Paul Papadimitriou

Psychology has come a long way since Freud, but the brand hasn’t caught up. The new psychological science of the mind and behavior is based on randomized, controlled experiments with measurable behaviors as well as fMRI and physiological data. Ideally, we’ll start rebranding psychology as a source of interesting, rigorous ideas. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

The hedonic treadmill we are on can be characterised as not the pursuit of happiness but the happiness of pursuit. That’s what that people really care about. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Stayed up all night. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Kids praised for their effort tended to take the challenging task, knowing they could learn more. They were more likely to continue feeling motivated to learn and to retain their confidence as problems got harder. Kids praised for their intelligence requested the easier task, knowing there was a higher chance of success. They lost their confidence... - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

How to start a startup is just a subset of a bigger problem you’re trying to solve: how to have a good life. And - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

though starting a startup can be part of a good life for a lot of ambitious people, age 20 is not the optimal time to do it. Starting a startup is like a brutally fast depth-first search. Most people should still be searching breadth-first at 20. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

"Problematic" bundles urgency, seriousness, and debatability into a single vague word, which is great for both sound bytes and tweets. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

if baboon societies are able to change the interaction between males and females based on the influence of culture, surely we can too. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Artists make art for themselves. Art is an honest expression. Artists who pander to their fans by trying to make music “for” their fans make empty, transparent art. The true fan does not want you to make music for them, they want you to make music for you, because that’s the whole reason they fell in love with you in the first place. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Beware of Joy - http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs...

If you view marriage as aspirational, as a milestone that Americans are sidestepping because of financial insecurity rather than disinterest, of course it makes sense that access to marriage should become more, not less, desirable over time, especially to historically marginalized groups. Marriage is, increasingly, a status symbol. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Imperfect. #2391 - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

The extraordinary thing about the marketing industry is that, by accident, it was pretty good at stumbling on some of these biases which behavioral economics later codified. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Math may be an obstacle to good thinking because it’s actually constraining. We have a perfectly good thing called words and grammar, which can describe very complex concepts. Regret, for example—maybe you can’t mathematically express it very easily but it patently affects human behavior. The fear of regret is clearly fairly influential in... - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

We can learn from blind people how to effectively use multiple fingers, and then teach these strategies to sighted individuals who have recently lost vision or are using tactile displays in high-stakes applications like controlling surgical robots - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Piano. #2391 — http://flic.kr/p/pd7fqT - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Piano. #2391 - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

our clothes can provide compatibility from a user perspective. Jean pockets is one of those conversations. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

a genuine 100 trillion dollar Zimbabwean note, as a reminder to us of the difference between money and value. Money can become worthless very quickly, value is something that is built over time through hard work. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

(via Infographic: A Day in the Life of the Collaborative Economy (Ver 1.0) | Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Digital Business) - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Armed with sensors, data and live connection to the Internet, a map shouldn’t just be a map — it should a storyboard for journey yet not undertaken. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Off. #2391 — http://flic.kr/p/puarqw - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Off. #2391 - http://www.flickr.com/photos...

The premise is seductive in its simplicity: people have skills, and costumers want services. Silicon Valley plays matchmaker, churning out apps that pair workers with work. Now, anyone can rent out an apartment with AirBnB, become a cabbie through Uber, or clean houses using Homejoy. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

The Bravest Cat in Military History - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Picturing ourselves in a limo activates visual areas of the brain, while imagining the clink of champagne glasses lights up the auditory cortex. These areas have links to the brain regions involved in emotion, decision-making, and motivation. “The motivational areas of the brain can be heavily influenced by vivid daydreaming,” - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

Language is the medium through which culture is enacted. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

To make the choice, your brain automatically looks for suggestions, searches for more information, and if there is little information, we can make strange associations, assume something is realistic, even if it is superstitious. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

it’s hard to imagine the average Internet user being a vocal supporter of oft-misleading and intrusive advertising units, particularly pop-ups and interstitials - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

When the odds are so small that they are difficult to conceptualize, the risk we perceive has less to do with outcomes than with how much fear or hope we are feeling when we make a decision, how we “frame” and organize sets of logical facts, and even how we perceive ourselves in relation to others. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...

In the data rich world of tomorrow, all incoming data should come with a question it answers, adding more context and thus constantly enhancing the experience. - http://papadimitriou.tumblr.com/post...