Robots enchanting humans, particularly the phenomenon of robots being perceived by humans as “magical” enough to develop intimate relationships with them (caring robots, sex robots)

Robots Enchanting Humans. Maciej Musiał. Chapter in Enchanting Robots: Intimacy, Magic, and Technology, pp 11-62. March 01 2019. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-12579-0_2

Abstract: The chapter discusses the issue of robots enchanting humans, particularly the phenomenon of robots being perceived by humans as “magical” enough to develop intimate relationships with them. To examine this problem, this chapter explores the current debates in the field of robot ethics that address sex robots and care robots. It investigates both the arguments of those who are enthusiastic about such robots as well as the positions of skeptics, who consider intimate relationships with robots to be a serious danger. Finally, in reference to sociological studies about transformations of intimacy it is argued that robots enchant humans and are perceived as potential intimate partners because humans are becoming progressively disenchanted in the sense that they are increasingly considered to be non-unique and problematic, while robots are seen as possessing all positive characteristics of humans without any flaws typical of humans.

Keywords: Intimacy Intimate relationships Sex robots Care robots Objectification

The same bias that causes someone to take an exploitative loan may also imply that the loan benefits them by causing them to purchase a product or service that they should, but wouldn’t otherwise, buy

Hayashi, Andrew T., Consumer Law Myopia (February 14, 2019). Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2019-03. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3334677

Abstract: People make mistakes with debt, partly because the chance to buy now and pay later tempts them to do things that are not in their long-term interest. Lenders sell credit products that exploit this vulnerability. In this Article, I argue that critiques of these products, particularly those that draw insights from behavioral law and economics, have a blind spot: they ignore what the borrowed funds are used for. By evaluating financing transactions in isolation from the underlying purchase, the cost-benefit analysis of consumer financial regulation is truncated and misleading. I show that the same bias that causes someone to take an exploitative loan may also imply that the loan benefits them by causing them to purchase a product or service that they should, but wouldn’t otherwise, buy. I demonstrate the importance of this effect in a study of tax refund anticipation loans. I find that regulation curtailing these loans reduced the use of paid tax preparers and the takeup of the earned income tax credit, which is the second largest federal transfer to low-income households.

Keywords: behavioral law and economics, consumer law

Consumers with food deprivation display lower preference for sustainable food items; hunger operates outside rational awareness and alters gentleness-associations with sustainable products

Hungry bellies have no ears. How and why hunger inhibits sustainable consumption. Stefan Hoffmann et al. Ecological Economics, Volume 160, June 2019, Pages 96-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.02.007

Highlights
•    Consumers with food deprivation display lower preference for sustainable food items.
•    Implicit Association Test shows that hunger operates outside rational awareness.
•    Hunger alters gentleness-associations with sustainable products.
•    Explicitly held judgments are not affected by food deprivation.

Abstract: While reports state that consumers are increasingly willing to consume more sustainably, no study has considered how the activation of very basic human needs, such as the state of hunger, affects sustainable food consumption. The authors expect that hungry consumers display a lower preference for sustainable food items and that this hunger-induced imprint on food consumption patterns must be traced back to the fact that the activation of very fundamental human needs contaminates stereotypical perceptions of sustainable products. More importantly, hunger primarily operates spontaneously, as well as automatically, and affects perceptions, which are difficult to control (and which sometimes go unnoticed). A laboratory experiment studied this premise by sampling 166 participants with 18 h of actual food deprivation, half of them having breakfast before and the other half after completing the experimental tasks. The participants who had breakfast show a stronger tendency to choose sustainable products, which can be traced back to implicit gentleness-associations concerning sustainable products in the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Albeit explicitly held beliefs also influence choices, these judgments are not affected by food deprivation. A field study then replicates the findings in a real-life setting.

Why Women Leave Their Husbands for Other Women

Why Women Leave Their Husbands for Other Women. Lauren Vinopal. Fatherly, Mar 04 2019. https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/women-bisexual-divorce/

Women are more likely to leave their husbands for other women because their sexual fluidity comes with fewer consequences.

Women are more likely than men to cheat on their spouses with a same-sex partner, studies suggest. It’s not that women are more likely to be homosexual or bisexual—it’s that women appear more willing than men to change their minds about what turns them on, throughout their lives. Men tend to choose a sexuality and stick with it, experts agree. Women are sexual wildcards.

