Quartz Daily Brief—Europe and Africa edition—Refugee summit, Sharapova rumors, ghostly octopods

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Quartz Daily Brief—Europe and Africa edition—Refugee summit, Sharapova rumors, ghostly octopods
by Quartz
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What to watch for today
EU leaders meet on the refugee crisis. An emergency summit on the movement of refugees within Europe takes place in Brussels. On the agenda: how to manage borders between member states.
The spotlight turns to the finances of Greece and Cyprus. Finance ministers from around the EU will discuss the economic adjustment plans for the two member nations, and their budgets for 2016. Cyprus’ existing loan plan is set to expire March 31.
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Urban Outfitters earnings. The edgy clothing chain has been struggling to keep hipsters coming back, but solid showings from its Free People and Anthropologie brands could help the company post strong numbers—that is, if a warm winter didn’t stop customers from buying jackets and knit caps.
Maria Sharapova puts the tennis world on edge. There's speculation that the former world No. 1 and past US Open and Wimbledon champion could announce her retirement. She is set to make a "major announcement," after an injury-plagued run at the Australian Open in January.
Over the weekend
Nancy Reagan passed away. The former US first lady and wife of late president Ronald Reagan died at the age of 94. Her spokesperson said Sunday she succumbed to congestive heart failure in Los Angeles.
Ted Cruz bolstered his argument that he is Donald Trump’s biggest competitor. The Texas senator won both the Kansas and Maine primaries on Saturday. Cruz said the results marked "a manifestation of a real shift in momentum."
Iran sentenced a billionaire to death for corruption. Authorities arrested Babak Zanjani in December 2013, following accusations (which he denies) that he withheld billions of dollars in oil revenue channeled through his companies. The ruling can be appealed.

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Turkey’s biggest newspaper was taken over by the state. Zaman printed one final Saturday edition before its offices were raided by police. On Friday, a Turkish court ruled that state administrators should run the newspaper, with no explanation given.
The oldest quarterback to ever win the Super Bowl announced his retirement. At 38 years old, Peyton Manning leaves the field with the most career earnings of any NFL player, having amassed over $248 million during his career.
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Quartz obsession interlude
Amy Wang on a newly discovered method of preventing peanut allergies: “It’s fairly common, and increasingly so, to hear someone say they’re allergic to peanuts. The prevalence of the potentially life-threatening allergy in the US alone has risen more than 300%—from 0.4% in 1997 to 1.4% in 2010—and scientists, doctors, and parents are fumbling for ways to reverse that.” Read more here.
Matters of debate
Republicans need to get behind Cruz if they want to defeat Trump. Cruz is equally hated by the establishment, but the nomination clock is ticking.
Sexual harassment is weeding out women in the sciences. There’s a distinct and obvious pattern, but academia isn’t doing anything to stop it.
MFAs don’t significantly affect writing style. There are no major differences in the language, themes, syntax, or characters of authors who hold the creative writing degree and those who do not.
Surprising discoveries
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Your mind really can heal you. The brain can drive physical changes that improve your health.
A college degree is worth less to poorer students. The proportional increase in salary, compared to those from a similar background but with only a high school degree, is far less for low-income graduates.
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Just seeing yourself as a creative type makes you more creative. Those who imagined themselves as an “eccentric poet” perform better on a divergent thinking test.
Medical services are moving into mental health clinics. Providers are finally beginning to close the gap between physical and mental care.
A ghostly octopod is likely a new species. Thanks to its lack of skin pigment, social media is calling for scientists to name the creature “Casper.”
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 Tags: daily brief http://qz.com/?tag=daily-brief

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The Real Style -------- NP2016

Do impulsive people have less free will?

Do impulsive people have less free will?
by Olivia Goldhill
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Before you consciously became aware of your decision to read this article, your brain was already making the necessary preparations to click the link.
There are a few crucial milliseconds between the moment when you’re consciously aware of a plan to act, and the moment you take action. This brief window is thought by some scientists to be the moment in time when we can exercise free will. It gives us the

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chance to consciously make a decision, suggesting we aren’t just slaves to our impulses.
But, as the New Scientist reports, a study published in Neuroscience of Consciousness last year found that impulsive people have a shorter window of time between their awareness of an impending action and the act itself. Emilie Caspar and Axel Cleeremans from the Free University of Brussels asked 72 people to fill out surveys to determine their level of impulsivity. Participants were then asked to watch a dot rotating through clock positions on a computer screen, and to press a key, which would make the dot stop, when they felt the urge to do so. They were told not to pre-plan their movements.
Participants wore electrode caps to measure their cerebral activity, and as expected, there was a spike in neural activity (known as “the readiness potential”) before participants were consciously aware of their plan to push the key. For impulsive people, the time between the brain activity spike and conscious awareness was significantly shorter.
There’s still some debate as to whether the readiness potential definitively shows that the brain is prepared to act. But for some cognitive scientists, evidence of this activity potentially undercuts the existence of free will.
“On one reading, we’re not free,” Cleeremans tells Quartz. “If you think that brain states are driving what you do, then it diminishes the sense that we have of being able to freely will the actions that we carry out. You’re not free to do anything you want, because you’re determined by the activity of your brain and the activity of your brain is determined by the experiences you’ve lived.”
Based on Cleereman's study, he says impulsive people have “less of an opportunity to change the course of the unfolding action” than the rest of us.

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But that conclusions is based on a very specific definition of free will, says Cleeremans—one that contradicts much of what we know about the connection between brain activity and mental life. He adds:
“The brain is not a computer. It’s a plastic organ, where everything you learn or experience is recorded in some way. And your brain has free will—not the power to do anything you want, but the power to carry out intelligent choices based on experiences. It’s a limited kind of free will.”
In other words, we may not have the free will to always make conscious, rational decisions that ignore how experience shapes our subconscious. But perhaps our free will is determined by our personal emotional experiences, rather than pure reason.
Joshua Knobe, philosophy and cognitive science professor at Yale University, tells Quartz that there’s no clear-cut right or wrong answer to this conundrum.
“There’s a view of the self you see in certain philosophers, going back to Aristotle, that who you really are is your capacity to reason. And it’s only when you’re exercising that capacity, and reflecting on the reasons for and against, that you’re your true self,” he says. “But reasoning isn’t necessarily what free will is all about.”
For example, if someone is overcome by anger, then should they be considered morally responsible for their actions, or did emotional impulse override free will? And what if someone is so overcome by compassion that they do something kind—is this also a denial of their free will and true identity?
“To have free will you have to act in a way that’s a reflection of yourself,” says Knobe. “From that point of view, maybe you were acting impulsively, but that impulse was maybe the time you were most free. It’s more reflective of who you really are,” says Knobe.

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It’s not as straightforward a conception of free will as many would .
like. But if impulsivity is core to your personal identity, then perhaps expressing those impulses is itself a sign of free will.

The Real Style ---------- NP2016