Word: explainer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What can TRAITS explain that normal demographics don't? De Marchi: Let me use the flu shot for an example. You'd think that people who had gotten the flu a lot or had a bad flu experience would get the vaccine every year. They didn't. Experience alone had no effect on whether you get the flu shot. But if you factored in whether someone was risk averse (they didn't want the flu again) or altruistic (they cared about infecting other people), then you could predict who would get a flu shot...
...Hamilton and Scott de Marchi have a lot in common. They are both professors at Duke University, they are roughly the same age, and they have the same number of children. And yet their consumption preferences are polar opposites. So the two professors developed a model to explain why seemingly similar people make vastly different decisions. Their book, You Are What You Choose, explores how certain attributes - such as a willingness to take risks, or worrying about what others think - affect our choices. De Marchi and Hamilton talked to TIME about their model, what it can predict and why anyone...
What can't TRAITS explain? Hamilton: We could predict whether you'd go for healthy food or fast food, but we can't predict chocolate or vanilla. We can tell if you'd support a third-party, independent or major-party candidate, but we don't do a good job predicting who is a Democrat vs. a Republican...
...backward through time to scupper its own creation. Each time scientists are on the verge of capturing the Higgs, the theory holds, the future intercedes. The theory as to why the universe rejects the creation of Higgs bosons is based on complex mathematics, but, Nielsen tells TIME, "you could explain it [simply] by saying that God, in inverted commas, or nature, hates the Higgs and tries to avoid them...
...were a watch, he might not be Swiss. No, that is not the caption to a Surrealist painting. Let me explain...