Tag: behavior

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Bench the benchmarks

In the social sciences as well as in engineering it is common practice to use benchmarks as indicators of performance. Thereby, several countries or regions within a country are compared with respect to quantitative indicator. Let’s take employment ratios. A higher employment ratio, which includes many persons working few hours in part-time work, is different from a slightly lower employment ratio, but hardly any part-time employees.
The same rationale holds true for benchmarks of AI systems or the newer versions of agentic AI that are under construction in many fields. The paper by Yuxuan Zhu et al. (2025) proposes the ABC (agentic behavior checklist) for agentic AI developers. The reporting of benchmarks by such models should include (1) transparency and validity, (2) Mitigation efforts of limitations and (3) result interpretation using statistical significance measures and interpretation guidelines.
The aim of this research is to establish a good practice in establishing benchmarks in the field of agentic AI. The sets of criteria to test for is large and the focus of how the agentic AI treats, for example, statistical outliers much above or below the average i.e. (> 2 standard deviations from the average) assuming a normal distribution, is one case of application only.
We welcome the efforts to bench the benchmarks in the field of AI as is common practice in other sciences as well.

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Pervasive waste

From time to time waste from so-called highly developed countries is making headlines and then it is forgotten again. Huge amounts of plastic waste gets shipped for example from the USA to Malaysia in containers regularly (NYT 2025-7-1). The dumping of waste in other countries where it is cheaper to waste the waste is a cynical practice. Not only is the potential for reuse and a circular economy disregard, the little control that is exercised how the waste is treated afterwards is neglected. Some might just end up in our oceans later on or find its way in our food chains. The recent discovery of lots of nuclear waste at 5000 m depth in the sea in another extreme example of this practice to dump waste affecting all of is when profits have been accumulated inn the hands of a few enterprises and states. Such external effects as they are called in economic theory are part of the standard economic thinking. The challenge is to detect such behavior, persecute or better prevent it. This calls on countries who produce the waste to check for the contamination potential and treat their own waste. Fukushima has lots of barrels of nuclear waste waiting. The pervasive nature of this waste will make it last for thousands of years. “Beggar thy neighbor” with your waste is a major default of our current economic and social model. It remains an unresolved puzzle why mankind continues to work towards its own extinction. (Image: Le grisou, Constantin Meunier, MRBAB, Brussels). 

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Own Production

The 21st century has seen many innovations. Solar energy has been around for at least 3 decades now, but the wide spread application and adoption of it through consumers has taken quite a while. Nowadays you can buy a reasonably priced solar panel in your local shop selling gardening tools and home appliances. Solar panels have moved from a niche product to become an ordinary home enhancement product. Previously, the production of energy was highly regulated and restricted to business activities. Hence as producer and consumer of your own energy you became a “prosumer” of energy. Just refrain from selling the energy to your neighbors and you will be happy monitoring your own energy production and your energy consumption throughout the day as well. Suddenly, you might make a few behavioral adjustments to your daily routine. Throughout the day when the sun is shining bright you start to think of what kind of energy consumption you might want to switch on at the time. Charging mobile phones, cooking meals and washing are the obvious candidates that do the trick. Charging a battery of a bicycle(s) is also a good idea. The excursion of the evening or cycling to work the next few days is feasible with this as well. There is a slight danger to check the energy production frequently to optimize the return on your investment. In this case it might be expedient to invest also in a battery to store the energy  for a longer time. No stress for consuming your nuggets, but initial investment costs are substantially higher, albeit prices for batteries have come down significantly in the last few months. “Prosit prosumers”.

