Episode 214: You Shouldn't Feel Bad (Except You Should)

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler welcomes social psychologist David Pizarro of Cornell University to the podcast to talk about his recent article (along with Raj Anderson, Shaun Nichols, and Rachana Kamtekar) on “false-positive emotions.” When agents commit accidental harms, we typically tell them they shouldn’t feel too guilty, it’s not their fault, it was out of their control, and so forth. At the same time, we don’t want them to let themselves off the hook right away either. They shouldn’t feel guilty, but also they…should. What’s behind these mixed messages and attitudes? Are we looking for information about their character? What kind?

Plus, a new algorithm can predict someone’s political orientation with 72% accuracy based on one profile photo (either from Facebook or a dating app). Is Big Brother around the corner?

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Links:

• Facial recognition technology can expose political orientation from naturalistic facial images | Scientific Reports
• 'I was shocked it was so easy': ​meet the professor who says facial recognition ​​can tell if you're gay | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
• One of the most famous campus outrage incidents was badly misreported - Vox
• “False positive” emotions, responsibility, and moral character - ScienceDirect