All posts tagged: explain

How evolution might explain impatience

How evolution might explain impatience

Published by skeptic

Nobody likes to wait, and we are willing to pay to avoid it. Expedited shipping, fast food and video streaming are all profitable because they reduce or eliminate that wait. You can test this by asking a group of people to choose between receiving £100 now or £110 in a year. Research shows a significant majority will choose the £100. But why do many people choose not to wait, when it seems obvious that they would be better off doing so? Sometimes this impatience is just put down to irrationality, impulsivity or short-sightedness, but there is also a long tradition in psychology and economics that views impatience as, at least in part, a rational response to the world. Perhaps the world of today, or perhaps the world in which we evolved. Recent research proposes that our evolutionary history shaped our impatience, and uses mathematical models to show how it works. The key idea is this. Imagine a large population of identical people who can choose between enjoying an early reward, or a larger reward later …

A key psychological factor helps explain how planetarium films boost interest in science

A key psychological factor helps explain how planetarium films boost interest in science

Published by José

Getting people excited about science can be a challenge, but a recent study offers a promising approach. Researchers discovered that inducing awe, specifically through immersive planetarium films, is highly effective at sparking and growing people’s interest in scientific subjects. This suggests awe could be key to making science more engaging for everyone. The work has been published in the journal Cognition and Emotion. Scientists have long recognized that emotions play a significant role in how we learn and remember things. Emotions related to knowledge and understanding, termed epistemic emotions, are particularly relevant in learning environments. For example, feeling curious can lead to deeper engagement with new material, while boredom can hinder learning. Awe is one such emotion, often described as the feeling we get when we encounter something vast and beyond our current understanding, prompting us to adjust our perspective of the world. Though awe is thought to be a driving force behind science learning, exactly how it affects our thinking processes during learning has remained largely unknown. Previous research exploring awe has often taken …

Racial and religious differences help explain why unmarried voters lean Democrat

Racial and religious differences help explain why unmarried voters lean Democrat

Published by José

A new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family has shed light on a persistent trend in American politics: unmarried voters are more inclined to support Democratic presidential candidates compared to their married counterparts. Researchers found that this difference in voting preferences is largely explained by the distinct racial and religious make-ups of these two groups. Specifically, the higher proportion of Black voters among unmarried individuals, and the lower levels of religious observance in this group compared to married voters, significantly contribute to this political divide. Political analysts have long observed various divisions within the American electorate, such as differences based on gender, race, and location. However, the influence of marital status on political preference has received less attention in recent years. While studies in the 1980s and 1990s noted that unmarried individuals leaned more towards Democratic presidential candidates, the new research aimed to provide an updated analysis using data from more recent elections, spanning from 1984 to 2020. The researchers sought to confirm whether this marital divide in voting remained relevant in …

Climate Models Can’t Explain What’s Happening to Earth

Climate Models Can’t Explain What’s Happening to Earth

Published by José

Fifty years into the project of modeling Earth’s future climate, we still don’t really know what’s coming. Some places are warming with more ferocity than expected. Extreme events are taking scientists by surprise. Right now, as the bald reality of climate change bears down on human life, scientists are seeing more clearly the limits of our ability to predict the exact future we face. The coming decades may be far worse, and far weirder, than the best models anticipated. This is a problem. The world has warmed enough that city planners, public-health officials, insurance companies, farmers, and everyone else in the global economy want to know what’s coming next for their patch of the planet. And telling them would require geographic precision that even the most advanced climate models don’t yet have, as well as computing power that doesn’t yet exist. Our picture of what is happening and probably will happen on Earth is less hazy than it’s ever been. Still, the exquisitely local scale on which climate change is experienced and the global purview …

“You can’t explain your way out of this”: CNN panelists slam Harris campaign’s excuses for loss

“You can’t explain your way out of this”: CNN panelists slam Harris campaign’s excuses for loss

