Suppose we know that Paula suffers from a severe phobia. If we reason that Paula is afraid either of snakes or spiders, and then establish that she is not afraid of snakes, we will conclude that Paula is afraid of spiders. However, our conclusion is reasonable only if Paula's fear really does concern either snakes or spiders. If we know only that Paula has a phobia, then the fact that she's not afraid of snakes is entirely consistent with her being afraid of heights, water, dogs or the number thirteen. More generally, when we are presented with a list of alternative explanations for some phenomenon, and are then persuaded that all but one of those explanations are unsatisfactory, we should pause to reflect. Before conceding that the remaining explanation is the correct one, consider whether other plausible options are being ignored or overlooked. The fallacy of false choice misleads when we're insufficiently attentive to an important hidden assumption, that the choices which have been made explicit exhaust the sensible alternatives.

When a young man commits himself to a woman in the Sacrament of Marriage, he makes a vow to love her regardless of his feelings. What does this mean? As time passes and the trials of life weigh down, the couple may not feel the sentiments of love. Because many people have a wrong understanding of love, they feel justified to leave the marriage and look for those same feelings in another person. This makes sense if we reduce love to mere feelings. True marital love, however, understands that the commitment transcends subjective feelings. The feelings may have been necessary at the beginning of courtship, but if it evolves into true love, feelings become secondary. Marriage is about a choice to commit one's life to another for their well-being regardless of emotions.

One of the interesting examples of nonverbal communication in impression management is Goffman's body gloss. In this process, individuals exhibit behavior designed to cover or gloss over a potentially negative incident and thereby reduce observers' unfavorable impressions. That is, body gloss frequently involves an actor playing to observers of a particular event. Thus, body gloss is unnecessary when there is no audience to impress. Unlike much of other nonverbal communication, however, this behavior is not necessarily interactive and conscious. Most of us have seen incidents of body gloss and, on occasion, have been actors in such performances, even if we were unaware of it.

Fluorine is a chemical element that is present in the environment. When bones are formed, they do not contain much fluoride, but they absorb it from the environment over time. In other words, the older a bone is, the more fluoride it has, so by measuring that amount we can know its age. It was found that the Piltdown remains had minimal amounts of fluoride, so it was clear that they had been buried recently. The news was sensational, especially in countries such as France and Germany, although, it has to be said, also in Great Britain and the United States, the latter a country where there were scientists who had doubted the English 'presapiens'. Yet many supporters of Piltdown Man - journalists and palaeontologists - refused to acknowledge the evidence provided by the fluoride. It was in 1953 that other analyses revealed that the remains had been dyed to give them an antique appearance and, worst of all, the teeth of the jaw, which turned out to be from an orangutan, had been filed down to give them a human look.

Experiments are good for testing the effects of 'treatments'; a treatment being the variable or stimulus that you are changing in order to test a differential response. For example, which web page configuration users prefer. This can be done covertly online by simply randomly exposing two groups to the two different configurations. If the dependent variable/objective is time on site then you can readily determine which website configuration leads to greater engagement. The overt/active lab-based experiment is most suited to studies seeking to determine psychological factors (though the lab can be virtual/online) and generally these are the preserve of academic inquiry. A company could employ a lab-based experiment to test differential reactions to two forms of packaging, for example. The problem with the lab experiment is that it tends to isolate a stimulus or effect. People make decisions and buy things in the real, noisy world where various other things influence and distract you.

When you begin to tell a story again that you have retold many times, what you retrieve from memory is the index to the story itself. That index can be embellished in a variety of ways. Over time, even the embellishments become standardized. An old man's story that he has told hundreds of times shows little variation, and any variation that does exist becomes part of the story itself, regardless of its origin. People add details to their stories that may or may not have occurred. They are recalling indexes and reconstructing details. If at some point they add a nice detail, not really certain of its validity, telling the story with that same detail a few more times will ensure its permanent place in the story index. In other words, the stories we tell time and again are identical to the memory we have of the events that the story relates.

In combat, subordinates have a strong desire and need for their leaders to keep them informed about the current situation and upcoming operations. Continuous information flow enables subordinates to anticipate and prepare for future challenges physically and mentally. Regarding preparing for the physical challenges of combat, subordinates can gather and check their equipment, implement rest plans, and adjust duties as needed. In terms of preparing for the mental challenges, continuous information helps group members form realistic expectations about the demands of the current or upcoming mission; it also prevents rumors. Therefore, sharing information, especially in chaotic and dangerous situations, provides group members with a sense of predictability and control that they need and crave, which facilitates successful stress management.

