2 . Pay No Mind: People Admit to Driving, Texting, Drinking During Telehealth Visits

A recent study of 1,000 Americans revealed people are quite distracted during their virtual doctors and therapy appointments.

Hello, people of the technologically advanced world. Remember how we all hoped technology would make us better, more evolved? How’s that going for us lately? Great, I suspect — because look at how far we have come!     1    

The only problem is that we all seem to be having a tough time concentrating. On Wednesday, a survey from a health company found people texting, driving, watching TV, playing video games and even drinking during telehealth visits.

The study was small, surveying only 1,000 Americans over the age of 18 — but people admitted to exercising (18%), scrolling through social media (21%) and even smoking (11%) during health visits.     2     When Forbes expanded on the study through case studies and doctors’ interviews, they found out it’s not even just patients-it’s doctors, too.

Confused? Well, let’s talk it through…

Who decided we should be sober during health visits anyway?

To be fair, I have always thought that conversations about fungal infections, or having to strip off completely naked in front of a complete stranger, are things best done drunk. But if you really want to take your health seriously, perhaps it’s better to start with a clear mind.

Oh, so you mean there are downsides to visiting the doctors from the comfort of our homes?

    3    

Get used to it! Now people are pretty good in the art of multitasking.

Yes. And for us to truly move forward we must constantly disrupt! Or be disrupted! By, er…drinking beers. At least some people were exercising during their health visits, I suppose.

Are there any dangerous behaviors which have been reported?

Some have admitted to driving during their health appointments. In fact, one doctor told Forbes that she has had to ask patients to pull over on to the side of the road during their appointments so that they can concentrate.

    4     Doctors have said that they are also finding it hard to concentrate in this new reality, where the buzzing of our phones, the allure of the television, or the unexpected knock on the door seem to be teaming up against us to steal our attention while at work.

Perhaps your life is not that interesting-your therapist might be busy doing more important things, like watching TV series.

4 . Watch Out for Social Media Posting

Many people share a lot of posts and comments on social media without really being aware of the consequences that they could have for them, their family and, their friends, and even third parties involved involuntarily.

    1     . Because of this, before uploading things to the Internet, it’s important to think twice and make sure we do everything we can to avoid posting anything that could later become a bigger problem than it should be.

Publishing your date of birth so that your contacts on social media get notifications is a common thing that many people do nowadays. However, revealing this information is much riskier than most people realize.     2    . Making it public might backfire in this case, as you are making the information available to everyone at all times.

It’s hard to deny that sharing information on social media can contribute to creating an atmosphere of free speech.     3    . These are usually created with different intentions in mind. Creating and sharing them can have several undesirable consequences. Among them are the increase of hostility toward certain groups, the attack on a person’s integrity, and the loss of the reputation of a company.

There are many people out there who find no issue in sharing screenshots of private WhatsApp conversations. This, by the way, applies to any other messaging service. Even in the rare cases when we have the other person’s consent, doing so might be considered a crime in several countries if you end up violating the right to communicate privately, revealing secrets, and/or damaging the reputation of someone involved in the conversation.

You know that, depending on the place you’re in, you are supposed to behave in one way or the other. For example, if you’re at the office you won’t act the same way as if you were at home or a restaurant. This is just as important when it comes to posting things online.     4     In this case, what you should avoid is insulting someone online, ridiculing them, or making fun of a mistake they may have made.

5 . Chief Executives Are the New Monarchs

When Christopher Columbus sought finance for his planned westward voyage to the “Indies”, he first turned to the king of Portugal before achieving success with Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Monarchs financed explorations because they believed such trips would boost their power and treasuries.

In the 21st century, corporate executives have become deeply involved in adventure and exploration. Sir Richard Branson of Virgin and Jeff Bezos of Amazon have travelled to the edge of space. Elon Musk of Tesla has developed the Space X programme and is talking of the eventual colonization of Mars.    1    Like past rulers, modern tycoons build their own monuments in the form of corporate headquarters, not just skyscrapers in New York but the vast, low-rise campuses in Silicon Valley. Whereas the ancient dynasts travelled in horse-driven coaches, modern CEOs separate themselves from the public in chauffeur-driven cars and private jets.

    2    At court of Louis I, France’s “Sun King”, the rhythm of the day was entirely devoted to the monarchs habits, with the luckiest courtiers (侍从) watching him get dressed, have lunch, and go to bed. Modern CEOs also have the ability to change the schedules of those around them. If they get up at 5 a.m. to send messages, someone on the staff will feel obliged to rise early in order to answer them. If they hold video conferences on weekends, the family life of subordinates (下属) will suffer.

