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THE BLUET

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2363-35
Interestingly, experts do not suffer as much as beginners when performing complex tasks or combining multiple tasks. Because experts have extensive practice within a limited domain, the key component skills in their domain tend to be highly practiced and more automated. Each of these highly practiced skills then demands relatively few cognitive resources, effectively lowering the total cognitive load that experts experience. Thus, experts can perform complex tasks and combine multiple tasks relatively easily. This is not because they necessarily have more cognitive resources than beginners; rather, because of the high level of fluency they have achieved in performing key skills, they can do more with what they have. Beginners, on the other hand, have not achieved the same degree of fluency and automaticity in each of the component skills, and thus they struggle to combine skills that experts combine with relative ease and efficiency.

2363-36
The growing complexity of computer software has direct implications for our global safety and security, particularly as the physical objects upon which we depend ― things like cars, airplanes, bridges, tunnels, and implantable medical devices ― transform themselves into computer code. Physical things are increasingly becoming information technologies. Cars are "computers we ride in," and airplanes are nothing more than "flying Solaris boxes attached to bucketfuls of industrial control systems." As all this code grows in size and complexity, so too do the number of errors and software bugs. According to a study by Carnegie Mellon University, commercial software typically has twenty to thirty bugs for every thousand lines of code ― 50 million lines of code means 1 million to 1.5 million potential errors to be exploited. This is the basis for all malware attacks that take advantage of these computer bugs to get the code to do something it was not originally intended to do. As computer code grows more elaborate, software bugs flourish and security suffers, with increasing consequences for society at large.

2363-37
Darwin saw blushing as uniquely human, representing an involuntary physical reaction caused by embarrassment and self-consciousness in a social environment. If we feel awkward, embarrassed or ashamed when we are alone, we don't blush; it seems to be caused by our concern about what others are thinking of us. Studies have confirmed that simply being told you are blushing brings it on. We feel as though others can see through our skin and into our mind. However, while we sometimes want to disappear when we involuntarily go bright red, psychologists argue that blushing actually serves a positive social purpose. When we blush, it's a signal to others that we recognize that a social norm has been broken; it is an apology for a faux pas. Maybe our brief loss of face benefits the long-term cohesion of the group. Interestingly, if someone blushes after making a social mistake, they are viewed in a more favourable light than those who don't blush.

2363-38
As particular practices are repeated over time and become more widely shared, the values that they embody are reinforced and reproduced and we speak of them as becoming 'institutionalized'. In some cases, this institutionalization has a formal face to it, with rules and protocols written down, and specialized roles created to ensure that procedures are followed correctly. The main institutions of state ― parliament, courts, police and so on ― along with certain of the professions, exhibit this formal character. Other social institutions, perhaps the majority, are not like this; science is an example. Although scientists are trained in the substantive content of their discipline, they are not formally instructed in 'how to be a good scientist'. Instead, much like the young child learning how to play 'nicely', the apprentice scientist gains his or her understanding of the moral values inherent in the role by absorption from their colleagues ― socialization. We think that these values, along with the values that inform many of the professions, are under threat, just as the value of the professions themselves is under threat.

2363-39
When trees grow together, nutrients and water can be optimally divided among them all so that each tree can grow into the best tree it can be. If you "help" individual trees by getting rid of their supposed competition, the remaining trees are bereft. They send messages out to their neighbors unsuccessfully, because nothing remains but stumps. Every tree now grows on its own, giving rise to great differences in productivity. Some individuals photosynthesize like mad until sugar positively bubbles along their trunk. As a result, they are fit and grow better, but they aren't particularly long-lived. This is because a tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it. And there are now a lot of losers in the forest. Weaker members, who would once have been supported by the stronger ones, suddenly fall behind. Whether the reason for their decline is their location and lack of nutrients, a passing sickness, or genetic makeup, they now fall prey to insects and fungi.

