'e 4 probe successfully landed on the far side of the Moon for the first time in history, and now it has brought back the first samples of lunar rocks in 40 years: the samples it has brought are from a volcanic area of the Moon called Mons Rümker.

The cargo has been transferred to the lunar sample laboratory at the National Astronomical Observatories controlled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

During the six Apollo expeditions that landed on the moon 2,415 samples with a total weight of 382 kg were collected.. Most collected by the Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions, between the three, a total of 283 kg of samples. Most rocks are stored under extreme cold, in liquid nitrogen, to keep them free of moisture or other external agents.

Lunar Mission / Collected Sample

• Apollo 11 / 22 kg
• Apollo 12 / 34 kg
• Apollo 14 / 43 kg
• Apollo 15 / 77 kg
• Apollo 16 / 95 kg
• Apollo 17 / 111 kg
• Moon 16 / 101 g
• Moon 20 / 55 g
• Moon 24 / 170 g

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China has brought back 1,731 grams of samples from the Moon, the first brought to Earth in more than 40 years

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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When in 1718, Etienne Francois Geoffroy, son of a pharmacist who held the chair of chemistry at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, published the "Table of the different relations observed between different substances", he did so in a context where chemists were already trying to disassociate themselves from alchemical thought.

The coup de grace was given by experimental knowledge but, above all, clear information from these experiments in an open society.

Experimental knowledge

It is usually thought that the disappearance of alchemy from the scientific field was due to experimentation without further ado. But it was not like that. Nor was it the development of cultured networks dedicated to new knowledge.

What condemned alchemy to the attic of pseudosciences was, as explained David Wootton in his book The invention of science:

The insistence that experiments had to be openly reported in publications that presented a clear explanation of what had happened, and that they should then be replicated, preferably before independent witnesses.

Alchemists had always done just the opposite: they had dedicated themselves to secret learning, convinced that only a few were qualified to have that exclusive knowledge.

In other words: a closed society regarding knowledge became an open, transparent society.

Corollary: We should not really expect to find reliable science before scientific communities began to take shape in the 1640s.

The disappearance of alchemy provides additional evidence, if additional evidence was needed, that what our modern science points to is not the performance of experiments (the alchemists performed a large number of experiments), but the formation of a critical community capable of to evaluate the discoveries and replicate the results.

This idea can perfectly be linked with the four basic tips that we must always remember to identify quite quickly when we are dealing with pseudoscience or established science, as you can see in the following video.

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The death knell of alchemy came for a more important reason than the arrival of the first experiments.

was originally published in

Xataka Science

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Sergio Parra

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A poisonous mushroom collected at London Heathrow Airport, next to a particularly ugly orchid, top the list of 156 new plants and fungi from Kew Botanical Gardens worldwide in 2020.

In fact, a third of the new species are orchids; and a total of 19 orchids were found on the island of New Guinea. In the following photo you can see an image of what is considered "the ugliest orchid in the world."

Other findings

Six new species of webcap toadstool fungi have been named in the UK this year, including Cortinarius heatherae (pictured at the top of this post), which was discovered along the river on the edge of Heathrow Airport by field mycologist Andy Overall. Other discoveries by scientists at Kew include:

• A Peruvian plant related to the sweet potato that could be a future food source.
• A rare and rare scaly shrub growing in the arid regions of Namibia, which has scaly leaves and grows in hot natural sand trays.
• A plant related to the pineapple, which is pollinated by hummingbirds, lives on a limestone cliff in central Brazil, but is at risk of extinction due to the mining of limestone to make cement.
• A bush related to the blueberry found near the world's largest gold mine in New Guinea, Indonesia.
• An herb with medicinal properties found in a forest on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
• Two new species of Aloe (as in Aloe vera) from Madagascar.

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The news

A poisonous mushroom collected at London Heathrow Airport is one of 156 new plants and fungi on the 2020 list

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

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