Yet another hit against counter-causal free will

Parasites probably have behavioural influence on humans.

http://style.uk.msn.com/health/zombie-nation-the-outside-forces-controlling-human-brains

The Happiness Project

This is a book about trying to improve the happiness in ones life. The approach of making this into a project makes it very personal. Being personal it doesn't translate to what makes other people happy. I found some advice that I would like to apply to my life: "Exercise better", "Blog more", "Enjoy now", "Acknowledge children's feelings", "Make new friends", "Be more grateful", "Pursue a passion", "Be mindful", but also a lot of advice which didn't appeal to me. The idea that stuck with me most is making a plan to change or improve your life and then, most importantly, following through. While increasing my happiness is not something I'm concerned about, there are other changes I would like to make. So I'll make a plan of small easy steps and put it into action.

Charity is kept low by discrimination

Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend -- not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let's change the way we think about changing the world.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html

Confusing correlation and causation in success stories

I recently read a interested take on the field of management/success/leadership: Management/Success/Leadership: Mostly Bullshit

We humans like to feel as if we understand and control our environments. We don't like to think of ourselves as helpless leaves blowing in the wind of chance. So we clutch at any ridiculous explanation of how things work.

I wonder if we could change our culture to demand better evidence for the explanations we trust, accept the lack of knowledge when the evidence is bad or missing and allow for chance to play a bigger role in our lives instead of false certainty. Could we get people to value honesty and doubt more than assertiveness and conviction, as to elect a politician that says: "I don't know, I'll look for more evidence before having an opinion on that.", "The evidence is unclear, I'll try what seems best and see if it works.", "I was wrong, I'll try something else now.".

Alone together

http://alonetogetherbook.com/

Shallow communication technologies may lead to shallow lives.

First we have sociable robots which have very limited ability to simulate emotions, yet children and adults seem eager to imbue them with personality and find their simplicity sometimes better than a complex demanding human companion.
I think the answer to the question "Don't we have people for this jobs?" referring to babysitters or companions for the elderly is a clear "No". The changing demographics, the long gone multi-generational home and the demand for better productive jobs, are all factors which push society to have a greater need and smaller availability for companions. While current robots are inadequate to replace human companionship, I think technology has a greater change to improve, than culture to fill in the gaps.

Them the attention turns to the change in communication patterns from letter, to phone, to e-mail, to IM and from landline to tethered virtual office and high-frequency text messaging. I found the lack of experience with real-time human communication (in-person or phone) displayed by teenage subjects in the book alarming. This training in having shallow text message communications might interfere with these teenagers ability to adapt to the real world of interpersonal relationships, but it might make them better able to have a wider contact network on which to rely. Maybe with advances in technologies all these communications can be integrated into a single audio-visual stream which might be efficient and engaging enough.

On the other hand, we should frown upon mixing real-time communication (in-person, phone) with virtual-time communication (texting, IM, facebook, email), because this mixing is what turn potential personal and intimate moments into a shallow distributed attention moment.

"Technology is bad, because people are not strong enough to resist its pull." This sums up a lot of the problems of modern life, including appealing food which makes us fat, convenient transportation which makes us immobile, advertising which makes us buy unneeded stuff, casinos which build alluring devices to part us from our money, illicit drugs which give us instant pleasure for a later crash, manipulative politicians which blind us to our best interest, tv which gives entertainment for no effort, video games which give strong rewards for little real effort and communication technology which makes us build barriers to live human interactions. When confronted with these problems, I don't think the standard appeal to 'willpower' is enough, because we are not evolved to resist this wave of temptations. So maybe we should acknowledge our limitations and build our culture around them.

Why nations fall

http://whynationsfail.com/
The book presents the theory that economic and political institutions drive the success or failure of nations.

First by using compartive analysis of regions with similar culture, geography, climate or resources the author makes a good cases that these differences don't explain success or failure as some have assumed (see Guns, Germs and Steel). While the outcome of civilization clashes is influenced by the technology, the root causes that make some contries use and expand technology, lies in the institutions those civilizations adopt.

The rest of the book gives a large number of examples of the political and economical organization of the region having a major effect on the outcomes people get and the incentives each part of society has. We readily see two fundementally different systems.
For the politics there are exclusive institutions designed to concentrate power in the leader and his circle of friends (tyrannies and monarchies), or inclusive institutions which distribute power widely (democracies and republics).
For the economics there are extractive institutions which exploit the work of many for the benefits of few or inclusive institutions where everyone has a right to the fruits of his labor.
This dichotomy is seen as the basis for success or failure.
While the thesis of the book is interesting it does seem to simplify the world a bit too much.
The simplicity of the theory has also the advantage that it can be readily tested by watching the success or failure of nations while assessing there inclusive vs. exclusive institutions. This is something interesting to think about while watching international politics.

Bill Gates has written a review of this book at:
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books/Personal/Why-Nations-Fail

Respecting the elders

Everyone seems to have anecdotal evidence of "The kids these days don't respect their elders", while I have a suspicion all generations say that. Is there some good evidence?

The only study I found is: http://www.benetas.com.au/Portals/0/Respect%20in%20an%20Ageing%20Society%20full%20report.pdf

which seems to say that because elders have lost contact with children and adults, they have also lost their respect.