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2363-30
To the extent that an agent relies on the prior knowledge of its designer rather than on its own percepts, we say that the agent lacks autonomy. A rational agent should be autonomous ― it should learn what it can to compensate for partial or incorrect prior knowledge. For example, a vacuum-cleaning agent that learns to foresee where and when additional dirt will appear will do better than one that does not. As a practical matter, one seldom requires complete autonomy from the start: when the agent has had little or no experience, it would have to act randomly unless the designer gave some assistance. So, just as evolution provides animals with enough built-in reflexes to survive long enough to learn for themselves, it would be reasonable to provide an artificial intelligent agent with some initial knowledge as well as an ability to learn. After sufficient experience of its environment, the behavior of a rational agent can become effectively independent of its prior knowledge. Hence, the incorporation of learning allows one to design a single rational agent that will succeed in a vast variety of environments.

2363-31
People have always needed to eat, and they always will. Rising emphasis on self-expression values does not put an end to material desires. But prevailing economic orientations are gradually being reshaped. People who work in the knowledge sector continue to seek high salaries, but they place equal or greater emphasis on doing stimulating work and being able to follow their own time schedules. Consumption is becoming progressively less determined by the need for sustenance and the practical use of the goods consumed. People still eat, but a growing component of food's value is determined by its nonmaterial aspects. People pay a premium to eat exotic cuisines that provide an interesting experience or that symbolize a distinctive life-style. The publics of postindustrial societies place growing emphasis on "political consumerism," such as boycotting goods whose production violates ecological or ethical standards. Consumption is less and less a matter of sustenance and more and more a question of life-style ― and choice.

2363-32
In labor-sharing groups, people contribute labor to other people on a regular basis (for seasonal agricultural work such as harvesting) or on an irregular basis (in the event of a crisis such as the need to rebuild a barn damaged by fire). Labor sharing groups are part of what has been called a "moral economy" since no one keeps formal records on how much any family puts in or takes out. Instead, accounting is socially regulated. The group has a sense of moral community based on years of trust and sharing. In a certain community of North America, labor sharing is a major economic factor of social cohesion. When a family needs a new barn or faces repair work that requires group labor, a barn-raising party is called. Many families show up to help. Adult men provide manual labor, and adult women provide food for the event. Later, when another family needs help, they call on the same people.

2363-33
Whatever their differences, scientists and artists begin with the same question: can you and I see the same thing the same way? If so, how? The scientific thinker looks for features of the thing that can be stripped of subjectivity ― ideally, those aspects that can be quantified and whose values will thus never change from one observer to the next. In this way, he arrives at a reality independent of all observers. The artist, on the other hand, relies on the strength of her artistry to effect a marriage between her own subjectivity and that of her readers. To a scientific thinker, this must sound like magical thinking: you're saying you will imagine something so hard it'll pop into someone else's head exactly the way you envision it? The artist has sought the opposite of the scientist's observer-independent reality. She creates a reality dependent upon observers, indeed a reality in which human beings must participate in order for it to exist at all.

2363-34
One of the common themes of the Western philosophical tradition is the distinction between sensual perceptions and rational knowledge. Since Plato, the supremacy of rational reason is based on the assertion that it is able to extract true knowledge from experience. As the discussion in the Republic helps to explain, perceptions are inherently unreliable and misleading because the senses are subject to errors and illusions. Only the rational discourse has the tools to overcome illusions and to point towards true knowledge. For instance, perception suggests that a figure in the distance is smaller than it really is. Yet, the application of logical reasoning will reveal that the figure only appears small because it obeys the laws of geometrical perspective. Nevertheless, even after the perspectival correction is applied and reason concludes that perception is misleading, the figure still appears small, and the truth of the matter is revealed not in the perception of the figure but in its rational representation.

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2363-23
There are pressures within the museum that cause it to emphasise what happens in the galleries over the activities that take place in its unseen zones. In an era when museums are forced to increase their earnings, they often focus their energies on modernising their galleries or mounting temporary exhibitions to bring more and more audiences through the door. In other words, as museums struggle to survive in a competitive economy, their budgets often prioritise those parts of themselves that are consumable: infotainment in the galleries, goods and services in the cafes and the shops. The unlit, unglamorous storerooms, if they are ever discussed, are at best presented as service areas that process objects for the exhibition halls. And at worst, as museums pour more and more resources into their publicly visible faces, the spaces of storage may even suffer, their modernisation being kept on hold or being given less and less space to house the expanding collections and serve their complex conservation needs.