“I think data are sufficient to suggest that more women are likely to change their reported sexual orientation depending on their circumstance, where men are more resistant to changing their identity from sexual behavior alone,” psychophysiologist and neuroscientist Nicole Prause, who studies women’s sexual responses, told Fatherly.

The phrase “sexual fluidity” was originally coined by psychologist Lisa Diamond in 2008. After following the same 100 women for a decade, she found that there were crucial differences between bisexuality and the sexual fluidity that otherwise heterosexual women experienced. Bisexuality is defined as being attracted to men and women. Many women, Diamond found, identified as gay or straight, but accepted the fact that they might change their minds at some point. When experts say that women are more likely to be sexually fluid, they mean that they’re more likely to make an exception to, or even update, their sexual identities.

Of course, this does not mean that women are more likely than men to cheat on their spouses and sexual fluidity is seldom the main cause of a relationship souring. As with any relationship problem, there are usually other, deeper relationship issues at play. But now, more than ever, married women are stepping away from problem heterosexual marriages, and into same-sex ones.

[...]

One hormonal explanation may be that women’s testosterone levels increase with age, and higher testosterone levels have also been linked with increased incidence of homosexuality and bisexuality in women. This might help explain why women may be more fluid in their thirties and forties, after having kids. Evolutionary psychologists have offered a number of theories as to why women may be more fluid as well, such as an adaptive way to decrease conflict in polygamous cultures. Another popular explanation is that, because saying yes to sex comes at a higher risk and reproductive cost to women, they tend to make sexual decisions more cautiously on a case by case basis, which could potentially allow for more deviation.

Still, it is likely that increased rates of sexual fluidity among women is primarily a social (rather than biological) phenomenon. Indeed, there is emerging evidence that men have the same potential as women to be sexually fluid, but that stigma prevents them from acting upon it. In most western societies, women still face fewer social costs for same-sex relationships than men. [...]

Psychological sex differences in humans are real, they can be large and even very large, and evidence suggests evolutionary origins for a broad range of sex differences

Archer, John  (2019) The reality and evolutionary significance of human psychological sex differences. Biological Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.

Abstract: The aims of this article are: (1) to provide a quantitative overview of sex differences in human psychological attributes, and (2) to consider evidence for their possible evolutionary origins. Sex differences were identified from a systematic literature search of meta-analyses and large-sample studies. These were organized in terms of evolutionary significance as follows: (1) characteristics arising from inter-male competition (within-sex aggression; impulsiveness and sensation-seeking; fearfulness; visuospatial and object-location memory; object-centred orientations); (2) those concerning social relations that are likely to have arisen from women’s adaptations for small-group interactions and men’s for larger co-operative groups (person-centred orientation and social skills; language; depression and anxiety); (3) those arising from female choice (sexuality; mate choice; sexual conflict). There were sex differences in all categories, whose magnitudes ranged from (1) small (object location memory; negative emotions), to (2) medium (mental rotation; anxiety disorders; impulsivity; sex drive; interest in casual sex), to (3) large (social interests and abilities; sociosexuality), and (4) very large (escalated aggression; systemizing; sexual violence). Evolutionary explanations were evaluated according to whether: (1) similar differences occur in other mammals; (2) there is cross-cultural consistency; (3) the origin was early in life or at puberty; (4) there was evidence for hormonal influences; and (5), where possible, whether there was evidence for evolutionarily derived design features. The evidence was positive for most features in most categories, suggesting evolutionary origins for a broad range of sex differences. Attributes for which there was no sex difference are also noted. Within-sex variations are discussed as limitations to the emphasis on sex differences.

If emerging technologies are so impressive, why are interest rates so low, wage growth so slow, investment rates so flat, & total factor productivity growth so lukewarm? Lack of genius.

