Asking Bigger, Deeper Questions

Are people inherently good, bad or blank slates?  Why are some people so poor, and others so rich?  What causes people to commit crimes?  What makes for long, happy marriages?

Many of us have opinions on important and interesting questions about a host of topics, from human and animal behavior, to the environment, economy, politics and history.

But what do researchers who patiently pursue these questions think and find in answer to these questions?  It’s easy to spout opinions; it’s much harder and more valuable for informed decision-making to carefully, systematically pursue answers.

Fortunately, there are plenty of well-trained researchers pursuing answers to many important and interesting questions, whether these be university scholars, think tank experts, museum or government specialists, or else.

Unfortunately, researchers’ answers are routinely published in ever growing numbers of books, academic journals and reports few people read, and they’re often written in dull, jargon-filled prose.  Occasionally, the researchers’ answers are publicized in newspapers, magazines, on radio, TV, or online, but still the audience for these are often limited to those interested enough to seek them out.

That’s the status quo we take for granted, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Learning Life’s mission is to inform and empower more people by printing knowledge on the sufaces of everyday life, like placemats, posters, napkins and cup sleeves, then linking these surfaces to an ever growing world of learning at our website.

As our readers may already know, one way we pursue this mission is to pose questions online and off, linked to a growing array of five-question quizzes at Learning Life’s website which offer brief facts on everything from food psychology to the U.S. Constitution.

In September 2013, we inaugurated our Big Questions series offering clear, 1-2 paragraph answers each from two or more experts on questions of wide public importance, like those posed at the start of this post.  You can read the questions to which we’ve gathered expert answers so far, and those upcoming on our Facts & Views page.

In so doing, we aim not only to advance our mission to inform wider publics, but to publicize the considered opinions and research of experts and scholars.

We invite our readers to contact us at email@learninglife.info to propose questions, and experts on those questions with whom Learning Life might work.

As always, if you like what Learning Life is doing, we encourage you to support our work, like us on Facebook, and/or follow us on Twitter.  Thank you for your interest and support!

OBAMACARE (ACA)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or “Obamacare,” has and will affect millions of Americans. The ACA was signed into law on March 23, 2010, and is being implemented gradually over four years. The ACA is big and does many things, but there are resources online to help Americans understand the law and how it affects individuals, families and businesses. This quiz introduces you to some of the ACA’s key provisions, with links to more information online.
Note: Special thanks to Learning Life intern, Kane Boynton, for conducting the research for this quiz, and drafting the questions and answers.

1. True or False? The ACA requires all Americans to have health insurance.

True

False

2. True or False? The ACA requires people who have their own private insurance to switch to federally approved health care.

True

False

3. All of the following are provisions of the ACA except:

No lifetime dollar limits on health insurance coverage.

No coverage denials without the ability to appeal the denial.

Insurance companies cannot drop your coverage when you get sick.

Insurance companies are required to provide at least preventive health insurance to undocumented immigrants.

Insurance companies cannot deny people insurance due to pre-existing health conditions.

4. Which of the following is the ACA’s 80/20 rule?

State and federal governments will cover 80% of your health care cost. You pay 20%.

Insurance companies must spend at least 80% of your money on healthcare.

Eighty percent of Americans already have health insurance. The ACA guarantees coverage to the other 20%.

Americans 80 and older and Americans 20 and younger will qualify for free healthcare starting in 2015.

Businesses must supply insurance for at least 80% of their employees and the government will cover the other 20%.

5. Under the ACA, health insurance plans must provide all the following, except:

Outpatient services, such as doctor visits or tests done outside a hospital

Cosmetic procedures

Hospital stays

Emergency services

Prescription drugs, including generic and certain brand-name drugs

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THE UNITED NATIONS

Please go to THE UNITED NATIONS to view this quiz

The Strength of Big Bits

Need a job, or want to find a better job?  The economy may be recovering, but for too many people this question remains all too pertinent.

One of the most cited contemporary sociologists, Mark Granovetter, has found that people more often get jobs through personal contacts than through formal channels, like job ads, employment agencies, or interviews sponsored by professional associations.

Furthermore, as Granovetter explains in his book, Getting a Job (1995), contrary to what one might believe, among one’s personal contacts, “strong ties” of friends and family are often less helpful in getting a job than one’s “weak ties,” that is, people we know less well, like acquaintances from work or school, or friends of friends.

Information – about where the job openings are, how to apply, who to contact, how to distinguish oneself, etc. – matters greatly.  However, our strong ties are less likely to know information we don’t know because they tend to be more like us (the adage “birds of a feather flock together” is far truer than “opposites attract”).  Our weak ties, however, are more likely to know information we don’t know – information that could lead to a job – precisely because they are less like us.

Granovetter called this “the strength of weak ties” in the title of an earlier and now classic sociological article (Granovetter 1973).

There are two important connections here between Granovetter’s incisive findings and Learning Life’s approach to learning.

First, we share Granovetter’s – and many other scholars’ – conviction that information matters.  Getting the right information can mean the difference between getting and losing a job, between success and failure, even life and death (example: safety and health information).

Second, printing big bits – small, useful pieces of information that can have big, beneficial consequences, like information about how to find work, fund a college education, or recognize the signs of a stroke – on the surfaces of everyday life where more people can see them turns public places into information environments that can be as or even more useful than weak ties, especially for those with fewer weak ties.

The future is not just about weak ties and social media.  It’s also about big bits and information environments.

If life is learning, let learning live.