Why do new psychotherapies work, and then stop?

a post by Cory Doctorow for the Boing Boing blog



On Slate Star Codex, psychiatrist Scott Alexander offers a "book review of All Therapy Books", which is a jumping-off point for asking how it is that psychotherapy is periodically rocked by new therapies that seem to perform incredibly well, but whose confirmed efficacy shelves off over time.

He proposes four different possibilities to explain this: maybe the first people to practice a new therapy are the most plugged-in, best psychotherapists, and then, as mediocre therapists adopt the practice, it dilutes the findings; maybe once the therapy is more familiar, the placebo effect (driven by excitement at trying something new) fades; maybe the underlying ideas in the new therapy get widespread attention so patients show up already having received much of the benefit the therapeutic perspective brings; or, maybe the inventors of the therapy are "true believers" who do quick studies that are countered by wider follow-on studies.

Continue reading

---

Why Mammalian Brains are Geared Toward Kindness

posted by Azra Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Patricia Churchland in The Scientist:



Three myths about morality remain alluring:

• only humans act on moral emotions,
• moral precepts are divine in origin, and
• learning to behave morally goes against our thoroughly selfish nature.

Converging data from many sciences, including ethology, anthropology, genetics, and neuroscience, have challenged all three of these myths. First, self-sacrifice, given the pressing needs of close kin or conspecifics to whom they are attached, has been documented in many mammalian species — wolves, marmosets, dolphins, and even rodents. Birds display it too. In sharp contrast, reptiles show no hint of this impulse.

Continue reading

---

Inventing a better future of work: the Working Futures science fiction anthology of better futures for workers and jobs

a post by Mike Masnick for the Boing Boing blog



[Worried about automation and high-tech unemployment, or gig economy labor apocalypses? Techdirt's Mike Masnick and the Copia Institute have pulled together an outstanding anthology of speculative fiction about better futures for work and workers, called Working Futures, [link to Amazon Kindle] which is just out. This kind of speculation-for-good is such a cool idea, and I'm delighted to give Mike a little space to discuss it. -Cory]

Over the past decade – as technology has advanced in two specific areas: the gig economy and artificial intelligence – there’s been a lot of discussion about the nature of work and the future of work. I’ve been somewhat frustrated by many of these discussions, as they always tend to fall broadly into two competing camps: people insisting that all the jobs will go away and we’re all doomed, or those who insist that “everything will work itself out, it always does“.

Continue reading

---

They told us DRM would give us more for less, but they lied

a post by Cory Doctorow for the Boing Boing blog


Image: Cryteria, CC-BY, modified

My latest Locus Magazine column is DRM Broke Its Promise, which recalls the days when digital rights management was pitched to us as a way to enable exciting new markets where we'd all save big by only buying the rights we needed (like the low-cost right to read a book for an hour-long plane ride), but instead (unsurprisingly) everything got more expensive and less capable.

For 40 years, University of Chicago-style market orthodoxy has promised widespread prosperity as a natural consequence of turning everything into unfettered, unregulated, monopolistic businesses. For 40 years, everyone except the paymasters who bankrolled the University of Chicago's priesthood have gotten poorer.

Continue reading and if you are not angry by the time you get to the end of the Boing Boing post and the Locus Magazine article then words fail me. 

---