CO2 #3 Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story' (via The Guardian)

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the cosmologist shares his thoughts on death, M-theory, human purpose and our chance existence.

A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said.

In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain's most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time.

Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today.

Check here this disturbing interview with the Britain's most important scientist: NoHeaven 

CO2 #2 Dan Ariely on Why We Lie and How We Justify our Actions (via GoodLifeProject)

This episode features famed psychologist, behavioral-economist and bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, Dan Ariely. In his late teens, a horrific accident burned 70% of his body and sent him into the hospital for three years. And it was that experience that incited a deep curiosity about how we behave in the world, how we experience and make choices about pleasure, pain and value, what we believe and the stories we tell ourselves.

This led Ariely into a stunning career as a leading behavioral economist, psychologist, acclaimed professor and bestselling author and speaker. 

Check here an extensive interview with this immense author: DanArielyEpisode 

CO2 #1 Column: How Wall Street creates criminals (via USA Today)

It is time to admit that Wall Street has lost its moral compass. Each day brings a new story of banks misleading clients, hedge funds' insider trading or investment banks manipulating prices. In one breathtakingly brazen scandal, Barclays and many of the largest banks in theU.S. and the U.K.— including Bank of America, Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase andRoyal Bank of Scotland— are being investigated for possibly rigging the Libor interbank lending interest rate that determines the interest charged on countless credit cards and bank loans.

The tsunami of scandals cannot be explained away as the work of a few "bad apples." Our financial services industry is in ethical crisis. To assess the depth of the problem, Labaton Sucharow, a law firm where one of us works, commissioned an anonymous survey of 500 financial services professionals in the United States andUnited Kingdom. The results are alarming.

Check here, this enlightening article about Wall Streets (lost) moral compass: WallStreetCriminals 

O2 #3 The Veil of Opulence (via New York Times)

More than 40 years ago the philosopher John Rawls, in his influential political work “A Theory of Justice,” implored the people of the world to shed themselves of their selfish predispositions and to assume, for the sake of argument, that they were ignorant. He imposed this unwelcome constraint not so that his readers — mostly intellectuals, but also students, politicians and policy makers — would find themselves in a position of moribund stupidity but rather so they could get a grip on fairness.

Rawls charged his readers to design a society from the ground up, from an original position, and he imposed the ignorance constraint so that readers would abandon any foreknowledge of their particular social status — their wealth, their health, their natural talents, their opportunities or any other goodies that the cosmos may have thrown their way. In doing so, he hoped to identify principles of justice that would best help individuals maximize their potential, fulfill their objectives (whatever they may happen to be) and live a good life. He called this presumption the “veil of ignorance.”

Check this insightful article about why the origins of inequality are rooted in our brain: VeilOpulence 

O2 #2 São Paulo: A City Without Ads (via Adbusters)

In 2007, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil's most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising.

In 2007, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil's most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Known on one hand for being the country's slick commercial capital and on the other for its extreme gang violence and crushing poverty, São Paulo's "Lei Cidade Limpa" or Clean City Law was an unexpected success, owing largely to the singular determination of the city's conservative mayor, Gilberto Kassab.

Read more about this pioneer measure from a non-communist city here: CleanCityLaw  

O2 #1 The Potentials and Limitations of Rational Choice Theory: an Interview with Gary Becker (via Simoleon Sense)

Gary S. Becker (Pennsylvania, 1930) is a university professor at the Departments of Economics, Sociology, and the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, Illinois. Becker earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and was awarded a PhD by the University of Chicago in 1955 for a thesis on the economics of discrimination, under the supervision of Milton Friedman. After teaching at Columbia University from 1957 to 1969, he returned to the University of Chicago where he has been based ever since.
Becker’s work and research interests encompass a wide range of topics, unified by what he calls The economic approach to human behavior (Becker 1976). He considers this refined version of the neoclassical theory of consumer behavior as a method that can be applied to analyzing individual choices beyond the boundaries of traditional economics domains, including discrimination, education (human capital), crime, addiction, the family (marriage, divorce, fertility), and altruism. Becker’s path-breaking work has been recognized with numerous honors, including the John Bates Clark Medal (1967), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2007). In 1992, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences “for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including non market behavior” (Nobel Prize press release). 

Professor Becker was interviewed by Catherine Herfeld at his office on the Campus of the University of Chicago on December 8th, 2010. The discussion ranged over a number of issues including the consequences of the recent financial crisis for the economics profession, the role of mathematics in economic modeling and the role of modeling in economics, the significance of the rationality-principle, and the development of Becker’s ‘economic approach’ and its distinctiveness from behavioral economics.

Read the complete interview about economics epistemology here: RationalChoice 

CO2 #3 Kathleen Vohs on Money’s Situational Effects (via The Situationist)

Money changes people’s motivations — increasing their sense of self sufficiency and even making them keep a greater physical distance from others. After focusing on money, individuals work longer before asking for help, are less helpful to others, and prefer to play and work alone. Kathleen D. Vohs presented at the “Small Steps, Big Leaps: The Science of Getting People to Do the Right Thing” research briefing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, co-sponsored by the Center for Social Innovation.

Check this video from Prof. Kathleen Vohs concerning the effect of money reminders on peoples' motivations: MoneyBehavior