Previously, only large companies offered employee retirement plans, leaving more than half of all working Americans without a path to a secure financial future

Human Interest

humaninterest

Other Worlds by Garrett Putman Serviss is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . PREFACE PREFACE The point of view of this book is human interest in the other worlds around us. It presents the latest discoveries among the planets of the solar system, and shows their bearing upon the question of life in those planets. It points out the resemblances and the differences between the earth and the other worlds that share with it in the light of the sun. It shows what we should see and experience if we could visit those worlds. While basing itself upon facts, it does not exclude the discussion of interesting probabilities and theories that have commanded wide popular attention. It points out, for instance, what is to be thought of the idea of interplanetary communication. It indicates what must be the outlook of the possible inhabitants of some of the other planets toward the earth. As far as may be, it traces the origin and development of the other worlds of our system, and presents a graphic picture of their present condition as individuals, and of their wonderful contrasts as members of a common family. In short, the aim of the author has been to show how wide, and how rich, is the field of interest opened to the human mind by man's discoveries concerning worlds, which, though inaccessible to him in a physical sense, offer intellectual conquests of the noblest description. And, finally, in order to assist those who may wish to recognize for themselves these other worlds in the sky, this book presents a special series of charts to illustrate a method of finding the planets which requires no observatory and no instruments, and only such knowledge of the starry heavens as anybody can easily acquire. G.P.S. Borough of Brooklyn, New York City, September, 1901. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Garrett Putman Serviss (2006). Other Worlds. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18431/pg18431-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The point of view of this book is human interest in the other worlds around us

TRENDS - To Meme or Game?

This paper is available on Arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Mykola Makhortykh, Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern; (2) Aleksandra Urman, Social Computing Group, University of Zurich; (3) Roberto Ulloa, GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences. Table of Links Author Note Abstract Theoretical background Methodology Findings Conclusion and References Methodology Data collection To investigate how COVID-19 is framed visually via search engines, we collected data from five search engines: Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Yandex, and Yahoo. We selected these search engines because they are the ones with the largest share of the international search market (Statcounter 2020) or dominate their major local markets (e.g., Yandex in the case of Russia). To collect the data, we used a novel algorithmic auditing approach based on large-scale simulation of user browsing behavior via virtual agents (Ulloa, Makhortykh and Urman 2022). Virtual agents are software programs which can mimic user behavior (e.g., by entering URLs in the browser). Unlike earlier studies (e.g., Unkel and Haim 2019; Hannak et al. 2013) that rely on crowdsourced user data or small-scale simulations of browser behavior, our approach allows scaling the analysis to make it more robust and also permits conducting it in a controlled environment. The latter feature allowed us to investigate how image search results related to COVID-19 are filtered and ranked under a default - i.e., non-personalized - conditions. The data were collected on February 26, 2020, two weeks before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. We deployed 83 machines from the Amazon Web Services Frankfurt cluster with each machine hosting two virtual agents (one on Firefox and another on Chrome). The agents imitated three sessions of user browsing behavior and were evenly distributed among the search engines, so each search engine was queried by 33/34 agents. All agents started each session simultaneously and used image search for the term “coronavirus” in English (session 1), Russian (session 2) and Mandarin Chinese (session 3; simplified characters were used). Then, the agents navigated through the result page(s) to retrieve links to the first 50 images from HTML. Following each session, the browsers were cleaned to prevent previous searches from affecting the latter queries. We removed the data that can be accessed by the search engine’s JavaScript (e.g., cookies) and the data accessible by the browser (e.g., browsing history). Data analysis To analyze collected data, we used qualitative framing analysis based on the generic frame typology developed by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000). The typology includes five types of frames: 1) conflict: frames emphasizing conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions; 2) human interest: frames bringing a human face or an emotional angle to the presentation of an issue/problem; 3) economic consequences: frames reporting an event or problem in terms of its economic consequences; 4) morality: frames putting the event or issue in the context of religious tenets or moral prescriptions; 5) responsibility: frames presenting an issue in such a way as to attribute responsibility for its cause/solution to either the government or to an individual/group. Similar to Kee, Faridah and Normah (2010), we adopted a set of 20 questions used by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) to measure the strength of the frames for each individual image we analyzed. Each question could be responded with either “yes” or “no”; the responses were used to measure the strength of the respective frame. The frame strength was calculated by summing the responses to the related questions (e.g., five questions for the human interest frame and the three questions for the economic one) which were quantified proportionally (e.g., each “yes” answer for one of the five human interest questions added 0.2 to the strength of the human interest frame for the respective image as it contained five questions, whereas for the economic frame questions each “yes” answer contributed 0.33 proportional to three questions). For the analysis, we looked at the 50 most frequent images among the search results acquired by the agents querying the same search engine. These images were coded by the three authors of the chapter. The coding was then checked for consistency by one of the coders and the disagreements between the coders were discussed and consensus-coded. This paper is available on under a CC 4.0 license. Arxiv

The Visual Framing of COVID-19 on Search Engines

This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license.
Authors:
(1) Mykola Makhortykh, Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern;
(2) Aleksandra Urman, Social Computing Group, University of Zurich;
(3) Roberto Ulloa, GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences. Table of Links Author Note Abstract Theoretical background Methodology Findings Conclusion and References Abstract In today’s high-choice media environment, search engines play an integral role in informing individuals and societies about the latest events. The importance of search algorithms is even higher at the time of crisis, when users search for information to understand the causes and the consequences of the current situation and decide on their course of action. In our paper, we conduct a comparative audit of how different search engines prioritize visual information related to COVID-19 and what consequences it has for the representation of the pandemic. Using a virtual agent-based audit approach, we examine image search results for the term “coronavirus” in English, Russian and Chinese on five major search engines: Google, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. Specifically, we focus on how image search results relate to generic news frames (e.g., the attribution of responsibility, human interest, and economics) used in relation to COVID-19 and how their visual composition varies between the search engines. Keywords: search engine, algorithm audit, COVID, framing, news frames, Google, image search, visual communication In today’s “high-choice” (Van Aelst et al. 2017) media environment, search engines such as Google play an integral role in informing individuals about important societal developments. Together with social media and news aggregators, search engines increasingly become a major pathway to finding and engaging with the latest news (Newman et al. 2019) and historical information used to contextualize these recent developments (Zavadski and Toepfl 2019; Makhortykh, Urman and Ulloa 2021). Using complex algorithms, search engines filter and rank sources to counter the information overload and supply their users with the most relevant content. By prioritizing certain sources and judging how relevant a particular piece of information is, search engines serve as informationgatekeepers (Laidlaw 2010) that structure individual and collective knowledge about the subjects varying from elections (Trielli and Diakopoulos 2022) to diseases (Paramita et al. 2021) to the matters of gender and race (Urman, Makhortykh and Ulloa 2022). The gatekeeping functions of search engines translate into their substantial influence on different aspects of contemporary societies, in particular the ones related to information literacy (van Dijk 2010). This influence varies from search engines’ information ranking affecting undecided voter preferences (Epstein and Robertson 2015) to their algorithmically constructed knowledge hierarchies reinforcing gender and racial stereotypes (Noble 2018; Urman and Makhortykh 2022). The functionality of search engines becomes particularly important at times of crises, when the need to create new hierarchies of knowledge in the face of uncertainty often leads to a state of “epistemic instability” (Harambam 2020) where the authoritative sources of truth are challenged, and alternative interpretations thrive. Under such conditions, filtering and ranking mechanisms used by search engines play an integral role in determining how individuals and societies understand the causes and the consequences of the current situation and decide on their course of action. In this chapter, we look at how the above-mentioned complexities of information distribution via search engine algorithms affect pandemic literacy during the COVID-19 crisis. Understanding pandemic literacy as the ability to locate and effectively use information related to health threats associated with widespread epidemic diseases, we examine how search engines can facilitate, but also impede the ability of individuals and societies to stay informed about the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we investigate the visual aspect of pandemic literacy by looking at visual representations of COVID-19 constructed by five major search engines in February 2020. Our interest in COVID-19 is characterized by the profound epistemic crisis experienced in relation to the pandemic and amplified by the intense use of digital media for disseminating false information about the disease (Allem 2020). By scrutinizing how search engines represent the pandemic, we strive to advance the understanding of their role at the time of epistemic instability and how search engines construct knowledge hierarchies in relation to a new and highly contradictory phenomenon. Our decision to focus on the visual representation of COVID-19 by search engines as contrasted to its textual representation that was examined in earlier studies (e.g. Makhortykh, Urman, and Ulloa 2020; Toepfl, Kravets, Ryzhova and Beseler 2022) is attributed to images as an effective means of communicating complex phenomena, in particular those that are hard to express verbally (Bleiker 2018). Images also stir strong emotional responses that make them a potent catalyst of societal mobilization but also result in their frequent abuse for manipulating public opinion (Ruijgrok 2017). To investigate how search engines represent and interpret COVID-19 visually, we combined qualitative analysis of visual frames—i.e., consistent patterns of selecting some aspects of the perceived reality and making them more salient (Entman 1993)—with quantitative techniques of algorithmic auditing used to investigate the functionality and impact of “decision-making algorithms” (Mittelstadt 2016). Utilizing a novel method of algorithmic auditing to extract visual search results, we compared the use of generic news frames (e.g., the attribution of responsibility, human interest, and economics; Semetko and Valkenburg 2000) for framing COVID-19 on five search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and DuckDuckGo in English, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. While doing so, we specifically investigated the following three research questions: How different/similar is the representation of COVID-19 via search engines compared with framing of earlier pandemics in legacy media? What types of news frames were prevalent in the representation and interpretation of COVID- 19? And are there substantial differences in the representation of COVID-19 among different search engines and languages? This paper is available on Arxiv under CC 4.0 license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Mykola Makhortykh, Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern; (2) Aleksandra Urman, Social Computing Group, University of Zurich; (3) Roberto Ulloa, GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Mykola Makhortykh, Institute of Communication and Media Studies, University of Bern; (2) Aleksandra Urman, Social Computing Group, University of Zurich; (3) Roberto Ulloa, GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences. Table of Links Author Note Author Note Abstract Abstract Theoretical background Theoretical background Methodology Methodology Findings Findings Conclusion and References Conclusion and References Abstract In today’s high-choice media environment, search engines play an integral role in informing individuals and societies about the latest events. The importance of search algorithms is even higher at the time of crisis, when users search for information to understand the causes and the consequences of the current situation and decide on their course of action. In our paper, we conduct a comparative audit of how different search engines prioritize visual information related to COVID-19 and what consequences it has for the representation of the pandemic. Using a virtual agent-based audit approach, we examine image search results for the term “coronavirus” in English, Russian and Chinese on five major search engines: Google, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. Specifically, we focus on how image search results relate to generic news frames (e.g., the attribution of responsibility, human interest, and economics) used in relation to COVID-19 and how their visual composition varies between the search engines. Keywords: search engine, algorithm audit, COVID, framing, news frames, Google, image search, visual communication In today’s “high-choice” (Van Aelst et al. 2017) media environment, search engines such as Google play an integral role in informing individuals about important societal developments. Together with social media and news aggregators, search engines increasingly become a major pathway to finding and engaging with the latest news (Newman et al. 2019) and historical information used to contextualize these recent developments (Zavadski and Toepfl 2019; Makhortykh, Urman and Ulloa 2021). Using complex algorithms, search engines filter and rank sources to counter the information overload and supply their users with the most relevant content. By prioritizing certain sources and judging how relevant a particular piece of information is, search engines serve as informationgatekeepers (Laidlaw 2010) that structure individual and collective knowledge about the subjects varying from elections (Trielli and Diakopoulos 2022) to diseases (Paramita et al. 2021) to the matters of gender and race (Urman, Makhortykh and Ulloa 2022). The gatekeeping functions of search engines translate into their substantial influence on different aspects of contemporary societies, in particular the ones related to information literacy (van Dijk 2010). This influence varies from search engines’ information ranking affecting undecided voter preferences (Epstein and Robertson 2015) to their algorithmically constructed knowledge hierarchies reinforcing gender and racial stereotypes (Noble 2018; Urman and Makhortykh 2022). The functionality of search engines becomes particularly important at times of crises, when the need to create new hierarchies of knowledge in the face of uncertainty often leads to a state of “epistemic instability” (Harambam 2020) where the authoritative sources of truth are challenged, and alternative interpretations thrive. Under such conditions, filtering and ranking mechanisms used by search engines play an integral role in determining how individuals and societies understand the causes and the consequences of the current situation and decide on their course of action. In this chapter, we look at how the above-mentioned complexities of information distribution via search engine algorithms affect pandemic literacy during the COVID-19 crisis. Understanding pandemic literacy as the ability to locate and effectively use information related to health threats associated with widespread epidemic diseases, we examine how search engines can facilitate, but also impede the ability of individuals and societies to stay informed about the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we investigate the visual aspect of pandemic literacy by looking at visual representations of COVID-19 constructed by five major search engines in February 2020. Our interest in COVID-19 is characterized by the profound epistemic crisis experienced in relation to the pandemic and amplified by the intense use of digital media for disseminating false information about the disease (Allem 2020). By scrutinizing how search engines represent the pandemic, we strive to advance the understanding of their role at the time of epistemic instability and how search engines construct knowledge hierarchies in relation to a new and highly contradictory phenomenon. Our decision to focus on the visual representation of COVID-19 by search engines as contrasted to its textual representation that was examined in earlier studies (e.g. Makhortykh, Urman, and Ulloa 2020; Toepfl, Kravets, Ryzhova and Beseler 2022) is attributed to images as an effective means of communicating complex phenomena, in particular those that are hard to express verbally (Bleiker 2018). Images also stir strong emotional responses that make them a potent catalyst of societal mobilization but also result in their frequent abuse for manipulating public opinion (Ruijgrok 2017). To investigate how search engines represent and interpret COVID-19 visually, we combined qualitative analysis of visual frames—i.e., consistent patterns of selecting some aspects of the perceived reality and making them more salient (Entman 1993)—with quantitative techniques of algorithmic auditing used to investigate the functionality and impact of “decision-making algorithms” (Mittelstadt 2016). Utilizing a novel method of algorithmic auditing to extract visual search results, we compared the use of generic news frames (e.g., the attribution of responsibility, human interest, and economics; Semetko and Valkenburg 2000) for framing COVID-19 on five search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and DuckDuckGo in English, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. While doing so, we specifically investigated the following three research questions: How different/similar is the representation of COVID-19 via search engines compared with framing of earlier pandemics in legacy media? What types of news frames were prevalent in the representation and interpretation of COVID- 19? And are there substantial differences in the representation of COVID-19 among different search engines and languages? This paper is available on Arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Arxiv Arxiv

