Raise your hand if you also like to fool yourself that you can influence a percentage progress indicator by intensely staring at it and really, really wanting it to hurry up.

After all, influencing electronics with your brainwaves is of course very credible. It's uh… you know… quantum mechanics and stuff! 💫

#pseudoscience #tech #technology #brain #waves #quantum #physics #electronics #digital

One of my favorite obscure YouTube channels is this licensed pharmacist who reviews and tries (!) sketchy gas station pills. #skepticism #pseudoscience #science #medicine #youtube #weird

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bQvUxwQoRRw

Erin Allday: Conversion therapy is quietly rebranding — and targeting #trans youths

#Conversiontherapy #pseudoscience
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/conversion-therapy-trans-kid-21143330.php

Polygraphs are still a thing?

Humanity is fucked.

#pseudoscience #brainrot #knowledgecrisis #education

"So Mr Guenzel and his co-authors used an algorithm to analyse the pictures of 96,000 MBA graduates, and extract what they call the “Photo Big Five”—as they rename the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness. (Before you head to the mirror, it’s not obvious what the AI is seeing.)

They then used data on these individuals’ labour-market outcomes to see whether the Photo Big Five had any predictive power. The answer, they conclude, is yes: facial analysis has useful things to say about a person’s post-MBA earnings and propensity to move jobs, among other things.

There are plenty of caveats. The predictive power of the Photo Big Five shouldn’t be exaggerated; the authors say it is only an incremental source of information on candidates. The field of AI facial analysis is young, and has been at the centre of methodological firestorms in the past. And even if techniques were flawless, adoption is likely to be slow. Anti-discrimination laws mean that there are obvious legal risks associated with making any decisions based on facial characteristics. Manish Raghavan of the MIT Sloan School of Management notes that companies are wary of using AI for facial analysis (though he worries more about bias infecting chatbot summaries of candidates’ cvs or LinkedIn profiles.)"

https://www.economist.com/business/2025/11/06/should-facial-analysis-help-determine-whom-companies-hire

#Phrenology #PseudoScience #BullshitScience #AI #FacialAnalysis