Oct 31 2012: Brands, and even whole industries, have been onto this for some time. A few things to note:
-The "clean laundry" smell that most detergents have as an additive actually isn't what clean laundry smells like - there really is no smell to clean laundry. Its used to evoke a psychological response in us.
-Humans tend to overvalue things they create - that's why when you buy a build it yourself piece of furniture from IKEA you tend to not want to get rid of it, or will try to sell it for more than its worth. Some companies can cut manufacturing/packaging costs by exploiting this.
-We also have positive (or negative) reactions to brand names themselves. Studies by Dan Ariely have shown that people react differently to the same object if they're told it comes from a different manufacturer. For instance, buying and wearing a counterfeit accessory is going to make you less honest in general, assuming you think its a counterfeit.
Jun 20 2012: The Gregorian Calendar is actually slightly more complex than what most people think. To account for the fact that a year is not exactly 365.25 days (and is 365.2425 days) we skip a leap year three out of every four centennials. The year 1900 was not a leap year and the year 2100 and 2200 will not be a leap year, but 2000 was. This amounts to 97 leap years in a 400 year span, and if you do the math ((97*366)+(303*365)) = 365.2425 or 365 days 5 hours 49 minutes 12 seconds.
Also note that a mean solar second is slightly different from an SI second. Leap seconds account for this difference.
Adding that knowledge to your pool, I'll let you decide which system you think is better.
Jun 19 2012: I believe that anyone intending an honest opposition to crowd wisdom should first read the book "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki. In the book he explains that given that certain criteria (diversity, independence, decentralization, and aggregation) are met, the crowd can be more intelligent than any individual member in the crowd or even an expert outside of the crowd.
Apr 23 2012: This is an awesome talk, really mind blowing, however I have an issue with his attempt to mystify the universe (and as such explain gaps in our knowledge of the multiverse) by mentioning that future cosmologists may not even be able to see future stars, and not believe they exist. Practically speaking, that period of time is going to be so far down the line that, should such future cosmologists exist, they'll have already overcome momentous obstacles, such as life without a sun or faster than light travel to inhabit other systems or possibly travel between universes.
I mean, sure, its possible that cosmologists could travel into a universe that has expanded faster than its speed of light, inhabit a planet there, and then forget their knowledge of the cosmos, but I think that if humanity gets that advanced, they're not only going to expand to one planet in one cosmos, its going to expand into multiple planets into multiple cosmoses, and should one civilization of the many collapse, others will still exist to further human development. Or human civilization as a whole will collapse before that point.
Either or, its just as easy to say we may have missed events that will help explain our existence (which he does later) than mention the possibility that we may forget. I just find it as an odd tangent.
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A comment on Conversation: The power of a brand to turn us into puppets.
-The "clean laundry" smell that most detergents have as an additive actually isn't what clean laundry smells like - there really is no smell to clean laundry. Its used to evoke a psychological response in us.
-Humans tend to overvalue things they create - that's why when you buy a build it yourself piece of furniture from IKEA you tend to not want to get rid of it, or will try to sell it for more than its worth. Some companies can cut manufacturing/packaging costs by exploiting this.
-We also have positive (or negative) reactions to brand names themselves. Studies by Dan Ariely have shown that people react differently to the same object if they're told it comes from a different manufacturer. For instance, buying and wearing a counterfeit accessory is going to make you less honest in general, assuming you think its a counterfeit.
A comment on Conversation: How should birthday be calculated
Also note that a mean solar second is slightly different from an SI second. Leap seconds account for this difference.
Adding that knowledge to your pool, I'll let you decide which system you think is better.
A comment on Conversation: Is there actually any wisdom displayed by the crowd? Or is it just the latest pet term to describe quantifiable results from chaos? .
A comment on Talk: Brian Greene: Is our universe the only universe?
I mean, sure, its possible that cosmologists could travel into a universe that has expanded faster than its speed of light, inhabit a planet there, and then forget their knowledge of the cosmos, but I think that if humanity gets that advanced, they're not only going to expand to one planet in one cosmos, its going to expand into multiple planets into multiple cosmoses, and should one civilization of the many collapse, others will still exist to further human development. Or human civilization as a whole will collapse before that point.
Either or, its just as easy to say we may have missed events that will help explain our existence (which he does later) than mention the possibility that we may forget. I just find it as an odd tangent.