WHAT CAN WE BET ON?

Humans have always tried to see into the future. Periods of crisis, in particular, fuel the desire for prognoses, although the prognoses in turn fuel the crisis, because the (mostly) hostile future forces people t take action in the present. So in fact prognoses probably say less about the future and more about the present in which they are formulated.

One of the most interesting futures institutes in the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco. Cleverly combing serious mission with a bit of fun, you can bet on the future at longbet.org. A few examples. By 2040 'Chi' will be recognised as 'Life Force' in traditional medicine, by 2060 there will be only three currencies world wide, in 2100it will be almost impossible to tell the difference between humans and machines. Anyone who bets has to explain reasoning behind his or her bet, with the result that the site generally attracts real experts with sometimes abstruse but never absurd ideas.

Long bets is part of of a large NGO which with the help of patrons including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has itself an ambitious task to change our fast/cheap thinking into longer term- better thinking. We Shouldn't just be thinking as far as our next birthday or up to the next legislative period, but in longer time spans. The project also confronts us with an uncomfortable question: do we really care what happens to the human race after we and our families are gone?

Kevin Kelly co-founder of the initiative, has bet that by 2060 there will be far fewer people on the earth than today. His rationale is that the trend towards small families with fewer than three children will spread the 'This world'. Is Kelly's predictions visionary or deeply racist? His explanation implies that the rest of the world needs to adopt our small family model and all the problems over over population will be solved.

What is going on here exactly? While we are being encouraged to think about the future, we are also being given a platform to question precisely these prognoses. The negative bets on the site are also interesting: The last video store will close in 2015. The computer mouse will disappear by 2030. By 2035 the Aral Sea will no longer exist. By 2020 taxes will no longer be levied. Our favourite: in 2100 there will be no racism.

'I prefer to remember the future'. Salvador Dali

HOW DO TEAM MEMBERS PARALYZE EACH OTHER

How free are we in all of the decisions that we make? Not at all according to my studies. During the 2008 financial crisis customers of the financial institution Washington mutual withdrew $16,000,000,000 from their accounts within a matter of days. Simply because that hurd that this is what other people were doing. The phenomenon is cold herd instinct. Another form of collective behaviour is the 'swarm intelligence'. Familiar to us from ant algorithms. On first sight the ant colony appears to be moving around completely randomly but if you look closer a patern can be seen. The swarm finds the shortest route to the best source of food and allocates defence territories.
Based on this observation professor Marco Dorigo solved a variety of logistics problems. Truck routing slot allocations at airports and controlling a military robots.
But it is debatable whether this sort of algorithm also works with groups of people because it does not take into account the human side of  swarm intelligence. Group thinking. In homogenous groups, opinions and viewpoints can intensify and become cohesive very quickly. And if too many people act to show up at the same thing attitudes can become radical and actions rash. Researchers have observed this phenomenon with juries. The more united a jury is the harsher the sentence and the more convinced the members of the jury are that their verdict was the right one. It is a kind of uncritical consensus: if everyone does the same as you, you believe your are in the right.

'Why do we follow the majority?' Is it because they have more reason? No, because they have more power. Blaise Pascal

WHY CHANGE HURTS

Until the 1980's change within companies was usually dictated from the top. The CEO made the decisions and the middle and bottom levels implementation. The underlying values for control consistency and predictability. The result employers often did not know why something was being changed and also did not understand what was expected of them in the future. 

With the growing importance of psychology in business studies there was a new approach to change and learn. Employees were no longer expected submissively obey (of course), but to think for themselves (Why we doing that?) The point was: change has to be understood if it is to be carried out effectively. Change management has developed into a discipline in its own right. Today there are hundreds of models that deal with the subject, including pioneering ones like John Kotters eight stage model. But what most of them don't take account of is that change is rarely a painless process. Because change presupposes movement which leads to friction. Friction causes pain. Every change- whether in a private or wider context- requires sacrifice and effort.

In reality, when the management of a company decides to make a change, it is usually other areas that bear the brunt of the pain. So we have to ask ourselves: of we want change, are we prepared to bear the pain that comes with it ourselves?

"Never too old, never too bad, never too late, never too sick to start from scratch once again".

