Pathological dating
People with a craving for pathological romance could, if they so wished, write algorithms to select attractive, pathological prospective spouses or recreational dating partners.
Koltan Scribner, inventor of the “Morbid Curiosity Scale” (Feedback, November 19, 2022), has investigated a new application of the tool: in a new study, he and two colleagues explain that “behavioral attraction predicts mating interest among morbidly curious women” towards men with risky personalities.
They cite previous research that shows those “women are aware of the potential costs associated with such men.” The new study aims to help those women, stating: “Despite the potential costs of men high on the dark triad, it may be beneficial for women with pathological curiosity to develop a preference for such men to fulfill short-term mating goals.”
The study doesn’t delve into the obvious business potential here. Feedback envisions a new era dedicated to the making and use of morbid gadgets. Perhaps brighter days lie ahead for this industry, originally called “computer dating.”
(For the curious, Scrivner has also created an easy way to gauge where you stand on his scale: the free online Morbid Curiosity Test. Before you begin the test, you’re told that “‘morbid’ doesn’t mean you’re inquisitive, it simply refers to the fact that the topic is somehow related to death.”)
The limits of curiosity
What are the limits of your curiosity? Is there a foolproof, easy way to find out? Here’s a test.
The feedback includes a copy of a paper published by Subhash Chandra Shaw and his colleagues. Indian Army Medical JournalThe title of the study and your response may tell you something about yourself.
The paper is titled “The Lost Anus: Don’t Overlook It.”
Talking about politics
Some politicians seek success through extremely eloquent speeches, which give them a momentary sense of persuasion.
Feedback noticed a similarity between the flashy but empty speeches of these politicians and the flashy but empty texts generated by ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence computer programs.
Michael Townsen-Hicks, James Humphreys, and Joe Slater of the University of Glasgow in the UK conducted a study entitled “ChatGPT is bullshit.” Ethics and Information TechnologyThey argue that “describing AI misinformation as bullshit is a more useful and accurate way to predict and discuss the behavior of these systems.” As a classic example of bullshit, the team cites a political candidate saying certain things simply because those words “might create a positive impression on potential voters.”
The feedback at least celebrates the skill of politicians who can deliver endless streams of ChatGPT-like, easy-to-swallow but indigestible chatter. In some countries, some of the most successful ChatGPT-esque politicians also display a visual counterpart to their words, a momentarily plausible physical aspect: they adorn their heads with ChatGPT-esque hair, or what might be mistaken for hair for a moment. There is little published research on why and how this happens.
It’s not such a small thing
Feedback continues its quest to create a list of trivial psychic powers, with Aline Berry confessing and professing that she has a trivial psychic power, which may not be trivial at all.
She writes, “I believe I have a superpower that I’ve taken for granted my whole life: when someone complains that they’re looking around for something, I usually find it within five minutes. Somehow, like Sherlock Holmes, I filter out the obvious things they no doubt see and focus on the lost item that’s camouflaged in such a way that it can easily be overlooked if not seen.”
“Recently, a friend of mine asked me for help after frantically searching for her car keys all morning. I stopped, looked around, realized there was no point in looking everywhere, and asked her if she’d looked in the fridge. Her eyes lit up – she’d placed her keys on something cold to remind herself to take them with her, but promptly forgot.”
Another skill emerged during her childhood: “I started a new school a few weeks late and was given a geometry problem. I had never studied geometry before and didn’t know any of the rules. So I looked at a graph and wrote the answer down. I was right. The teacher accused me of cheating and gave me a problem that I had drawn myself, that no one had seen. I wrote the right answer again. As punishment, the teacher gave me ten problems that had to be solved the right way. I didn’t know the correct rules, so I was happy when I got the news that I was going to a different school.”
A whirlwind of interest
An exercise in dimensional scaling. Which is more powerful: a) a storm in a teacup, or b) a storm in a teapot? An experiment is the real way to answer this question. Survey your colleagues (at least 50 people) and submit the three survey results (number of respondents, storm, and tempest) to Swirl of interest, c/o Feedback.
Marc Abrahams is the founder of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founder of the journal Annals of Improbable Research. He previously worked on unusual uses of computers. His website is Impossible.
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