The BBC has an article on why people should give compliments to others. There are studies that indicate that giving compliments results in a sense of reciprocity. Other studies indicate that people significantly underestimate how happy people would be to receive a compliment. All that being said, as an older male, there are a few things I need to remind myself about: Compliment something someone has done, not something they genetically have.

When reading stuff on the intertubes, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether a comment is stupid, ignorant, brain freeze or troll. You cannot see the other person and have no knowledge about their background. I would treat a lot of statements as simply trolls if I didn’t have the personal experience of an 18 year old American “honors” student ask me why people in Switzerland spoke German because their minds think in English.

I recently finished a 260 page analysis of some open source software projects at the request of someone in Switzerland (no one getting paid, this is open source software). That took about a month. It was followed by a week helping a guy in Italy resolve the performance problems of the software he maintains which had come dead last in the analysis. Then four days adding an feature to some software I have found myself as the maintainer at the request of someone else on the intertubes.

It seems like a lot of people would have no meaning to life if they didn’t have someone to hate. Fortunately I hate everyone so a lot of targets would have to go away. From time to time friends in the international tax arena call and update me on the latest goings on. Usually it is fairly clear that most of the parties at the table are engaged in political posturing but do not actually seem to want to resolve the issues.

Suppose you are an ethical researcher so you needed informed consent before experimenting on people. Now suppose a group of people writing really complicated software read email suggestions for patches on the software and any emailed patch will go through several of review before it is accepted. Finally, suppose you decide to “research” whether you can get patches accepted that look like they are positive on their face, but in reality create security holes in the software.

I’ve been hearing horror stories from friends in the medical field about COVID deniers even as they are gasping for breath. Many of these people (and their families) simultaneously deny the existence of COVID and insist that the doctors gave it to them to get more money. How did this happen? Because people told them lies. Children are taught the saying “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

I was told yesterday that business people don’t cheat or cut corners because if they did, investors would punish them and that if I had studied finance I would understand that. It was all I could do to avoid just responding with maniacal laughter. Last year I had an economics professor tell me that Google and Amazon are not profit maximizing companies because they do not operate the way that microeconomic theory says that they will.

Courtesy of Paul in a comment on Charlie Stross' blog. “I know the facts.” “You have opinions.” “He’s biased.” “They’ve been brainwashed.” Like everyone else, I occasionally need to be reminded of my own biases and preconceptions. As usual, feel free to disagree using this contact link. My world view is a hypothesis, not a belief.

I’ve been read some of the excuses for bad behavior, most recently discussions about Richard Stallman being neurodivergent and therefore he did nothing wrong. In this context I and others thought to dig up this comment by someone calling themselves Hershele Ostropoler about sexual harassment at public gatherings in John Scalzi’s blog in 2012: “If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.” “If you step on my foot without meaning to, you need to get off my foot.

Norton Juster, the author of “The Phantom Tollbooth” died yesterday at age 91. In my opinion, it is a book that everyone should read (or have read to them - you can choose to take this as snark or not as you see fit). It is possible to appreciate it more as an adult than as a child. Below are some of my favorite quotes. “You must never feel badly about making mistakes … as long as you take the trouble to learn from them.

An interesting study was recently released (Feb 24, 2021) on morality and atheists v. religious. It started from the observation that while attitudes in the US have improved towards minorities over time, attitudes towards atheists have not. According to a Pew poll in 2019, 44% of Americans think belief in God is necessary for morality (apparently people only behave well if someone is watching). The researchers decided to look at morality among the atheists and religious in the US (a religious country) and Sweden (a non-religious country) and investigate “whether disbelievers differ from believers in how they conceptualize morality.

Psych News Daily reports that Conversations Rarely End When People Want Them to End. Scientific American reports that People Literally Don’t Know When to Shut Up or Keep Talking. You would think this was consistent reporting. Are you sure about that? Psych News Daily states “On average, participants wished their conversations had been 1.9 minutes (or 24%) longer. They also said they believed that their partners wished that the conversation had been 5.

Sometimes (some people would say often) I feel the need to flag some study in an area I am completely unqualified to comment on the substance. I am, however, really good at pulling apart logic, generalizations and over-broad journalistic pronouncements, however, so I feel completely at ease in doing that. What else is the internet for? WARNING: Long read. Cambridge University researchers just came out with a study entitled The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach with a rather astounding claim in the abstract: “[W]e uncovered the specific psychological signatures of political, nationalistic, religious and dogmatic beliefs.