Digital Abundance and Scarce Genius: Implications for Wages, Interest Rates, and Growth. Seth G. Benzell, Erik Brynjolfsson. NBER Working Paper No. 25585, February 2019, https://www.nber.org/papers/w25585

Digital versions of labor and capital can be reproduced much more cheaply than their traditional forms. This increases the supply and reduces the marginal cost of both labor and capital. What then, if anything, is becoming scarcer? We posit a third factor, ‘genius’, that cannot be duplicated by digital technologies. Our approach resolves several macroeconomic puzzles. Over the last several decades, both real median wages and the real interest rate have been stagnant or falling in the United States and the World. Furthermore, shares of income paid to labor and capital (properly measured) have also decreased. And despite dramatic advances in digital technologies, the growth rate of measured output has not increased. No competitive neoclassical two-factor model can reconcile these trends. We show that when increasingly digitized capital and labor are sufficiently complementary to inelastically supplied genius, innovation augmenting either of the first two factors can decrease wages and interest rates in the short and long run. Growth is increasingly constrained by the scarce input, not labor or capital. We discuss microfoundations for genius, with a focus on the increasing importance of superstar labor. We also consider consequences for government policy and scale sustainability.

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Why then, if emerging technologies are so impressive, are interest rates so low, wage growth so slow and investment rates so flat? And why is total factor productivity growth so lukewarm? To resolve this paradox, we propose a model of aggregate production with three inputs. The third factor corresponds to a bottleneck which prevents firms from making full use of digital abundance. Bottlenecks are ubiquitous in economics. This paper is typed on a computer that is over 1000 times faster than those of the past, but our typing is still limited by our interface with the keyboard.
An assembly line that doubles the output, speed or precision of 1, 2 or 99 out of 100 of processes will still be limited by that line’s weakest link. In other words, no matter how much we increase the other inputs, if an inelastically supplied complement remains scarce, it will be the gating factor for growth.

Our model can explain why ordinary labor and ordinary capital haven’t captured the gains from digitization, while a few superstars have earned immense fortunes. Their contributions, whether due to genius or luck, are both indispensable and impossible to digitize. This puts them in a position to capture the gains from digitization.

In our digital economy technology advances rapidly, but humans and their institutions change slowly. Institutional, managerial, technological, and political constraints become bottlenecks (Brynjolfsson et al., 2017). Before a firm can make use of AI decision making, its leaders need to make costly and time-consuming investments in quantifying its business processes; before it can scale rapidly using web services it needs figure out how to codify its systems in software. Therefore, digital advances benefit neither unexceptional labor nor standard capital, at least insofar as they can be replicated digitally (Brynjolfsson et al., 2014). The invisible hand instead favors those who are a scarce complement to these factors.

The inputs in our model are traditional capital and labor and a relatively inelastic complement we dub ‘genius’ or G. When G is relatively abundant, the economy approximates a two-factor one. But as G becomes relatively scarce, it becomes a bottleneck for output and captures an increasing share of national income. We show that when traditional inputs are sufficiently complementary to G, innovations in automation technology can reduce both labor’s share of income and the interest rate.

This theory fits what we know about the limitations of digital technologies, including cutting-edge AI. While general artificial intelligence might someday lead to an economic singularity, contemporary AI technologies have clear limitations, making humans indispensable for many essential tasks. Agrawal et al. (2018a) and Agrawal et al. (2018c) observe that AI is good at prediction tasks, but struggles with judgment – often a close complement. Brynjolfsson et al. (2018) create a rubric for assessing which tasks are suitable for machine learning and use it to evaluate the content of over 18,000 tasks described in O-Net. They find that while the new technology delivers super-human performance for some tasks, it is ineffective for many others. In particular, despite their many strengths, existing computer systems weak or ineffective at tasks that involve significant creativity or large-scale problem solving. Even tasks amenable to automation may require large organizational investments before business processes can be automated.

The only essential feature of G in our model is that it is inelastically supplied, because, in part, it is not subject to digitization. For concreteness, our primary interpretation for G is superstar individuals. They may be exceptionally gifted with the ability to come up with an exciting new idea, sort through bad ideas for a diamond in the rough,3 or effectively manage a business. If these good ideas are owned by and accumulate within firms, they correspond to a kind of alienable genius.

...

Many have the sense that intangible assets and superstar workers are more abundant than ever. Perhaps the most surprising thing then about our result is that these factors are increasingly scarce. We contend that this is due to confusion between the value and importance of these inputs, which are increasing, and their relative abundance, which is decreasing.

Laterality, or left–right discrimination (LRD) is assumed to be innate or acquired early, but in one study, a majority of students scored less than 77% on an objective LRD test

Challenging  assumptions of  innateness –leave nothing unturned . Jason J Han & Neha Vapiwala. Medical Education, Mar 3 2019, https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13824

It was once common in various academic fields to assume that individuals possess certain fundamental abilities or intuitions (e.g. the assumption of rationality in the fields of economics and social sciences).1 However, the past half-century has overseen a transition towards a different model of human cognition, one which acknowledges the human brain as complex machinery that is vulnerable to systematic errors.