This Is How the Covid-19 Pandemic Looks Like

It happens every few months: an article or video describing a shocking new TikTok trend lands in one of your feeds, one you simply can not believe is real. From people biting into Tide detergent pods and trying to climb across stacked crates to eating corn on the cob attached to a power drill, these trends become a core part of the cultural discourse for a few days or weeks before the world turns and moves on to the next one. As TikTok is fundamentally an entertainment vehicle, it’s not surprising its users seek this sort of thing out, nor is it surprising the algorithm built to capture your attention rewards these content creators. What those who don’t use TikTok may find surprising is there is increasing visibility and popularity of edutainment communities, people who gather around content subjects designed to entertain and also educate. There is an untold number of these communities, including #BookTok, #FoodTok, #MoneyTok, and #BeautyTok. But there’s one that has really lifted off in the last year or two that no one saw coming: #PrisonTok. #PrisonTok is an Eye-Opener Like many niche communities on TikTok, #PrisonTok offers a window into a world many know only through the lens of mass media and news reports. #PrisonTok creators come from all angles, including legal professionals, those who work in prisons, the formerly incarcerated, and even, believe it or not, . those who are currently serving time and accessing the internet with a smartphone they’re not allowed to have One leading #PrisonTok influencer, Sabrena Morgan, has built an engaged audience with more than 51,000 followers as she shares her journey from addiction and self-destruction to her four years in federal prison and where she is now, re-entering society while trying to spark a broader conversation about the justice-related things people tend to shy away from. In a recent episode of the , Sabrena shares the emotional evolution she underwent while on pre-trial and away at prison and how that helped her not only develop good, healthy habits but also to live a life driven by intention and a desire to, in her words, “not waste time.” Nightmare Success podcast with Brent Cassity The honest, raw perspective of someone who re-invents their fundamental approach to life is not one that makes its way through to Hollywood, but its popularity on TikTok tells us that it is a mistake by the major studios and producers: people want these stories. Beyond Entertainment and Human Interest And while other #PrisonTok influencers take a sillier approach to their content, offering up things like prison recipes, it’s important to understand the real value of #PrisonTok extends beyond entertainment and human interest. In the words of , #PrisonTok and related communities have become an important step for those facing the prospect of incarceration: “Unfortunately, for many years, there has been a lack of information to those who are going to prison. That’s a very big problem that social media is beginning to address, and the availability of this information has already had a meaningful impact on thousands of people.” federal prison consultant Sam Mangel Mangel, who offers similar, , knows first-hand. After he was arrested for insurance fraud violations in 2016, Mangel engaged an attorney who specializes in white-collar criminal defense. Despite his purported expertise, Mangel’s lawyer failed to prepare him for several key pre-sentencing steps, which culminated in a sixty-month sentence, more than three times greater than the guideline recommendation for his crime. complementary, and informative content about prison on his YouTube channel Mangel turned his attention to what he could do to return to his family as quickly as possible, which was a tall order in the pre-#PrisonTok world. Mangel ultimately served less than two years of his sixty-month sentence, returned home, and now assists white-collar offenders (including CEOs, medical professionals, politicians, and foreign nationals) in preparing for incarceration as a federal prison consultant. If he were faced with the same circumstances in today’s information environment, it’s likely Mangel would have been better informed and would have known to speak with his attorney about the critical steps they missed. It’s possible he would have engaged the services of a consultant for personalized guidance. And armed with all of that, it’s likely he would have found himself with a far better outcome than a sixty-month sentence. The Power of Breaking Down Information Silos While many media outlets focus on security concerns that threaten to and groups that liken social media use to smoking cigarettes, communities like #PrisonTok offer what has long been the promise of social media and the internet broadly: breaking down data silos, improving access to critical information, and connecting people. That’s why it’s important to highlight communities like these, which clearly offer so much help to those in need. These are an important counter-point to the current discourse around TikTok and social media. ban TikTok in the United States

The Rise (and Real Value) of #PrisonTok

#PrisonTok-এর উত্থান (এবং আসল মূল্য)

Der Aufstieg (und der wahre Wert) von #PrisonTok

El auge (y el valor real) de #PrisonTok

L'essor (et la valeur réelle) de #PrisonTok

#PrisonTok का उदय (और वास्तविक मूल्य)

#PrisonTok の台頭（そして真の価値）

#PrisonTok의 상승(및 실제 가치)

A ascensão (e valor real) de #PrisonTok

Рост (и реальная ценность) #PrisonTok

#PrisonTok'un Yükselişi (ve Gerçek Değeri)