 

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Guidelines Follow-up

The are many professional organisations which agree after thorough discussions on guidelines how to conduct professional services. As long as we have such guidelines, the adherence to the guidelines is an issue as well. This is part of a research program of organisational sociology, but there is a rather strange paradox in this field of compliance with guidelines. In the most highly educated professions like medical doctors, the rate of compliance to guidelines is below average. A study of 20+ years ago published in the JAMA Journal: Cabana et al. (1999) “Why Don’t Physicians Follow Clinical Practice Guidelines?” highlighted this paradox among medical doctors. The lack of awareness of existing or changed guidelines is one of the major reasons mentioned in this respect. Self-efficacy is also an issue, but mentioned less frequently for not following guidelines.
Besides a professional bias, related to the above average educational attainment of physicians, (believed) superior coping mechanisms compared to the average population might be at work. Mastering advanced technology might lead to a behavior that assumes to be able to handle higher risks as well.
For a profession that is used to confront issues of life and death on a regular basis some adherence to a very specific medical guideline might appear a negligible risk. However, maybe comparable to some cases among politicians or priests a logic: “rules or guidelines are for others to follow” rather than the physicians bear obvious risks to these persons themselves, but even to others in specific circumstances like the spreading of infectious diseases.
Drug or substance abuse has been evidenced before in relationship with specific professions or in historical time periods. We should take care to repeat similar studies (Cabana et al. (1999) every now and again.

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Cheatflation

There are many ways to study inflation. You may start by looking through your collection of bills. Economists like to swear by the consumer price index or indices, if you are even more into inflation. In textbooks like “economics for dummies” we learn about rational behavior and price adjustment mechanisms through the “invisible hand” to find some sort of equilibrium.
Advanced economics courses will teach you about strategic behavior inspired by game theory and the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of cheating. For advanced economists it is, therefore, inevitable that “cheatflation” should be part of the economists’ vocabulary. Of course, a profit maximizing entrepreneur is likely to way the risk of being found out contributing to cheatflation against the potential gains.
How to cheatflate? Too easy. Any producer of a product can cheat by using, for example, other ingredients than those printed on the product label, usually cheaper ones. Instead of fruit juice (wine) you may just sell colored water with lots of sugar (ethanol) in it, but still label it fruit juice (wine) and get away with this, until a consumer protection group makes a fuzz about it. A more sophisticated way is to sell investments in ESG-rated funds, but then include dirty stocks without proper notification in the fund, which probably increases profits based on wrong labels.
There is a specific quality to cheatflation, which makes it different from shrinkflation or enshittification. The drive to “obtain unfair advantages” through cheating across a whole country or region makes cheatflation an economy-wide process and subverts general fairness rules as well as trust in a society.
(Image Saccharometer, DTM Berlin 2024)

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Animal Longevity

  1. From time to time it is interesting to study animals from many species to maybe learn from them about longevity. Roberto Salguero-Gómez (LINK) developed a sociality continuum and compared 152 species across 13 taxonomic classes. The study reiterates and generalizes the many studies of single species and finds that „more social species live longer, have more generation time and longer reproductive windows“.  Social structures amongst animals of the same species influence survival and reproduction as basic demographic processes. These processes determine to a large extent the size of animal populations. Sociality appears to be a major contributor to longevity compared across species. These processes determine the survival of rather solitary species like panda bears (running higher risks of extinction) compared to populations of bees with rather hierarchical predefined social structures. The spotted hyenas developed cooperative hunting and communal care which allows for effective survival compared to other species. Sociality is specific to species and therefore largely determined by genetic factors. Nature rather than nurture is at work. However, species where reproduction occurs later allow for learning curves of sociality. In other words even within species there is scope to improve longevity through sociality. Migration patterns or experience with migration might be yet another determinant of survival or longevity as climate change poses new challenges to many species.
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No tobacco Sweden

Sweden is the forerunner as country with the lowest number of smokers across Europe and probably even the world with only 5% of the population 16 years and older. The success of these public health policies is due to banning smoking not only form pubs and restaurants, but also outside in the surroundings of public spaces like schools, playgrounds, train stations and sports facilities. These policies work quite well and the effects of discouraging smoking in public is reduced to a minimum rather than the normal encounter.
Health of the other persons and children passing through these areas is not the only goal. A new estimate of lost days or years due to smoking based on a study from England shows that “each cigarette smoked reduces the smoker’s life by about 20 minutes (17 for men, 22 for women, LINK to study). Of course, there is a huge variance and other work and life conditions that play an important role as well, but the broad average estimate is a nice way of talking about statistics. The basis of the estimate is for those who stop smoking and not those reducing their tobacco intake by some percentage or replacement product.
In the Belgian football stadium (image below 2024) in Brussels the No tobacco sign is well placed to make parents of children and youth understand the challenge ahead. Good resolutions are assisted by gentle regular reminders as well.

