Society & Education

49 papers

When the weather gets really extreme, families aren't just losing their savings—they’re losing their daughters.

Collision socarxiv | Apr 3

People trust AI more when the problems get harder, which is exactly when it’s most likely to be wrong.

Nature Is Weird edarxiv | Apr 2

Half a million people skipped out on free pandemic cash because the application was just too much of a 'hassle' compared to the money.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Apr 2

Voters in developing countries use the stock market's fluctuations as a 'cheat sheet' to figure out which political candidates are actually competent.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Apr 1

In autocratic countries, universities are the most effective tools the government has for staging massive pro-government rallies, not centers of rebellion.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Apr 1

Even a global pandemic that forced millions onto welfare didn't make the public more supportive of government benefits.

Nature Is Weird socarxiv | Apr 1

The degrees that lead to the highest-paying jobs for new college graduates are exactly the ones most likely to be automated by AI.

Cosmic Scale edarxiv | Apr 1

High-achieving students who stop trying after getting into college aren't lazy; their brains are performing a logical 'metabolic audit.'

Nature Is Weird edarxiv | Apr 1

Video calls are effectively erasing cultural differences in how people converse.

Nature Is Weird socarxiv | Mar 31

The 'success gap' for children of older parents is likely a statistical mirage.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 31

Dropping out of an apprenticeship only hurts your career if you are from a poor family.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 31

General-purpose AI like ChatGPT has already become the world's largest mental health platform by accident.

Cosmic Scale socarxiv | Mar 31

Refugees find jobs faster when living in private homes than in government housing.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 31

Interest rates were a steady 5% back in the 1400s, proving that money has always acted the same, even when the church tried to ban it.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 30

Turns out persecution doesn't actually make religions grow. Historically, Christianity won because it had the government's wallet, not because of martyrs.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 27

Voters don't care how much an autocrat ruins democracy—they only get mad if they can actually see them doing it.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 27

Being poor doesn't actually change where you get cancer—your bank account has zero say in which organ gets sick first.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 27

If you want more likes on a post, stop acting like you know everything. People engage way more when you admit you're not sure.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 27

Whether a talk with a political enemy goes well has almost nothing to do with what you're actually talking about.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 26

Even though income inequality has been sky-high for decades, it hasn't actually made people lose faith in democracy.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 26

Economic crashes act like a one-way trap that permanently kicks young people and immigrants out of the workforce.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 26

Multiple-choice tests are actually making students worse at knowing what they don't know.

Practical Magic edarxiv | Mar 26

The college degrees that get you the biggest paychecks are, ironically, the same ones AI is most likely to take over.

Paradigm Challenge edarxiv | Mar 26

Even in France—where people are snobs about language—voters actually like politicians more if they have a thick regional accent.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 25

When politicians try to talk like 'regular people' to sound cool, everyone—even their own voters—thinks they look less competent and less trustworthy.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 25

Teachers don't usually pick on struggling students; they actually give them 'mercy grades' to try and even the playing field.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 25

Immigrants actually start blending into their new country’s culture six months before they even get there.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 25

Tell someone a snack is 'plant-based' and they probably won't want it. Tell them after they've eaten it, and they’re 37% more likely to buy it again.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 25

Cutting back on social media during elections stops you from seeing fake news, but it doesn't change your political views at all.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 24

Mass surveillance has made it basically impossible to treat paranoia in a clinical setting.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 24

That famous 'cluster-based' tracing that supposedly saved Japan during the first COVID wave was mostly a myth.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 24

Having a strong economy protects people from climate disasters way more than any specific climate policy ever could.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 23

AI surveillance cameras can actually trigger a psychotic break in people who haven't even used a computer.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 23

Telling voters how much billionaires pollute actually makes them *less* likely to want to fix the climate.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 20

If you put just five more items on a ballot, 1% of people will just stay home instead of voting.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 20

The recent shift of Latino voters toward the GOP was actually driven by those voters becoming more anti-immigration.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 19

Your personality is a better predictor of how much you'll struggle with government red tape than your money or education.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 19

Whether a nine-year-old is better at words or math can predict their interest in politics ten years later.

Nature Is Weird socarxiv | Mar 19

Pot users who remember seeing mental health warnings are actually more likely to be high-risk daily users.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 19

Immigrants often get more 'pro-native' and want stricter borders when a completely different cultural group arrives.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 19

If it rains on the Sunday before a big election, Republican turnout on Tuesday takes a massive hit.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 18

Human lifespan and female fertility are moving up at the exact same pace, like they’re both set to the same internal clock.

Nature Is Weird socarxiv | Mar 18

People aren't homeschooling because of the curriculum as much as they are because of the racial makeup of the school's bosses.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 17

For-profit medical schools in the Caribbean are 'shopping' for regulators in places like Kazakhstan just to dodge quality rules.

Practical Magic edarxiv | Mar 17

Waiving academic warnings during the pandemic to 'help' students actually backfired and led to way more people failing later on.

Nature Is Weird edarxiv | Mar 17

That 'scientific certainty' in big medical studies? Sometimes it’s just because the researchers are buddies, not because the data is actually solid.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 16

Getting rid of haggling can actually scare off customers, even if the new "fixed" price is cheaper than what they were paying before.

Paradigm Challenge socarxiv | Mar 13

Planting native flowers might actually be worse for city birds and bees than those "exotic" gardens people love to hate.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 13

Trade wars aren't actually stopping global trade because individual companies are just ignoring the politics and doing their own thing.

Practical Magic socarxiv | Mar 13