The pioneers of this paradigm shift, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, attributed this to the co-existence of two processing mechanisms.2 They described the first, aptly named System 1, as the fast, automatic, intuitive, unconscious approach and the second (System 2) as the slower, more deliberate, analytical and conscious mode. The purpose of this categorisation was not to assign a hierarchy, but rather to acknowledge that both systems have their respective pros and cons depending on the task. System 1 is efficient but more error-prone. System 2 is more thorough but requires greater resources and quickly drains our working memory and attention, thereby making it too susceptible to error. In this issue of Medical Education, Gormley et al. juxtapose these two systems in the context of one of the most commonly performed mental tasks –our ability to discern laterality or left–right discrimination (LRD). This ability is particularly critical in medicine, as errors in LRD can lead to wrong diagnoses and interventions, and ultimately patient harm. The authors note that although LRD is often assumed to be innate or acquired during early stages of human development, in reality LRD is a complex neuropsychological process with which 17% of women and 9% of men have reported difficulty.3 Medical students are not exempt from this challenge. In one study, a majority of students scored  less than 77% on an objective LRD test.4 In the interviews conducted by Gormley et al., students who had difficulty with LRD disclosed feelings of inadequacy, which led to greater efforts to conceal this difficulty and even influenced their career trajectories by steering them away from certain specialties. Undoubtedly, these f indings have important implications for the medical education community, suggesting the need to overthrow assumptions that LRD is an  innate human skill and to raise the importance of laterality training in the curriculum.5

This study inspires the realisation that no tacit assumption of innateness or intuitiveness should go unchecked. What else are we assuming is easy, innate or intuitive? The distinction between what is presumably innate and what merits attention and practice is somewhat arbitrary. Observing that we teach correct anatomic spatial orientation, such as anterior from posterior, superior from inferior, Gormley et al. asked, why not also left from right? Extrapolating further, we could apply the same line of questioning to other competencies in medical education, such as our ability to recognise personal cognitive biases or develop ‘soft’ skills such as empathy and clarity of communication. There are undoubtedly circumstances in which we assume we effectively and expertly broke bad news, disclosed error or obtained informed consent, but in the eyes of the patient our performance was lacking. As such, we can all stand to gain important insights into our own abilities with a more conscious and thoughtful approach.6,7 1

Short-run impacts of the 2018 trade war on the U.S. economy: Annual losses from higher costs, $68.8 bn (0.37% of GDP); after tariff revenue & gains to producers, welfare loss is $6.4 bn (0.03% of GDP)

The Return to Protectionism. Pablo D. Fajgelbaum, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Patrick J. Kennedy, and Amit K. Khandelwal. Working Paper, Mar 2019, http://www.econ.ucla.edu/pfajgelbaum/RTP1.pdf

Abstract: We analyze the short-run impacts of the 2018 trade war on the U.S. economy. We estimate import demand and export supply elasticities using changes in U.S. and retaliatory war tariffs over time. Imports from targeted countries decline 31.5% within products, while targeted U.S. exports fall 9.5%. We find complete pass-through of U.S. tariffs to variety-level import prices, and compute the aggregate and regional impacts of the war in a general equilibrium framework that matches these elasticities. Annual losses from higher costs of imports are $68.8 billion (0.37% of GDP). After accounting for higher tariff revenue and gains to domestic producers from higher prices, the aggregate welfare loss is $6.4 billion (0.03% of GDP). U.S. tariffs favored sectors located in politically competitive counties, suggesting an ex ante rationale for the tariffs, but retaliatory tariffs offset the benefits to these counties. Tradeable-sector workers in heavily Republican counties are the most negatively affected by the trade war.


Check also Krugman on Sep 2018: Trump’s tariffs really are a big, bad deal. Their direct economic impact ***will be modest*** (?!), although hardly trivial https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/09/krugman-trumps-tariffs-really-are-big.html

Orgasms with a partner were associated with the perception of favorable sleep outcomes; orgasms achieved through masturbation were associated with the perception of better sleep quality & latency

Sex and Sleep: Perceptions of Sex as a Sleep Promoting Behavior in the General Adult Population. Michele Lastella et al. Front. Public Health, March 04 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2019.00033

Objective: The main aim of this study was to explore the perceived relationship between sexual activities, sleep quality, and sleep latency in the general adult population and identify whether any gender differences exist.

