Is Multitasking Always Good?

Not only do smart-phones provide unrestricted access to information, they provide perfect opportunities to multitask. Any activity can be accompanied by music, selfies or social media updates. Of course, some people pick poor times to tweet or text, and lawmakers have steeped in.     1     In Honolulu, it’s illegal to text or even look at your phone while crossing the street, and in the Netherlands they’ve banned texting while biking.

    2     You need to self-regulate. Understanding how the brain multitasks and why we find multitasking so appealing will help you realize the danger or pulling out your phone.

Multitasking feels like doing two things at the same time, so it seems the danger lies in asking one mental process to do two unrelated things — for texting drivers, watching the screen and the road.

Twenty states have instituted bans on driving using a hand-held phone while still allowing hands-free calls. Yet hands-free or hand-held makes no difference.     3     The real problem is the switch of attention between the conversation and road, and that affects performance.

Please sense this, and when on the phone they drive slower and increase their following distance, but they are far too confident that these measures reduce risks. This overconfidence extends to other activities. A 2015 survey showed that a majority of students who use social media, text or watch TV while studying think that they can still comprehend the material they’re studying.

People multitask merely because they see no harm in it; they see benefits.       4     Most people will still choose to multitask. But they should, at the very least , be fully aware of how that choice affects them and the potential consequences for themselves and others. They need to pay attention to how much — or how little — they are paying attention.

【推荐1】The sunk cost effect is the ongoing investment of time, money and effort that an individual makes in any attempt, even if rationally the results appear unpromising. When any individual has already made an investment of time, money or effort, it becomes difficult to withdraw from the task. An error of judgement occurs when we fail to cut our losses-the sunk cost.

The simplest method of beating this error of judgement is to simply stop investing when it’s not producing results. As the age-old proverb goes, “Why cry over spilt milk?”But we still can’t seem to do it! Why?

People perceive the same amount of losses and gains in a different light. This means that the same amount of losses will hurt more than an equal amount of gain. For example, if a business is going through heavy losses, one must decide to either shut it down or continue. Shutting it down is a definite loss of money, time and effort. People become risk-seeking when they are facing a definite loss. They will pump more money as a gamble to achieve a positive outcome. If there is a positive outcome and the business starts making a profit, this has given them a higher utility(效用) than simply making profits from the beginning. They managed to rise up from a heavy loss, thereby giving higher satisfaction about the decision to continue investing.

We, however, will not choose to honor sunk costs on every occasion. This is especially true in the case of insurance. Let’s say that you have taken home insurance and probably never used it. You are not going to burn your house down just so you can utilize your house insurance.

【推荐3】Nuclear bombs. That’s the go-to answer for incoming space objects like asteroids(小行星) and comets, as far as Hollywood is concerned. Movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon rely on nuclear weapons, delivered by stars like Bruce Willis, to save the world and deliver the drama.

But planetary defense experts say in reality, if astronomers spotted a dangerous incoming space rock, the safest and best answer might be something unnoticeable, like simply pushing it off course by crashing it with a small spacecraft.

That’s just what NASA did on Monday evening, when a spacecraft headed direct into an asteroid called Dimorphos, which is around 7 million miles away and poses no threat to Earth. It’s about 525 feet across and orbits another larger asteroid.

In images streamed as the impact neared, the egg-shaped asteroid grew in size from a little spot on screen to have its full rocky surface come quickly into focus before the signal went dead as the spacecraft hit right on target.

Events happened exactly as engineers had planned, they said, with nothing going wrong. “As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success,” said Elena Adams, the mission systems engineer, who added that scientists looked on with “both terror and joy” as the spacecraft neared its final destination.

The impact was the peak of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a 7-year and more than $300 million effort which launched a space vehicle in November of 2021 to perform humanity’s first ever test of planetary defense technology. It will be about two months, scientists said, before they will be able to determine if the impact was enough to drive the asteroid slightly off

NASA plans to launch an asteroid-hunting space telescope named NEO Surveyor in 2026. “We’ve tracked lots of space rocks, especially the larger ones that could cause extinction-level events. Thankfully, none currently threaten Earth. But many asteroids the size of Dimorphos haven’t yet   been discovered, and those could potentially take out a city if they came crashing down.” explains Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer.

【推荐1】The story of the emperor’s new clothes is one of Andersen’s best-known fables. Conmen (骗子) fool the emperor into believing they have made him a fabulous suit that the unworthy will be unable to see. Courtiers (侍从) dare not say that the emperor is naked; it takes a child to point out the obvious.

