Why Nice People Are Scary

Interesting 3-minute video explaining why we are likely to be put off by people who are exceptionally nice to us

The Fire Falls Of Yosemite

Yosemite National Park has a wealth of astonishing sights, but among the highlights is Horsetail Falls. Especially at a very specific time of year, when the 2,000 foot cascade suddenly appears to catch on fire.

Photos that appear to show liquid magma spilling down the sheer cliff face are really just capturing a natural trick of light—at a certain time in February, at a specific time of day (around 5:30 PM), the setting sun strikes the face of the cliff in just such a way; according to visitors, it briefly becomes tough to even make out the waterfall—and then it illuminates, all at once and in startling fashion. So convincing is the effect that some visitors refuse to believe that it isn’t actually lava, despite having seen the falls with their own eyes just moments previous.

Strangely, a hotel owner in the late 1800s actually did push hot embers over the edge of the cliff on a regular basis, to create a night-time light show for his visitors—which was of course a ridiculous fire hazard, in addition to not being nearly as spectacular as the natural phenomenon.

The Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx

According to legend, the athletes appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated go on to experience bad luck. SI’s first cover subject, baseball player Eddie Mathews, was also the first victim of the jinx, suffering a hand injury one week later that forced him to miss seven games. 

Over the years, the jinx has produced losses (the 1987 baseball preview featured the Indians with the declaration ‘Believe it! Cleveland is the best team in the American League’ only for the team to lose 101 games and finish dead last), injuries (golfer Jim Venturi was named 1964’s Sportsman of the Year then spent the next season battling carpal tunnel syndrome) and even death (Pat O’Connor, pictured on the 1958 Indianapolis 500 preview issue, was killed in a fifteen car pile-up on the last lap). 

On the other hand, Michael Jordan appeared on the cover a record 49 times and made it through with life and limb intact. Sports Illustrated did their own analysis of the phenomenon for a 2002 issue and concluded that 37% of their cover subjects suffered a demonstrable misfortune or decline in performance following their appearance.

Hummingbirds Understand Quantum Mechanics

The exact mechanics of hummingbird flight have mystified scientists for well over two centuries. There’s even an urban legend that Charles Darwin’s grandson, Phlostigon, killed himself over his inability to crack the problem. (In reality, Darwin didn’t have any grandchildren, and certainly none with such a stupid name.) In order to maintain their famous hover, hummingbirds beat their wingsapproximately 50 times per second, which should cause them to burst into flames from air friction alone. To power such rapid wingbeats, a hummingbird’s heart has to beat at almost half the speed of sound, or four times as fast as the fastest speedboat ever built.

So how do they do it? Well, for a long time, scientists simply didn’t have the answer. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus famously refused point-blank to acknowledge that hummingbirds even existed, only recanting in his sixties, when he involuntarily flinched after Voltaire threw one at his head. But in 2007, scientists made a breakthrough when they noticed that hummingbirds acted in perfect accordance with the laws of quantum physics.

To put it simply, scientists have long been aware that matter can exist as either both a wave or a particle, or neither, or both. However, it cannot be either a wave or a particle—it must be both, or neither, or both. In contrast, it has been suggested that antimatter can be either a wave or a particle, or neither, or both, but it is much more likely that it is neither both a wave or a particle, nor either, nor both. Furthermore, pairs of particles and antiparticles can randomly “pop” into existence, but one or both must also be a wave, unless neither is, in which case the particles will immediately disappear again (although in some cases they don’t).

Once this theory became widely accepted, it was relatively easy to demonstrate that hummingbirds drew energy from the mysterious “dark matter” which is now believed to exist in many universes, possibly not including ours. Since quantum entanglement dictates that linked particles will react in the same way, and since those particles are either also waves or aren’t (but will always react as though they were), it was a simple matter to demonstrate that tickling one hummingbird would cause all other hummingbirds to giggle uncontrollably. Scientists hope to use this breakthrough to develop a hummingbird-based wireless communications system, with many researchers pledging to tickle as many hummingbirds as it takes to make a breakthrough.

We Can Be Blind To Things Right In Front Of Us

Let’s face it, we are all sometimes guilty of inattentional blindness—failing to see the unexpected because our attention is focused elsewhere. In 1999, American psychologists Daniel Simons and Chris Chabris demonstrated this in a humorous fashion with their now-famous Invisible Gorilla Test. The two psychologists asked participants to watch a video of people in white and black shirts passing a basketball to each other. The participants were then asked to count the number of passes each white team member made.

As this was being done, a person in a gorilla costume made his way to the middle of the group, beat his chest, and walked out of view. After the experiment, the psychologists found that half of the participants failed to see the gorilla because they were so engrossed in counting the passes. This experiment has conclusively proven that attention is a vital factor that affects our perceptual and visual fields.

Babies are Manipulative

Babies are great. They're adorable, only occasionally smell bad, and — best of all — are blissfully ignorant of the world's cruel indifference. If you don't like babies, something is wrong with you.

But let's face it: Babies are manipulative, too. And a new study by psychologist Hiroko Nakayama in Japan seems to reaffirm what many perpetually sleep-deprived moms and dads have long suspected: Babies will fake cry to get what they want.

Researchers carefully analyzed two infants — Baby R and Baby M — through dozens of tearful episodes, and sought to pin down two specific states before and after crying spurts: Positive emotions (smiling/laughing) and negative emotions (frowning or appearing genuinely upset about something). Here's what they found:

In total, 102 crying episodes were analyzed. The infants displayed negative affect almost always just before starting to cry and soon after crying terminated. However, there were exceptions. Positive affect was observed. These were crying behaviors that the mother identified as "fake crying" or "emergence of fake crying." These data indicate that, although normally infant affect just before and right after crying is negative, infants also can exhibit positive affect when they show fake crying. [PubMed]

Most of the time the crying really was because Baby R and Baby M were unhappy: 98 percent of Baby R's crying bouts came after something negative. But one day, at around the 11-month mark, a tearful episode was preceded and followed by laughs and smiles. "Infant R appeared to cry deliberately to get her mother's attention," said Nakayama, "[then] she showed [a] smile immediately after her mother came closer."

Tricky.

That's not to say fake crying is a bad thing. We're all manipulative to an extent. Nakayama asserts that fake crying is a sign of emotional health, and "contributes not only to an infant's social development, but also their emotional development. Infants who are capable of fake crying might communicate successfully with their caregivers in this way on a daily basis."

Adds Nakayama: "Fake crying could add much to their relationships."