Becons

The Becons are the Behavioral Economics Oscars. They are exactly what they sound like, prizes awarded on the basis of their economic lessons. Cass Sunstein runs down this years winners.

Best picture: No, it’s not "Interstellar," and it’s not "Gone Girl." And a loud system 1 rejection of "Birdman," "The Theory of Everything," "Into the Woods" and "The Imitation Game." The biggest Becon goes to the movie that has the biggest heart, and the best scene, and the best score, and the best romance of the year (without even a single kiss). It’s a celebration of optimism bias, the value of agency, duration neglect, the illusion of control, the gambler’s fallacy, steps you can’t take back, and the human spirit. Mark Ruffalo and Keira Knightley, you are ridiculously good. "Begin Again" dances off with the Becon.

Which goes to show that while movies can teach important economic lessons, that might not be the best way to go about making a good movie (Begin Again is by the director of Once, and it is basically Once with actors instead of musicians as leads; if you choose to see one, see Once).

Aliens is the best movie about humans and technology

I love this Tim Carmody essay about why James Cameron's Aliens is the best movie about technology.

Now, the aliens are certainly intelligent enough to use tools — they just don’t need them. Evolution has given them everything they need to kill just about anything they want to. They can gestate inside any host, taking on whatever physical characteristics of that host are needed to survive in a new environment. Their bodies make their armor, their secretions make their architecture. Technology is irrelevant. Their biology is so perfect that they are technology. (I’m partial to the theory that the derelict spacecraft discovered in Alien and again in Aliens was carrying the alien’s eggs to use as bombs; Burke and the Weyland-Yutani corporation want to exploit their biology in much the same way. It’s all IP to humans!)

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The climactic scene in Aliens is obviously Ripley’s battle with the alien queen. Exoskeleton to carapace, blowtorch to hidden extra jaw, it’s literally a battle between a human plus technology and a biologically superior lifeform. Again, I love how low-tech Ripley’s suit actually is: it could easily have existed in 1986, but probably never will, if Amazon’s warehouse robots are any indication of our future. But I also love that Ripley wins not just because she can put on the suit and know how to use it, but because she can take it off.

Think about it: all Ripley is really doing inside the exoskeleton is holding off the queen while she is opening the airlock. Even with the benefit of a robotic prosthesis, a human being can’t kill the alien: only space can. Ripley and the queen tumble head over head into the bottom of the airlock. Ripley luckily lands on top, but is also able to ditch her techno-suit and climb out of harm’s way. The alien queen can’t even break off from her egg sac as quickly as Ripley scrambles out of her suit; she’s too tied to her own biology to let any of it go, to treat it as something other than herself.

When introverts should drink coffee

In his book Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, psychologist Brian Little argues that introverts shouldn't drink coffee before an important meeting, or anything like it.

Why does coffee seem to have this effect on introverts?
This isn't my own research, but it's based on the theory of extraversion by Hans Eysenck and research by William Revelle of Northwestern University. It's the idea that introverts and extraverts differ in the level of neocortical arousal in the brain — in other words, how alert or responsive you are to your environment. According to this theory, introverts are over the optimal level — that is, more easily stimulated — and extraverts under the optimal level. 

It's more complex than that, but this is a useful model because it allows us to make some predictions. This suggests that performance will be compromised for introverts if they are exposed to stimulating situations, or if they ingest a stimulant (such as caffeine),which pushes them even further away from the optimal level. 

So when should introverts have their coffee, then?
Later in the day would be better; at any rate, they should try not to have caffeine right before something like an important meeting, as I say in the book.

Being cold as a weight-loss technique?

Is the fact that Americans can be warm year-round one reason they are so obese?

That's the theory of Ray Cronise, former NASA materials scientist.

Cronise’s latest ideas are laid out in a 2014 article he co-authored with Andrew Bremer, who was then at Vanderbilt University (he is now at the National Institutes of Health), and the Harvard geneticist David Sinclair, who is well known for his recent work on resveratrol (the “anti-aging” antioxidant found in red wine) and sirtuins—enzymes that help control metabolism. Sirtuins are active during times of stress, including when a person is hungry, and are thought to be related to the known life-prolonging effects of very-low-calorie diets.

Cronise, Bremer, and Sinclair propose what they call the “Metabolic Winter” hypothesis: that obesity is only in small part due to lack of exercise, and mostly due to a combination of chronic overnutrition and chronic warmth. Seven million years of human evolution were dominated by two challenges: food scarcity and cold. “In the last 0.9 inches of our evolutionary mile,” they write, pointing to the fundamental lifestyle changes brought about by refrigeration and modern transportation, “we solved them both.” Other species don’t exhibit nearly as much obesity and chronic disease as we warm, overfed humans and our pets do. “Maybe our problem,” they continue, “is that winter never comes.”

Their article joins a growing body of research on the metabolic effects of cold exposure, some of which I’ve reported on previously. Earlier last year, in the journal Cell Metabolism, researchers from the National Institutes of Health likened these effects to those of exercise, arguing that a better understanding of endocrine responses to cold could be useful in preventing obesity. The lead researcher in that study, Francesco Celi, published more research in June, finding that when people cool their bedrooms from 75 degrees to 66 degrees, they gain brown fat, the metabolically active fat that burns calories to generate heat. (Having brown fat is considered a good thing; white fat, by contrast, stores calories.) Another 2014 study found that, even after controlling for diet, lifestyle, and other factors, people who live in warmer parts of Spain are more likely to be obese than people who live in the cooler parts.

If you want to try this out for yourself, the article mentions a device called the Cold Shoulder, a vest that holds ice packs, which you can wear around the house to try to burn more calories. You can buy the Cold Shoulder weight loss vest on Amazon for $149.

This still all sounds speculative, but I do sleep much better in really cold rooms. When I'm in a hotel and need a good night's sleep, I always crank up the A/C and bury myself under the covers.

I came home from vacation in Del Mar to a 63 degree apartment in San Francisco today, and I'm not going to turn on the heat. Damn it is cold.