Royal dynasties added to their empires through both military conquest and strategic marriages. Modern executives achieve the same effect by using their financial power to buy smaller rivals.    3    

In effect, the evil of ancient monarchs was too much ambition. The military overreach (不自量力) of Spain’s Philip Ⅱ in his battle with England and the Netherlands was followed by the country’s steady decline as a global power, for example.    4    They often acquire businesses that do not fit with the rest of their enterprise. Or, like many an ancient ruler, they make the mistake of fighting on two fronts. The greatest danger to monarchs can sometimes arrive when they appear to be at the height of their powers.

6 . Too clever to be wise

I am not the calm, sensible person that I hope to be. It didn’t take much to discover this-just my answers to a couple of quick questions.

Here is the first: How many pairs did Moses take on the ark(方舟)? And the second: Jack is looking at Anne but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

It took me no seconds at all to answer the first: I couldn’t, but I thought the Bible would tell me. What I did not see, because I was too busy looking at the end of the question and not the premise(前提), was that the answer is zero. Moses was not busy building any arks; that was Noah.

As for Anne, George and Jack, I quickly concluded we could not know, because we had not been told the status of Anne.     1     If I had stopped to draw two diagrams of Jack, Anne and George looking at one another, I would have seen that no matter whether Anne was married, a married person was indeed looking at an unmarried one.

This is what the science writer David Robson has called “the intelligence trap”-our tendency to assume that general intelligence leads to good thinking. Actually, it doesn’t. It doesn’t protect us from cognitive biases(认知偏误)like the ones I have just demonstrated.     2     They seldom question their assumptions, learn from their mistakes, take advice or change their decisions when discovering new facts. Instead, they use their brainpower to skillfully defend their original positions.

    3    In health, 15% of all hospital diagnoses are wrong, often because they are made quickly and rarely rethought. In business, a reluctance to think through consequences, question optimism or challenge decisions leads to countless failures and some major disasters. Robson’s term for these failures is “functional stupidity”. These errors could be largely avoided if we could approach problems differently.

The intelligence trap is largely a cultural phenomenon. Western culture highly values quick decisions, dominant leadership and simple answers. From school onwards, they are taught to argue their case convincingly, persuade others to follow.     4    

The key insight is our pressing need to use intellectual humility, open-mindedness, curiosity and wide consultation, rather than the blind stubbornness and grandstanding(哗众取宠)that so often passes for judgement. It has never been more necessary to recognize and release ourselves from the intelligence trap.

8 . High school cheating on the rise

According to a recent survey, 61% of American high school students have admitted to cheating in exams at least once, an increase of 5% over last year. It can be argued such a response may not mean much. After all, most students have been faced with the temptation to peek at a neighbour’s test paper. And students can be hard on themselves in judging such behaviour.

More and more states are requiring students to pass academic tests in order to receive their high school diplomas. And many educators fear that an increase in the use of state exams will lead to a corresponding rise in cheating.

Cheating is now considered to be a major problem in colleges and universities. Several professors say they’ve dropped the traditional term paper requirement because many students buy prewritten term papers, and they can’t track down all the cheaters any more.

Colleges and universities across the nation have decided to do more than talk about the students’ cheating. For instance, the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland launched a campaign to stop one form of cheating. Students are required to produce an ID card with an attached photo so as to catch “ringers”, students who take tests for other students.

The majority of students at the University of Maryland applauded the campaign. The campus newspaper editorial said, “Like police arresting speeders, the intent is not to catch everyone, but rather to catch enough to spread the word.”

9 . As people recognize the dangers of fossil fuel plants, especially the risk of global warming from carbon dioxide production, nuclear power begins to look more attractive. But what about the waste — all that highly radioactive debris (废弃物) that will endure for thousands of years? Nuclear waste is one of the biggest technical issues that any future president is likely to face.     1     Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. Even after 100,000 years, the radiation will still be above 10% of the level it had when it left the reactor.     2     How can we possibly prove that this material can be kept safe for 100,000 years?

Still the US government persists in pursuing “safe” nuclear waste disposal (处理). It has created nuclear waste facilities buried deep within Yucca Mountain, Nevada. To keep the waste safe, the storage rooms are 1,000 feet below the surface.     3     It needs at least 2 square miles. The cost of the facility is expected to reach $100 billion, with hundreds of billions of dollars more in operating costs. To make matters worse, earthquakes happen often in the Yucca Mountain region. More than 600 earthquakes of magnitude of 2.5 and higher have occurred within a 50-mile radius of the mountain in the past few decades. And the mountain was produced by volcanic eruptions. Although that was millions of years ago, how sure can we be that the waste facility won’t be torn apart by another eruption?

    4     Why not just send the waste into the Sun? Well, maybe that’s not such a good idea, since on launch some rockets do crash back down to the Earth. Some scientists have proposed that the waste be put in ships and sunk under the oceans. Yet just the fact that scientists make such suggestions seems to emphasize how the problem really is.