Participants/methods: We used a cross-sectional survey to examine the perceived relationship between sexual activity and subsequent sleep in the general adult population. Seven-hundred and seventy-eight participants (442 females, 336 males; mean age 34.5 ± 11.4 years) volunteered to complete an online anonymous survey at their convenience.

Statistical Analyses: Chi square analyses were conducted to examine if there were any gender differences between sexual activities [i.e., masturbation (self-stimulation), sex with a partner without orgasm, and sex with a partner with orgasm] and self-reported sleep.

Results: There were no gender differences in sleep (quality and onset) between males and females when reporting sex with a partner [χ2(2)
= 2.20, p = 0.332; χ2(2)=5.73, p = 0.057] or masturbation (self-stimulation) [χ2(2) = 1.34, p = 0.513; χ2(2) = 0.89, p = 0.640] involved an orgasm.

Conclusions: Orgasms with a partner were associated with the perception of favorable sleep outcomes, however, orgasms achieved through masturbation (self-stimulation) were associated with the perception of better sleep quality and latency. These findings indicate that the public perceive sexual activity with orgasm precedes improved sleep outcomes. Promoting safe sexual activity before bed may offer a novel behavioral strategy for promoting sleep.

The informal economy share rises after reaching a high GDP... Norway has a bigger shadow economy than the US

Nonlinearity Between the Shadow Economy and Level of Development. Dong Frank Wu, Friedrich Schneider. IMF Working Paper No. 19/48, Mar 2019. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/03/01/Nonlinearity-Between-the-Shadow-Economy-and-Level-of-Development-46618

Summary: This paper is the first attempt to directly explore the long-run nonlinear relationship between the shadow economy and level of development. Using a dataset of 158 countries over the period from 1996 to 2015, our results reveal a robust U-shaped relationship between the shadow economy size and GDP per capita. Our results imply that the shadow economy tends to increase when economic development surpasses a given threshold or at least does not disappear. Our findings suggest that special attention should be given to the country’s level of development when designing policies to tackle issues related to the shadow economy.

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The paper also seeks to identify the potential factors which boost GDP per capita. Consistent with the growth literature, we find that educational attainment plays a vital role in improving GDP per capita, especially a college degree or above. This result helps shed some light on a possible mechanism of a U-shaped pattern at the micro level. From the individual perspective, people work to make themselves better off. When the level of development is low, education helps build up labor productivity and skilled workers with college education or above choose to stay in the formal sector to enjoy benefits from high productivity position and social security net. When the economy advances to a new level at which income of skilled workers becomes high enough and one household member can easily cover the whole family’s daily expenses, demand for informal work is likely to increase due to work flexibility or other desirable perks. Hence the size of shadow economy reverses its downtrend.


Check also the paper that found that taxpayers’ attitudes toward evasion are not predictive of behavior & that tax compliance is not related to trust in government or one’s fellow citizens; Danes are more likely to evade tax than Italians; at the same time, Danes are less tolerant of tax evasion by others:

Willing to Evade: An Experimental Study of Italy and Denmark. Alice Guerra and Brooke Harrington. Copenhagen  Business  School, Department  of  Business  and  Politics. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/09/found-that-taxpayers-attitudes-toward.html

The organic label leads to an underestimation of caloric value and more consumption; this effect is not moderated by implicit evaluations, maybe by a semantic association between the concepts “organic” & "non-caloric”

The calories underestimation of “organic” food: Exploring the impact of implicit evaluations. Theo Besson et al. Appetite, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2019.02.019