There are times when the need for local customization is crystal clear. Researchers, led by Stanford's Pamela Hinds, have been tracking a software firm with outposts in the United States and India for several years. The first location opened in Silicon Valley. Much like the offices at Facebook, Twitter, IDEO, and other California companies that are renowned for creativity, the software firm's Silicon Valley office had concrete floors and other rough unfinished surfaces. The Indian location was opened with concrete floors as well. But locals objected to it because it looked crude by local standards. The floors also became dirty quickly because there was more dust outside than at the Silicon Valley location. This created problems in India because female employees wore saris, which became dirty as they dragged across the dusty floor. So the company wisely set aside its traditional approach and installed carpeting.

A model proposed by Marcel Adam Just and Sashank Varma attempts to account for the dynamic brain processes that underlie forms of complex cognition. They start with a basic principle, which is generally agreed upon by all cognition researchers: "Thinking is the product of the concurrent activity of multiple brain areas that collaborate in a large-scale cortical network." According to Just and Varma, these cortical networks change according to the demands of the thinking-related task. Although there is some specialization in the cortex, cortical areas can generally perform multiple functions, and different functions can be performed in multiple cortical areas. This flexibility allows not only for the reformation of networks following brain injury but also for the dynamic recruitment of regions to attend to tasks on a regular basis. Although the brain may develop primary neural networks for specific complex cognitive tasks, variations on a theme are possible, due to the recruitment of different cortical areas toward similar-but not identical-goals.

In one recent study, sociologists examined changes in the size and intensity of interpersonal relationships over a twenty-year period. Using data from two representative samples of Americans interviewed in 1985 and in 2004, they discovered that dramatic changes had occurred over this period. Almost three times as many people now say they have no one in their lives with whom they can "discuss important matters." Similarly, the average number of confidants (discussion partners) dropped from three in 1985 to two in 2004. Even more striking, in 1985 most respondents said that they had three close confidants, but in 2004 most respondents said that they had zero. The smaller size of close interpersonal networks is due to fewer confidential conversations with both friends and family, although the decline of friendship connections appears to be more serious. In general, the evidence indicates that Americans are rapidly losing contact with others, especially in our neighborhoods and other public places.

There have been many attempts to define what music is in terms of the specific attributes of musical sounds. The famous nineteenth-century critic Eduard Hanslick regarded 'the measurable tone' as 'the primary and essential condition of all music'. Musical sounds, he was saying, can be distinguished from those of nature by the fact that they involve the use of fixed pitches, whereas virtually all natural sounds consist of constantly fluctuating frequencies. And a number of twentieth-century writers have assumed, like Hanslick, that fixed pitches are among the defining features of music. Now it is true that in most of the world's musical cultures, pitches are not only fixed, but organized into a series of discrete steps. However, this is a generalization about music and not a definition of it, for it is easy to put forward counter-examples. Japanese shakuhachi music and the sanjo music of Korea, for instance, fluctuate constantly around the notional pitches in terms of which the music is organized.

Many people see a negotiation as a struggle in which their task is to obtain as much value for themselves as possible. For them, a negotiation is, basically, a distributive process. The parties are fighting over a pie whose size is fixed, and each side is seeking to obtain for itself as big a slice as possible. Certainly, every negotiation involves issues of distribution over which the parties must struggle. Discussion about the price of the goods to be purchased, the amount of capital to be contributed to a joint venture, the interest rate to be charged by a lender, and the royalty rate to be paid by a trademark license are all examples of issues involving the distribution value. Every additional dollar gained by one side in the negotiation of these issues is a dollar lost by the other side.

Positive freedom emphasizes both the removal of barriers and the creation of a social context necessary for free action. This is the view of freedom that Martin Luther King Jr. was advocating when he criticized communism for its excessive social barriers and criticized capitalism for its excessive individualism. "Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both." Positive freedom reminds us that our individual autonomy is wrapped up with the freedom and autonomy of others. One person's freedom to smoke can limit another person's freedom to breathe clean air and live a healthy life. One person's freedom to sell their house to anyone they please can limit another person's freedom to live wherever they please. One person's right to hire and fire employees can limit someone else's freedom to work and earn a living.

