MetaFilter posts tagged with behavior

"Want to play a chord? Try not to die."

zarq — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:46:28 -0800

Piano Stairs! (Not everyone thinks they're a good idea.) Also see "The Deepest Trash Can". Both videos are from Volkswagon Sweden, whose new English-language website, TheFunTheory is still under construction. But here's the Swedish-language version.

Search Patterns

netbros — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:06:48 -0800

Peter Morville is widely recognized as a father of the information architecture field, and he serves as an advocate for the critical roles that search and findability play in defining web user experience. His recent project titled Search Patterns, is a sandbox for collecting search examples, patterns, and anti-patterns; for example spime search, the ability to query objects in motion and find things in the real world. Morville is also on the editorial board of the new Journal of Information Architecture.

The "Intelligence" of Plants

Marisa Stole the Precious Thing — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:23:10 -0800

New botanical research is shedding light on plant behavior and "intelligence". Additional reading: "Some experiments have shown that if a plant's roots grow near to those of another unrelated plant, the two will try to compete for nutrients and water. But if a root grows close to another from the same parent plant, the two do not try to compete with one another. Karban says he was 'pretty surprised' at the results. 'It implies that plants are capable of more sophisticated behaviour than we imagined.'" "To commence use of the term intelligence with regard to plant behaviour will lead to a better understanding of the complexity of plant signal transduction and the discrimination and sensitivity with which plants construct images of their environment, and raises critical questions concerning how plants compute responses at the whole-plant level."

neuroscience and behavior videos

nickyskye — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:39:37 -0800

At Psychoanalyst TV, we aggregate psychology and neuroscience videos, and put them on our own TV channels. Its companion site, Neurological Correlates, A Neuroscience Tabloid of Dysfunctional Behavior - Mostly Psychopaths, Narcissists, Obesity and Addiction. Includes such gems as Visualizing Desire and Sadobabies - Runaways in San Francisco.

Regaining Your Balance

netbros — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:52:09 -0800

"Web professionals are often expected to be “always on”—always working, absorbing information, and honing new skills. Unless our work and personal lives are carefully balanced, however, the physical and mental effects of an "always on" life can be debilitating." Burnout: Running On Empty By Scott Boms

neurobiology of trust

nickyskye — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:25:38 -0800

As the market plummets, it might be interesting to look at the neurological background in the breakdown of trust. The author, Jonah Lehrer, is a young brainiac writer for Seed and the excellent Frontal Cortex. l Scientists immediately discovered a strong neural signal that drove many of the investment decisions. The signal was fictive learning. l One way to think of the financial markets right now is that instead of being populated by rational agents, they're full of people with borderline personality disorder. The Neurobiology of Trust Recent articles in Seed by Jonah Lehrer. Previously (wonderful post about Jonah Lehrer's first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist). Previous references to Frontal Cortex: 1, 2, 3.

Go to Your Room

netbros — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:23:42 -0800

Are you an older sibling? Did you feel unfairly treated compared to your brothers and sisters? Well, now you have science to back you up. According to Games Parents and Adolescents Play, a new sociology study published in The Economic Journal, the oldest kid in the family really does bear the brunt of parental strictness, while the younger brothers and sisters generally coast on through. "This reputation model of parent–child interactions yields two empirical predictions. First, parents with two or more children should be more willing to punish their older children who engage in risky behaviour in order to influence the actions of their later-born children. Second, to the extent that parents can establish such reputations, their older children are less likely to engage in risky behaviour as teens. In essence, the reputation model implies that risk-taking of adolescent offspring and parental responses to such behaviour vary systematically by birth order."

Swarm

homunculus — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:51:34 -0800

From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm. Carl Zimmer looks at the work of Iain Couzin. [Via The Loom.]

This story is about something called Radical Honesty. It may change your life. (But honestly, we don't really care.)

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:35:05 -0800

I appreciate you for reading this article. I resent you for snarking in the thread without reading it.

I'm a cold Italian pizza / I could use a lemon squeezer

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 09:26:08 -0800

Bonobo chimpanzees are commonly thought to be "an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness" in the animal kingdom. Ian Parker's Swingers suggests a darker, more savage side to the species that belies popular perception.

6. No animal shall kill any other animal.

orthogonality — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:01:58 -0800

OMG!! Chicken cops break up bunny brawl!

David O. Russell, "collaborator"

ed — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:53:44 -0800

Filmmaker David O. Russell's history of abusive behavior is well-documented. It spawned fistfights with George Clooney on the set of Three Kings. But two recent videos from the set of I ♥ Huckabees provide a telltale glimpse of how Russell's "directorial style."