2363-24
Hyper-mobility ― the notion that more travel at faster speeds covering longer distances generates greater economic success ― seems to be a distinguishing feature of urban areas, where more than half of the world's population currently reside. By 2005, approximately 7.5 billion trips were made each day in cities worldwide. In 2050, there may be three to four times as many passenger-kilometres travelled as in the year 2000, infrastructure and energy prices permitting. Freight movement could also rise more than threefold during the same period. Mobility flows have become a key dynamic of urbanization, with the associated infrastructure invariably constituting the backbone of urban form. Yet, despite the increasing level of urban mobility worldwide, access to places, activities and services has become increasingly difficult. Not only is it less convenient ― in terms of time, cost and comfort ― to access locations in cities, but the very process of moving around in cities generates a number of negative externalities. Accordingly, many of the world's cities face an unprecedented accessibility crisis, and are characterized by unsustainable mobility systems.

2363-25
The above graph shows the share of the EU-28 population participating in tourism in 2017 by age group and destination category. The share of people in the No Trips category was over 30% in each of the five age groups. The percentage of people in the Outbound Trips Only category was higher in the 25-34 age group than in the 35-44 age group. In the 35-44 age group, the percentage of people in the Domestic Trips Only category was 34.2%. The percentage of people in the Domestic
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2363-18
Custard Valley Park's grand reopening event will be held on June 1st. For this exciting occasion, we are offering free admission to all visitors on the reopening day. There will be a food stand selling ice cream and snacks. We would like to invite you, our valued members, to celebrate this event. Please come and explore the park's new features such as tennis courts and a flower garden. Just relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery. We are confident that you will love the new changes, and we are looking forward to seeing you soon.

2363-19
While the mechanic worked on her car, Jennifer walked back and forth in the waiting room. She was deeply concerned about how much it was going to cost to get her car fixed. Her car's engine had started making noises and kept losing power that morning, and she had heard that replacing an engine could be very expensive. After a few minutes, the mechanic came back into the waiting room. "I've got some good news. It was just a dirty spark plug. I already wiped it clean and your car is as good as new." He handed her the bill and when she checked it, the overall cost of repairs came to less than ten dollars. That was far less than she had expected and she felt at ease, knowing she could easily afford it.

2363-20
Certain hindrances to multifaceted creative activity may lie in premature specialization, i.e., having to choose the direction of education or to focus on developing one ability too early in life. However, development of creative ability in one domain may enhance effectiveness in other domains that require similar skills, and flexible switching between generality and specificity is helpful to productivity in many domains. Excessive specificity may result in information from outside the domain being underestimated and unavailable, which leads to fixedness of thinking, whereas excessive generality causes chaos, vagueness, and shallowness. Both tendencies pose a threat to the transfer of knowledge and skills between domains. What should therefore be optimal for the development of cross-domain creativity is support for young people in taking up creative challenges in a specific domain and coupling it with encouragement to apply knowledge and skills in, as well as from, other domains, disciplines, and tasks.

2363-21
Lawyers sometimes describe ownership as a bundle of sticks. This metaphor was introduced about a century ago, and it has dramatically transformed the teaching and practice of law. The metaphor is useful because it helps us see ownership as a grouping of interpersonal rights that can be separated and put back together. When you say It's mine in reference to a resource, often that means you own a lot of the sticks that make up the full bundle: the sell stick, the rent stick, the right to mortgage, license, give away, even destroy the thing. Often, though, we split the sticks up, as for a piece of land: there may be a landowner, a bank with a mortgage, a tenant with a lease, a plumber with a license to enter the land, an oil company with mineral rights. Each of these parties owns a stick in the bundle.