On a recent trip to the family farm, several of us went on our traditional afternoon walk. We hiked to the spot we call Coyote Hill. I decided to search for evidence that this was indeed a hill frequented by coyotes. Shortly thereafter, I found coyote tracks and some coyote feces. The evidence confirmed my suspicions. Yes, this was definitely a coyote hill. Or so I thought. My niece casually remarked that the tracks and feces were probably from the local farm dog, out with the cattle. My doubt returned. I don't actually know what coyote feces or paw prints look like, although they are undoubtedly distinct from those of dogs, as their respective diets and activities are clearly different. Nonetheless, I had unconsciously forced my concept of dog feces and paw prints to be accepted into the evidence I found because coyotes fit so nicely into my existing dog category. We instinctively impose our model of the world effortlessly.

The concept of 'artificial intelligence' is a vast one which includes all the forms of thinking produced by artificial machines. The concept of AI is therefore strongly related to that of automation, that is, of machines behaving autonomously, albeit in response to certain inputs and in the presence of programs. Any inorganic machine conceived and construed by humans-be they desktop computers or semi-mobile robots, dishwashers or power looms-and able to carry out the tasks that humans carry out using their own intelligence is an automaton. In other words, a certain category of sets of elements are 'universal' in the sense that one can assemble such elements into machines with which one can realize functions which are arbitrary to within certain reasonable restrictions. Given this definition, it follows that all functioning automata are endowed with a certain degree of artificial intelligence. The refrigerator is less intelligent than a PC, in more or less the same way as an insect is less intelligent than a vertebrate. And some do not hesitate to compare the various forms of organic and inorganic intelligence.

When a dog is trained to detect drugs, explosives, contraband, or other items, the trainer doesn't actually teach the dog how to smell; the dog already knows how to discriminate one scent from another. Rather, the dog is trained to become emotionally aroused by one smell versus another. In the step-by-step training process, the trainer attaches an "emotional charge" to articular scent so that the dog is drawn to it above all others. And then the dog is trained to search out the desired item on cue, so that the trainer can control or release the behavior. This emotional arousal is also why playing tug with a dog is a more powerful emotional reward in a training regime than just giving a dog a food treat, since the trainer invests more emotion into a game of tug. From a dog's point of view, the tug toy is compelling because the trainer is "upset" by the toy.

Restricting power has been one of the great achievements of human culture. Even in groups of animals, the leader can do almost anything he (or less often she) wants. Humans have gradually learned to hold their leaders responsible. The progress of culture has included imposing more and more restrictions on power, so that even the topmost leaders can be arrested, put on trial, and removed from office against their will. Even in the family, the husband or father no longer holds the extreme power over his wife and children that was common in many earlier societies, a power that at times has extended to life and death. Humans use laws-which are among the most powerful elements of culture-to restrict and restrain the uses of power.

Intuition is an imaginative way of perceiving the world around you. While your five senses see factual detail, your intuition sees the nuances or shades of meaning. For intuitives, the world is full of possibilities, and exploring new ideas, people, places, and things is what gives life its zest. They love to seek what's possible in the future; they aim to understand whole systems rather than just the parts. This is the aptitude used by scientists to raise new questions and think outside the box. Poets employ intuition to create metaphors and playfully manipulate the commonsense meaning of words. Actors use it to imagine the inner life and motives of the characters they portray.

Many international negotiations demonstrate that the stronger side should not take its power for granted but rather should analyze it carefully. In particular, it should ask what its sources of power are in this specific negotiation rather than merely calculating its total resources. Had the United States objectively examined this question at the outset of the conflict in Vietnam, the country might not have wasted the men and resources that it did in the war. The failure of the strong to understand their power may also lead them to behave unwisely in a negotiation. Through words and actions, a party may communicate its power in arrogant ways, ways that provoke the hostility of the other side, make it defensive, and in the end hinder negotiation.

Linguists today are much concerned over the loss of indigenous languages, as endangered tongues pass quietly from the scene when the few village elders still speaking them die. Already, youngsters in the community will be using a tongue with wider circulation, and no passionate campaign to save the fading language is mounted by locals. If such an effort is made, it is likely to come from outsiders aware of the particular significance or value of the syntax, grammar, or vocabulary as these relate to the ecological setting of a language, or the way the language reflects the worldviews of its speakers. The great majority of the languages being lost have never been written or recorded, but among them some are likely to contain crucial pieces of evidence concerning such matters as environmental change, early migration, ecology, and belief systems. A growing movement is under way to document such languages to the extent that research funds allow, but the accelerating rate of loss will render it inevitably incomplete.