The Reality Check Episode 58

Alternative Style Auctions+Interview with Tim Farley+Flamingo Colour Myth

Online Auctions

Part 1:

There is a kind of alternative style auctions. It's kind of like ebay, but the different part is that you'll still have to pay your highest bid even if you lose. So, let's say someone put up a 20 dollar bill online, and sells it for a dollar. One person comes in and bids a dollar, then another person comes in and bids 2 dollars. That process will keep going until someone gets to 20 dollars. But if someone bet 19 dollars and they lose, they will still have to pay that money. So, that person might just say, in order not to lose money, I'll bid 21 dollars, and so I'll just lose 1 dollar's worth. Then the other person will think they can just lose 2 dollars, not 20. Then the bids goes higher and higher. But who is dumb enough to do that? 

Another kind of auction is that people start bidding at 0 dollars. But, every time you make a bid, you pay the company 60 cents. There is also a time limit, which is 20 seconds, every time a bid it made, the time jumps back to 20 seconds. Basically, the company wins a lot of money. But, most of the people who buys the product usually pays less than the actual product. Because the company earns money every single time when someone bids, and when they add that up, it's much more than the product, so they still earn money. 

Part 2:

Interview with Tim Farley!

Time Farley is a software engineer and scientific skeptic and he created the site What's The Harm. He's currently working on research into ways to combine those two interests into a startup company that would provide tools to identity and avoid misinformation on the internet. 

What's The Harm? is a website providing a catalog os stories where people have been injured or killed by believing in misinformation or through a lack critical thinking. This site organizes and catalogs instances where a lack of skepticism caused or led to just that - Harm. In providing documented reports of various quandaries this site makes the claim that critical thinking is a vital skill to be used in everyday life. Rather than engage in debate, the site presents hundreds of examples of problems caused by the absence of rationality, performing the function of a modern day factual Aesop's Fables. The site has gotten praise from the skeptic community. James Randi called the site "an important site" in a post to his SWIFT newsletter. james Randi Educational Foundation President Phil Plait posted in his Discovery magazine blog, "Now when someone asks "What’s the harm?" you can send them right to What’s The Harm.... It’s a very interesting place to click around." Skeptics Society Executive Director Michael Shermer has said of the site, "I think it's excellent. 'What's the harm?' is the question that all of us skeptics get asked whenever we do interviews on T.V. or debate people about irrational beliefs. And often, they are quite harmful." Penn Jillette called it "an amazingly great website" in his video blog Penn Says. "It's terrific, it's a great site. When someone says to you 'what's the harm' in a certain thing, go to What's The Harm and check it out." The site has also been cited as a useful resource in mainstream media articles about alternative medicine , pesudoscience and the paranormal.

Science Myth of the Week:

Are flamingo's pink because they eat shrimps?

Surprisingly Yes! They turn white when they don't get shrimp!