Jan 17, 2018
A few academic lifehacks I have learned from Paul Slovic or how
to Save the life you can
Daniel Vstfjll What would Paul do? Life hacking refers to any
trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases
productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life Baz Luhrman
Everybody's Free (to Wear Sunscreen) (original essay by Mary
Schmich) If I could offer you only one tip for the future,
sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have
been proved by scientists - What would Pauls advice be? (3 best of)
1. Make the world a better place (as a person and as a
scientist)
Personal and professional interest in making the world better (e.g
darfur genocide etc) The collapse of compassion
Slovic, JDM. The collapse of compassion Our capacity to feel (good
or bad) is limited. Valuation depends on feelings (the affect
heuristic). Lack of feeling leads to inaction as large losses of
life occur. Collapse starts at n=2 (Vstfjll, Slovic, Mayorga &
Peters, 2014) Single child condition
Rokia How much money would you donate to help save rokia? Two
children condition
Rokia Moussa How much money would you donate to help save Rokia and
Moussa? Results from Vstfjll et al., 2014
Affect Donations how do you feel about donating to rokia
[moussa][rokia & Moussa]? -1 to 5 Fast empathy Google searches
help refugees
How can we overcome psychic numbing and compassion collapse? 2.
Never let old ideas/data die
7-8 yrs ago Paul revisited findings from: Fetherstonhaugh et al
(1997): 4500 were valued less when paired with small (11.000) or
large ( ) camp implying that all could not be helped Small et al
(2007): Donations to Rokia was reduced by half when paired with
statistics New data (then, 2007): 1 Child was helped more than 1
out of 2 (undetermined) New concept: Pseudoinefficacy People become
demotivated to help the one that can be helped by awareness of the
ones that cannot be helped 2. Never let old ideas/data die 2
Last couple of years Paul revisited findings from: Slovic 1975
(first data collected 1961!) and Tversky, Sattah and Slovic 1988 on
prominence (the more important dimension determine choice, even for
options equated in value, eg. quality is more important than
quantity) Latest : National security trumps life-saving in
decisions (see Numbers and Nerves book) Even if life-saving and
security are both highly valued, security is prominent in many
decisons and may lead to inaction in life-saving decisions
Prominence thinking in political decisions Workshop w/ high-level
DMs: Can Decision Analysis improve decision making about mass
atrocities? 3. Do research with people you like to hang out
with
Compassion week In sum Paul: lets hang out and discuss new and old
data formany years to come! Still much that can be changed for the
better in theworld Many experiments to be run and data to collect
tohelp us think! We havent yet understood the mysterious mind Thank
you for being the best colleague and friend!