Essays

A Deception Study: Operation Mincemeat 

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Reading Time: 9 minutes All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu  Deceit and violence – these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings. But deceit controls more subtly, for it works on belief as well as action.  When we undertake to deceive others intentionally, we communicate messages meant to mislead them, meant to make them believe what we ourselves do not believe. We can do so through gesture, through disguise, by means of action or inaction, even through silence.  Sissela Bok – Secrets: On the …

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How to Counteract Disinformation

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Reading Time: 7 minutes The last few years exposed more than ever the fragility of our information ecosystem. Elections, Brexit, social unrest, COVID-19 conspiracies, and the war in Ukraine have been used as disinformation operations by certain actors to undermine faith in governments, raise fear and anger, confuse and manipulate us.  Disinformation is information meant to deceive (trolls posting fake news). In contrast, misinformation is false information with no malicious intent (our friends and family genuinely believe in disinformative content and willingly share it).  Why is Disinformation Effective?  …

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Leonardo da Vinci: Between the Tongue of the Woodpecker and Mona Lisa

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Reading Time: 11 minutes Get hold of a skull. Nutmeg.  Observe the holes in the substance of the brain, where there are more or less of them.  Describe the tongue of the woodpecker and jaw of a crocodile.  Give measurement of the dead using his finger [as a unit].  Get your books on anatomy bound. Boots, stockings, comb, towel, shirts, shoelaces, penknife, pens, a skin for the chest, gloves, wrapping paper, charcoal.  This to-do list belonged to Leonardo da Vinci, written perhaps before a journey da Vinci took to …

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The Apgar Score and Its Hidden Lessons

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Reading Time: 7 minutes The first test newborns have to pass is the Apgar score, a rating system from zero to ten used by healthcare providers to determine how thriving a newborn is.  Appearance (skin colour), Pulse (heart rate), Grimace (reflexes), Activity (muscle tone), and Respiration (breathing rate), these categories are each rated from zero to two so that midwives, nurses or obstetricians can quickly assess a baby’s condition after birth. A score of seven or above indicates the baby is in good health. A lower score does not …

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When Incentives Fail. A Story about Rats, Cobras, Nails, and Atrocities. 

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Reading Time: 6 minutes Part 1: When Incentives Fail. A Story about Rats, Cobras, Nails, and Atrocities.  Part 2: Avoiding Perverse Incentives  More than a century ago, the French colonialists decided to modernize the French Indochina, especially its capital, Hanoi. Large areas of Hanoi were cleared to accommodate French-style districts with boulevards, bridges, palaces, villas and gardens. This major infrastructure project was supposed to transform Hanoi from a cramped and narrow city into a symbol of France’s “civilising” mission in Indochina.  A sign of cleanliness and civilization was …

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How to Reduce Biased Thinking

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Reading Time: 7 minutes The brain is designed with blind spots, optical and psychological, and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on its owner the comforting delusion that he or she does not have any.  Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson – Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)   Every day an overflow of thoughts dashes through our minds as we must adapt as efficiently and quickly as possible to everchanging environments. We can’t process all streams of information around us at once, so we turn to mental shortcuts …

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An Overview of the Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Its Effects on Us

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Reading Time: 9 minutes Cognitive dissonance is a theory proposed by Leon Festinger in the 1950s related to how we react in the face of conflicting behaviours and cognitions (ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions). According to this theory, people strive to keep their knowledge, attitudes or behaviours consistent (consonant). So, when we encounter contradictory information, we try to reduce contradicting (dissonant) cognitions and restore equilibrium by altering our attitudes, beliefs or behaviours.   Festinger argued that to cope with contradictory ideas or experiences, some of us would blindly believe what we …

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Dilemmas in Approaching Scientific Content

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Reading Time: 7 minutes Understanding some basic neuroscience can be highly liberating as it can undo some of our apparently irreversible limitations or failings. As you can imagine, much of this content is based on scientific research. Reading studies about neuroscience, procrastination, productivity, etc., is where the waters become muddier because scientific research often has an agenda that can lead to the “file drawer problem” or publication bias. This bias states that research results that don’t validate the researchers’ hypothesis tend to end up in the file drawers. …

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