The moral is that people are often too hidebound by social tradition to state their views. How many companies have ploughed ahead with expensive projects that were favoured by the chief executive, even when other managers have had doubts?

People from different backgrounds approach problems from different angles—that much should be blindingly obvious. It is not just about selecting people for teams from both sexes and various ethnicities. Hire only Cambridge politics graduates or Harvard MBAs or Stanford software engineers and they will have studied under the same professors and absorbed similar world views regardless of their gender or skin colour.

In the modern world, with all its complexity, co-operation is essential if breakthroughs are to be made. In science and engineering, 90% of papers are now written by teams rather than individuals. Analysis of American patent fillings since 1975 showed teams dominate in every one of the 36 defined categories.

There is another element to selecting a good team: ensuring that those viewpoints are heard and respected. That may not happen if those in charge are overbearing. A study of over 300 projects by the Rotterdam School of Management found that those led by junior managers were more likely to succeed than those led by senior managers—maybe because other team members were less scared about pointing out potential dangers to someone lower down the pecking order (权力等级).

The ability to speak up within an organization, without fear of punishment, is known as “psychological safety”. Mr. Syed cites a study of teams at Google, which found that self-reported psychological safety was by far the most important factor behind successful teamwork at the technology giant.

One way to overcome shyness while brainstorming, for instance, is for everyone to write down their ideas but ensure their names are never known. That way, opinions about thoughts are less closely tied to the seniority of the thinker and can be tested against each other with less fear or favour.

【推荐2】In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed events that are related. A theory often involves an imaginary model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event could be produced. A good example of this is found in the kinetic molecular (分子运动) theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up of many small particles (微粒) that are in constant motion.

A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observations, helps to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a theory has been publicized, scientists design experiments to test the theory. If observations confirm the scientists’ predictions, the theory is supported. If observations do not confirm the predictions, the scientists must search further. There the scientists must search further. There may be a fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or rejected.

Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri Poincare said: “Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house.”

Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible solutions to the problem are formulated (制定). These possible solutions are called hypotheses (假设).

In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends the scientist’s thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes observations to test hypotheses. For without hypotheses, further investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are confirmed, they are incorporated (合并) into theories.

【推荐3】The train was speeding onward and the plains of Texas were pouring eastward.

A newly married pair had boarded this coach at San Antonio. The man’s face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun, and a direct result of his new black clothes was that from time to time he looked down respectfully at his clothes. He sat with a hand on each knee, like a man waiting in a barber’s shop. The glace she devoted to other passengers were shy. The bride was not pretty. She wore a dress of blue cashmere. She continually twisted her head to regard her puff sleeves. They embarrassed her. The blushes （脸红）caused by the careless glances of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange to see.

They were evidently very happy. “Ever been in a parlor-car （特等火车）before?” he asked, smiling with delight.

“No,” she answered; “I never was. It’s fine，ain’t it?”

“Great! And then after a while we’ll go forward to the dinner. Fresh meal in the world. Charge a dollar. ”

“Oh, do they?” cried the bride. “Charge a dollar? Why，that’s too much — for us — ain’t it, Jack?”

Later he explained to her about the trains. “You see, if s a thousand miles from one end of Texas to the other; and this runs right across it, and never stops but four times.” He had the pride of an owner. He pointed out to her the dazzling fittings of the coach; and in truth her eyes opened wider and she watched the sea-green velvet（丝绒人）, the shining bronze，silver, and glass, the wood that glowed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil. At one end a bronze statue held a support for a separated room, and on the ceiling were frescos（壁画）in olive and silver.

To the minds of the pair, their surroundings reflected the glory of their marriage that morning in San Antonio: this was the environment of their new estate; and the man’s face in particular shone with an elation （得意）that made him appear ridiculous to the Negro porter. This porter at times surveyed them with an amused and superior grin. On other occasions he bullied them with skill in ways that did not make it easy to them that they were being bullied. He oppressed them. But of this oppression they had small knowledge, and infrequently, a number of travelers covered them with stares of derisive （嘲讽的）enjoyment.

At last they went to the dining-car. Two rows of Negro waiters, in glowing white suits, surveyed their entrance with the interest. The pair fell to the seats of a waiter who happened to feel pleasure in steering them through their meal. He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly guide, his face radiant with kindness. The service, coupled with the ordinary deference（毕恭毕敬），was rare to them. And yet, as they returned to their coach, they showed in their faces a sense of escape.