Urban Etiquette

grapefruitmoon — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 08:05:04 -0800

Urban Etiquette : Confused about when to answer your cellphone? Not sure when to take off your iPod? Baffled as to what to say to that guy you saw in that movie with that chick when you see him on the street? Worry no more. In too much of a hurry to read this long article from New York Magazine? This short guide has you covered. Here are a few more New York specific examples. When all else fails, ask Mr. Social Grace. [more inside]

Nudge instead of a push?

Gyan — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 07:41:02 -0800

The avuncular state - "A smarter, softer kind of paternalism is coming into style"

Now show me how to do the thing with the termites and the stick.

Eothele — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 10:12:00 -0800

It's official, humans are dumber than chimps. These guys show (at the NY Times level) that human kids will over-imitate every ritualized nuance modeled for them, whereas chimp kids just wanna get the damn cookie out of the box. Their website also describes more of their studies.

This is because the letter U is phonetically pronounced with a Y, Yooo.

odinsdream — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 08:32:25 -0800

Sarah Elizabeth Witt struggles to convey a word game [direct to quicktime] that caused her doctor to diagnose her as obsessive-compulsive.

"When I hear a word that starts with the letter U, I immediately gain access to the letter Y!"

No more knuckle sandwiches in the cafeteria.

Gyan — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 20:55:21 -0800

Diet and behavior.

Nature is stupidly clever

orthogonality — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 07:18:54 -0800

"Creatures are out there that can control brains." [pdf]

The women "spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive", but were "less trustworthy and had more relationships with men". The men become "less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight". All "are at greater risk of being involved in car accidents". Why? Something has its tentacles in their brains. They probably got it from that cuddly old species, the domestic cat, which the parasite infects by making infected rats "almost taunt" the cats into eating them.

Parasites in the brain alter their host's behavior. It's not just video game fiction. Various multi-host parasites make their living by making their hosts less ambulatory and less willing to explore, by castrating them and making them less cautious of predators, or by forcing their hosts to stay out all night so as to be eaten in the morning. These parasites offer yet another example of how stupidly clever evolution can be, and raise questions about how free "free will" really is.

It's raining today, so Gore won't get my vote...

advil — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 11:03:13 -0800

Behavior in the voting booth. (by Louis Menand)

How dogs became man's best friend

MzB — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 07:50:47 -0800

How dogs became man's best friend: Dr Hare's hypothesis is that dogs are superbly sensitive to social cues from people...
His experiment was simple. He presented his animal subjects with two inverted cups. Then he hid the cups behind a screen, put a small piece of food under one of them, and took the screen away. The animal had to choose which cup to look under. If the experimenter gave no cue, both species got it right 50% of the time, as would be expected. However, if he signalled in some way which was the right cup, by pointing at it, tapping it, or even just gazing at it, a dog would choose correctly every time, while a chimpanzee would still do only slightly better than chance. [More at Harvard Gazette]
-- My question: are you able to reproduce his results?

sure, let's roleplay. what should my role be?

anastasiav — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 08:06:29 -0800

Vixen Love - Read the logs of AIM users tricked into a relationship with a mindless chat bot named Emily. Remember, VixenLove is just out to make friends!

This is the cardinal sin of urinal etiquette: Never pee beside someone.

anastasiav — Sun, 23 Nov 2003 22:51:15 -0800

The International Center for Bathroom Etiquette makes me really glad that I'm a girl. I had no idea there were such complex decisions to be made about where to stand and which sink to use.

Can obsessive behaviours involving electronic community be considered an addiction, and the community itself an 'addictive substance?'

Ufez Jones — Fri, 07 Nov 2003 10:21:00 -0800

At the recent Digital Games Research Conference held at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, Florence Chee and Richard Smith presented a paper on Everquest and its implications for addiction policy. Here's the full text and a decent summary here.

Monkey Business

Blue Stone — Mon, 22 Sep 2003 09:50:12 -0800

Monkeys down tools . - Demand fair pay for a fair day's work. " Researchers taught brown capuchin monkeys to swap tokens for food. Usually they were happy to exchange this "money" for cucumber. But if they saw another monkey getting a grape - a more-liked food - they took offence. Some refused to work, others took the food and refused to eat it. "

I don't hear any TYPING!

Irontom — Mon, 04 Aug 2003 07:51:16 -0800

Riddle me this: why are so many people in such a hurry to monitor, record and analyze every aspect of modern life? A UCLA professor wants to outfit an entire first grade classroom with minuscule sensors. The National Science Foundation awarded $1.8 million to fund the study, which will see students wearing special caps tracking their location and what they're looking at while cameras and microphones will record their activities. All the data gathered will be processed by a data-mining software package. [more inside]