Bikram Choudhury

THE FIVE STAGES OF DYING

In her model 'The five stages of dying' the Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926 to 2004) described the process a person goes through after being told that that dying. 

Denial: I'm fine. The dying person represses a diagnosis, she looks for another doctor in hope of getting a better diagnosis. 

Anger: Why me. The dying person directs her rage at everyone who's able to continue living, relatives and carers. 

Bargaining: I would give anything to live another year. The dying person accepts. her impending health but begins to negotiate with doctors, with god with fate. She tries to buy time. 

Depression: I'm going to die, nothing matters anymore. The dying person becomes disconnected refuses visitors. Psychologically speaking this phase allows her to take leave from people she loves. Acceptance: I cant fight it, I might as well prepare myself for it. The dying person comes to terms with her mortality. 

What is going to be your best memory on earth?. What one moment for you defines what its like to be alive on this planet?

Douglas Coupland generation X.....

WHAT WE THINK ABOUT OTHERS

Religion has always exploited prejudices. But what kind of prejudices do we have against particular religions. A good tool for working this out is the Google algorithm. On Google.com you begin by typing 'why I are Jews' with the help of the Google algorithm the sentence is finished by somewhat the search criteria. Other uses for example "Why I Jews.... so greedy" "Why are Jews so celever?". The algorithm is determined by the popularity of the search terms. In other words all of the completed sentences. Resulting from the partial search were previously typed in as search terms by Google users. This automatic completion (Google autocomplete results) is a little revealing, a revealing little method for gauging the interests and attitudes of Google users. 

The model shown here reveals our results when we typed into Google 'Why are...' adding one of the 5 worlds religion. Buddhists, Muslims., Hindus, Christians, Jews and then we tried atheists and Jehovah's witness. 

If god exists I hope he has a good excuse Woody Allen

WHY PARENTS ARE UNIMPORTANT

Why parents are unimportant. How the parents real at the child has no long term effects on the child's personality intelligence for mental health. When the psychologist Judith Richard Harris made the assertion in 1955 she became a persona non grata. But all she was really doing was questioning what extent our personalities are shaped by our up bringing. Harris noticed that most studies which purported to prove the influence of parental nurture neglected to analyze the importance of genetic influences. What more, there were no studies on the interplay between parents and children. i.e. whether children elicit particular behavior in their parents and not just vice versa. According to Harris the concept of 'the family' is apparently profound influence of the individual- is the modern phenomenon. She contradicted the Freudians and the development psychologist by suggesting that we modify our behaviour depending on the environment we are in. Her conclusion: children are shaped not by their parents but by the peer group in which they are socialised.

Critics argued that her theory was an excuse for bad parenting. She countered: ‘Are you only loving towards your children because you think you can influence them?’

One of Harris’s arguments: children speak the dialect of their peer group, not that of their parents. Critics retorted that parents determine their children social environment by selecting their school of them, and therefore still have influence.

He’s a chip off the old block

WHY SOME PEOPLE ARE UNFAITHFUL

Eric Johnson from the Kinsey Institute developed an infidelity metrics. The chill control model of sexual response. To explain human sexual behaviors. It uses the analogy of a gas pedal with breaks to describe the dual forces of excitation. Being easily attracted to another person and innovation. Fighting the sexual attraction. In order to find out how these 2 forces a balanced. 

Jensen designed to survey with questions, such as 'If somebody you find sexually attractive accidentally brushes against you, are you immediately aroused? Jensen elicits whether and how effectively our brakes work by asking 'If others can hear you having sex, do you quickly lose your desire? or 'Do you lose your desire if you feel coerced into having sex?' This is where up bringing and convection come into play. According to Johnson around 40 percent of people are easily aroused: their engines are revved. Which doesn't necessarily mean they are unfaithful because only about half of these 'racers' have trouble applying the brakes. You could call them two-timing cheats or say that they live a different value system. Systems such as polyamory ie sexual non-monogamy.

Twenty percent I are racers who are good at braking. They are faithful but feel the urge to go astray. The solution serial monogamy promising underlying love again and agian.

I never loved another person the way I loved myself.

Mae West