Sự trỗi dậy (và giá trị thực) của #PrisonTok

#PrisonTok 的兴起（及其真正价值）

223 Stories To Learn About Science

What to Expect? Introduction The Basics of Behavioral Economics Common Cognitive Biases in Crypto-Trading. Emotional Influences on Trading Decisions. Behavioral Economics strategies for crypto traders. Case studies and Real-world Applications. Understanding human behavior in the cryptocurrency marketplace is just as important as understanding fundamentals. Why traders make certain decisions and how they can improve their strategies is insights that can be best learned through the field of behavioral economics, which is a hybrid of economics and psychology. With reference to principles of behavioral economics, this article shows how they can be used for making smarter constructive trading decisions within the economy. crypto The Basics of Behavioral Economics Behavioral economics combines psychological insights with economic theory to provide a more nuanced understanding of human behavior relating to financial context, thus making it interesting. On the other hand, traditional economics assumes that people are rational actors and, therefore, make decisions that will maximize their utility. However, behavioral economics acknowledges that humans do not always behave rationally due to various factors that hinder them from making optimal choices. To start with, the core concepts of behavioral economics include . Heuristics act as shortcuts in reasoning that simplify decision-making processes. Although they might be useful, they can also lead to cognitive biases, i.e., systematic thinking errors that affect how individuals make decisions and judgments. For example, some popular heuristics that may lead to such fallacies include the availability heuristic, whereby the individuals assess the likelihood of an event on how easily they recall similar cases, and the representativeness heuristic, where individuals assess the probability of an event by comparing it with a prototype. heuristics and biases are preferences that are based on heuristics. They can have a great impact on trading and even investment decisions. For instance, anchoring bias occurs when individuals rely too heavily on the first piece of information they receive (the “anchor”) when making decisions. In crypto trading, if a trader buys a cryptocurrency at a high price, that price becomes the anchor, and they may be reluctant to sell it at a lower price, even if the market conditions suggest it would be wise to do so. Biases is another key principle of behavioral economics developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. It explains how people value gains and losses differently, leading to inconsistent risk-taking behavior. For example, it is often more likely for someone to take risks when trying to avoid loss rather than making profit. In crypto trading, this is particularly relevant as the fear of missing out on potential gains may prompt traders to hold onto their assets for too long or invest in high-risk ventures without sufficient due diligence. Prospect theory Understanding these basic principles of behavioral economics is essential for crypto traders. It allows them to recognize the psychological traps that can lead to poor trading decisions and to develop strategies to counteract these biases. By doing so, traders can improve their ability to make rational, informed decisions that align with their investment goals and risk tolerance. Common Cognitive Biases in Crypto Trading When we talk about cognitive biases what do we actually mean? Well, Cognitive biases refer to systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, often resulting in illogical conclusions or decision-making. In the context of , these biases can significantly influence a trader’s actions and may result in recurring errors of judgment and investment. crypto trading is one of the most common cognitive biases that affect traders. It happens when someone has an unreasonable level of belief in his or her ability to predict events or to control events that he or she cannot. This bias may show itself while trading crypto, where a trader tends to think they know more about the market than they actually do, and so can predict price movements, resulting in increased trade volumes and greater risks taken. For example, a trader might believe that against all odds, the losing position can turn into a winner and, therefore, place more funds on it. Overconfidence Bias , as opposed to making gains, is a preference for avoiding losses. Research shows that two times, the positive feeling from gain is roughly the same as the negative one from losing. In this case, behaviors such as hanging on to loss-making trades with the hope that they will bounce back or selling winners early to ‘lock in’ profits are typical patterns for an individual who prefers not to lose money rather than make gains through trading securities. Loss Aversion Bias refers to people’s tendency to seek, interpret, prefer, and retain information that supports their existing beliefs or ideas. In the volatile crypto market, a trader may disregard negative news or market indicators forecasting a slump in anticipation of the continued rise in the market. This can result in a failure to react suitably to market shifts, which may end up with financial losses. Confirmation Bias Other cognitive biases that affect crypto traders include: : This is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual makes a decision based on the first piece of information they are exposed to. For example, if a trader purchases Bitcoin at a certain price, that price becomes the anchor and even if the market conditions indicate otherwise, it can be hard for the trader to dispose of Bitcoin at lower prices. Anchoring Bias : As its name suggests, this behavior involves doing what others do in the financial markets, especially in crypto trading. In some cases, herd behavior may lead to bubbles followed by crashes in crypto trading, which is very risky. Herd Mentality To fight these biases, traders must have a disciplined trading strategy in place, keep an eye on these common pitfalls, and learn about market trends and psychology over time. Traders who understand and acknowledge these cognitive biases can take deliberate steps to reduce their impact and make more logical trading choices. Section 3: Emotional Influences on Trading Decisions These emotions are very powerful and can influence human actions, and this is even more observable in the case of cryptocurrency trading. In the , traders experience rapid fluctuations with unpredictable outcomes that can evoke strong feelings which may make them act impulsively, disregarding their long-term investment goals. crypto market When the market goes down, or there is some negative news associated with a specific cryptocurrency, instantaneously kicks in. This usually prompts a fight-or-flight response, thereby causing investors to sell off their assets in a panic to avoid further losses. Such behavior only serves to intensify declines in the market and result in big financial losses for those who sell at the bottom. fear On the other hand, immediately takes over during upswings. It makes the traders overly optimistic, ignoring signs of overvaluation or market saturation. Decisions that are motivated by greed often involve exposure to too much risk as they aim at earning high returns leading to significant losses when the markets normalize. Greed Another emotional influence that can make traders make impulsive decisions is (fear of missing out). Therefore, when traders see others making huge profits from an asset that is going up in value, they may feel like there is no time to waste and rush into the market without doing enough research or having a clear investment plan. FOMO To control these emotional influences, it is crucial to develop emotional intelligence. This means being able to identify one’s own emotions, comprehend how they affect decision-making as well as keep them under control. This way, by understanding what triggers them emotionally and responding with reason and logic instead of being overwhelmed by such feelings, traders can remain calm and make better choices. Strategies to enhance emotional intelligence include: Mindfulness can help traders become conscious of their emotions and mental habits that result in reactive trading. Mindfulness practices: : Using stress-reducing exercises like deep breathing, working out and meditating can keep traders’ composure during market instability. Stress management techniques : Creating a group of people involved in this business to talk to and advise each other may balance decisions taken and reduce emotional biases. Support networks By enhancing emotional intelligence and learning techniques for managing emotions, traders are able to make more disciplined and farsighted approaches in the cryptocurrency markets. Section 4: Behavioral Economics Strategies for Crypto Traders Traders exploring the volatile world of cryptocurrency trading often use behavioral economics strategies as their guide. These strategies are meant to assist traders in realizing and mitigating the cognitive biases and emotional influences that result in bad decisions and monetary losses. One method is the application of . A checklist can be constructed from a simple yet powerful tool that ensures no important detail is missed before initiating a trade. Some of the items may include verifying market trends analysis, looking for global economic news that may impact crypto, and reviewing the trade’s risk-reward ratio. By following a checklist step by step, traders will avoid making impetuous decisions and engage in more disciplined trading. checklists Also, keeping is very critical. All trades are recorded in this trading journal, including why each was made, what came out of it, and any teaching it produced. This technique helps traders identify their behavior patterns when trading, recurring biases that affect them regularly, and how they can be improved upon. a trading journal are those that traders use when they set rules to be followed regardless of emotional state or market conditions. A few examples of these include setting predetermined entry and exit points, stop loss orders for reducing potential losses, and well-defined criteria for selecting investments. This ensures that fear and greed are eliminated from the trader’s emotions, making him or her stick to a plan. Pre-commitment strategies Another strategy that can be used is where funds are divided into different accounts for different purposes. For instance, one could allocate a particular section of their portfolio to long-term investments, another fraction to short-term trading, and some cash for high-risk – high-reward opportunities. Because of this, traders can make better choices and refrain from investing too much in one particular asset or trade. mental accounting, is a familiar concept involving spreading investments across different assets in order to lower risks associated with certain investments. In behavioral economics, diversification behaves as an antidote to overconfidence bias since not all trades will be profitable; hence, it is wise to spread risk in investment. Diversification Finally, Crypto traders should prioritize which serve as the most important strategies. Informed persons, on the other hand, can understand biases through the study of behavioral economics and psychology on trading, helping them in decision making. education and continued learning, These behavioral economics strategies can also help crypto traders expand their toolkit in order to make better choices that are logical and they are comfortable with considering their risk tolerance and trading goals. When applied systematically, these measures will ultimately enhance the performance of a trader in terms of trading and make it more enjoyable. Section 5: Case Studies and Real-World Applications The application of behavioral economics in crypto trading is not just theoretical; it has practical, real-world implications that can lead to tangible improvements in trading performance. By examining case studies and analyzing specific trading scenarios, traders can gain insights into how behavioral economics principles can be effectively applied. One of the most notable examples of behavioral economics in action is the Bitcoin bubble of 2017. During this period, the price of Bitcoin soared to nearly $20,000, driven by a surge in public interest and a classic case of market euphoria. Many traders, influenced by herd mentality and FOMO, bought into Bitcoin at high prices without a clear exit strategy. As the market corrected and prices plummeted, those who had not applied behavioral economics principles suffered significant losses. In contrast, traders who recognized the signs of a bubble and adhered to pre-set stop-loss orders were able to protect their capital and even profit from the volatility. The Bitcoin Bubble of 2017: The Use of : Another application of behavioral economics in the real world is incorporating behavioral indicators into algorithmic trading systems. Instead of relying solely on technical analysis, these systems examine market sentiment to inform trading decisions based on psychological patterns. It means that, for instance, a trading algorithm can be coded to each time it observes a sudden surge in posts on social media showing FOMO among retail investors, which might indicate an imminent correction of the price. Algorithmic Trading sell a cryptocurrency For example, behavioral economics can be used to analyze specific trading scenarios. For example, let us say there is a trader who is considering buying a cryptocurrency that has gained 200% in a short span. By virtue of its momentum, traditional economic theory may propose that this asset is worth investing in. In contrast, according to behavioral economics, the trader should take into account the likelihood of overconfidence bias and assess critically if the asset’s fundamentals justify its recent price increase. This way, the trader can choose more wisely and perhaps avoid purchasing at market rallies’ tops. Analyzing Trading Scenarios is a real-world example of how behavioral economics could have improved trading outcomes triggered by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the bottom of the market, many traders were selling their assets out of panic and fear. People who know behavioral economics, such as markets, tend to overreact to news, as well as the fact that it is important for one to maintain their calmness even under pressure could hold on to their investments or buy more at reduced prices, benefiting from the recovery of the market. The March 2020 market crash By studying these case studies and real-world applications, traders can learn from past successes and mistakes, applying the lessons of behavioral economics to their own trading strategies. With this knowledge, traders can make more rational decisions, manage their emotions effectively, and achieve better financial outcomes in the volatile world of cryptocurrency trading. The Future of Trading with Behavioral Economics The integration of behavioral economics into the future of trading is poised to revolutionize the way decisions are made in the financial markets, particularly within the realm of cryptocurrency. As we look ahead, the potential for behavioral economics to enhance automated trading systems and artificial intelligence (AI) is immense, promising a new era of trading that is more attuned to the nuances of human psychology. The future of trading is likely to witness a substantial rise in the use of automated trading systems and AI informed by behavioral economics. These systems will be built to analyze large amounts of market data such as price movements, trading volumes and news sentiment, but will also consider the psychological factors that affect trader behavior. These systems can then go ahead to carry out trades based on models that predict how traders are likely going to react under different market conditions and exploit human biases and emotional responses. Automated Trading Systems and AI Advancements in behavioral analytics will enable trading platforms to provide real-time insights into trader sentiment, potentially predicting market movements based on collective behavior. This could lead to the development of tools that alert traders to potential biases in their decision-making process or warn them about market conditions leading to irrational trading behavior. Behavioral Analytics : The future may bring trading platforms that will offer personalized trading experiences suited to individual traders’ psychological profiles. For instance, a platform could use a trader’s past data to identify behaviors linked to overconfidence or loss aversion and then adjust its interface and recommendations accordingly. Trading experiences made personal With the expansion of behavioral economics, we should anticipate an increase in educational materials and training programs focused on psychological aspects of trade. Consequently, traders will be empowered with information that will help them to spot biases, thus enabling them to make more rational investment decisions. Education And Training Regulatory Implications Additionally, regulation could also be affected by behavioral economics integrated into trading. For example, regulators can apply the principles of behavioral economics in order to develop policies that can shield traders from some of the common mistakes such as making hasty conclusions based on very little information or falling prey for fraudulent schemes which exploit their mental weaknesses. Conclusion In summary, traveling through the and taking into account behavioral economics shows that the mind of a crypto trader is full of psychological aspects influencing trading decisions. This article has explored cognitive biases in depth, emotions’ influence, and a number of approaches that could be used for making better judgments while coping with cryptocurrency trading. thoughts of a crypto trader The key takeaways from this exploration are clear: , such as overconfidence, loss aversion, and confirmation bias, can lead to systematic errors in judgment and must be recognized and mitigated. Cognitive biases , including fear, greed, and FOMO, can cloud judgment and must be managed through emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Emotional influences , such as checklists, trading journals, and pre-commitment strategies, provide a framework for disciplined decision-making. Behavioral economics strategies demonstrate the practical benefits of applying behavioral economics to trading, offering valuable lessons for traders. Case studies and real-world applications The future of trading with behavioral economics is bright, with potential advancements in automated trading systems, AI, and personalized trading experiences that cater to individual psychological profiles. One must apply the knowledge acquired through behavioral economics, refine strategies, and be aware of psychological pitfalls leading to less profitable transactions. If the field of behavioral economics is changing, then a dealer should also change his approach to it by studying new approaches and instruments for decision-making. However, this is not the end of the journey for those who want to know more about psychology and finance. This is an ongoing exploration of behavior economics that calls for traders to continue learning, reading more research, and engaging in discussions that question the traditional paradigms of trading. It’s time to integrate the principles of behavioral economics into your cryptocurrency trading with a view to making intelligent decisions.

Decoding the Crypto Trader’s Mind: Leveraging Behavioral Economics for Smarter Trading Decisions.