2363-22
When it comes to the Internet, it just pays to be a little paranoid (but not a lot). Given the level of anonymity with all that resides on the Internet, it's sensible to question the validity of any data that you may receive. Typically it's to our natural instinct when we meet someone coming down a sidewalk to place yourself in some manner of protective position, especially when they introduce themselves as having known you, much to your surprise. By design, we set up challenges in which the individual must validate how they know us by presenting scenarios, names or acquaintances, or evidence by which to validate (that is, photographs). Once we have received that information and it has gone through a cognitive validation, we accept that person as more trustworthy. All this happens in a matter of minutes but is a natural defense mechanism that we perform in the real world. However, in the virtual world, we have a tendency to be less defensive, as there appears to be no physical threat to our well-being.

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2362-35
Before getting licensed to drive a cab in London, a person has to pass an incredibly difficult test with an intimidating name ─ "The Knowledge." The test involves memorizing the layout of more than 20,000 streets in the Greater London area - a feat that involves an incredible amount of memory resources. In fact, fewer than 50 percent of the people who sign up for taxi driver training pass the test, even after spending two or three years studying for it! And as it turns out, the brains of London cabbies are different from non-cab-driving humans in ways that reflect their herculean memory efforts. In fact, the part of the brain that has been most frequently associated with spatial memory, the tail of the sea horse-shaped brain region called the hippocampus, is bigger than average in these taxi drivers.

2362-36
When evaluating a policy, people tend to concentrate on how the policy will fix some particular problem while ignoring or downplaying other effects it may have. Economists often refer to this situation as The Law of Unintended Consequences. For instance, suppose that you impose a tariff on imported steel in order to protect the jobs of domestic steelworkers. If you impose a high enough tariff, their jobs will indeed be protected from competition by foreign steel companies. But an unintended consequence is that the jobs of some autoworkers will be lost to foreign competition. Why? The tariff that protects steelworkers raises the price of the steel that domestic automobile makers need to build their cars. As a result, domestic automobile manufacturers have to raise the prices of their cars, making them relatively less attractive than foreign cars. Raising prices tends to reduce domestic car sales, so some domestic autoworkers lose their jobs.

2362-37
Species that are found in only one area are called endemic species and are especially vulnerable to extinction. They exist on islands and in other unique small areas, especially in tropical rain forests where most species are highly specialized. One example is the brilliantly colored golden toad once found only in a small area of lush rain forests in Costa Rica's mountainous region. Despite living in the country's well-protected Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, by 1989, the golden toad had apparently become extinct. Much of the moisture that supported its rain forest habitat came in the form of moisture-laden clouds blowing in from the Caribbean Sea. But warmer air from global climate change caused these clouds to rise, depriving the forests of moisture, and the habitat for the golden toad and many other species dried up. The golden toad appears to be one of the first victims of climate change caused largely by global warming.

2362-38
The fundamental nature of the experimental method is manipulation and control. Scientists manipulate a variable of interest, and see if there's a difference. At the same time, they attempt to control for the potential effects of all other variables. The importance of controlled experiments in identifying the underlying causes of events cannot be overstated. In the real-uncontrolled-world, variables are often correlated. For example, people who take vitamin supplements may have different eating and exercise habits than people who don't take vitamins. As a result, if we want to study the health effects of vitamins, we can't merely observe the real world, since any of these factors (the vitamins, diet, or exercise) may affect health. Rather, we have to create a situation that doesn't actually occur in the real world. That's just what scientific experiments do. They try to separate the naturally occurring relationship in the world by manipulating one specific variable at a time, while holding everything else constant.

2362-39
Why do people in the Mediterranean live longer and have a lower incidence of disease? Some people say it's because of what they eat. Their diet is full of fresh fruits, fish, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts. Individuals in these cultures drink red wine and use great amounts of olive oil. Why is that food pattern healthy? One reason is that they are eating a palette of colors. More and more research is surfacing that shows us the benefits of the thousands of colorful "phytochemicals"(phyto=plant) that exist in foods. These healthful, non‑nutritive compounds in plants provide color and function to the plant and add to the health of the human body. Each color connects to a particular compound that serves a specific function in the body. For example, if you don't eat purple foods, you are probably missing out on anthocyanins, important brain protection compounds. Similarly, if you avoid green‑colored foods, you may be lacking chlorophyll, a plant antioxidant that guards your cells from damage.