Abstract: Specific attributes of a food product can cause it to be spontaneously but wrongly perceived as healthier than it really is (i.e., the health halo effect). Notably, there is preliminary evidence that individuals evaluate organic food as less caloric than regular, non-organic food. However, explanations regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying the health halo effect remain scarce. Drawing from the implicit cognition literature, we hypothesize that this effect could be due to (a) the reactivation in memory of implicit positive evaluations and/or (b) the reactivation of a semantic association between the concepts “organic” and “non-caloric”. We first conducted a 2 (Product label: organic versus non-organic) × continuous (Valence-IAT score) × continuous (Calorie-IAT score) study (N = 151) to test these hypotheses, and conducted a conceptual replication in a second study (N = 269). We computed Bayesian analyses alongside frequentist analyses in order to test for potential null hypotheses, as well as frequencies and Bayesian meta-regression including both datasets. Both methods provided consistent results. First, Bayesian analyses yielded extremely strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the organic label leads to an underestimation of caloric value. Second, they provided strong evidence that this effect is not moderated by implicit evaluations. Hence, we replicated the organic halo effect but showed that, surprisingly, it does not arise from implicit associations. We discuss these findings and propose directions for future research regarding the mechanisms underlying calories (under)estimation.

Religions that lose strength... Tyler Cowen's comments on Jana Riess's The Next Mormons: How Millennials are Changing the LDS Church

Jana Riess, The Next Mormons: How Millennials are Changing the LDS Church. 2019. Comments by Tyler Cowen, Mar 02 2019, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/03/the-mormon-asymptote.html:

...compared to some other religions, Mormonism is not doing too badly.  Mormonism's US growth rate of .75 percent in 2017 -- kept in positive territory by still-higher-than-average fertility among Mormons -- is actually somewhat enviable when compared to, for example, the once-thriving Southern Baptists, who have bled out more than a million members in the last ten years.  Mormonism is not yet declining in membership, but it has entered a period of decelerated growth.  In terms of congregational expansion, the LDS Church in the United States added only sixty-five new congregations in 2016, for an increase of half a percentage point.  In 2017, the church created 184 new wards and branches in the United States, but 184 units also closed, resulting in no net gain at all.

By some estimates (p.7), only about 30 percent of young single Mormons in the United States go to church regularly.  The idea of the Mormon mission, however, is rising in import:

More than half of Mormon Millennials have served a full-time mission (55 percent), which is clearly the highest proportion of any generation; among GenXers, 40 percent served, and in the Boomer/Silent generation, it was 28 percent.

In contrast, "returning to the temple on behalf of the deceased" is falling (p.54).

Mormons are about a third more likely to be married than the general U.S. population, 66 to 48 percent.  But note that 23 percent of Mormon Millennials admit to having a tattoo, against a recommended rate of zero (p.162).

And ex-Mormon snowflakes seem to be proliferating.  For GenX, the single biggest reason giving for leaving the church was "Stopped believing there was one church".  For Millennials, it is (sadly) "Felt judged or misunderstood."

Check also Crawfurd, Lee. 2019. “Does Temporary Migration from Rich to Poor Countries Cause Commitment to Development? Evidence from Quasi-random Mormon Mission Assignments.” SocArXiv. January 10. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/01/assignment-to-region-in-global-south.html

Now we know why we are smart & prone to addiction too: Ants defend plants they fed on more aggressively against herbivore competitors (termites) when the plant is doused with artificial nectaries

Nectar quality affects ant aggressiveness and biotic defense provided to plants. Fábio T. Pacelhe et al. bioTropica, Feb 27 2019, https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.12625

Abstract: Ant–plant mutualisms are useful models for investigating how plant traits mediate interspecific interactions. As plant‐derived resources are essential components of ant diets, plants that offer more nutritious food to ants should be better defended in return, as a result of more aggressive behavior toward natural enemies. We tested this hypothesis in a field experiment by adding artificial nectaries to individuals of the species Vochysia elliptica (Vochysiaceae). Ants were offered one of four liquid foods of different nutritional quality: amino acids, sugar, sugar + amino acids, and water (control). We used live termites (Nasutitermes coxipoensis) as herbivore competitors and observed ant behavior toward them. In 88 hr of observations, we recorded 1,009 interactions with artificial nectaries involving 1,923 individual ants of 26 species. We recorded 381 encounters between ants and termites, of which 38% led to attack. Sixty‐one percent of these attacks led to termite exclusion from the plants. Recruitment and patrolling were highest when ants fed upon nectaries providing sugar + amino acids, the most nutritious food. This increase in recruitment and patrolling led to higher encounter rates between ants and termites, more frequent attacks, and faster and more complete termite removal. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that plant biotic defense is mediated by resource quality. We highlight the importance of qualitative differences in nectar composition for the outcome of ant–plant interactions.

Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, on systematic biases... Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability

From 1973... Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman. Cognitive Psychology, Volume 5, Issue 2, September 1973, Pages 207-232. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9

Abstract: This paper explores a judgmental heuristic in which a person evaluates the frequency of classes or the probability of events by availability, i.e., by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind. In general, availability is correlated with ecological frequency, but it is also affected by other factors. Consequently, the reliance on the availability heuristic leads to systematic biases. Such biases are demonstrated in the judged frequency of classes of words, of combinatorial outcomes, and of repeated events. The phenomenon of illusory correlation is explained as an availability bias. The effects of the availability of incidents and scenarios on subjective probability are discussed.

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Daniel Kahneman – Prize Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Mar 03 2019. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2002/kahneman/lecture

"Remarkably, the intuitive judgments of these experts did not conform to statistical principles with which they were thoroughly familiar. In particular, their intuitive statistical inferences and their estimates of statistical power showed a striking lack of sensitivity to the effects of sample size. We were impressed by the persistence of discrepancies between statistical intuition and statistical knowledge, which we observed both in ourselves and in our colleagues. We were also impressed by the fact that significant research decisions, such as the choice of sample size for an experiment, are routinely guided by the flawed intuitions of people who know better."

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Check also From William Niskanen's obituary at the Washington Post, William A. Niskanen Jr., economist and former Cato Institute chairman, dies. By T. Rees Shapiro. Washington Post, November 1, 2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/william-a-niskanen-jr-economist-and-cato-institute-chairman-dies/2011/10/31/gIQAuM1RaM_story.html

At Ford, Dr. Niskanen found, conformity was key. But it was a lesson Dr. Niskanen did not learn until 1980, when he was fired for breaking ranks with the executives.

During the 1970s, the nation's car industry was battered by rising gas prices. For Japanese manufacturers, touting smaller cars with fuel-sipping engines, American sales took off.

In late 1979, Ford begged for a government intervention, asking the International Trade Commission to impose quotas on Japanese cars.

[...]

Dr. Niskanen told Ford executives that the government could not cure the company's ills. Japan was not the problem, Dr. Niskanen told his bosses; they were.

[...]

Ford's real issue, Dr. Niskanen said, was bad product decisions.

Upon hearing his advice, Ford executives dismissed Dr. Niskanen.

"I was told, Bill, in general, people who do well in this company wait until they hear their superiors express their view and then contribute something in support of that view,・ Dr. Niskanen said in an 1980 interview with the Wall Street Journal. "That wasn", and isn't, my style."
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Excellence is not enough: Most UK scientists who publish extremely highly-cited papers do not secure funding from major public and charity funders

Most UK scientists who publish extremely highly-cited papers do not secure funding from major public and charity funders: A descriptive analysis. Charitini Stavropoulou, Melek Somai, John P. A. Ioannidis. PLOS, February 27, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211460

Abstract: The UK is one of the largest funders of health research in the world, but little is known about how health funding is spent. Our study explores whether major UK public and charitable health research funders support the research of UK-based scientists producing the most highly-cited research. To address this question, we searched for UK-based authors of peer-reviewed papers that were published between January 2006 and February 2018 and received over 1000 citations in Scopus. We explored whether these authors have held a grant from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trust and compared the results with UK-based researchers who serve currently on the boards of these bodies. From the 1,370 papers relevant to medical, biomedical, life and health sciences with more than 1000 citations in the period examined, we identified 223 individuals from a UK institution at the time of publication who were either first/last or single authors. Of those, 164 are still in UK academic institutions, while 59 are not currently in UK academia (have left the country, are retired, or work in other sectors). Of the 164 individuals, only 59 (36%; 95% CI: 29–43%) currently hold an active grant from one of the three funders. Only 79 (48%; 95% CI: 41–56%) have held an active grant from any of the three funders between 2006–2017. Conversely, 457 of the 664 board members of MRC, Wellcome Trust, and NIHR (69%; 95% CI: 65–72%) have held an active grant in the same period by any of these funders. Only 7 out of 655 board members (1.1%) were first, last or single authors of an extremely highly-cited paper. There are many reasons why the majority of the most influential UK authors do not hold a grant from the country’s major public and charitable funding bodies. Nevertheless, the results are worrisome and subscribe to similar patterns shown in the US. We discuss possible implications and suggest ways forward.