Civilizer / Civilizer Blog: Recent posts

My blog site has been moved to http://suewonjp.github.io/civilizer/blog/

Strip search phone call scam: Revisited

I discussed Milgram Effect in my previous post. I claimed that Milgram Effect can manipulate human minds so powerfully and it could possibly disrupt your daily decision making processes. The Mount Washington scam is one notable incident that shows how scammers make use of Milgram Effect to exert a strong influence on your mind. If you don't know what the incident was, please, check out the Wikipedia page or read my previous post or this news article.... read more

Milgram experiment

Do you know Milgram experiment? It's a famous social psychological experiment conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram that demonstrated human's great tendency of obedience to authority figures. If you are not familiar with the experiment, I recommend you to read the Wikipedia page. Here is my short version of explanation. But, it might've been misinterpreted by mistake, so I really recommend you to figure out the details by yourself.... read more

Ambiguity effect

Have you heard of Ambiguity effect? It's a cognitive bias. According to the Wikipedia page, the effect implies that people tend to select options for which the probability of a favorable outcome is known, over an option for which the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown.

Here is a citation from the same page illustrating an example of how the effect works :

As an example, consider a bucket containing 30 balls. The balls are colored red, black and white. Ten of the balls are red, and the remaining 20 are either black or white, with all combinations of black and white being equally likely. In option X, drawing a red ball wins a person $100, and in option Y, drawing a black ball wins them $100. The probability of picking a winning ball is the same for both options X and Y. In option X, the probability of selecting a winning ball is 1 in 3 (10 red balls out of 30 total balls). In option Y, despite the fact that the number of black balls is uncertain, the probability of selecting a winning ball is also 1 in 3. This is because the number of black balls is equally distributed among all possibilities between 0 and 20. The difference between the two options is that in option X, the probability of a favorable outcome is known, but in option Y, the probability of a favorable outcome is unknown ("ambiguous"). ... read more

Unstructured data

The other day, to a friend of mine, I explained a rough concept of PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) and How Civilizer can help PKM activities. He argued that using tools like Civilizer is an overkill, and a simple tool like Windows Notepad is enough.

As far as I'm aware, note applications like EverNote are being used widely for activities similar to PKM. That makes sense because I think EverNote is so much sophisticated and useful enough. But Windows Notepad? I don't think so. The data model, which Windows Notepad is supposed to work with, is just a series of text. In other words, it is just a form of Unstructured Data.... read more

Small Practices

Image source : http://www.snapfiles.com

Every modern OS has its default file explorer, and every file explorer has a common functionality called "Bookmarks". The name might be different on platforms. In Windows Explorer, it is called as Favorites (See the above image).
I think Bookmarks are very useful. Let's say you have a shared folder located on some remote machine and you visit the folder from time to time. Also say the path of the folder is a little deep like "\\some-file-server\path\to\folder\you\access\at\times" so it's not so easy to remember.
Bookmarking for this kind of folder as well as folders more frequently you access are a good idea. And just one click lets you instantly access those folders.... read more

How many times do you think you encounter new information or knowledge every day?

Please, try to answer this question. The answer may depend on each individual's personality and his or her current job or education. I assume the average number of the answer might've been a little bit smaller if the same question was asked earlier like 10 years ago.

We have been encountering new knowledge or information from the traditional media such as books, TV, newspapers, magazines. In addition to the traditional media, we've become to have new kind of media such as Web pages, wikis, blogs, SNS. Other than media, we now have new communication infrastructures such as wireless, more powerful devices such as smart phones. We have more sources of information than we used to have, and another kind of media will highly likely show up in the future. ... read more