Indirect Control

Your choices and preparation reduce the risk, but you do not control whether it happens.

Information and Belief | Psychological and Social Manipulation

Repeating a Statement Twenty-Seven Times Raised Belief No More Than Nine Did. Almost All of It Arrived on the Second Showing.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 23, 2026October 2, 2026

File photo: a smartphone display. Photo: Skitterphoto, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0. In the news · August 2026 An experiment with 165 participants showed Instagram-style posts that were either new or repeated, with high or low like counts. Repeated statements were again judged more true than new ones, and like counts did not change that effect….

Read More Repeating a Statement Twenty-Seven Times Raised Belief No More Than Nine Did. Almost All of It Arrived on the Second Showing.
Debt and Credit | Financial Risk

Courts Resolve More Than Seventy Per Cent of Debt Suits Without a Defence. Fewer Than One Defendant in Ten Has a Lawyer.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 20, 2026October 2, 2026

In This Series: Personal Finance & Investing Why Most Stock Investors Lose Money: What the Evidence Actually Shows Options and Futures: Where Retail Money Actually Goes Two Retirees, the Same Returns, Only One Runs Out. The Difference Is the Order. Deposit Insurance Stops at $250,000. Since 2008, Uninsured Depositors Have Actually Lost Money in Six…

Read More Courts Resolve More Than Seventy Per Cent of Debt Suits Without a Defence. Fewer Than One Defendant in Ten Has a Lawyer.
Groups and Influence | Psychological and Social Manipulation

One Thousand and Seventeen People Agreed to the Recruitment Weekend. Two Years Later, Four Per Cent Were Still Members.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 14, 2026October 2, 2026

File photo: silhouettes of a group of people at sunset. Photo: Sue Huan (Unsplash), via Wikimedia Commons, CC0. In the news · July 2026 A Victorian parliamentary inquiry made 39 recommendations after reviewing 317 submissions and hearing from survivors of groups such as the Two by Twos and Geelong Revival Centre. It proposes outlawing group-based…

Read More One Thousand and Seventeen People Agreed to the Recruitment Weekend. Two Years Later, Four Per Cent Were Still Members.
Social Risk | Youth and Digital Life

A Teenager Would Need Sixty-Three More Hours of Screen Time a Day to Move Their Wellbeing Half a Standard Deviation.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 13, 2026October 2, 2026

File photo: a teenager texting on a smartphone. Photo: Summer Skyes 11, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. In the news · June 2026 A Eurobarometer survey of 26,297 teenagers and 12,750 parents across the EU, carried out in March and April 2026, found that 25% of teens exceed six hours of daily screen time…

Read More A Teenager Would Need Sixty-Three More Hours of Screen Time a Day to Move Their Wellbeing Half a Standard Deviation.
Information and Belief | Psychological and Social Manipulation

Fifty-Two Contested Claims Were Corrected in One Study. Not One of Them Backfired.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 13, 2026October 2, 2026

Key takeaways · 12 min read The backfire effect comes from a 2010 paper whose own second experiment failed to reproduce it at the group level. The largest test since — five experiments, more than 10,000 people, 52 corrected claims — found it zero times. Across the literature, 81% of reported backfires used a single-question…

Read More Fifty-Two Contested Claims Were Corrected in One Study. Not One of Them Backfired.
Infrastructure Risk | Water and Sanitation

Four Weeks of Deliberate Stagnation Grew No Legionella. The Precautionary Flush Afterwards Raised It for a Fortnight.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 13, 2026October 2, 2026

Stagnation and Legionella are genuinely linked — in dead legs and capped pipe spurs. An empty building is a different claim, and in the one building anyone measured, the standard remedy backfired.

Read More Four Weeks of Deliberate Stagnation Grew No Legionella. The Precautionary Flush Afterwards Raised It for a Fortnight.
Family and Care | Social Risk

Family Carers Are Widely Said to Face a 63 Per Cent Higher Risk of Death. In 1.1 Million Linked Records, They Died Less Often Than Everybody Else.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 13, 2026October 2, 2026

The famous figure came from 392 people, applied only to strained spouses, with a confidence interval starting at 1.00. Larger studies found the reverse — and inside them, strain still predicts death.

Read More Family Carers Are Widely Said to Face a 63 Per Cent Higher Risk of Death. In 1.1 Million Linked Records, They Died Less Often Than Everybody Else.
Psychological and Social Manipulation | Relationship Manipulation

The Word Arrived a Decade Before the Evidence. A Review of Gaslighting in Intimate Relationships Found Fourteen Eligible Studies.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 10, 2026October 2, 2026

File photo: a woman sitting by a large window. Photo: Alexandre Chambon (Unsplash), via Wikimedia Commons, CC0. In the news · April 2026 A Scientific Reports study from Turkey surveyed 333 women aged 20 to 40 in romantic relationships. Using standardized scales and mediation analysis, it found that higher self-silencing was linked to greater exposure…

Read More The Word Arrived a Decade Before the Evidence. A Review of Gaslighting in Intimate Relationships Found Fourteen Eligible Studies.
Accident and Physical Hazard | Public Transport

Sixty-Four Per Cent of Seriously Injured British Bus Passengers Were Never in a Crash. And the Bus Is Still About Four Times Safer Than the Car.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 10, 2026October 2, 2026

In This Series: Road, Transit & Child Safety Nobody Skips the Car Seat. The Deaths Are in the Exceptions. Half of the People Who Die in Crashes Were Not Wearing a Belt Three Quarters of Pedestrian Deaths Happen After Dark. Your Reflective Vest Is in the Wrong Place. A Child Physically Cannot See a Car…

Read More Sixty-Four Per Cent of Seriously Injured British Bus Passengers Were Never in a Crash. And the Bus Is Still About Four Times Safer Than the Car.
Infrastructure Risk | Water and Sanitation

Eighty-Seven Per Cent of Boil-Water Advisories in One State Followed a Broken Pipe, Not a Positive Test. Nobody Has Shown the Advisories Themselves Reduce Illness.
BySeung Hyoun Kim September 10, 2026October 2, 2026

Key takeaways · 11 min read In Kentucky over seventeen years, 87% of 36,673 boil-water advisories were issued because of a line break or leak, not because of a positive test. Average duration was five days. A pressure loss stops the pipe being a sealed system. That is the mechanism, and it has the best…

Read More Eighty-Seven Per Cent of Boil-Water Advisories in One State Followed a Broken Pipe, Not a Positive Test. Nobody Has Shown the Advisories Themselves Reduce Illness.