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2362-30
Over the past several decades, there have been some agreements to reduce the debt of poor nations, but other economic challenges (like trade barriers) remain. Nontariff trade measures, such as quotas, subsidies, and restrictions on exports, are increasingly prevalent and may be enacted for policy reasons having nothing to do with trade. However, they have a discriminatory effect on exports from countries that lack the resources to comply with requirements of nontariff measures imposed by rich nations. For example, the huge subsidies that rich nations give to their farmers make it very difficult for farmers in the rest of the world to compete with them. Another example would be domestic health or safety regulations, which, though not specifically targeting imports, could impose significant costs on foreign manufacturers seeking to conform to the importer's market. Industries in developing markets may have more difficulty absorbing these additional costs.

2362-31
In the course of his research on business strategy and the environment, Michael Porter noticed a peculiar pattern: Businesses seemed to be profiting from regulation. He also discovered that the stricter regulations were prompting more innovation than the weaker ones. The Dutch flower industry provides an illustration. For many years, the companies producing Holland's world-renowned tulips and other cut flowers were also contaminating the country's water and soil with fertilizers and pesticides. In 1991, the Dutch government adopted a policy designed to cut pesticide use in half by 2000 ― a goal they ultimately achieved. Facing increasingly strict regulation, greenhouse growers realized they had to develop new methods if they were going to maintain product quality with fewer pesticides. In response, they shifted to a cultivation method that circulates water in closed-loop systems and grows flowers in a rock wool substrate. The new system not only reduced the pollution released into the environment; it also increased profits by giving companies greater control over growing conditions.

2362-32
It's hard to pay more for the speedy but highly skilled person, simply because there's less effort being observed. Two researchers once did a study in which they asked people how much they would pay for data recovery. They found that people would pay a little more for a greater quantity of rescued data, but what they were most sensitive to was the number of hours the technician worked. When the data recovery took only a few minutes, willingness to pay was low, but when it took more than a week to recover the same amount of data, people were willing to pay much more. Think about it: They were willing to pay more for the slower service with the same outcome. Fundamentally, when we value effort over outcome, we're paying for incompetence. Although it is actually irrational, we feel more rational, and more comfortable, paying for incompetence.

2362-33
In adolescence many of us had the experience of falling under the sway of a great book or writer. We became entranced by the novel ideas in the book, and because we were so open to influence, these early encounters with exciting ideas sank deeply into our minds and became part of our own thought processes, affecting us decades after we absorbed them. Such influences enriched our mental landscape, and in fact our intelligence depends on the ability to absorb the lessons and ideas of those who are older and wiser. Just as the body tightens with age, however, so does the mind. And just as our sense of weakness and vulnerability motivated the desire to learn, so does our creeping sense of superiority slowly close us off to new ideas and influences. Some may advocate that we all become more skeptical in the modern world, but in fact a far greater danger comes from the increasing closing of the mind that burdens us as individuals as we get older, and seems to be burdening our culture in general.

2362-34
Many people look for safety and security in popular thinking. They figure that if a lot of people are doing something, then it must be right. It must be a good idea. If most people accept it, then it probably represents fairness, equality, compassion, and sensitivity, right? Not necessarily. Popular thinking said the earth was the center of the universe, yet Copernicus studied the stars and planets and proved mathematically that the earth and the other planets in our solar system revolved around the sun. Popular thinking said surgery didn't require clean instruments, yet Joseph Lister studied the high death rates in hospitals and introduced antiseptic practices that immediately saved lives. Popular thinking said that women shouldn't have the right to vote, yet people like Emmeline Pankhurst and Susan B. Anthony fought for and won that right. We must always remember there is a huge difference between acceptance and intelligence. People may say that there's safety in numbers, but that's not always true.