THE LOVE STORY OF THE AWKWARD MAN

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. It has been remarked by Professor Wilhelm Ostwald that the problem of homosexuality is a problem left over to us by the Middle Ages, which for five hundred years dealt with inverts as it dealt with heretics and witches. To regard the matter thus is to emphasize its social and humanitarian interest rather than its biological and psychological significance. It is no doubt this human interest of the question of inversion, rather than its scientific importance, great as the latter is, which is mainly responsible for the remarkable activity with which the study of homosexuality has been carried on during recent years. The result has been that, during the fourteen years that have passed since the last edition of this Study was issued, so vast an amount of work has been carried on in this field that the preparation of a new edition of the book has been a long and serious task. Nearly every page has been rewritten or enlarged and the Index of Authors consulted has more than doubled in length. The original portions of the book have been still more changed; sixteen new Histories have been added, selected from others in my possession as being varied, typical, and full. These extensive additions to the volume have rendered necessary various omissions. Many of the shorter and less instructive Histories contained in earlier editions have been omitted, as well as three Appendices which no longer seem of sufficient interest to retain. In order to avoid undue increase in the size of this volume, already much larger than in the previous editions, a new Study of Eonism, or sexo-esthetic inversion, will be inserted in vol. v, where it will perhaps be at least as much in place as here. HAVELOCK ELLIS. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Havelock Ellis (2004). Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13611/pg13611-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Saying nothing is loud and clear. From startup to public traded company, there is an opportunity for earned media that many tech companies are missing right now. Not a day goes headlines aren’t pummeled with lay offs, cut backs or, as of today, . For companies in growth mode, the once cutthroat competitive landscape for media attention is opening slightly. Example -- the same companies going through layoffs aren’t pitching positive stories to the same media writing about their deficiencies. startup-funding banks closing What didn’t work two years ago, may now What was once a race to differentiate between competitors or stand out in a crowded marketplace, may now be an easier “sell.” Especially in the startup world, human interest stories in the “survive and thrive” genre are resonating along with more coverage of success moments that aren’t as frequent. For example, startups who close a Series B round are more compelling because . those rounds have fallen sharply The media you earn during these moments sets a company up for the next round of funding and has major implications in launching a company’s post-funding earned and owned media strategy. Remaining relevant in the news cycle (think: every 28 days) is a major part of what our team calls the Reputation+ model and impacts authority and awareness for every single stakeholder. “Always on” mentality We all know that major media coverage doesn’t happen overnight. No professional relationship in any capacity works like that. It’s important that your public relations team has regular outreach with media across all of your target verticals. From story starter ideation to early outreach on major company news and announcements regular “drip” outreach builds long-term relationships on behalf of your brand. Companies who conduct media outreach or thought leadership moments infrequently (less than once a month) can expect the same from media results. Media strategy matters more than ever right now because the portion that includes “white space opportunities” is a gap that is widening. While product-led announcements typically incur the lowest amount of coverage, in the current economy, there are new ways to position these types of things if they: save money, save time, impact employee satisfaction, reduce waste, etc… These types of stories didn’t really work a few years ago because almost everyone could say the same thing. Working with an internal PR team or external agency in an “always on” capacity means they build out a 28-day strategy that includes a full-scope strategy: major announcements, proactive story starters, reactionary topics, thought leadership, owned amplification and more. Fully executed, it gives marketing counterparts ample opportunities to retarget and implement paid strategies to further connect with stakeholders. Earned media increases investor meetings Recently, a friend of mine, who also happens to be a founder in an industry that is getting funding, got a “big deal” earned media placement. This particular piece linked him with some impressive third-party credibility and thanks to particular words and phrases in the article, it’s now the number one result for him on Google (and Google News). Why does it matter? He is currently fundraising and investors are researching him before meetings. Coincidentally, after securing this major placement, he noticed an increase in the number of investor meetings accepted over the next two weeks. How did they get the placement? It doesn’t hurt to have a friend in tech PR who was able to offer them as the perfect source to a reporter who was actively working on piece already. Imagine replicating that across the board with bylines in trade publications investors or customers read, a podcast tour to get your voice heard or with multiple secured media opportunities that alert your Linkedin connections, like investors, that you’re in the news again. Score. Public relations practitioners understand the changing media landscape and interact with  reporters to keep a pulse on what they’re looking for and what stories they want to tell. Be part of the story.

3 reasons growth-focused tech companies need PR during a down economy  

Delusion and Dream by Sigmund Freud, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Jensen’s brilliant and unique story of Gradiva has not only literary merit of very high order, but may be said to open up a new field for romance. It is the story of a young archæologist who suffered a very characteristic mental disturbance and was gradually but effectively cured by a kind of native psychotherapeutic instinct, which probably inheres in all of us, but which in this case was found in the girl he formerly loved but had forgotten, and who restored at the same time his health and his old affection for her. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the work is that the author knew nothing of psychotherapy as such, but wrought his way through the labyrinth of mechanisms that he in a sense rediscovered and set to work, so that it needed only the application of technical terms to make this romance at the same time a pretty good key to the whole domain of psychoanalysis. In a sense it is a dream-story, but no single dream ever began to be so true to the typical nature of dreams; it is a clinical picture, but I can think of no clinical picture that had its natural human interest so enhanced by a moving romance. Gradiva might be an introduction to psychoanalysis, and is better than anything else we can think of to popularize it. It might be added that while this romance has been more thoroughly analysed than any other, and that by Freud himself, it is really only one of many which in the literature of the subject have been used to show forth the mysterious ways of the unconscious. It indicates that psychoanalysis has a future in literary criticism, if not that all art and artists have, from the beginning, more or less anticipated as they now illustrate it. The translator is thoroughly competent and has done her work with painstaking conscientiousness, and she has had the great advantage of having it revised, especially with reference to the translation of technical terms from the German, by no less an eminent expert in psychotherapy than Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe. G. STANLEY HALL. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Sigmund Freud (2014). Delusion and Dream. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/44917/pg44917-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

INTRODUCTION

First and Last Things by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE NECESSITY FOR METAPHYSICS THE NECESSITY FOR METAPHYSICS. As a preliminary to that experiment in mutual confession from which this book arose, I found it necessary to consider and state certain truths about the nature of knowledge, about the meaning of truth and the value of words, that is to say I found I had to begin by being metaphysical. In writing out these notes now I think it is well that I should state just how important I think this metaphysical prelude is. There is a popular prejudice against metaphysics as something at once difficult and fruitless, as an idle system of enquiries remote from any human interest. I suppose this odd misconception arose from the vulgar pretensions of the learned, from their appeal to ancient names and their quotations in unfamiliar tongues, and from the easy fall into technicality of men struggling to be explicit where a high degree of explicitness is impossible. But it needs erudition and accumulated and alien literature to make metaphysics obscure, and some of the most fruitful and able metaphysical discussion in the world was conducted by a number of unhampered men in small Greek cities, who knew no language but their own and had scarcely a technical term. The true metaphysician is after all only a person who says, “Now let us take a thought for a moment before we fall into a discussion of the broad questions of life, lest we rush hastily into impossible and needless conflict. What is the exact value of these thoughts we are thinking and these words we are using?” He wants to take thought about thought. Those other ardent spirits on the contrary, want to plunge into action or controversy or belief without taking thought; they feel that there is not time to examine thought. “While you think,” they say, “the house is burning.” They are the kin of those who rush and struggle and make panics in theatre fires. Now it seems to me that most of the troubles of humanity are really misunderstandings. Men’s compositions and characters are, I think, more similar than their views, and if they had not needlessly different modes of expression upon many broad issues, they would be practically at one upon a hundred matters where now they widely differ. Most of the great controversies of the world, most of the wide religious differences that keep men apart, arise from this: from differences in their way of thinking. Men imagine they stand on the same ground and mean the same thing by the same words, whereas they stand on slightly different grounds, use different terms for the same thing and express the same thing in different words. Logomachies, conflicts about words,—into such death-traps of effort those ardent spirits run and perish. This is now almost a commonplace; it has been said before by numberless people. It has been said before by numberless people, but it seems to me it has been realised by very few—and until it is realised to the fullest extent, we shall continue to live at intellectual cross purposes and waste the forces of our species needlessly and abundantly. This persuasion is a very important thing in my mind. I think that the time has come when the human mind must take up metaphysical discussion again—when it must resume those subtle but necessary and unavoidable problems that it dropped unsolved at the close of the period of Greek freedom, when it must get to a common and general understanding upon what its ideas of truth, good, and beauty amount to, and upon the relation of the name to the thing, and of the relation of one mind to another mind in the matter of resemblance and the matter of difference—upon all those issues the young science student is as apt to dismiss as Rot, and the young classical student as Gas, and the austere student of the science of Economics as Theorising, unsuitable for his methods of research. In our achievement of understandings in the place of these evasions about fundamental things lies the road, I believe, along which the human mind can escape, if ever it is to escape, from the confusion of purposes that distracts it at the present time. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2009). First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4225/4225-h/4225-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

