Experiments in shopping habits January 12, 2007
Posted by dorigo in news, science.add a comment
Through three quarks daily (http://www.3quarksdaily.com/) I got to read a quite interesting article on the Economist about the nature of our spending habits and how we evaluate costs and benefits in our brain when deciding on a purchase.
Dr Loewenstein, an economist at Carnegie Mellon, teamed up with psychologists Brian Knutson of Stanford and Drazen Prelec of the MIT to study the matter through experiment. The team obtained information about the cognitive processes of volunteers asked to choose whether to buy goods displayed on a screen by using fMRI, a functional magnetic resonance imaging technique capable of recording local blood flow and oxygen consumption.
Quoting from the article (http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8516366), Dr. Loewenstein’s hypothesis is that
rather than weighing the present good against future alternatives, as orthodox economics suggests happens, people actually balance the immediate pleasure of the prospective possession of a product with the immediate pain of paying for it.
The team will now design new experiments to verify whether
in the same individuals, buying with credit cards eases the pain compared with paying by cash. If they find that it does, then credit cards may have to join the list of things such as fatty and sugary foods, and recreational drugs, that subvert human instincts in ways that seem pleasurable at the time but can have a long and malign aftertaste.
Towards a ban of credit cards ?
Premeditated murder January 12, 2007
Posted by dorigo in news, personal.5 comments
One month ago a family was murdered in Erba, Italy, with knives, a hammer, and fire. Raffaella Castagna, her 2-years old son, and her mother Paola Galli all died horribly, slaughtered by ferocious hands. A neighbor who had heard the screams was also killed, and her husband nearly escaped death.
The murderers were finally identified yesterday, nailed by a drop of blood which stained the interior of their car. Their names are Rosa Bazzi and Olindo Romano. They gave a full confession after cornered by the questions of the investigators. The couple lived at the first floor of the same building where, one floor above, lived the slaughtered family. After years of quarrels over the noise that the Castagna family produced, they finally decided to take action on the evening of December 11th.
The italian media have covered in excruciating detail the story, the investigations, and the final collapse of the murderers. I had paid little attention to the whole process, but what stroke me today was reading the confession of the woman, who explained the investigators how they had planned the multiple murder in every detail.
The couple had chosen the best time for their action, when everybody was dining with the TV on and would have not noticed any screams from the Castagna apartment. They carefully selected the weapons, they decided how to dress in suits that had to later be destroyed, even investigated on their future victims by following them and taking notes of their habits. They got a copy of the key to the building of the victims, brought material to set ablaze the crime scene. They even worked on an alibi, by rushing to a nearby town after the murder to get a dinner and a timed receipt.
And the murder was horrible and merciless. Once they crept in the apartment, they hammered Raffaella on the head and finished her with rage, hitting her with a knife 12 times. The same treatment was reserved to the mother Paola, while the little Youssef, the two-year old son, was killed as an animal, when Rosa pulled him up by the hair and slit the infant’s throat. But it was not over yet: they then had to deal with the occupants of the third floor, who had been alerted by the noise. Their throats were also slit, but the husband miraculously survived due to a congenital defect of his veins. He laid in a coma for almost a month, but is now recovering.
Finally, they set the apartment on fire, and merrily went to eat their dinner in Como. On the following days the investigators were able to detect a conversation in their apartment, when Rosa and Olindo finally rejoyced at the silence and quietness of their home.
The reason why I tell this story is that I ask myself whether we really are different from animals. If hatred - built day by day through a few years of frustration for being unable to sleep at night, in this case - can bring two people to such extreme acts of violence, it means that violence was there in a seminal form already. It was only damped by the fear of punishment, and no remorse appears to have plagued the murderers before they were finally framed.
Would we all be criminals if we had a chance of improving our life with a crime and the certainty of getting away with it ? There are times I am afraid we would.