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2362-23
Education must focus on the trunk of the tree of knowledge, revealing the ways in which the branches, twigs, and leaves all emerge from a common core. Tools for thinking stem from this core, providing a common language with which practitioners in different fields may share their experience of the process of innovation and discover links between their creative activities. When the same terms are employed across the curriculum, students begin to link different subjects and classes. If they practice abstracting in writing class, if they work on abstracting in painting or drawing class, and if, in all cases, they call it abstracting, they begin to understand how to think beyond disciplinary boundaries. They see how to transform their thoughts from one mode of conception and expression to another. Linking the disciplines comes naturally when the terms and tools are presented as part of a universal imagination.

2362-24
New words and expressions emerge continually in response to new situations, ideas and feelings. The Oxford English Dictionary publishes supplements of new words and expressions that have entered the language. Some people deplore this kind of thing and see it as a drift from correct English. But it was only in the eighteenth century that any attempt was made to formalize spelling and punctuation of English at all. The language we speak in the twenty-first century would be virtually unintelligible to Shakespeare, and so would his way of speaking to us. Alvin Toffler estimated that Shakespeare would probably only understand about 250,000 of the 450,000 words in general use in the English language now. In other words, so to speak, if Shakespeare were to materialize in London today he would understand, on average, only five out of every nine words in our vocabulary.

2362-25
The graph above shows the average number of students per teacher in public elementary and secondary schools across selected countries in 2019. Belgium was the only country with a smaller number of students per teacher than the OECD average in both public elementary and secondary schools. In both public elementary and secondary schools, the average number of students per teacher was the largest in Mexico. In public elementary schools, there was a smaller number of students per teacher on average in Germany than in Japan, whereas the reverse was true in public secondary schools. The average number of students per teacher in public secondary schools in Germany was less than half that in the United Kingdom. Of the five countries, Mexico was the only country with more students per teacher in public secondary schools than in public elementary schools.

2362-26
Born in 1627 in Black Notley, Essex, England, John Ray was the son of the village blacksmith. At 16, he went to Cambridge University, where he studied widely and lectured on topics from Greek to mathematics, before joining the priesthood in 1660. To recover from an illness in 1650, he had taken to nature walks and developed an interest in botany. Accompanied by his wealthy student and supporter Francis Willughby, Ray toured Britain and Europe in the 1660s, studying and collecting plants and animals. He married Margaret Oakley in 1673 and, after leaving Willughby's household, lived quietly in Black Notley to the age of 77. He spent his later years studying samples in order to assemble plant and animal catalogues. He wrote more than twenty works on theology and his travels, as well as on plants and their form and function.

2362-29
Research psychologists often work with self-report data, made up of participants' verbal accounts of their behavior. This is the case whenever questionnaires, interviews, or personality inventories are used to measure variables. Self-report methods can be quite useful. They take advantage of the fact that people have a unique opportunity to observe themselves full-time. However, self-reports can be plagued by several kinds of distortion. One of the most problematic of these distortions is the social desirability bias, which is a tendency to give socially approved answers to questions about oneself. Subjects who are influenced by this bias work overtime trying to create a favorable impression, especially when subjects are asked about sensitive issues. For example, many survey respondents will report that they voted in an election or gave to a charity when in fact it is possible to determine that they did not.

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2362-18
Regular attendance at school is essential in maximizing student potential. Recently, we've become concerned about the number of unapproved absences across all grades. I would like to further clarify that your role as a parent is to approve any school absence. Parents must provide an explanation for absences to the school within 7 days from the first day of any period of absence. Where an explanation has not been received within the 7-day time frame, the school will record the absence as unjustified on the student's record. Please ensure that you go to the parent portal site and register the reason any time your child is absent. Please approve all absences, so that your child will not be at a disadvantage. Many thanks for your cooperation.

2362-19
Ester stood up as soon as she heard the hum of a hover engine outside. "Mail," she shouted and ran down the third set of stairs and swung open the door. It was pouring now, but she ran out into the rain. She was facing the mailbox. There was a single, unopened letter inside. She was sure this must be what she was eagerly waiting for. Without hesitation, she tore open the envelope. She pulled out the paper and unfolded it. The letter said, 'Thank you for applying to our company. We would like to invite you to our internship program. We look forward to seeing you soon.' She jumped up and down and looked down at the letter again. She couldn't wait to tell this news to her family.

