The100: Swimming cats, scary space and forgetica

Doubt yourself

At our October shindig in London – the Power of Finding your Truth in Marketing – Joe from fullfact.org (the UK’s independent fact checking organisation) was a font of useful ideas including:

• Tips for challenging claims (30”)
• How our experience can be used against us (11”)
• To doubt yourself rather than believe in yourself (52”)
• That the golden mean is all about having ‘informed trust’ (30”)
• And how data can be misused (57”)
  As in, it can be true, but is it fair? I think we can all learn something from that.

Take Cognitive Control

Ian Leslie looks at why we might have a love for fake news. I’d like to think I exercise a little Cognitive Control and therefore don’t believe everything I read the instant I read it. But it’s hard.

“The psychologist Daniel Kahneman likens our capacity for analytical reason to the ability of cats to swim. We can do it, but only with effort and discomfort, and we’d rather not unless we have to.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a problem.”

In this MSNBC video Katy Tur argues that the news should make you uncomfortable.

Short on time? Skip to 2’40” – no matter the hue or bent of your political persuasion, it’s powerful stuff that needs listening to.

Of course, you could get Daniel Radcliffe to fact check things for you – he’s pretty good at it as it turns out.

Scary Space.

We agree with Helen Edwards. Often.

“Unless you’re ahead of the consumer, you can’t be ahead of the competition […] But it’s a scary space up there, with no easy way of checking in to see if you’ve got things right. How do you achieve it?”

In her fantastic piece – in which she gives a lovely little nod to using ethnography – she argues that asking the consumer what they want won’t necessarily get you to the answers you want.

Loneliness, belonging, and the effects of living in cities

Ikea makes an annual habit of asking 22,000 people questions. They are trying to understand how people live around the world. In their latest report, they found that:

“Almost half of Americans (45%) go to their car, outside of the home, to have a private moment to themselves”

And that

“Life at home is changing, profoundly, all over the world,”

They put it down to a lack of comfort, privacy, security, ownership and belonging. There’s something profoundly sad about all of that.

Back to happy thoughts

Apparently looking at lovely things (and people) can make you happier.

And you can stop feeling guilty about your endless list of tasks that never get done. And to help you remember what you just read, change the font to forgetica.

“When we want to learn something and remember it, it’s good to have a little bit of an obstruction added to that learning process because if something is too easy it doesn’t create a memory trace.”

Where on Earth?!

For our regulars who read to the end of each 100, here’s your dose of map medication: a game where you land on a random street-view and have to guess where you are. It doesn’t help that google blurs number plates!

Hat tip to our Fran for finding for this. It’s got me hooked.