Published by Sam

CNN panelists weren’t happy with the excuses made for  ‘ loss by top campaign staffers this week. A who’s who of the Harris campaign stopped by the podcast “Pod Save America” for an episode released on Tuesday that attempted to serve as a post-mortem of the election and an explanation of Harris’ stunning loss. Commentator Bakari Sellers and national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny both came away from the talk feeling that Democratic Party strategists had no interest in taking the blame for their own decisions.  “It was disappointing at best, hearing their lack of self-awareness, their lack of self-reflection,” Sellers said, laying into the staffers for a lack of clear messaging and for covering up flagging numbers. “[They showed an] inability to figure out a way in which you could win this race. Simply providing messaging and saying that we’re up whereby you don’t believe that in your heart of hearts to be true.” Zeleny was equally harsh in his critique of the campaign staffers’ analysis. “You can’t explain your way out of this loss,” he …

how quantum black holes explain why we don’t see the end of space and time

how quantum black holes explain why we don’t see the end of space and time

Published by skeptic

Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity, is famously incomplete. As proven by physics Nobel laureate Roger Penrose, when matter collapses under its own gravitational pull, the result is a “singularity” – a point of infinite density or curvature. At a singularity, space, time and matter are crushed and stretched into nonexistence. The laws of physics as we know them suffer a complete breakdown. If we could observe singularities, our physical theories couldn’t be used to predict the future from the past. In other words, science would become an impossibility. Penrose also realised nature may hold a remedy for this fate – black holes. A defining feature of a black hole is its event horizon, a one-way membrane in space-time. Objects – including light – that cross the event horizon can never leave due to the black hole’s incredibly strong gravitational pull. In all the known mathematical descriptions of black holes, singularities are present in their core. Penrose postulated that all the singularities of gravitational collapse are “clothed” by the event horizons of black holes …

Plants and animals with bigger genomes grow less efficiently – new research helps explain why they never died out

Plants and animals with bigger genomes grow less efficiently – new research helps explain why they never died out

Published by skeptic

All living things have a blueprint provided by the DNA that is stored in every one of their cells. Yet the amount of DNA in each cell – what we refer to as genome size – spans an incredible range across the tree of life. In animals, it ranges from the tiny genome of the worm-like marine parasite Intoshia variabili, which is 200 times smaller than a human’s, to that of the marbled lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus), which is estimated to be over 40 times larger than our own. Plants show similar variation, with one – the fork fern (Tmesipteris oblanceolata) – holding the record for the largest genome, having over 50 times as much DNA in each cell as humans. DNA superheavyweight, the fork fern. Wikimedia, CC BY-SA This variation in genome size highlights the remarkable diversity of life on Earth, but also poses an intriguing evolutionary question. Smaller genomes enable plants and animals to grow much more quickly and efficiently, so why do some species have much larger genomes? All living organisms must replicate …

Our brains might help explain political differences

Our brains might help explain political differences

Published by skeptic

amygdala: An area deep within the brain and near the temporal lobe. Among other things, the amygdala plays a role in emotions. The term comes from the Greek word for an almond, which this region resembles in shape. ancestor: A predecessor. It could be a family forebear, such as a parent, grandparent or great-great-great grandparent. Or it could be a species, genus, family or other order of organisms from which some later one evolved. For instance, ancient dinosaurs are the ancestors of today’s birds. (antonym: descendant) attention: The phenomenon of focusing mental resources on a specific object or event. average: (in science) A term for the arithmetic mean, which is the sum of a group of numbers that is then divided by the size of the group. biology: The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists. empathy: (adj. empathetic) The ability to recognize and share what someone else is feeling or experiencing. evolution: (v. to evolve) A process by which species undergo changes over time, usually through genetic variation and natural …

“That man needs to go to jail”: Former Trump voters explain why they could never support him again

“That man needs to go to jail”: Former Trump voters explain why they could never support him again

Published by Sam

PHILADELPHIA — Free markets, free trade and defending democracy, at home and abroad: that’s John Conway’s ideal version of the United States, led by the Republican Party. In 2024, it’s also a vision far removed from reality, former President Donald Trump’s conquest of the GOP having been fully actualized, his party critics long since replaced by members of his family and others more loyal to him than the principles, however romanticized, of traditional conservatism. Conway, director of strategy for the group Republican Voters Against Trump, is fully aware of that. He just doesn’t think that he and other conservatives should accept their party being taken over by a 78-year-old with a dubious grasp on what it takes to be a leader — “a disgusting character who doesn’t represent the best of America” — and a record of putting his own interests ahead of the republic. “Donald Trump has really fundamentally changed what the Republican Party stands for and what the Republican Party is,” Conway said in an interview. “If you look at an issue like …

I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is

I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is

Published by skeptic

The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!” As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday …