Talks At Google recently had Daniel Dennett come in to speak about some of the topics in his book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (via The Verge).
It’s really interesting even though a good chunk of it was over my head. It’s about 35 minutes long with about 25 minutes of Q&A.
I love this quote by Dennett’s student Bo Dahlbom on thinking tools:

Just as you cannot do very much carpentry with your bare hands, there is not much thinking you can do with your bare brain.
Sounds eerily similar to the Steve Jobs quote that fueled my Kickstarter from last year:
A computer is like a bicycle for our minds.
Brains are cool.
Brains using tools are even cooler.

At io9, Robert T. Gonzalez tells us why wine tasting is bullshit (via John Gruber):

There are no two ways about it: the bullshit is strong with wine. Wine tasting. Wine rating. Wine reviews. Wine descriptions. They’re all related. And they’re all egregious offenders, from a bullshit standpoint.
I know wine tasting is bullshit because I have $240 to prove it.
A few years ago my friend had a wine tasting party at his upper east side apartment in Manhattan. Every person/couple was instructed to bring $20 and a bottle of red wine. When we arrived at his place, he took our coats, our $20 and our bottle of wine. He then wrapped our wine bottles in silver wrapping paper and set it on the table with all the other wine bottles.
Wait, let’s rewind a bit.
On our way to the party my wife and I stopped at a wine shop in our upper east side neighborhood (owned by our next-door neighbor in our apartment complex) Vinyl Wine. It’s still on Lexington Ave.
When I walked into the shop, I told the girl working where I was going and what I needed. I told her what I was looking for wasn’t the best wine in their shop, but the one that everyone would like.
She pointed me to two different bottles she said were very popular. Since I’m a graphic designer, I made the executive decision to pick the one with the best looking label design.
The bottle I chose was $13.
I paid and my wife and I jumped into a cab an cut through Central Park to my friend’s apartment.
Now let’s fast forward a bit.
So my friend made the wine tasting special. He had first prize (the pot of money), second & third places even got some gift certificates and bottle openers. He gave out score sheets to rate each bottle on, based on the Robert Parker rating system. He had a spittoon. The whole thing was awesome.
My wife and all my friends and I took the wine tasting as seriously as you can take a wine tasting. Under everyday circumstances I can’t tell a Cab from a Pinot Noir, but during a wine tasting, it was easier for me to detect the nuances between different wines.
My friend, the host, donned in his apron, collected our score papers and went through every bottle’s score. There were 12 bottles and my wife and I kept expecting our shitty $13 bottle to be named. Bottle after bottle going down, but not ours. How is this possible?!
Finally our bottle was named. The last one.
We had taken the Pepsi challenge against 11 other bottles,ranging from $15 to $45 bottles. Ours won, the cheapest bottle.
So yeah, wine tasting is bullshit.
The taste of the wine you’re drinking should be what matters to you. Or the artwork on the label. Or the story behind the winery and how they came into being. Just don’t let anyone tell you the wine you like isn’t a good wine.
If you like it, then it’s a good wine.

So brain games might be bullshit:

The answer, however, now appears to be a pretty firm no—at least, not through brain training. A pair of scientists in Europe recently gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) to settle this controversial issue. The conclusion: the games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence. Playing the games makes you better at the games, in other words, but not at anything anyone might care about in real life.
via Co.Design

David Pizarro gives a great TED Talk on the politics of disgust:

What does a disgusting image have to do with how you vote? Equipped with surveys and experiments, psychologist David Pizarro demonstrates a correlation between sensitivity to disgusting cues — a photo of feces, an unpleasant odor — and moral and political conservatism. (Filmed at TEDxEast.)

David Pizarro is a psychologist interested in how certain emotions (disgust, fear, anger) affect our moral judgment.

This reminds me of Dan Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational. We like to believe we’re logical, rational animals, but we’re far from it.

After reading about the horrible retail experiences like those of MG Siegler at a Microsoft kiosk and Marco Arment at a Microsoft Store, I don’t feel so bad about my very short experience at a pop-up Samsung kiosk at a mall here in LA.

I was at the mall over the weekend with my brother, and I spotted a Samsung pop-up kiosk in the middle of the mall. I love Apple products, but I love playing with any new, fun gadgets I can get my hands on so I decided to check out Samung’s latest phones and tablets.

Before I could even get my hands on a shiny, new Android-powered phone, a sales girl jumped in front of me and asked me if I had any questions. I said no, and told her I just wanted to check out their new products.

After a minute she interrupted my brother and I again to hand me a ticket, explaining that if I collected tickets from every station at their kiosk I could win a new Samsung smartphone or tablet.

This pattern of interruption repeated when my brother and I moved over to another station to check out the Samsung tablets.

At this point I put the tablet down that was in my hands, and my brother and I walked away.

When are companies like Samsung and Microsoft going to learn how interact with people in ways that don’t drive them nuts?

Part of the fun of using a new device is the process of discovery. Pressing buttons and icons to see what happens. Samsung and Microsoft don’t seem to understand this. If Samsung and Microsoft were parents, they’d be the type to take a toy or puzzle from their child to show them how to solve it, and then hand it back to them.

Leave people alone. When they’ve hit a wall or are ready to buy something, they’ll tell you.

This bit from one of my favorite stand-up acts by Eddie Izzard came to mind in light the the recent presidential debates here in the U.S.:

CNet: Judge says Apple’s ‘smoking crack’ with giant witness list

“I mean come on. 75 pages! 75 pages! You want me to do an order on 75 pages, (and) unless you’re smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called when you have less than four hours,” Koh said.
“Your honor, I can assure you, I’m not smoking crack,” Lee replied matter-of-factly.

This might sound bizarre and fake to those of you who have never served jury duty in a United States court, but I can assure you, it’s not. I served on 2 juries in the 11 years I lived in Manhattan and some crazy things happen in the courtroom. I’ve seen lawyers act just dramatically as they do on TV. They do everything they can to piss of the other side’s people so they trip up, make mistakes and admit to things they didn’t intend to admit to.
I’ve seen jurors hold back laughter at ‘antics’ by lawyers (myself included) and I’ve seen judges scold lawyers multiple times for things they’re not supposed to do.
Oh, and if you think Apple has this in the bag, think again. Anything is possible once jurors enter the deliberation room. Logic and decisions based on evidence go out the window. It’s sad but true.

Derek Thompson over at the Atlantic shares 11 ways consumers are hopeless at math (via Flowing Data):

You walk into a Starbucks and see two deals for a cup of coffee. The first deal offers 33% extra coffee. The second takes 33% off the regular price. What’s the better deal?

“They’re about equal!” you’d say, if you’re like the students who participated in a new study published in the Journal of Marketing. And you’d be wrong. The deals appear to be equivalent, but in fact, a 33% discount is the same as a 50 percent increase in quantity. Math time: Let’s say the standard coffee is $1 for 3 quarts ($0.33 per quart). The first deal gets you 4 quarts for $1 ($0.25 per quart) and the second gets you 3 quarts for 66 cents ($.22 per quart).

If you’re like me and fascinated by behavioral economics, I suggest you read Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

Sit down, relax and be brilliant.
This is what Cary Grant’s character’s wife say to him after he spaces out and acts like the absent-minded scientist he is in the movie Monkey Business.
Why doesn’t my wife say that to me when I space out?

My flight back from Chicago was delayed this past Thursday because “the plane was too hot.” It was 100 degrees in Chicago and one of the cooling units in the plane broke and cabin was too hot to board.
Over an hour past the original boarding time we finally got to our seats, and not only was the plane still hot, but there were no little air nozzles above the seats. Upon realizing we had emergency oxygen units but no air vents, the guy next to me confessed, “I’ll take air over oxygen any day.”

A good observation by Darren at Engadget on Steve Ballmer’s appearance during the Surface Keynote last night:

Finally, there’s passion. Steve Ballmer didn’t smile much (if at all) while introducing this product range. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t he be amped about this thing if it’s truly engineered to change the game? Part of me wonders how many consumers will still be around to care about this when it ships in six months. People loved Palm… but they didn’t love ’em enough to wait.

Since Microsoft is copying Apple’s integrated business model (and magnetic covers) it’s only fair to compare the the enthusiasm with which Steve Jobs (an even Tim Cook to an extent) presented new products to the complete lack of of enthusiasm showcased by big Ballmer.

The New Yorker : Does Wine from New Jersey Taste the Same as Wine from France?

On May 24, 1976, the British wine merchant Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting of French and Californian wines. Spurrier was a Francophile and, like most wine experts, didn’t expect the New World upstarts to compete with the premiers crus from Bordeaux. He assembled a panel of eleven wine experts and had them taste a variety of Cabernets blind, rating each bottle on a twenty-point scale.

The results shocked the wine world. According to the judges, the best Cabernet at the tasting was a 1973 bottle from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars in Napa Valley. When the tasting was repeated a few years later–some judges insisted that the French wines had been drunk too young–Stag’s Leap was once again declared the winner, followed by three other California Cabernets. These blind tastings (now widely known as the Judgment of Paris) helped to legitimate Napa vineyards.

But now, in an even more surprising turn of events, another American wine region has performed far better than expected in a blind tasting against the finest French ch√¢teaus. Ready for the punch line? The wines were from New Jersey.

I’ve known wine snobbery to be bullshit for a while now and this fact was further confirmed this past winter when a friend of mine had a wine tasting party. Everyone was to bring one bottle of red wine and $20 for the blind tasting. The person/couple who’s bottle scored the highest got the pot – $240. The bottle my wife and I brought won. I paid $13 for the bottle.

Dan Ariely has a new book out called The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. I loved his book from 2010, Predictably Irrational.
From Ariely (via Brain Pickings):

Creativity can help us tell better stories — stories that allow us to be even more dishonest but still think of ourselves as wonderfully honest people.

Reminds me of how documentary filmmaker Ken Burns believes all storytelling is manipulation and lies.

Update your RSS Readers.
Jonah Lehrer just announced he’s taking his blog, Frontal Cortex, from Wired over to The New Yorker.
I’ve been following Jonah’s brain musing for a while now. He’s a great read.
I’ve also started reading his new book, Imagine. It’s along the lines of Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From (FYI – if you use these links I get a small kickback from Amazon).