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Month: June 2020

Cognitive bias

Illusory Superiority: Everyone can’t be above-average. Where are your blind spots?

June 30, 2020 Bob Sullivan 1

  If you read my recent entry on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, you’ve probably figured out that I enjoy a story that takes (some) people down a peg or two. Maybe it was all those years covering tech companies in Silicon Valley and Seattle, where fortunes are made on vaporware, owing [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Will savers soon have to pay their banks interest? The perils of low interest rates

June 23, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

We’re all used to earning interest at a bank when we save money. But could a financial institution soon charge you ‘interest’ to park your money there? Yes, says Ken Tumin, the man behind DepositAccounts.com. Interest rates are now so low that saving money could soon cost consumers. In today’s [Keep reading]

Cognitive bias

Why ‘getting attached’ costs you real money — the Endowment Effect

June 22, 2020 Bob Sullivan 1

Emotional attachment can be costly. In fact, social scientists have actually measured how costly!  People become too attached to stocks, to real estate, to automobiles, and of course, to ideas.  We endow things we have with added value because of these attachments, and that makes us poor players in a [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Podcast: How to detect fake anything in a zero trust world – my conversation with Avivah Litan

June 18, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

Fake News is stoking violence and helping destroy our democracy. Fake pills make people sick and can even kill them. Fake foods, like fake olive oil, or mislabeled fish, rip consumers off and steal profits from honest companies. The world is becoming overrun by fake everything, says Avivah Litan, renowned [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Podcast: How blockchain, and the ‘Internet of Value,’ can fight exploitation and racism

June 15, 2020 Bob Sullivan 8

Too often, people who do the work don’t get paid for that work, or earn only a fraction of the money extracted by institutional layers — middlemen — shoe-horned between producer and consumer.   The cook is the least-paid worker at a restaurant chain; the musician or painter gets pennies on [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Hate and misinformation are a feature, not a bug — ‘ban targeted ads’ movement gains traction

June 10, 2020 Bob Sullivan 6

Old advertising pitches nearly always boiled down to a cliche — “Half of advertising works, half doesn’t, and we don’t know which half is which. So, you’d better advertise.” Then the Internet came along and changed that equation, promising precise data on which ads do work, through highly targeted ads, [Keep reading]

Cognitive bias

Hyperbolic discounting: It’s now vs. the future, and it’s not a fair fight

June 9, 2020 Bob Sullivan 2

“Hyperbolic discounting” is one of those terms that sounds more impressive than it is. People make weird – but oddly predictable – decisions when balancing today’s desires against tomorrow’s needs.  As a concept, however, it’s quite powerful. There’s a pattern to your bad choices.  Understand that pattern and you can [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Where is my puppy??!! As online shopping surges during Covid, so does online fraud

June 8, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

Americans are shopping online at record levels — thanks to Covid-19…and with all that flurry of activity, criminals have flocked to e-commerce, too. Julie Ferguson, CEO of the Merchant Risk Council, talked to me recently about why online credit card fraud and other kinds of fraud seem to be spreading [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Photo essay — Hoboken Black Lives Matter protest

June 5, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

HOBOKEN, N.J. — One thing you learn when covering a protest in person– if you are honest — is that you probably know less about what’s going on than almost anyone else.  All you know is what you see right in front of your face. In the chaos, there’s no [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Program that funnels surplus military equipment to local cops under scrutiny again

June 2, 2020 Bob Sullivan 1

If you’ve ever wondered how your local police department ended up with military HUMVEES, visit The Marshall Project. There, you can click on your community and see if has been was the recipient of a Pentagon surplus program known as “1033.”  Since the late 1990s — when signed into law [Keep reading]

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About me

BOB SULLIVAN is a veteran journalist and the author of four books, including the 2008 New York Times Best-Seller, Gotcha Capitalism, and the 2010 New York Times Best Seller, Stop Getting Ripped Off! His latest, The Plateau Effect, was published in 2013, and as a paperback, called Getting Unstuck in 2014. He has won the Society of Professional Journalists prestigious Public Service award, a Peabody award, and The Consumer Federation of America Betty Furness award, and been given Consumer Action’s Consumer Excellence Award.

Bob Sullivan