2362-20
The introduction of new technologies clearly has both positive and negative impacts for sustainable development. Good management of technological resources needs to take them fully into account. Technological developments in sectors such as nuclear energy and agriculture provide examples of how not only environmental benefits but also risks to the environment or human health can accompany technological advances. New technologies have profound social impacts as well. Since the industrial revolution, technological advances have changed the nature of skills needed in workplaces, creating certain types of jobs and destroying others, with impacts on employment patterns. New technologies need to be assessed for their full potential impacts, both positive and negative.

2362-21
North America's native cuisine met the same unfortunate fate as its native people, save for a few relics like the Thanksgiving turkey. Certainly, we still have regional specialties, but the Carolina barbecue will almost certainly have California tomatoes in its sauce, and the Louisiana gumbo is just as likely to contain Indonesian farmed shrimp. If either of these shows up on a fast-food menu with lots of added fats or HFCS, we seem unable either to discern or resist the corruption. We have yet to come up with a strong set of generalized norms, passed down through families, for savoring and sensibly consuming what our land and climate give us. We have, instead, a string of fad diets convulsing our bookstores and bellies, one after another, at the scale of the national best seller. Nine out of ten nutritionists view this as evidence that we have entirely lost our marbles.

2362-22
Perhaps, the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace may bode well for Emotional Intelligence (EI). As AI gains momentum and replaces people in jobs at every level, predictions are, there will be a premium placed on people who have high ability in EI. The emotional messages people send and respond to while interacting are, at this point, far beyond the ability of AI programs to mimic. As we get further into the age of the smart machine, it is likely that sensing and managing emotions will remain one type of intelligence that puzzles AI. This means people and jobs involving EI are safe from being taken over by machines. In a survey, almost three out of four executives see EI as a "must-have" skill for the workplace in the future as the automatizing of routine tasks bumps up against the impossibility of creating effective AI for activities that require emotional skill.

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2361-35
Although technology has the potential to increase productivity, it can also have a negative impact on productivity. For example, in many office environments workers sit at desks with computers and have access to the internet. They are able to check their personal e-mails and use social media whenever they want to. This can stop them from doing their work and make them less productive. Introducing new technology can also have a negative impact on production when it causes a change to the production process or requires workers to learn a new system. Learning to use new technology can be time consuming and stressful for workers and this can cause a decline in productivity.

2361-36
Up until about 6,000 years ago, most people were farmers. Many lived in different places throughout the year, hunting for food or moving their livestock to areas with enough food. There was no need to tell the time because life depended on natural cycles, such as the changing seasons or sunrise and sunset. Gradually more people started to live in larger settlements, and some needed to tell the time. For example, priests wanted to know when to carry out religious ceremonies. This was when people first invented clocks ― devices that show, measure, and keep track of passing time. Clocks have been important ever since. Today, clocks are used for important things such as setting busy airport timetables ― if the time is incorrect, aeroplanes might crash into each other when taking off or landing!

2361-37
Managers are always looking for ways to increase productivity, which is the ratio of costs to output in production. Adam Smith, writing when the manufacturing industry was new, described a way that production could be made more efficient, known as the "division of labor." Making most manufactured goods involves several different processes using different skills. Smith's example was the manufacture of pins: the wire is straightened, sharpened, a head is put on, and then it is polished. One worker could do all these tasks, and make 20 pins in a day. But this work can be divided into its separate processes, with a number of workers each performing one task. Because each worker specializes in one job, he or she can work much faster without changing from one task to another. Now 10 workers can produce thousands of pins in a day ─ a huge increase in productivity from the 200 they would have produced before.

2361-38
Sometimes the pace of change is far slower. The face you saw reflected in your mirror this morning probably appeared no different from the face you saw the day before ― or a week or a month ago. Yet we know that the face that stares back at us from the glass is not the same, cannot be the same, as it was 10 minutes ago. The proof is in your photo album: Look at a photograph taken of yourself 5 or 10 years ago and you see clear differences between the face in the snapshot and the face in your mirror. If you lived in a world without mirrors for a year and then saw your reflection, you might be surprised by the change. After an interval of 10 years without seeing yourself, you might not at first recognize the person peering from the mirror. Even something as basic as our own face changes from moment to moment.