THE NECESSITY FOR METAPHYSICS

Astounding Stories of Super-Science June 1931, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Manape the Mighty - Chapter III: A Night of Horror CHAPTER III. A Night of Horror The meal consisted of various fruits, some meat which Bentley could not identify, and wild honey which was delicious. The bread tasted queer but was distinctly edible. The castaways ate ravenously, but even as he ate Bentley noticed that Ellen's face was chalky pale, and that in spite of a distinct effort of will she simply had to look at intervals toward the great beast in the cage. Caleb Barter sat with his back to the animal. Bentley sat at the left of the old scientist, Ellen Estabrook at his right. The great beast was quiet now, but he squatted within his prison and his red-rimmed eyes swerved from one person to the other in the room with a peculiar intentness. "I'd swear that beast can almost read our thoughts!" ejaculated Bentley at last, after he had somewhat sated his appetite. Barter smiled with those too-red lips of his. "He can—almost. You'd be surprised to know how nearly human the great apes are, and how nearly human this particular one is. Ah!" "What do you mean, this particular one?" asked Bentley curiously. "He doesn't look any different to me from the others I've seen except that he is far and away the largest." "I don't see why you should be so curious," said Barter testily. "It's none of your business you know—yet." "What do you mean?" demanded Bentley, nettled by Barter's tone. "Lee, hush," said Ellen. "Professor Barter is not on trial for any crime." Bentley looked at her in hurt surprise, inclined to be angry with her for the tone she was taking, but he saw such a look of appeal in her eyes that he choked back the words that rushed to his lips for utterance. He was decidedly on edge, more, he felt, than he should have been despite what they had gone through. When their eyes met he saw her glance quickly toward the ape, and noted a frown of worry between her brows. Bentley glanced at the ape. The brute now was staring at the girl in a way that made Bentley's flesh crawl. It was preposterous of course, but he had the feeling, something which seemed to flow out of that mighty cage like some evil emanation from a dank tarn, that the ape knew the girl's sex—and that he desired her! It was horrible in the extreme to contemplate, yet Bentley knew when he glanced swiftly at the girl that she had sensed the same thing and was fighting to keep the natural horror she felt at such a ghastly thought from being noticeable. It was absurd. The ape was a prisoner. But.... "Professor Barter," said Bentley, "you're accustomed to being with this brute, but it isn't so nice for us, especially for Miss Estabrook." Barter now frowned angrily. "My dear Bentley," he said with that odd testiness which he had assumed toward Bentley before, "I refuse to have any interference with my experiment. This is part of it." "You mean—" began Bentley. "I mean that I'm training that ape—I call him Manape—to behave like human beings. How better can he learn than by watching our behavior?" "Just the same," said Bentley, "I don't like it." "It's all right, Lee," said Ellen quickly. "I don't mind." But Bentley knew that it wasn't all right, and that she did mind, terribly. Barter finished eating. Bentley had noticed that despite the long years he had been a virtual hermit, Barter ate as fastidiously as he probably had done when he had lived among his own kind. He pushed back his chair with a swift movement. Instantly the roaring of Manape rang through the room. The great brute rose to his full height and grasped the bars of his cage, shaking them with savage fury. He glared at his master and bestial rage glittered from his red-rimmed eyes. He was a horrible sight. Ellen Estabrook, with no apology, stepped around the table and crouched wide-eyed in the arm of Lee Bentley. "Lee," she said, "I'm terribly afraid. I almost wish we had trusted ourselves in the jungle." "I'll look out for you," he whispered, as Barter turned his attention to the great ape. But Bentley was watching the animal. So was Barter. The eyes of the scientist were shining like coals of fire. For the moment he appeared to have forgotten his guests. "It is a success!" he cried. "As far as it goes, I mean!" What did Barter mean? Seeking some answer to the enigma, Bentley studied the ape anew. Now he was positive of another thing: Manape was scarcely concerned with Barter, whom he appeared to hate with an utterly satanic hatred. His beady eyes were staring at Bentley instead! "The brute is jealous of me!" thought Bentley. "Good God, what does it mean, anyway?" Barter turned back to them and all at once became the genial host. "Shall we return to the other room?" he asked politely. It was a relief to the castaways to put that awful room behind them. Barter closed and barred the door with deliberate slowness. Why had this old man shut himself away from civilization like this? How long had he held this great ape in captivity? What was the purpose of it? What experiment was he performing? What part of it had the castaways been witnessing that they had not recognized? Bentley, recalling the distinct impression that the ape had stared at Ellen almost with the eyes of a lustful man, and had even appeared to be jealous of him because the girl had gone into his arms—Bentley felt a shiver of revulsion course through him as it struck him now how human the regard and the jealousy of the creature had been! He felt like clutching at the girl and racing with her into the hazards of the jungle. But he remembered the anthropoids out there, and Barter's peculiar domination of the brutes. Barter was now watching the two with interest, studying them in turn speculatively, unmindful of the impertinence of his studious regard and silence. "I have it!" he said. "Will you two be good enough to excuse me? You will need rest, I am sure. I am going away for a little time, but I shall return shortly after dark. Make yourselves at home. But remember—don't enter that room!" "You need not worry," said Bentley grimly. "I sincerely hope we take our next meal in some other room." Barter laughed and passed out of the door without a backward glance. From the jungle immediately afterward came the drumming of the great apes, and now and again the laughter of Barter—high-pitched at first, but dying away as Barter apparently moved off into the jungle. "Ellen," said Bentley quickly, "I don't know what's going on here, but I'm sure it's something sinister and awful. Let's take a look at our rooms. If there isn't a door between them which can be left open, then you'll have to spend the night in my room while I remain awake on guard." "I was thinking of the same thing, Lee," she whispered. "This place gives me the horrors. Barter's association with the apes is a terrible thing." Hand in hand they stepped to the door Barter had designated as that of Ellen Estabrook's. Bentley opened it cautiously, heaving a sigh of relief to find it empty. He scarcely knew what he had expected. There was a connecting door between the two rooms, open, and they peered into the chamber Bentley was to occupy. Back they came to her room, to stand before a window which gave onto a shadowed little clearing in the rear of the cabin. "Look!" whispered Ellen. There was a single mound of earth, with a white cross set over it, on which was the single word: Mangor. It might have been a word in some native dialect. It might have been some native's name. It might have been anything, but, whatever it was, it added to the sinister atmosphere which seemed to hang like an evil mist over the home of Caleb Barter. "That settles it, Ellen," he said. "You'll spend the night in my room." Ellen retired in Bentley's room, closing the door which led to the adjoining room, and Bentley walked back and forth in the reception room, waiting for Barter to return. When darkness fell he lighted the lamps he had previously located. Their odor caused him to guess that the fuel they used was some sort of animal fat. In the strange glow from the lamps, his shadow on the walls, as he walked to and fro, was grotesque, terrible—and at times a grim reminder of the great apes. It caused him to consider how, after all, human beings were akin to gorillas and chimpanzees. Somehow, now, it was a horrible thought. The night wore on and Bentley's stride became faster. Now and again he peered into the girl's room. She was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion and he did not waken her. Bentley felt it was near midnight when Barter returned, his return heralded by a strange commotion in the clearing, and the frightful drumming of the great apes—or at least one great ape. Bentley shuddered as the animal behind the locked door answered the drumming challenge with a drumming thunder of his own. Barter came in, and Bentley accosted him at once. "See here, Barter," he began. "I don't like it here. There's something strange going on in this clearing. Miss Estabrook and I wish to leave immediately in the morning! And that grave behind the cabin, who or what is it?" Barter studied the almost trembling Bentley for all of a minute. "That grave?" he said at last, with silken softness. "It's the grave of a jungle savage. He died in the interest of science. As for you, you'll leave here when I bid you, and not before, understand? I've a guardian outside that would tear both of you limb from limb." But Bentley caught and held fast to certain words the scientist had spoken. "The savage died in the interest of science?" he said. "What do you mean?" Barter smiled his red-lipped smile. "I took the savage and Manape, who wasn't called Manape then, and administered an anesthetic of my own invention. You've heard that I was a master of trephining? No matter if you haven't heard, the whole world will know soon! While the native and the ape were under anesthesia I transferred their brains. I put the black man's brain in the skull pan of the ape, and the ape's brain in that of the savage. The ape lived—and he is Manape. The savage, with the ape's brain, died, and I buried him in that grave you asked about!" With a cry of horror Bentley turned and fled from Barter as though the man had been His Satanic Majesty himself. He entered the room with Ellen and barred the door behind him. He likewise barred the door which led to that other room. Now in total darkness it was all he could do from clambering on the bed where Ellen slept, and begging her to touch him—anything—if only to prove to him that there still were sane creatures left in a mad world. Outside Barter laughed. "Oh, Bentley," he called after a long interval of silence, "do you like the odor of violets? Goodnight, and pleasant dreams!" What had Barter meant? Again assuring himself that the connecting door could not be opened if anything or anybody tried to enter that way, Bentley flung himself down before the door which gave on the reception room. He had no intention of sleeping. But in spite of himself he dozed off, though he fought against sleep with all his will. Strange, but as he gradually slipped away into unconsciousness he was cognizant of the odor of violets—like invisible tentacles which reached through the very door and wrapped themselves gently about him. His last conscious thought was of Manape, the ape with the brain of a jungle savage. But in spite of the vague feeling of horror he could not fight off the desire for sleep. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Various. 2010. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June 1931. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 2022 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31893/31893-h/31893-h.htm#Manape_the_Mighty . This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Astounding Stories of Super-Science June 1931: Manape the Mighty - Chapter III

Persuading someone to open their wallet for an unknown website or a new product can be hard. So, how do you go about it? While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to it, customer testimonials can do the job. Using customer testimonials on your website is a wise way of persuading visitors and converting them into customers. After all, 95% of the buyers say that reviews, whether negative or positive, influence their buying decisions. Wouldn’t you want to grab the slice of that action - perhaps see some customer testimonial page examples? But, you might be asking: Why are Customer Testimonials Important? Customer testimonials can be a great marketing asset, if only you learn how to use them properly. A lot of e-commerce businesses have made them an essential part of scaling their online presence. Still not convinced? Let’s get into specifics: 1. Customer Testimonials Build Trust and Credibility These testimonials have an impact on your future customers because they add legitimacy to your products or website and make people more willing to buy from you. Put simply, they have the potential to improve the conversion rate of visitors into paying customers. What we’re trying to say is - and nudge them towards making a purchase  - because they learn that other people have been happy with the website and have made the same purchase for similar reasons. customer testimonials make people more comfortable 2. Customer Testimonials Provide Social Proof Have you ever eaten at a restaurant because your friend mentioned the great food? Have you ever bought a product because your favorite actor endorsed it? That’s social proof. Social proof simply develops the case of ‘if it’s good for them, it’s good for me as well.’ Used correctly, customer testimonials can be a very efficient sales ploy. A great testimonial taps into a prospective buyer’s head and persuades them to think that ‘I also need that product because everyone else cannot be wrong.’ 3. They Boost Conversions According to a BigCommerce study, customers who interact with a review are 58% more likely to convert. The same study also pointed that 50+  reviews can generate a 4.6% increase in conversion rates. These numbers show that the more genuine and positive testimonials you can gain from your customers, the more chances there will be of conversions. 4. They Humanise Your Brand People love a good story. Their empathy and curiosity towards other humans are ingrained in their psyches. And that’s another reason why you should leverage customer testimonials. The testimonials on your website or product page can provide a human interest angle to your offerings- enabling customers to connect with, relate to, and better understand the services and products before them. You must have come across - just to reveal the human side of their business. So, as marketers, you too can achieve the same outcome by sourcing great testimonials. big brands that spend millions on advertising campaigns 5. They Tell Users About Your USP One of the reasons testimonials are a great marketing asset is testimonials can show how a product or service can solve the pain points of the customers. In other words, it informs them about the unique selling point  (USP) of your product or service and helps illustrate how you solved a recurring challenge for your existing customer. How to use Customer Testimonials Efficiently? By this stage, you must have understood the importance of customer testimonials. I am sure you’d want to leverage it as a marketing strategy and review customer . So, we got you some interesting hacks on using testimonials more efficiently. testimonial page examples 1. Consider Adding Testimonial in a Video Written testimonials are indeed effective. However, videos can convey more meaning and leave a great impact on viewers in a shorter space of time. One of the studies revealed that 79% of people have watched a video testimonial to learn about a product or service. I too am a big fan of using testimonials in a video - with faces of real people and their experiences. Just think about it - you got the audio, text, and visual - all elements in one neat package. Hearing and seeing an existing customer's genuine appreciation for your business is more appealing than you think. So, make sure to incorporate this type of testimonials. 2. Create a Dedicated Testimonials Page How about creating a dedicated page that only highlights your success stories with previous customers? A lot of online businesses are doing this by amassing a good number of positive testimonials. They are providing a hub for customers to find out what existing and previous customers have to say about the product. You can make this page as low-key or flashy as your budget and design skills allow. A great thing, these pages aren’t tough to set up. You can use plugins and theme pages that will pull through reviews to your testimonial page automatically. Even software like HubSpot CRM has created testimonial pages that oozes social proof and turn visitors into paying customers. 3. Use Testimonials in Email Campaign One super-effective strategy for encouraging prospective buyers to take action is to create a small email campaign where you show them your testimonials. This strategy has helped businesses encourage customer engagement and others gather meaningful feedback. And this one is pretty inexpensive too. You only need to churn a compelling subject line, some thought-provoking questions, and then paste the testimonials from your past customers. 4. Testimonials on Social Media Social media is indeed a great palace to add your testimonials and some social proof. The key here is to share your social channels which tap into the . audience’s pain points We recommend using social sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn for discovering user’s pain points. You can easily do this by monitoring topical discussion threads and monitoring hashtags. LinkedIn is indeed a great tool for gauging the opinions of people who’re in the same industry. 5. Add Testimonials to Home Page If you want to create a good first impression for your website visitors, you must consider adding a testimonial section to your website’s home page. Adding testimonials on the website homepage ensures that you gain your visitor’s trust from the very beginning. Considering how visitors spend a very limited time on a website, you should make that time count by displaying something that can inspire a conversion. Some glowing testimonials with verifiable details like photos, links, full names can maximize credibility. If you’re a B2B company, we’d recommend adding logos and quotes from your impressive clients. You can include their testimonials in an e carousel banner or slider at the top of your home page to increase visibility and impact. This way, the visitors will not need to scroll below to find the testimonials. Similarly, if your company has won an award or gained a decent press review, you should consider adding feature snippets from these testimonials to your homepage. 6. Testimonials on a Product Page One of the important touchpoints in your customer journey is your product or service page. While on the product page, visitors are checking out the goods, it’s great to reinforce your testimonials - and how brilliant your product is and how previous customers have been happy with the purchase. This type of customer testimonials is considered to be well-placed and well-timed testimonials. It sends a reminder to prospective customers that real people have already used your product. All in all, it’s a neat trick to reassure your customers that your product or service is legit. So, every bit of positive reassurance you give to your users will coax them to the finish line. 7. In Crowdfunding Campaigns If you’re planning to start a crowdfunding campaign for raising funds for your business, it’s a smart idea to add some testimonials from existing users or early adopters of your service. When you’re asking investors and sponsors to put their hand in the waller, you need to establish a belief, trust, and confidence in your business - and testimonials are a great way of doing that. By including from enthusiastic customers, you’ll be able to provide extra legitimacy for backing up your funding request. You can do this by presenting a case study, a video testimonial, or its pull-out quotes. real testimonials Inspiring Customer Testimonial Page Examples to Boost Conversions Slack’s Testimonial Page Slack is nailing credibility with its ‘customer stories’ page. This testimonial page highlights success stories of slack’s previous users. As you can see, they’ve used big names and company logos like trivago, influx, airwallex, and more. The testimonial page has success stories of multiple companies, and as you scroll down, you’ll also see pull quotes of what users are saying. Furthermore, what we love about this page is how it ends with the well-placed CTA button - encouraging users to take action. Key highlights of Slack’s testimonial page: Success stories of existing partners Logos and names of big companies Pull quotes of existing customers A featured customer Neatly organized design Call to action at the bottom Zoom’s Testimonial Page Zoom’s testimonial page is one of the most well-organized customer testimonial pages we’ve come across. Apart from all the use cases, Zoom ensures to bring out specific testimonials from different industries - making a strong case that their product has helped businesses from multiple sectors. Much like Slack, Zoom has also used all the big names from different industries. On their customer testimonial pages, you’ll come across names like Uber, HubSpot, Zendesk, Slack, Go Daddy, and Zapier. Key highlights of Zoom’s testimonial page: Testimonials for multiple industries Testimonials from industry leaders Well-placed case studies Logos from all major customers Impactful quotes from existing customers CTA at the bottom Zoho CRM’s Testimonial Page We found Zoho’s testimonial page to be effective at inspiring future customers. You’ll see well-placed customer success stories written in short glowing copies. Zoho further uses links to each testifying customer’s business - giving existing customers an external link, which is not just a free advertisement for their clients but also supports their SEO. Each customer testimonial is fairly short so that visitors can easily read each snippet without wasting too much time. Key highlights of Zoho CRM’s testimonial page: Incredibly simple design - single-column layout Testimonials grouped under categories (depending on the industry, company size, region, and employee numbers) Link to each testifying customer’s business Logos and names of big clients CTA - requesting visitors to get a demo Buffer Testimonial Page I loved buffer’s testimonial page - it’s probably the simplest and coolest customer testimonial page out there. Buffer - which is known to be the most useful social media management company - has an inspiring customer stories page. Each case study takes visitors to its dedicated page. The main page only features a one-sentence review from the client. Here also, you’ll come across industry-specific use cases that are efficiently featured on the page, making sure that the prospect is getting relevant information based on the industry they’re in. Key highlights of Buffer testimonial page: Expertly editors testimonial videos Written case study Mention of industry leaders Snippets from each case study and a link to the full case study Clutter-free interface FreshDesk Testimonial Page You’ll find Freshdesk’s success story page to be one of the best customer testimonial page examples. Since the company focuses on customer relations, it makes sense that they nail this page with smart use-cases, quote snippets, and neat designs. When you first look at Freshdesk’s testimonial page, you’ll come across featured brands that are placed at the top of their pages. That story is of industry leaders, which helps Freshdesk immediately build trust in new visitor’s eyes. We see some high-profile customers - legit companies - and immediately the credibility increases. Furthermore, Freshdesk organized the rest of the testimonials into multiple categories including industry, location, company size, and more. This helps Freshdesk pinpoint relevant information and makes for easy browsing. Key highlights of Freshdesk testimonial page: Neatly organized Multiple categories to pinpoint only relevant information Featured story of industry leader Case studies Lots of white space to reduce content overwhelm Final Thoughts By this stage, you must have understood why customer testimonials are important. Since we also walked you through customer testimonial page examples, you should have a fair understanding of how to ace use testimonials to full potential.