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Administration Online

The public administration is more and more moving online. The electronic identity is becoming a reality for all those with a recent personal identity card and who remember where they stored their pin code which came with the card. Moving houses or apartments or car registrations among other official registrations can be carried out online rather than by joining the lengthy queues at your public administration. The “buergerservice.org e.V.” presented the easy steps at the SCCON 2024 in Berlin again to the audiences. The support by the “mobile citizen’s office”, allowed to do the PIN retrieval or change on site and during 2 minutes. This is going to be a game changer for many people who shun away from lengthy admin procedures and push off such registrations due to the time-consuming queueing systems currently in place. Labour shortages are circumvented by e-administration and citizen’s satisfaction with public services increases. More publicity for such e-services and rapid implementation across countries and the EU should bring a about a new e-dynamic drive to old Europe. Employees or civil servants will be pleased to deal with exceptional cases only rather than the bulk of repetitive registrar work. More time will be available to real case management instead of suffering from impatient citizen clients. “Administration as a service” sounds like the new device of digital public management.

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Forced Living Space

The „Topography of Terror“ hosted the book launch of the research project on „Zwangsräume“ (forced living space or forced homes). The cooperation of an impressive network of organizations (Aktives Museum Faschismus und Widerstand in Berlin e.V., Koordinierungsstelle Stolpersteine Berlin, Alfred Landecker Foundation, Metropol Verlag) has achieved to uncover the forced relocations of thousands of German jewish people from rented place to another one, thereby regrouping and cramping Jews into ever smaller living spaces in predetermined houses within Berlin. Through this horrible step by step expropriation and extermination terror was present and visible all over Berlin. The online documentation and data access allowed citizen science projects to accompany the research and actively contribute to enlarge the data investigated, analysis and dissemination of the findings. The continuation and extension of the project is already in preparation and seeks additional funding and volunteers. The traditional book publication helps to provide an insight into the thorough historical research which started with a more adequate definition „Zwangsräume“ than the previously used term of so-called „Judenhäuser“, since the houses had and kept a mixed population sharing the living spaces until deportations of the jewish persons forced into ever smaller living spaces before. The property of the deported persons was recovered by officials from sealed apartments and sold mostly as bargains on auctions or just redistributed among officials in need or with special merit for the Nazi-movement. This adds an intergenerational dimension to the project that is also worth looking into in the next phase of this extremely valuable project based on large online archives from original register information and other documents. (Image: The map shown below in the presentation has blue signs that have already been traced and hundreds of red signs where the histories are not yet retrieved).

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Risk Takers

We are all risk takers of one form or the another. Those of us who ride motorbikes or enjoy rock climbing have an above average taste for risk taking. Since the publication of „The risk society“ we are aware that collectively as a society we have taken on additional risks like nuclear energy, atomic weapons or the risk associated with silent climate change with the persistent reliance on fossil fuels to a large extent. Holman W. Jenkins (WSJ) has added an additional perspective on risk takers which originates from government policies to encourage building homes in places subject to high risks of flooding. Several policies come to mind that encourage individuals to take high risks and construct and repair buildings in flood prone areas. Government grants, insurance policies and relocation subsidies are at issue here. Regulations like driving licenses try to build on competences to ensure „more rational risk taking“ in people. Teaching about nutrition might alleviate the obesity pandemic as much as awareness of an active lifestyle can avoid a large number of cardiovascular diseases. Risk taking should be to a large extent an individual’s choice with the consequence to live up to the consequences of the risks taken also more an individual’s responsibility. Collective solutions are a powerful way to encourage additional risk taking. The consequences of those well-defined solutions have to be funded collectively as well. A society-wide discussion and voting process on such issues has to be organized and updated from time to time. (Image Skateboard high and long jumps Brussels 2024-10)