The Fading Virus Bias
AI that can code, decision-making lessons from NASA & Shapeshifting Pasta
🧠 Curiosity
Today it’s two weeks that gastronomy opened up again here in Austria. But to me it feels like it’s been months that I am back into (almost) normality. COVID and the lockdown times somehow became a distant memory very fast. While just a few weeks ago I have been a bit concerned that the relaxation of measurements might even be too fast, I have gone back to hugging as my default welcome gesture to friends by now (without giving much of a thought to COVID). It surprised me how fast main brain pushed everything virus-related into a hidden corner and how little I think about it on a daily basis (although the pandemic is still not over).
The so-called ‘Fading Affect Bias’ might be one part of the explanation - it’s a ‘psychological phenomenon in which memories associated with negative emotions tend to be forgotten more quickly than those associated with positive emotions’. I don’t believe that is the only reason that I (and seemingly also the majority of people around me) changed my lifestyle relatively fast (general COVID-fatigue and the visual impression that, with people sitting in restaurants, life around us simply looks almost entirely normal certainly played a role here as well), but I nevertheless think it’s an interesting human behavior.
While in this particular case, the fading-affect bias might lead to too much slack with regards to the preventative measures still in place (hugging too many people is probably still not a smart idea), I think it’s also really cool that our brain has some mechanisms in place that help us to get over negative memories fast. After all this is what we need now - a focus on the good sides of life and the motivation to start new things which generally comes along with positive emotions (often referred to as broaden-and-build theory).
Note to self: Be grateful for the experiences that are now possible again, use the positive drive to explore new ideas but don’t forget that it isn’t over quite yet.
🤖 Curses & Cures
IBM has released an annotated dataset with more than 500 million lines of code from more than 55 different programming languages.
Why it matters: Software is an integral part of our lives these days. It’s not only in our computers but in our cars, homes and wearables. This article attempts to make an educated guess about the number of lines of code written each year and lands on an estimate of about 93 billion. If we could teach an AI to write code or even just support developers with modernizing code or fixing bugs, the resulting increase in productivity in software development could be massive. Excited to see what AI systems will be brought to life by Project CodeNet within the next years.
📚 Curation
Adventures in Astrophysics with Thomas Zurbuchen [Podcast]
This interview is not only interesting for space nerds but uncovers a lot of generally helpful insights into the decision process of someone responsible for a $8 billion research budget.
For me, what I hate, if you want to tick me off, come show up and tell me everything is low risk. That makes me believe you haven’t understood your job, right? Don’t make me laugh, don’t make me feel good. Make me feel scared and then make me feel comfortable because you’re dealing with all the risks. Don’t come and say it’s all low risk. It is not low risk, it’s rocket science.Are Uber and Lyft drivers being exploited? [Podcast]
Are great series of interviews exploring the arguments on both sides of the current debate on potential changes in the U.S. labour law
Now in New York City its more of a scheduled shift system - so there is blocks of 4 hours and you kind of have to select your shifts and when and where you want to drive. Its sort of like a scheduling system (…). The overwhelming feedback from drivers that I have talked to (…), is that the drivers don’t like it because they have lost some flexibility. Maybe they want to take a week off and then they don’t qualify for the shifts anymore that they normally want to drive. So there is a loss in flexibility, but for me even though drivers don’t like the system, I see it as a fair trade-off. There are obviously things that can be improved (…) but I think that trade-off of having a minimum wage in exchange for loosing some of the flexibility (…) is a fair one.Prescription Drug Commercials: Why Are You the Way You Are?
Although prescription drug commercials are (luckily?) not a thing in the EU, it’s thought provoking to read about things like patient influencers & the effect of those commercials on drug usage.
The popular stance to take is “pharma marketing bad”, and it’s frankly not super hard to argue. Why should pharma companies be spending money to induce consumer demand when they could instead take that money and reinvest it into R&D? Just for fun and my love of angry emails, I’ll play a little devil’s advocate.
One question is whether these ads are a net negative societal cost. This means that the dollar cost going into these ads (and the value of where they could be otherwise invested) is higher than the benefits they provide. (…)
This is a very hard area to study but in general you can probably argue there are some beneficial effects of ads to get people to take useful drugs. On the flipside, a dollar invested into pharma R&D has gotten steadily much worse over time, dropping to 1.8% return on a dollar invested.
✨ Curios
A list of helpful pieces of advice for building a landing page that converts
Already as early as 1972 a newspaper article on e-scooters has been published
Scientist have found a way to make flat rectangle pasta that turns into fusilli, rings and other pre-defined shapes when cooked. Might seem useless, but could actually simplify shipping and reduce packaging.