The Importance of Customer Testimonials to Inspire Future Customers

Striking up a conversation at work can be intimidating. We avoid eye contact, turn our heads away and pretend to be busy on our phones all in an attempt to save ourselves from the awkward moment of meeting someone and not sure what to say. And if we do gather up a little courage to look them in the eye, the conversation starter “hey, what’s up, how is it going, how are you” instantly kills the conversation. Everyone knows these words are an attempt to be polite without the intention to engage. There are plenty of opportunities at work to bond with the coworkers. How about a few moments before the meeting gets started, lunch hours, coffee breaks or those other water cooler chats. You can use small talk to fill in those moments of silence, but it’s only the deep desire to understand the other person that can form meaningful connections at work - what’s valuable to them, what interests them about work, how they solve problems, what they struggle with and what comes easy to them. It seems like we rarely converse anymore. I mean, we talk and we chat (often over text or e-mail), but we don’t really hash things out. We spend a lot of time avoiding uncomfortable conversations and not enough time making an effort to understand the people who live and work around us - Celeste Headlee Yes, it does take effort and energy to start a conversation, be curious about others, pay attention to them and try to form a connection. Nothing that’s easy adds much value to our lives. Before we talk about what to talk about at work, know how these conversations add significant value to our work lives and why they are worth our time. How great conversations add magic to work Workplace conversations can work like a charm. There are interesting people all around us who can inspire, rejuvenate, unblock our thinking and add that extra meaning to our work life. 1. Discovering a common link Starting a conversation with a coworker knowing nothing about them to finding a shared interest can instantly energise you - how you both contribute to the open-source community, love for solving problems, interest in designing systems, passion for writing code and so on. It’s the same feeling as finding a person from your home town in a foreign land. You instantly click and connect, grabbing onto that weak link and may end up bonding with the person as you commit more time and energy to the relationship. The newfound connection adds positivity to your work life and can help you share ideas and learn from each other in work that matters to you. 2. Expanding mental models Speaking to a co-worker from another cross-functional unit may give you an idea to a problem that you have been stuck with for so long. Big innovation most often happens when an outsider who may be far away from the surface of the problem reframes the problem in a way that unlocks the solution - David Epstein Speaking to people with diverse backgrounds and domain knowledge can also help you draw ideas from these domains, expand your thinking beyond your circle of competence and help you build new mental models to solve problems and make better decisions. It enables the mindset shift from being stuck as a specialist to appreciating the value in being a generalist. 3. Serving as a distraction A meaningful conversation with a co-worker can give you the much needed break after deep focussed work to re-energize and refuel your mind for doing more quality work. Being purposeful about these conversations in moments when you need them can serve as a good distraction and help you be more productive. They can also be a source of creative outflow by helping you shift from obsessing about the problem to giving space to your brain to form new connections. Harvard University researcher and psychologist Shelley H. Carson says  “Distraction isn’t always a bad thing. If you are stuck on a problem, an interruption can force an incubation period. In other words, a distraction may provide the break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution” 4. Unlocking unbiased thinking How you view people at work can change only if you take the time to look beyond your biases and make an attempt to understand them. Your attribution bias may be at play when you are quick to attribute someone’s behaviour at work to their character flaw without taking their situational factors into account. By engaging with co-workers and colleagues with an intent to understand, you will be able to rationalise why people behave in certain ways and devise better strategies for collaboration instead of resorting to fight or flight response. A difficult person may turn out to be extremely collaborative when given an opportunity to explain. It only takes one good conversation to change your understanding of someone else’s world, your world, and the world at large - Celeste Headlee Great conversations add magic to work. They bring you in touch with other like minded individuals, expand your thinking, improve your productivity and make you a better person by shifting from passing snap judgments to adopting an attitude of understanding. And who knows, you may just come across someone who helps you kick off your dream startup, become a friend for life or maybe even a life partner. 7 ways to start a conversation and build meaningful connections at work These 7 ways will guide you on how to have effective conversations at work that does not involve small talk and adds value to work without making you feel uncomfortable. 1. Ask questions that get the other person talking People like to talk about themselves. A question framed with the right mix of curiosity about the person and their work can be a great way to start a conversation. Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival—to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated. When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air. And after that vital need is met, you can then focus on influencing or problem solving - Stephen R. Covey While waiting for a meeting to get started, you notice Jon who works in the analytics department. This is a great opportunity for you to connect with a person from another unit by asking “Hi Jon. I am [...] from [...]. I will be working with your team to integrate our product with the new analytics system. Being the chief architect of the new system, you might be the perfect person to share the key highlights of your product. I am curious to know what went into designing it” A new product manager Keith joins your team. Make that first impression count by asking “Hi Keith. I am [...]. I work on [...]. What excites you about product management?” Your boss’s boss Julia is in the elevator. Don’t miss the chance to connect by saying “Hi Julia. I am [...] from [...].  We are working on this new product [...] that I am excited about. You shared some great insights about our last product. Curious to know what you think about this one.” Asking open-ended questions that shows an interest in another person’s point of view and gives them a chance to speak about themselves or their experience is a great way to start a conversation. 2. Do more listening and less talking Epictetus, a great Greek Stoic philosopher said, "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." Great conversations require the right balance between talking and listening. Active listening, though difficult, is the most effective medium to communicate and form a connection that inspires the other person to open up and share what they really think and feel. If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments - Dale Carnegie Start the conversation by asking the right question, but then listen intently to the other person with the desire to learn more about them. People can see when we are genuinely curious and when we are faking it. Hijacking the conversation by speaking too much or shifting the focus of the discussion and making it about us can instantly kill the conversation. 3. Don’t engage with a victim mindset Don’t start a conversation by putting someone or something in a bad light - our boss sucks, this is a crap presentation, this meeting is a waste of time and so on. It may be tempting to talk to others about things that you dislike or not going so well for you with the assumption that they feel the same way, but approaching the conversation with the victim mindset is the worst way to connect with someone. It makes you look like a complainer and doesn’t give an opportunity to the other person to speak much. Talking to people with a negative frame of mind can turn them off and avoid you in future interactions. Take this advice from Olivia Fox, The Charisma Myth “Aim to keep your questions focused on positive subjects because people will associate you with whatever feelings your conversation generates. Focus on questions that will likely elicit positive emotions. With your questions, you have the power to lead the conversation in the direction you want” Look for positive things to talk about which adds personal value to you and the other person. 4. Know your boundaries Different people are open to different levels of talking and sharing. Know when your question is getting too personal or making the other person uncomfortable. Also, having a difference of opinion is not the same as imposing it. Share your disagreement, but in a manner that does not seem like an attack on another person. Starting a conversation with “This is wrong. I don’t agree with it….” will make the other person defensive. However, if you start with the curiosity to understand them first by asking “Tell me more why you think this way…”, they will be more open to your disagreement when you share it later by saying “My opinion is [...]. What do you think about it?” 5. Accept vulnerability Brene Brown talks about excruciating vulnerability. It’s the idea that for connections to happen, we need to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen - Brene Brown People feel shameful when they don’t know something and instead of showing curiosity to learn about it, they pretend to know the subject and nod in agreement. Such superficial conversations are pointless and do not lead to building trust and connection. Don’t pretend to be someone you are not or pretend to know something that you don’t. Accept that you don’t know and ask “Oh, I don’t know about that. What’s that?” Accepting vulnerability is the most powerful means to start a conversation and build a long lasting connection. Start a conversation by asking “I don’t know much about [...]. Can I pick your brain to learn more about it?” 6. Keep it simple We over complicate things in our mind by overthinking and obsessing about the perfect question and then end up killing the idea to talk to the person when we can’t seem to find one. Conversations don’t always need a perfect start. We need to get started somewhere and then give it a direction. When nothing else comes to mind, asking simple questions like these can get the conversation flowing: What’s interesting about your work What keeps you busy What are you learning these days Who has the biggest influence in your life What practices do you follow for continuous improvement What new skills are you focusing on What’s your advice on [...] I am curious about [...]. What resources do you recommend on this topic 7. Be present In today’s world with a constant stream of distractions all around us, it’s difficult to choose a human connection over a digital one. But, conversations where we are constantly distracted don’t add value. Great conversations require us to be present, mentally and physically in the moment. Celeste Headlee says “We got all that terrible advice we got to look someone in the eye and nod your head and say ‘uh huh, ’ is just teaching you how to pretend you are paying attention—and that’s totally unnecessary if you are paying attention!” And Olivia Fox talks about being fully present in The Charisma Myth “The ability to be fully present makes you stand out from the crowd; it makes you memorable. When you’re fully present, even a five-minute conversation can create a “wow” effect, as well as an emotional connection” Stop looking at your phones and actually start paying attention to the person right next to you. Start a conversation by committing to being present instead of giving in to distractions. Work life can be more meaningful if we can learn to connect with all the interesting people in it. Conversations that go beyond small talk to the desire to understand and learn from each other can be a powerful source of energy. Also published here .

