I've never understood public suicide.  Suicide in itself is immensely selfish, but to involve others in the taking of your own life seems to be the ultimate act of terminal nihlism. 

Yes, you took your own life, but you also permanently scarred innocent people who were just out enjoying the day, in this particular case at a national monument. [Warning: disturbing video.  Not graphic, but not pleasant.]

This sort of thing makes me equal parts sad and angry.

Errol Morris’s new piece in the NYTimes is interesting to me, as I’ve always noodled the Dunning-Kruger effect around in my mind ever since learning about it. And I’ve long held the belief that we act in a social system governed by confirmation bias; that is, we tend towards what we believe or want to believe, both in our learning and actions.

(The beauty -- and irony -- of Dunning-Kruger is that it is difficult to truly know on which end of the continuum you reside.)

Morris, in his piece, really gets into the holes in our knowledge and how they effect our behavior. This fascinates me, because I’ve been on both sides of conversations that were heated and full of energy only to find one of us was entirely ignorant of an adjunct area of knowledge that played heavily in the rounder conversation.

In Morris’s piece, David Dunning writes:

If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life.

Today’s bit in the NYTimes if part one of five. Can’t wait for the rest.

(Via kottke)

An Asker won't think it's rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess culture person will hear it as presumptuous and resent the agony involved in saying no. Your boss, asking for a project to be finished early, may be an overdemanding boor -- or just an Asker, who's assuming you might decline. If you're a Guesser, you'll hear it as an expectation. This is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awkwardnesses, too: Brits and Americans get discombobulated doing business in Japan, because it's a Guess culture, yet experience Russians as rude, because they're diehard Askers.

Probably the best categorization of this personality spectrum I’ve seen anywhere; sure goes beyond the now-(in)famous Type A/Type B dichotomy.

As you might expect, when the extremes of these types are forced to interact, it probably won’t be pretty.

(Via Kottke)

Flat-out one of the best talks I've ever seen.  And the presentation style, while fantastic, is ironic given some of the subject matter.

Worth 10 mins of your time.  Promise.

There is something conservative about much of Pixar's output, but when I say conservative, I mean a small “c” conservative that sees the world along the same lines as Edmund Burke: “A disposition to preserve.” I'm going to call this “social conservatism,” by which I don't mean the religious or moral conservatism of modern political discourse, but a conservatism that is interested in preserving traditional social features - in particular, the idea of “family” - but which sees such preservation as ultimately futile. The family will dissolve, eventually, and so we must do what we can to keep it going as long as possible. It is a worldview based not on progression but on loss.

Absolutely fascinating:

Dinotopia artist James Gurney posted this video about a "change blindness" experiment. 75% of the participants didn't notice that the experimenter who bent under a counter was replaced by a different person. Says Gurney: "Here's proof that most of the time we look but don't see." I think Matisse said something to the effect that he didn't really see things unless he was painting them.

Mark Frauenfelder over at Boing Boing asks an interesting question:

Here’s a test: let’s say a meeting, originally scheduled for Wednesday, has been moved forward two days. What is the new day of the meeting?

To me, the answer is Monday (because moving something forward means it will happen sooner), but it turns out that how you answer the question says a lot about how you perceive time itself.

If you think it’s Friday, you imagine time as something you move through. If you think it’s Monday, you think of time as something that passes by you.

What does this have to do with anger?

Well, according to the British Psychological Society, “Friday” people have an angrier disposition, than “Monday” people.

Not sure how scientific this is (seems a little wobbly to me), but it sure makes for fun intra-office profiling.

(Via Tyler Cowen)