The term “Penn Faces” originates from the University of Pennsylvania. It refers to the phenomenon where students maintain a facade of happiness and success, even if they are struggling internally. This facade creates an impression that everyone around them is doing well, which can lead to feelings of isolation and inadequacy for those who are struggling but don’t want to show it. The constant pressure to appear perfect exacerbates stress, anxiety, and depression. ...

Just-kidding. This is the real 40 questions that lead to falling in love, written by Edward Dean Melinat as part of his 1991 dissertation Intimacy: Negotiating Closeness and Distance. Appendix G: Questions and Tasks for Getting Close (Instructions: do each question in order, don’t skip. When being asked a question, share your answer with your partner. Then let him or her share their answer to the same question with you. Alternate who goes first to read and intepret the questions.) ...

Mutual vulnerability and informational disclosure fosters closeness. One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure. Aron et al. 1997. And here’s the infamous 36 questions of love that structuralize the issue. The 36 questions in the study are broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the previous one. Set I Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest? Would you like to be famous? In what way? Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why? What would constitute a “perfect” day for you? When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else? If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want? Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common. For what in your life do you feel most grateful? If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? Set II If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know? Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it? What is the greatest accomplishment of your life? What do you value most in a friendship? What is your most treasured memory? What is your most terrible memory? If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why? What does friendship mean to you? What roles do love and affection play in your life? Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s? How do you feel about your relationship with your mother? Set III Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling … “ Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share … “ If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? Tell your partner something that you like about them already. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about? If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet? Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why? Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why? Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.

introduction A fascinating thing about psychology and economic research is that we can easily relate them with our lives. This result in some works being ‘mentioned’ in general articles abusively to an extent that almost everyone knows it in some way. It all started with a NY Times article of Mandy Len Carton, To Fall in Love With Anyone, DO THIS. The author discussed her experience in experimenting the ‘36-questions’ that, supposedly, would make people fall in love with one another. Mandy was in the midst of a breakup then, and, as an academic, she turned towards science—a 1997 psychology paper by Arthur Aron and his fellow coauthors: ...

Regulation restricts the action of economic agents—in general. It is omnipresent. Why does regulation exist? In a free-market economy, why does the government choose to place restrictions on the decisions of certain agents and actions? George Stigler (1911-1991) introduced his “Theory of Economic Regulation” in 1971 trying to answer this question in a well-established framework, on the basis of some previous empirical arguments such as Normative Analysis as a Positive Theory (NPT) or Capture Theory (CT). ...

In an enchanting solo that captures the essence of Frederick Ashton’s choreographic genius, Marianela Nunez transforms the stage into a canvas of poetic motion in her rendition of the Female Variation from “Les Rendezvous.” Recorded unofficially and shared on Bilibili, Nunez’s performance is a masterclass in balletic expression, marrying the technical with the emotional in a dance that feels like a living artwork. The dance is light-heartedly sweet. Nela showed of her brilliance in mastering the emotion while displaying superior technique. Watch here. ...

June 18, The Royal Ballet presented three of Ashton’s most celebrated and expertly choreographed pieces set to music by Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff and Auber. This mixed programme opens with the buoyant Les Rendezvous, a fizzing succession of dances following a group of friends who meet in a park. The Dream, Ashton’s witty and tender reimagining of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, follows set to Felix Mendelssohn’s gossamer light music. The one-act ballet follows two pairs of mortal lovers, their fates at the hands of Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of Fairies. Ashton’s lyrical masterpiece, Rhapsody, concludes the programme, its explosive jumps and fleet footwork a bravura match for Sergei Rachmaninoff’s virtuosic Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. ...

Following yesterday’s post (here), let’s delve deeper into Stackelberg Games and the key points of the paper, particularly the addition of context to the problem setting. Regret Minimization in Stackelberg Games with Side Information Keegan Harris, Zhiwei Steven Wu, Maria-Florina Balcan (2024) | paper’s arxiv link recap of the mode: A Stackelberg Security Game is a structured competitive setting involving a defender and an attacker. The defender commits to a strategy $ \mathbf p \in \mathbb{R}^n $ over $ n $ targets, and the attacker selects a target. The utility outcome for both parties depends on their actions and possibly some unknown world state event. ...

Of course, the general purpose of an academic presentation is multifaceted (see an older post about it), as discussed here. Nevertheless, I’ve once heard someone say that the key purpose of a talk at a conference is to make your audience interested in reading your work after the talk ends. I attended the RAIN seminar yesterday at Y2E2, Stanford, where Nina Balcan presented one of her latest works. Personally, I have a general interest in research that involves complex human behaviors. But Nina Balcan’s talk was particularly captivating. So, I decided to read a bit of the paper, Online Learning in Stackelberg Security Games : ...

I had the very fortune to listen to Nina Balcan giving a talk on one of her latest work, Online learning in Stackelberg Security Games: ABSTRACT In a Stackelberg Security Game, a defender commits to a randomized deployment of security resources, and an attacker best responds by attacking a target that maximizes their utility. While algorithms for computing an optimal strategy for the defender to commit to have been used in several real-world applications, deployed applications require knowledge about the utility function of the potential attacker. In this talk I will describe an online learning approach for addressing this problem. We consider algorithms that prescribe a randomized strategy for the defender at each step against an adversarially chosen sequence of attackers and obtain feedback on their choices. I will discuss online algorithms whose regret (when compared to the best fixed strategy in hindsight) is sublinear in the number of time steps. I will also consider an extension that handles auxiliary contextual information that is often readily available to each player (e.g. traffic patterns or weather conditions) and discuss what no regret guarantees are possible in this even more realistic scenario. ...