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According to educational psychologist Susan Engel, curiosity begins to decrease as young as four years old. By the time we are adults, we have fewer questions and more default settings. As Henry James put it, "Disinterested curiosity is past, the mental grooves and channels set." The decline in curiosity can be traced in the development of the brain through childhood. Though smaller than the adult brain, the infant brain contains millions more neural connections. The wiring, however, is a mess; the lines of communication between infant neurons are far less efficient than between those in the adult brain. The baby's perception of the world is consequently both intensely rich and wildly disordered. As children absorb more evidence from the world around them, certain possibilities become much more likely and more useful and harden into knowledge or beliefs. The neural pathways that enable those beliefs become faster and more automatic, while the ones that the child doesn't use regularly are pruned away.

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Advertisers often displayed considerable facility in adapting their claims to the market status of the goods they promoted. Fleischmann's yeast, for instance, was used as an ingredient for cooking homemade bread. Yet more and more people in the early 20th century were buying their bread from stores or bakeries, so consumer demand for yeast decreased. The producer of Fleischmann's yeast hired the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency to come up with a different marketing strategy to boost sales. No longer the "Soul of Bread," the Thompson agency first turned yeast into an important source of vitamins with significant health benefits. Shortly thereafter, the advertising agency transformed yeast into a natural laxative. Repositioning yeast helped increase sales.

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Individuals who perform at a high level in their profession often have instant credibility with others. People admire them, they want to be like them, and they feel connected to them. When they speak, others listen ― even if the area of their skill has nothing to do with the advice they give. Think about a world-famous basketball player. He has made more money from endorsements than he ever did playing basketball. Is it because of his knowledge of the products he endorses? No. It's because of what he can do with a basketball. The same can be said of an Olympic medalist swimmer. People listen to him because of what he can do in the pool. And when an actor tells us we should drive a certain car, we don't listen because of his expertise on engines. We listen because we admire his talent. Excellence connects. If you possess a high level of ability in an area, others may desire to connect with you because of it.

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Think of the brain as a city. If you were to look out over a city and ask "where is the economy located?" you'd see there's no good answer to the question. Instead, the economy emerges from the interaction of all the elements ― from the stores and the banks to the merchants and the customers. And so it is with the brain's operation: it doesn't happen in one spot. Just as in a city, no neighborhood of the brain operates in isolation. In brains and in cities, everything emerges from the interaction between residents, at all scales, locally and distantly. Just as trains bring materials and textiles into a city, which become processed into the economy, so the raw electrochemical signals from sensory organs are transported along superhighways of neurons. There the signals undergo processing and transformation into our conscious reality.

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Someone else's body language affects our own body, which then creates an emotional echo that makes us feel accordingly. As Louis Armstrong sang, "When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you." If copying another's smile makes us feel happy, the emotion of the smiler has been transmitted via our body. Strange as it may sound, this theory states that emotions arise from our bodies. For example, our mood can be improved by simply lifting up the corners of our mouth. If people are asked to bite down on a pencil lengthwise, taking care not to let the pencil touch their lips (thus forcing the mouth into a smile-like shape), they judge cartoons funnier than if they have been asked to frown. The primacy of the body is sometimes summarized in the phrase "I must be afraid, because I'm running."

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Restricting the number of items customers can buy boosts sales. Brian Wansink, Professor of Marketing at Cornell University, investigated the effectiveness of this tactic in 1998. He persuaded three supermarkets in Sioux City, Iowa, to offer Campbell's soup at a small discount: 79 cents rather than 89 cents. The discounted soup was sold in one of three conditions: a control, where there was no limit on the volume of purchases, or two tests, where customers were limited to either four or twelve cans. In the unlimited condition shoppers bought 3.3 cans on average, whereas in the scarce condition, when there was a limit, they bought 5.3 on average. This suggests scarcity encourages sales. The findings are particularly strong because the test took place in a supermarket with genuine shoppers. It didn't rely on claimed data, nor was it held in a laboratory where consumers might behave differently.

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