The boundary between uniquely human creativity and machine capabilities continues to change. Returning to the game of chess, back in 1956, thirteen-year-old child prodigy Bobby Fischer made a pair of remarkably creative moves against grandmaster Donald Byrne. First he sacrificed his knight, seemingly for no gain, and then exposed his queen to capture. On the surface, these moves seemed insane, but several moves later, Fischer used these moves to win the game. His creativity was praised at the time as the mark of genius. Yet today if you program that same position into an ordinary chess program, it will immediately suggest the exact moves that Fischer made. It's not because the computer has memorized the Fischer-Byrne game, but rather because it searches far enough ahead to see that these moves really do pay off.

Since the early 1980s, Black Friday has been a kind of unofficial U.S. holiday marking the beginning of the holiday season and, consequently, the most profitable time for retailers in the year. But in recent years, a new movement has come to light, adding a more ecological philosophy. The movement is called Green Friday, and it seeks to raise awareness about the damage that Black Friday brings to the environment. Think of the carbon emissions caused by driving to the mall, the shipping of millions of items around the world, the plastic waste produced by packaging, and even the long-term waste produced by mindlessly buying things we don't need. Green Friday is about changing the way we see this day and switching our mindset from buy, buy, buy to finding alternative ways to give gifts during the holiday season so we don't cause further damage to the Earth. Even if only a small percentage of the population makes the switch, it'll mean great things for the environment.

U.S. commercial aviation has long had an extremely effective system for encouraging pilots to submit reports of errors. The program has resulted in numerous improvements to aviation safety. It wasn't easy to establish: pilots had severe self-induced social pressures against admitting to errors. Moreover, to whom would they report them? Certainly not to their employers. Not even to the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), for then they would probably be punished. The solution was to let the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) set up a voluntary accident reporting system whereby pilots could submit semi-anonymous reports of errors they had made or observed in others. Once NASA personnel had acquired the necessary information, they would detach the contact information from the report and mail it back to the pilot. This meant that NASA no longer knew who had reported the error, which made it impossible for the airline companies or the FAA (which enforced penalties against errors) to find out who had submitted the report. If the FAA had independently noticed the error and tried to invoke a civil penalty or certificate suspension, the receipt of self-report automatically exempted the pilot from punishment. When a sufficient number of similar errors had been collected, NASA would analyze them and issue reports and recommendations to the airlines and to the FAA. These reports also helped the pilots realize that their error reports were valuable tools for increasing safety.

In the modern world, we look for certainty in uncertain places. We search for order in chaos, the right answer in ambiguity, and conviction in complexity. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world, best-selling writer Yuval Noah Harari says, than on trying to understand it. We look for the easy-to-follow formula. Over time, we lose our ability to interact with the unknown. Our approach reminds me of the classic story of the drunk man searching for his keys under a street lamp at night. He knows he lost his keys somewhere on the dark side of the street but looks for them underneath the lamp, because that's where the light is. Our yearning for certainty leads us to pursue seemingly safe solutions - by looking for our keys under street lamps. Instead of taking the risky walk into the dark, we stay within our current state, however inferior it may be.

In 2011, Micah Edelson and his colleagues conducted an interesting experiment about external factors of memory manipulation. In their experiment, participants were shown a two minute documentary film and then asked a series of questions about the video. Directly after viewing the videos, participants made few errors in their responses and were correctly able to recall the details. Four days later, they could still remember the details and didn't allow their memories to be swayed when they were presented with any false information about the film. This changed, however, when participants were shown fake responses about the film made by other participants. Upon seeing the incorrect answers of others, participants were also drawn toward the wrong answers themselves. Even after they found out that the other answers had been fabricated and didn't have anything to do with the documentary, it was too late. The participants were no longer able to distinguish between truth and fiction. They had already modified their memories to fit the group. -> According to the experiment, when participants were given false information itself, their memories remained stable, but their memories were falsified when they were exposed to other participants' fake responses.

When self-handicapping, you're engaging in behaviour that you know will harm your chances of succeeding: You know that you won't do as well on the test if you go out the night before, but you do it anyway. Why would anyone intentionally harm their chances of success? Well, here's a possible answer. Say that you do study hard. You go to bed at a decent time and get eight hours of sleep. Then you take the maths test, but don't do well: you only get a C. What can you conclude about yourself? Probably that you're just not good at maths, which is a pretty hard blow to your self-esteem. But if you self-handicap, you'll never be in this position because you're creating a reason for your failure. You were bound to get a C, you can tell yourself, because you went out till 1 a.m. That C doesn't mean that you're bad at maths; it just means that you like to party. Self-handicapping seems like a paradox, because people are deliberately harming their chances of success.

In 2003, British Airways made an announcement that they would no longer be able to operate the London to New York Concorde flight twice a day because it was starting to prove uneconomical. Well, the sales for the flight on this route increased the very next day. There was nothing that changed about the route or the service offered by the airlines. Merely because it became a scarce resource, the demand for it increased. If you are interested in persuading people, then the principle of scarcity can be effectively used. If you are a salesperson trying to increase the sales of a certain product, then you must not merely point out the benefits the customer can derive from the said product, but also point out its uniqueness and what they will miss out on if they don't purchase the product soon. In selling, you should keep in mind that the more limited something is, the more desirable it becomes.

John Bowlby, British developmental psychologist and psychiatrist, was born in 1907, to an upper-middle-class family. His father, who was a member of the King's medical staff, was often absent. Bowlby was cared for primarily by a nanny and did not spend much time with his mother, as was customary at that time for his class. Bowlby was sent to a boarding school at the age of seven. He later recalled this as being traumatic to his development. This experience, however, proved to have a large impact on Bowlby, whose work focused on children's development. Following his father's suggestion, Bowlby enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge to study medicine, but by his third year, he changed his focus to psychology. During the 1950s, Bowlby briefly worked as a mental health consultant for the World Health Organization. His attachment theory has been described as the dominant approach to understanding early social development.

