I think so too but the study doesn't mention that. It would be interesting future research

It is analogous to discrete vs continuous color spectrum. Discrete spectrum clearly separates all colors, whereas continuous spectrum has gradual transition.

My simplistic understanding is that people who dont like uncertainty tend to remember concepts as discrete as possible to avoid mixing different concepts. This helps them in reducing memory errors in distinguishing different concepts. However, this also reduces their ability to generalize, meaning they fail to see similarities among different concepts.

The study doesn't establish any causality. So, it is unclear whether how you remember information determines a dislike for uncertainty or vice versa.

From the article

"Knowledge about the world is stored in our semantic representations (that is, concepts that correspond to our knowledge about and experiences with the world). These semantic representations are structured following a similarity principle, such that the semantic representations of similar concepts are grouped closer together in neural and psychological space, and those of dissimilar concepts are farther apart1. Because stimuli often activate more than one concept, there is always some uncertainty when a person needs to identify which concept to retrieve. This mapping presents an ongoing challenge for those who are averse to uncertainty. One way to reduce this uncertainty is to separate the semantic representations that are activated by the same stimulus as much as possible in representational space. We posited that people structure their semantic representations in ways that satisfy their psychological needs, including the desire to reduce uncertainty. On the basis of classic work in cognitive science2, we hypothesized that to achieve this uncertainty-reduction goal, people who are averse to uncertainty should exhibit separated semantic representations, which would make each representation more easily identifiable."

Layman's language by the editorial team

"People who are averse to uncertainty usually have a strong motivation to mitigate uncertainty. In this work, the authors suggest that this motivation to decrease uncertainty might also affect semantic representations and related neural activity patterns. The reported findings are a fascinating demonstration of how individual differences can fundamentally affect our cognition"

I remember reading something like that years decades ago about Amazon rainforest or in general any coastal forests. They help pump or transfer water inland. Most rains fall within a few km of a coast. It is forests that recycle the water and transpire to restore moisture for rains further inland. So, cutting coastal forests is far more damaging as it disturbs entire water cycle of much much broader geography.

It is nice to final evidence of such long held traditional knowledge linking trees with rains.

From the article

" the projected deaths are not necessarily lower in scenarios with less warming or cleaner air. This is because while reducing PM2.5 pollution lowers the exposure level, increasing the size of vulnerable populations can significantly increase PM2.5-related deaths. For most countries, we find that changes in socio-demographic factors (for example, ageing and declining baseline mortality rates) play a more important role than the exposure level in shaping future health burden."

So, the gains from cleaner air are offset by demographic aging. Older people are more susceptible than the younger ones to air pollutant risks.

Well. His contribution is somewhat overhyped, at least in South Asian context. Had it not been groundwater, pumps, and electricity, those high yield hybrids would not have been successful. So, it wasnt as much green revolution as it was water pump revolution, and to some extent fertilizer revolution.

I suspect the same with most of such high yield seed varieties. They are often fertilizer and water intensive in reality, if not in labs, which defeats the purpose of having such seeds if you have unpredictable water supply.

No. Unless I missed it, it seems they just used "hurtful" in a sentence of a survey question.

How energy efficient is it as compared to the existing ones? Can we use it at homes? What are the other applications?

The title is uninformative and misleading. Here are some highlights from the study:

>Over 87% of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, consistently express broad levels of support for free speech and free expression. But, there are willing to selectively withdraw First Amendment protections at times for some category of people. Then why do then make such strong endorsements regarding First Amendment protections? One reason to be skeptical about these declarations of support for free speech is that these endorsements lack tradeoffs and are socially desirable.

So, researchers hypothesized that it costs people nothing to support free speech, so they keep expressing their support. But could this change otherwise? The study essentially explored if introducing 'costs' affects support for free speech. The cost was the introduction of "the use of hurtful language".

For the control group, they asked: "I would never support restricting my or someone else’s freedom of speech"

For treatment ( 'cost') groups, they asked: "I would never support restricting my or someone else’s freedom of speech even if it means that Democrats/Republicans/other people will be able to say hurtful things about me/others"

The results show that

>Americans are willing to limit First Amendment protections for everyone (themselves included) when they deem the speech to be hurtful. However, they appear less ready to limit First Amendment protections for strictly partisan or ideological purposes. Respondents were relatively more opposed to censorship on college campuses when they heard different ideological viewpoints.

I don't find the results too significant. It was intuitive already that people might be reluctant to support free speech that was hurtful to in-groups and out-groups. Based on the introduction of the study, I was hoping they would explore why people changed their support for free speech. Was it just to avoid hurting others?

Edits: improved for clarity and grammar.

From the study

"The timing of electricity consumption is increasingly important for grid operations. In response, households are being encouraged to alter their daily usage patterns through demand response and time-varying pricing, although it is unknown if they are aware of these patterns. Here we introduce an energy literacy concept, 'load shape awareness', and apply it to a sample of California residents (n = 186) who provided their household’s hourly electricity data and completed an energy use questionnaire. Choosing from four prominent load shape designations, half of respondents (51%) correctly identified their dominant load shape before COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) orders while only one-third (31%) did so during SIP orders. Those aware of their load shape were more likely to have chosen evening peak, the most frequent dominant shape in the electricity data. Our work provides proof of principle for the load shape awareness concept, which could prove useful in designing energy conservation interventions and helping consumers adapt to an evolving energy system."

This could distortion our perception of real attractiveness and would worsen the beauty standards and expectations in, for example, online dating, which is already terrible for many. I think individual mental health crisis, especially among teens and youngs, will further deteriorate.

The work was done in Germany.

Snippets from the article

>Existing research suggests that people are positive about wind energy in the abstract, but when it comes to actually establishing wind farms in local communities, there has been substantial resistance, to the point where many proposals have been killed off.
>
>It has long been understood that people’s attitudes towards science and emerging technologies are shaped by their cultural and ideological world views. One world view that has become a particular focus of attention is what we refer to here as ‘conspiracy mentality’, the notion that it is commonplace for groups of elites with bad intentions to conduct elaborate hoaxes on the public and to do so in near-perfect secrecy
>
>We find that conspiracy mentality explains a large portion of people’s resistance to vote in favour of a potential wind farm in their community. Believing in a specific conspiracy theory around the construction of the wind farm does so to an even larger degree. Informing people about the benefits of the wind farm has a considerable positive effect on their intentions to vote for the wind farms, particularly among those with a strong conspiracy mentality. These effects are smaller when people are also provided with counterarguments or when they believe in a specific conspiracy theory about the wind farm. Overall, our research suggests that conspiracy beliefs play a major role in understanding resistance to wind farms and sheds light on how to counteract this opposition.

Some general points mentioned in the paper regarding the attributes of conspiracy mentality:

1. High conspiracy mentality predisposes people to believe misinformation
2. Conspiracy mentality is characterized by distrust of elites

​

Edits: improved for clarity

Please check my explanation with the link to the original article.

Thanks for sharing your anecdote.

Good point about spcies composition. Different ecosystems support different set of species. We cannot say for sure that one composition is superior to another.

I agree but it was only research. For them, documenting the biodiversity of a small plot was challenging in itself. Measuring miles of tracts is nearly impossible for a single study. I support huge government efforts to monitor the biodiversity of an entire ecosystem onna regular basis.

Yes. This is one of the recommendations. It is not logging but unmanaged and uncontrollable logging that is the problem.

Yes. Only limited logging may have some macro level benefits for the short term.

You are absolutely correct to point out that fungi and microorganism may be difficult to count. So, we dont know whether limited logging will continue to produce the same benefits in the long-term, meaning over centuries, as compared to the old growth.