Get Beyond Small Talk To Forming Meaningful Connections At Work

Ask copywriters: what's the one thing that insanely improves the copy? And even before you could finish, they'll scream in unison — "Headlines". Think about it - the headline is the first line your readers read. How many times have you read a blog, clicked an ad, played a podcast, or scrolled to the bottom of the website just because the headline lured you? Correct. Quite often. Since the headline is the first thing your readers see, it should grab attention. It must be like an oasis in the desert. A chandelier in the hallway. A Victoria's Secret billboard at a signal. You got the point. So how can you write such headlines? Well, use this time-tested 4 U's formula. The 4 U's stands for This is a simple and effective technique used by copywriters for decades. And in the next few minutes, you'll learn it too. urgent, unique, ultra-specific, and useful. Shall we begin? 1. Urgent Urgency is among the most used marketing techniques in copywriting. The idea here is to make the readers act be it clicking your ad, reading your blog, or placing the order. NOW; Marketers often create a sense of urgency to drive sales with limited-time deals, such as discounts valid for a few hours or a limited number of products. Here urgency is created using scarcity. This technique is equally effective when writing headlines — drawing the reader in to read the rest of the copy or article. Another way to create urgency in your headlines is by adding a time element. For instance: vs "How to grow business with blogs?" "How to grow business with blogs within 60 days?" 2.  Unique Say something unique or say something usual in a new way. This will make your headline cut through the clutter and convey to the readers that your offer is something unique. Your headline is fighting for attention amidst the hundreds of other content. You gotta stand out to cut through the clutter and you can do it by saying something unique. The headline below is considered to be the most famous automobile ad ever written. “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the New Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock” See how the feature of the car is communicated in a unique way. The headline could have been something like: "The new Rolls-Royce is super silent". But, it won't have been that effective. So, offer something unique in your headlines or say the usual in a different way. 3. Ultra Specific Your readers have questions. If your headline can answer them and feed their curiosity, you can persuade them to read. And being specific... being ultra-specific helps you do that. (scratch that) Read this headline: ‘How to tour the U.S.A. for £35 a week’ This headline by David Ogilvy is a part of the American tourism campaign. It made the U.S Travel Services offices work overtime to handle the inquiries. The headline worked because it addressed the Europeans' exaggerated impression about traveling the U.S.A. They thought it was too expensive. The ad headline directly attacked their notion with a This is way more effective than saying, "Touring the U.S.A is cheaper than you think". very specific figure of £35 a week . 4. Useful “The best headlines appeal to people’s self-interest, or give news.” — John Caples. When you offer something useful that benefits and appeals to the reader's interest they are more likely to read it. Useful can be anything that provides value to the readers or solves their problem. Even you're reading this blog because you want to learn to write better headlines. The headline appealed to your self-interest and promised something useful. A classic example of a useful headline is , the title of the book by Dale Carnegie. It's simple but works because it promises you'll be able to make friends and persuade people — appealing to a common human interest. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" Applying this formula Next time you write the headlines consider these 4 guidelines. Ask yourself if your headline creates a sense of urgency, is unique, is ultra-specific, and is useful. You can evaluate how strong your headline is by ranking it on a scale of 1 to 4 (1 being weak and 4 being strong). Your headlines might not score 3 or 4 on all U's, but if it does on any 3 U's, it is indeed a strong headline. And, in case, if you need someone to write such headlines for you — . just drop me a line Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash

Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines With This Classic Copywriting Formula

, but decentralized systems require cooperation in order to work. If Richard Hendricks’ dream of the new internet is to come to fruition, it’s going to mean we’re relying on our friends, neighbors, and even strangers to provide us with information and connection to the outside world. It’s going to take communities of ultra-cooperation to work. But can we rely on networks of people (some or all of whom are self-interested) to deliver? Call me the optimist, but I think humans actually have the necessary "stuff" to make it work well. Here, I lay out some of our evolved moral fabric, and how that moral fabric can be tailored to socially scale the decentralized web. Interest in the dWeb is blossoming Cooperation refers to win-win interactions among peers. This is in contrast to one person dominating from a transaction at the expense of the other (cooperation is not altruism or free-riding). One of the most common forms of cooperation is direct reciprocity, “you give me this, and I’ll give you that.” —one that Benjamin Franklin picked up when dolling out perhaps a surprising piece of wisdom: “If you want to make a friend, ask for a favor.” This is effective because it makes future interactions more likely; the person who gave you a favor is more likely to seek you out and ask for a return favor. This back-and-forth keeps the social balance-sheet open.  Salespeople and charities have also picked up on the effectiveness of appealing to our ethic of reciprocity. Perhaps you’ve received personalized address labels or cute kitten calendars in the mail—a gift accompanied by a pre-stamped donation return envelope. Reciprocity is an incredibly strong ethic in humans This reciprocity creates social capital that helps us all survive. We all come out ahead when we return favors, or when we collaborate to accomplish something that’s impossible to achieve alone. Studies of primates have revealed that cooperation is generally paid out with equitable resources to encourage future interaction—for instance, if primates hunt big game  together, the monkeys which accomplish capturing the game tend to receive more of the meat than the other primates who participated, but were less pivotal. This equitable reimbursement ensures that those primates continue to have buddies to hunt with in the future. Nobody wants to include selfish, meat-hoarding monkeys on their hunts. Humans have evolved reciprocity to an even greater degree. But, as this example may imply, constant cooperation is not a foolproof technique to ensure one’s own (or even the whole species’) survival. , it only takes one free-rider to ruin its effectiveness by stripping the “always cooperators” of their resources. This was the downfall of Napster’s predecessor, Gnutella. Gnutella got around the centralized directory that Napster relied on, but did so by assuming that its user base would cooperatively upload files online as requests from other users came along. Unfortunately, it only takes a few free-riders to ruin it for the cooperators. In the case of Gnutella, there were a lot: the vast majority of their user base would request music, but wouldn’t upload music. The burden became too heavy for the cooperative users, and Gnutella largely fell apart. It had a faulty premise about human nature: we don't cooperate. Constant cooperation is exploitable always Two partners in crime are arrested on minor charges and questioned separately. They are told if they rat out their partner on a larger crime (and their partner stays quiet), they will walk out free. If they both stay quiet, they will receive only light prison time for the minor charges. If, however, their partner rats them out for the larger crime, too, then they will face a long prison sentence. In a single round of the prisoner’s dilemma, people tend to stop cooperating with their crime partner and this results in a bad situation: long prison sentences for both prisoners. In fact, even when it seems to be in out best interest, humans aren’t “always cooperators.” Today, game theorists illustrate this issue with the prisoner’s dilemma. Perhaps obviously, behaviors in the prisoner’s dilemma change dramatically if players are required to play multiple rounds with the same partner. That is, we’re more likely to cooperate with each other when we’re stuck with each other for the foreseeable future. Evolutionarily, we want to keep our ingroups happy, because we partially depend on them for our survival. (Don’t make the one guy who knows how to make fire mad at you just before winter…) But, if always cooperating is exploitable, and making people mad is bad for business what’s the right balance? The mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport developed an algorithm that won a tournament of repeated prisoner’s dilemma games and largely solved the cooperation strategy problem. His solution operates off a familiar principle: . Cooperation between peers is maximized according to these simple rules: That’s it. If two peers play according to this algorithm, they will always cooperate. If one of the players doesn’t use this algorithm, they experience punishment until they change their ways. Thus, the initially uncooperative peer is incentivized to cooperate in future interactions. Tit-for-Tat 1. Cooperate on first interactions with a stranger. 2. On subsequent interactions, copy what the other player did  (cooperate/defect) in the prior round. . Gnutella transferred whole files between peers at a time, effectively operating as a single round of the prisoner’s dilemma. By breaking files up into small bits, BitTorrent forced the file transfer process into one of a repeated prisoner’s dilemma. As user’s download pieces of their target file from a given swarm of others, they simultaneously upload pieces of files to the peers from whom they’ve downloaded the most data recently. In contrast to Gnutella, BitTorrent successfully coordinated cooperative file-transferring, and once boasted managing 43% of internet traffic. Bram Cohen, who created the now popular BitTorrent protocol, used the Tit-for-Tat principle as its backbone But holdup—the problem of peer-to-peer connections hasn’t been totally alleviated. These sorts of "cooperation" algorithms are still exploitable if the assumptions they are based on are faulty—namely if the repeated rounds aspect is questionable. One way this assumption can be violated in P2P algorithms is when groups are sufficiently large, such that free-riders can effectively avoid repeat rounds of cooperation dilemmas. If everybody follows rule #1 of the Tit-for-Tat principle, then free-riders can take advantage of initial cooperation by interacting with others exactly one time. The tit-for-tat principle doesn’t work very well in large groups, because you can trade  partners without fear that you’ll run out of “suckers” to interact with. And we actually saw algorithmic responses to BitTorrent which would allow you to download files without uploading files by constantly finding new “swarms” from which to download the next needed file pieces (without needing to give file pieces back). One example of this is BitThief. The internet is nothing if not a massive group. There’s no shortage of  cooperative “suckers” online. So now what? The dWeb requires, by definition, large groups of people. Well, one option is for large groups to evolve a collective ethic of punishing people who have harmed others (not just punishing those who harm the self). But in order to do this, humans would need to be able to detect free-riders. As it turns out, humans are very sensitive to detecting cheaters—more so than they are sensitive to similar unfair outcomes happening by “accident.” For instance, babies as young as 15 months are surprised when a person distributes goods unequally (i.e. when people who put the same levels of work in get different payoffs) but show no such surprise when the unfair outcome is distributed via non-conscious actions (i.e. physical constraints of the environment cause the "unfair" payoffs). But detecting cheaters isn’t enough to deter them, they must actually punish free-riders. And, indeed, people interacting in large groups also conferred reproductive advantages by enacting third-party punishment. That is, humans evolved to punish people for wrongdoing, even when the wrongdoing was not directed at themselves. This tendency has been confirmed by psychological studies: not only are humans willing to punish third-party bad actors, but they are willing to incur personal cost to do so, and experience pleasure in correcting third-party free-riders in spite of these costs. But we still aren't home free. Individuals in large groups can protect themselves from third party punishments if their identities are unknown. Two common approaches to online reputation management include (one person creates multiple accounts to boost their online popularity) and (a person opens a new account in order to shed a bad reputation on their old account). Decentralized identity platforms like Sovrin or may help get around this by making it sufficiently difficult to re-create new identities, though it is unlikely that any platform can be completely immune from these reputation management schemes. One unique challenge the digital world has faced in detecting and subsequently punishing cheaters is reputation management. Sybil attacks white-washing Iris Recently there have been a number of suggestions for making peers in a decentralized network offer up some sort of “stake” which can be “burned” or "slashed" in the event punitive action needs to be taken against a troll or free-rider. The logic is that people won’t free-ride or otherwise be uncooperative if doing so incurs a cost to themselves. But these sorts of suggestions need to be considered gingerly, particularly for social networks. Alongside digital identity, stake-slashing offers a potential solution to such bad actors, because stake could theoretically be burned before they have an opportunity to withdraw from a platform. Humans are prone to enacting revenge, and bad actors could, in turn, burn the stakes of innocent others to discredit their punishers. This can create a regression of stake-burning, anti-social behavior—probably the exact opposite of what the dWeb needs. There is potential to curb such stake-burning by requiring the punisher to incur a cost themselves—though even this suggestion should be implemented with caution. As noted previously, people don’t mind incurring some small costs for the pleasure of punishing bad actors. Online, the potential pool of punishers is large, and it wouldn’t be inconceivable for micropunishments from numerous third parties to become far too harsh. Punishments should probably be local in some sense—meaning the free-rider is punished only in the context of the relationship between the wrong-doer and the punisher, not globally across a protocol. Another consideration in bad-actor detection is allowing for a margin of error. Humans are pretty bad at reading tone and intention in online communications. It’s not difficult to imagine a miscommunication occurring in which one party burns another’s stake after misunderstanding what was intended. Likewise, . For instance, if a peer involved in a BitTorrent protocol went down multiple times, honest nodes might think that peer is using BitTheif and throw them off the network. peers on a network that accidentally go down might look as though they are free-riding Fortunately, the evolution of morals also gives us tips about how we might handle these sorts of cooperation “accidents” and previous bad actors turned cooperative: forgiveness. Forgiveness is clearly seen throughout human social functioning, but it’s also rampant in chimpanzees and bonobos as well. Primatologist has noted that primates, after a fight, are often seen extending hands to one another, and offering comfort in the form of hugs or sex. Typically, reparations are initiated on the part of the bad actor (or the peer who did the questionable behavior of going offline). And there is computational evidence to back up the usefulness of forgiveness mechanisms: Frans DeWall simulation studies have revealed that resources are maximized in groups which instill some sort of program of forgiveness. In fact, forgiveness is the only performance tweak to the tit-for-tat protocol that I am aware of. It’s called “ ,” and it’s not hard to see why it offers an improvement in the real, messy world of misunderstandings and hardware malfunctions. Imagine that you’re playing a repeated round of the prisoner’s dilemma. Things seem to be going well, and both you and your partner are operating on the original tit-for-tat principle. Then, all of a sudden, you go offline. When you come back online and interact with the peer, a funny thing happens: they screw you over. What neither of you realize is that they thought you screwed them over when you went offline, so they are returning your free-riding favor. Now since you both run on tit-for-tat, you’re stuck in an infinite loop of not cooperating. This forgiveness tweak allows the peers to restore cooperation in the future, thus extracting mutual benefits once more. generous tit-for-tat Generous tit-for-tat offers a simple tweak: if your partner is uncooperative, frequently (but don't always) reciprocate. A quick word about “trustlessness.” I like the idea, but Cryptocurrencies, despite being heralded as trustless, are simply not (yet) trustless. 51% attack aside, double-spending is still a problem for relatively new transactions in which a fork can overtake the main chain—hence the advice to “wait six blocks” before delivering a good or service. Even if all of the (many) cryptocurrency attacks are patched, these transactions are meant to reflect what’s happened in the not-so-trustless world. This is partly why multi-sig and transaction mediator systems have emerged. These mediator businesses indicate a trust issue in my opinion. So long as the dWeb is used to enhance connectivity of humans, trust is relevant. I’m skeptical about our ability to deliver trustless algorithms. Much of the dWeb technology is new, and I cannot say for certain whether full trustlessness is achievable. However, I can say that we humans have evolved to use trust as a tool for expanding our potential via cooperation. And we’ve come a long way. While we’re slowly improving our algorithms of “trustlessness,” I hope some of the evolved moral-social tendencies I’ve outlined can be implemented into our algorithms as well. We humans are pretty savvy about navigating mesh networks. Afterall, we naturally are one. Disclaimer: I am building out the decentralized web with ERA, a peer-to-peer database (GUN), identity (Iris), and token (AXE) company. If you enjoyed this article, you might want to check out my interviews with dWeb and crypto startup founders on YouTube. I love making new friends--please also connect with me on Twitter !