The elements any particular animal needs are relatively predictable. They are predictable based on the past: what an animal's ancestors needed is likely to be what that animal also needs. Taste preferences, therefore, can be hardwired. Consider sodium (Na). The bodies of terrestrial vertebrates, including those of mammals, tend to have a concentration of sodium nearly fifty times that of the primary producers on land, plants. This is, in part, because vertebrates evolved in the sea and so evolved cells dependent upon the ingredients that were common in the sea, including sodium. To remedy the difference between their needs for sodium and that available in plants, herbivores can eat fifty times more plant material than they otherwise need (and eliminate the excess). Or they can seek out other sources of sodium. The salt taste receptor rewards animals for doing the latter, seeking out salt in order to satisfy their great need.

Despite abundant warnings that we shouldn't measure ourselves against others, most of us still do. We're not only meaning-seeking creatures but social ones as well, constantly making interpersonal comparisons to evaluate ourselves, improve our standing, and enhance our self-esteem. But the problem with social comparison is that it often backfires. When comparing ourselves to someone who's doing better than we are, we often feel inadequate for not doing as well. This sometimes leads to what psychologists call malignant envy, the desire for someone to meet with misfortune (I wish she didn't have what she has). Also, comparing ourselves with someone who's doing worse than we are risks scorn, the feeling that others are something undeserving of our beneficence (She's beneath my notice). Then again, comparing ourselves to others can also lead to benign envy, the longing to reproduce someone else's accomplishments without wishing them ill (I wish I had what she has), which has been shown in some circumstances to inspire and motivate us to increase our efforts in spite of a recent failure.

The great irony of performance psychology is that it teaches each sportsman to believe, as far as he is able, that he will win. No man doubts. No man indulges his inner skepticism. That is the logic of sports psychology. But only one man can win. That is the logic of sport. Note the difference between a scientist and an athlete. Doubt is a scientist's stock in trade. Progress is made by focusing on the evidence that refutes a theory and by improving the theory accordingly. Skepticism is the rocket fuel of scientific advance. But doubt, to an athlete, is poison. Progress is made by ignoring the evidence; it is about creating a mindset that is immune to doubt and uncertainty. Just to reiterate: From a rational perspective, this is nothing less than crazy. Why should an athlete convince himself he will win when he knows that there is every possibility he will lose? Because, to win, one must proportion one's belief, not to the evidence, but to whatever the mind can usefully get away with. -> Unlike scientists whose skeptical attitude is needed to make scientific progress, sports psychology says that to succeed, athletes must eliminate feelings of uncertainty about whether they can win.

We have already seen that learning is much more efficient when done at regular intervals: rather than cramming an entire lesson into one day, we are better off spreading out the learning. The reason is simple: every night, our brain consolidates what it has learned during the day. This is one of the most important neuroscience discoveries of the last thirty years: sleep is not just a period of inactivity or a garbage collection of the waste products that the brain accumulated while we were awake. Quite the contrary: while we sleep, our brain remains active; it runs a specific algorithm that replays the important events it recorded during the previous day and gradually transfers them into a more efficient compartment of our memory.

We have already seen that learning is much more efficient when done at regular intervals: rather than cramming an entire lesson into one day, we are better off spreading out the learning. The reason is simple: every night, our brain consolidates what it has learned during the day. This is one of the most important neuroscience discoveries of the last thirty years: sleep is not just a period of inactivity or a garbage collection of the waste products that the brain accumulated while we were awake. Quite the contrary: while we sleep, our brain remains active; it runs a specific algorithm that replays the important events it recorded during the previous day and gradually transfers them into a more efficient compartment of our memory.

Everyone's heard the expression don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good. If you want to get over an obstacle so that your idea can become the solution-based policy you've long dreamed of, you can't have an all-or-nothing mentality. You have to be willing to alter your idea and let others influence its outcome. You have to be okay with the outcome being a little different, even a little less, than you wanted. Say you're pushing for a clean water act. Even if what emerges isn't as well-funded as you wished, or doesn't match how you originally conceived the bill, you'll have still succeeded in ensuring that kids in troubled areas have access to clean water. That's what counts, that they will be safer because of your idea and your effort. Is it perfect? No. Is there more work to be done? Absolutely. But in almost every case, helping move the needle forward is vastly better than not helping at all.

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.

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.

If cooking is as central to human identity, biology, and culture as the biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham suggests, it stands to reason that the decline of cooking in our time would have serious consequences for modern life, and so it has. Are they all bad? Not at all. The outsourcing of much of the work of cooking to corporations has relieved women of what has traditionally been their exclusive responsibility for feeding the family, making it easier for them to work outside the home and have careers. It has headed off many of the domestic conflicts that such a large shift in gender roles and family dynamics was bound to spark. It has relieved other pressures in the household, including longer workdays and overscheduled children, and saved us time that we can now invest in other pursuits. It has also allowed us to diversify our diets substantially, making it possible even for people with no cooking skills and little money to enjoy a whole different cuisine. All that's required is a microwave.

The irony of early democracy in Europe is that it thrived and prospered precisely because European rulers for a very long time were remarkably weak. For more than a millennium after the fall of Rome, European rulers lacked the ability to assess what their people were producing and to levy substantial taxes based on this. The most striking way to illustrate European weakness is to show how little revenue they collected. Europeans would eventually develop strong systems of revenue collection, but it took them an awfully long time to do so. In medieval times, and for part of the early modern era, Chinese emperors and Muslim caliphs were able to extract much more of economic production than any European ruler with the exception of small city-states.