Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
You Might Be Feeling Tired on Lockdown. Here’s Why.
A lot of people have been posting on social media saying they have been feeling tired earlier than usual while on lockdown. […]
Here’s Four Weird Artifacts of Video Conferencing
People have long noticed, however, that some peculiar things happen in videoconferencing. Norm Friesen, and educational technology researcher, has explored this and presents four odd things that happen when you’re engaged in a videoconference.
Four Tech Tips For Students Whose Classes Moved Online
Yes, there has been a mad rush to get classes online. If you’ve found yourself having to study your university course online, here are some ways to ensure you’re ready for your virtual experience.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Coronavirus Thinking
The answer for the kind of panicked flurry in reasoning we’re seeing during the COVID-19 pandemic may lie in a field of critical thinking called vice epistemology. This theory argues our thinking habits and intellectual character traits cause poor reasoning.
Lessons From a Coronavirus Symptom-Tracking App (That’s Free)
“Rather than sending out thousands of online or paper questionnaires, we teamed up with health data science company ZOE to develop a simple symptom-monitoring app called COVIDradar. The app was made from scratch in about four days and would normally take four months. Volunteer citizen scientists use it to report their health status daily and note the appearance of any new symptoms. Once we realized that there was nothing similar available in the UK to monitor symptoms on a population-wide level, we decided to make the app freely available to all.”
Why Call It ‘Social Distancing’? We Need Social Connection More Than Ever
Staying socially connected in times of threat has benefits beyond helping us manage our mental well-being. Other people can provide us with practical support, like picking up groceries or passing on relevant information, as well as emotional support. This feeling is called social solidarity, and if we get it right we’ll be much better equipped to respond to this and other crises.
Breaking Bad News: How to Talk With the Misinformed
It’s also common to encounter people who are misinformed but don’t know it yet. It’s one thing to double-check your own information, but what’s the best way to talk to someone else about what they think is true – but which is not true?
Twixt Duck and Rabbit: Psychological Biases and Bad Coronavirus Policy
Crises rarely see human decision-making operating at its best. Politicians and policymakers have to make important decisions in unfamiliar circumstances, with vast gaps in the available information, and all in the full glare of public scrutiny. The psychology of decision making doesn’t just tell us a lot about the potential pitfalls in our own thinking – it alerts us to ways in which some of the world’s governments may go astray.