Psychology of the dWeb: Incentives to cooperate on the decentralized internet

Robotization of routine operations, when robots rather than people are used to solve simple but labor-intensive tasks, has become very active. Many things are being automated, including telephone conversations with customers. Neuro.net is developing technologies that can improve the capabilities of robots. In this post, developers talk about the technologies and details of recognizing the interlocutor’s gender by voice and working on important elements of the conversation. First, we’ll talk about a business case, then we’ll discuss technologies in detail. One of the most interesting business cases involves the introduction of a voice robot instead of employees of the call center of a partner company. The robot’s capabilities were used not for regular tasks, such as clarifying the delivery address, but in order to find out why some customers have become less likely to visit the company’s website. The technology was based on a fully functional neural network rather than individual scripts. It was the neural network that helped solve the problems that usually confuse robots. First of all, we are talking about such answers of the interlocutor as “well, I don’t know yet, maybe yes or rather no” or even “well, probably, not.” Words that are common to humans become an insurmountable obstacle for a robot. After the training, the robot understands the meaning of different phrases and possible answers to them. The robot had several voices, both male and female. The main task was to make the robot more like a person, so that its human interlocutor would not test the capabilities of the machine itself but would conduct a dialog within the framework of the target scenario. Below is an example of the result. https://soundcloud.com/daniil-dymshits/sets/neuronet-kupivip-black-friday The robot listens to the interlocutor and gives meaningful answers. The total number of different branches of the conversation script is more than a thousand. The main goal of this robot was to understand the reason for the decrease in customer activity on the company’s website and to make an interesting offer to customer. This was one of the company’s first attempts to automate the call centers. New robots are significantly improved. Here are some more examples of how robots communicate with humans: , , . first second third Now let’s talk about the underlining technologies. There are three key technological features that ensure the performance of the robot: ● Recognition of the interlocutor’s gender using their voice ● Age recognition ● Managing dialog with a human interlocutor Recognition of the interlocutor’s gender using their voice Initially, this function was developed to conduct surveys using robots. Previously, surveys were conducted by people who filled out a questionnaire with a number of questions. For example, it was necessary to indicate the gender of the interlocutor. It is clear that a human interviewer does not need to ask who they are talking to, a man or a woman. In 99% of cases, everything is clear. With robots, the situation is different; in order for them to more or less accurately learn to recognize voices, developers had to solve many problems. And this work was not in vain, now this technology is used to personalize offers and voice prompts depending on gender. What is it for? An important point: the female voice is universal and applicable for working with the widest range of products, and it is especially important for products for women. , a female voice is perceived positively by any audience, respectively, in this case, the conversion is better. The exception is campaigns to promote “male” products, when a male voice is preferable. According to various studies First, primary data processing is performed based on the processing of voice recordings and fragments lasting 20 ms. All collected voice fragments are preprocessed using the VAD (Voice Activity Detection) component. This is necessary to separate the grains from the chaff — that is, the speech from noise. All unnecessary elements are removed, thereby increasing the accuracy of the models. How does it work? The so-called space of cepstral coefficients of the first/second order differences is used for recognition. The GMM ( ) method is the basis for this approach. Gauss Mixture Models So, we take an interval of 10–20 ms and calculate the current power spectrum, after which we apply the inverse Fourier transform for the logarithm of the spectrum with the search for the necessary coefficients. Our GMM models are set up separately for training using male and female voices, and we also use models to determine adult and children’s voices. Of course, you cannot train the system from scratch, you need voice recordings with markups. To increase the efficiency of the system, we use the coefficients of timbre voice models: ● Timbral sharpness ● Timbral warmth ● Timbral brightness ● Timbral depth ● Timbral robustness ● Timbre growth ● Timbral unevenness ● Timbral reverb Timbre models are needed to correctly identify the voices of children since any other models consider the child’s voice as female. In addition, you need to distinguish between gruff female voices (for example, the voice of an elderly smoking woman), high male voices, etc. By the way, if a person said “hello” and then coughed, then all previous models without timbre filters consider such a voice as male. The main component of the system is the data classification module based on the MLP multilayer perceptron. It receives data from models of male and female voices and data from timbral models. At the input, the system receives an array of preclassified values, and at the output, the result of determining the gender. The described technology is used to work in both online (according to the first phrase of the customer) and offline classification modes (after the conversation). Gender recognition accuracy is around 95%. It is important to note the delay when working online does not exceed 120–150 ms, which is extremely important to make the robot more like a person. Usually, the pauses during communication between a robot and a human are not milliseconds but seconds, which, of course, looks strange to the human interlocutor, and it immediately becomes clear that the digital system is involved in the communication. Developers are also going to add functionality for working with text. If the interlocutor speaks about itself in a feminine gender, then the interlocutor is definitely a woman. In the near future, this technology will be improved and integrated into the recognition system. Determining the interlocutor’s age The main goal is to prevent the offer of various products and services to minors. In addition, knowing the age is useful to personalize offers by age categories. What is it for? For this purpose, exactly the same technologies are used as in the previous case. The accuracy of the system is about 90%. How does it work? Constructing dialogs And now, we will discuss the most interesting part — the principles of constructing dialogs. To effectively replace a person, a robot must be able to work both in linear and nonlinear dialog scenarios. In the first case, it can be a questionnaire, and in the second one it can be interaction with subscribers of a call center, technical support service, etc. What is it for? We use the NLU Engine based on semantic analysis of texts received from ASR systems. Then, recognition objects such as entities and intents, which are used in the logic for constructing conversational flows, are defined. How does it work? Here is an example of using this technology. A text received from a speech recognition system (ASR): “In general, I am interested in your proposal, but I would like something cheaper. And I’m a little busy right now. Could you call me back at six o’clock tomorrow?” Objects populated using the NLU Engine: Intents: confirmation=true objection=expensive question=null callback=true wrong_time=true Entities: date= 02.01.2019 (suppose the call date is January 1, 2019) time=18:00 amount=6 The approach to filling objects in this example: Intents: • The “I am interested in your proposal” text has been translated into the “confirmation” intent with a value of “true.” • The “but I would like something cheaper” text has been translated into the “objection” intent with the value of “expensive.” • The “And I’m a little busy right now” text has been translated into the “wrong_time” intent with the value of “true.” • The “Could you call me back at six o’clock tomorrow?” text has been translated into the “call_back” intent with the value of “true.” • The subscriber did not ask any questions, so the “question” intent is null. Entities: • The “tomorrow” text has been automatically translated into the “date” entity with the value of “January 2, 2019” using the following formula: current_date + 1 (suppose that the date of the call was January 1, 2019). • The “at six o’clock” text has been automatically translated into the “time” entity with the value of “6:00 p.m.” • The “six” text was translated into the “amount” entity with a value of “6,” which in this logic can be ignored since there are entities with a higher priority. All intents and entities are assigned specific values, which are then used to construct a conversational flow. Now, let’s talk about the algorithms that are supported by the NLU Engine. The system includes two levels. The first level works with a relatively small sample of data containing about 600–1,000 records. ML algorithms are used here. Recognition accuracy is 90%–95%. The transition to the second level is carried out after the launch of the project and the accumulation of a large sample of data containing more than 1 million records. DL algorithms are used here. Recognition accuracy is 95%–98%. This solution works with two subsystems: - A subsystem for categorization and classification of text data - A dialog design subsystem Both subsystems work in parallel. The categorization and classification system receives the recognized text based on voice communication with the subscriber and issues the filled-in Entity and Value parameters to construct an answer. The dialog construction subsystem for nonlinear scenarios is built on the basis of a neural network. The system receives the recognized text based on voice communication with the subscriber and issues a decision on which recording should be played back at the next moment. A nonlinear scenario is suitable for the first support line where the robot does not know who is calling, which product is of interest, and what questions can be asked. Here, the further course of the dialog depends on the customer’s response. However, for outgoing calls, the best solution would be a linear scenario. The corresponding example was given at the very beginning of the article. Another example of a linear scenario is related to conducting a survey when it does not matter what the customer answers since the answers will be further analyzed by professionals. Nevertheless, it is important to guide the customer through all the questions that are on the list. In conclusion, we want to emphasize that voice robots will not replace people. Now, they are doing an excellent job of their routine tasks by calling people to ask them some questions and listen, record, and/or analyze the answers. Thus, call center and technical support operators will be spared from performing the same routine procedures. Instead, they can focus on solving really interesting problems and completing important tasks.

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