To control is to make things happen or not happen. Primary control is when we align the world to our wishes. Secondary control is when we align ourselves to the world, often because the world isn't cooperating with our wishes.
We have no idea what the actual wage increases were, since the “tip credit” was used by many employers. Also, Seattle was booming during the period studied. How did the researchers control for the effects of skyrocketing employment and economic growth in Seattle?
The Bray and von Storch 5th International Survey of Climate Scientists consists of over a hundred statements related to climate change and its effects. For each statement, respondents indicated their level of agreement or opinion via a seven-point scale. Around a third of the 651 respondents were involved (as author, reviewer, etc.) with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (2014 IPCC AR5).
Of the scientists convinced or confident that climate change is occurring, 48% were convinced that most of the recent or near future climate change is the result of anthropogenic causes; 26% were very confident of this; and 14% were modestly confident.
...only those authors who self-rated their papers as having an opinion on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) were asked if they personally endorsed AGW themselves. These authors represented 62.7% of the whole sample - 746 out of 1189 respondents. The authors who self-rated their papers as having no position on AGW were not asked about their opinion on global warming. They were also climate scientists...
...we tend to become more categorical in our opinions when they serve as markers of belonging to a moral community.
Doctors need to be willing to act boldly, willing to do nothing, and willing to change their minds. Because the health of the patient is what’s important – not a foolish consistency with past opinions....So it should be when the planet is the patient.
Those few hundred milliseconds between relief and renewed vigilance. Researching and thinking hard before the game - and then the payoff, the sense-making, in-between the momentary triumphs.
Living in the jungle is hard: building nests every evening, extracting the nutritious stuff from thousands of plants. That takes deliberation, reasoning, inference, problem-solving, weighing the pros and the cons.
The idea is that competing and cooperating with one's fellows takes smarts. Individual animals who are better at these social interactions are more likely to transmit their genes to future generations. Over evolutionary time, you get a smarter species.
Thoughts are remnants of automatic brain processes that have temporarily captured our attention. If we are aware of a thought, we have recreated it.
"Our conscious experience is assembled on the fly, as our brains respond to constantly changing inputs, calculate potential courses of action, and execute responses." Michael S. Gazzaniga
Sometimes simply doing something is the payoff, especially when coming after a period of indecision. Of course, the same behavior may have multiple potential payoffs: enjoyable in its own right, doubly so if applauded by others, triply so if it advances one's career.
...many climate change skeptics don’t contest that the climate is warming. That’s rarely the issue. More often, the argument is that the relative contribution to warming of human activity/GHG emissions hasn’t been proven to exceed 50%. Or that the pace or extent of warming is not alarming, so does not require extraordinary measures.
All sorts of things inform our choice of payoff, for instance: ease of achieving, certainty of achieving, vividness, immediacy.... A lot of things to consider but usually these choices are made in a flash, below the threshold of consciousness, thanks to our extraordinary brains.
...'trigger' is also "a device that releases a spring-loaded mechanism" and that’s how I mean it. A trigger in this sense is what psychologists call an “affordance”: something that presents the possibility of an action on an object or environment. An affordance is an opportunity to achieve an outcome. In this way a trigger suggests a pay-off. Just like a doorknob, a trigger is not a cause of behavior but an enticement to act.
Brains and agents are prediction machines. Behind every behavior is an anticipated consequence. A pay-off. Before every behavior is its trigger. The trigger hints at a pay-off and sets the whole ABC sequence in motion.
Now let’s look at Financial Shocks, focusing on sudden cut-off of an income stream. Usually we’re talking about a job lost to employer action (being laid off) or disability. If people are less worried about financial shocks, they may save a little bit less than before.
Skeptics aren’t going to be impressed with ‘stories’ and ‘personal experiences’. They want to argue the science.
Thanks to memes, we can hold ourselves apart and consider the spectacle, thereby falling into delusion and wonder.