experiment

“Every repetition is an experiment for the brain”

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The premiere of the live-action remake of ‘Moana’ does not seem to have started too well, and it is already planned considerable losses in this attempt to recapture the success of the original film and its sequel, just a decade after the release of the first installment. But that does not detract from the achievements of the original ‘Moana’: it is still, according to figures from Disney itself, the most watched movie in the history of Disney+. What is so special about that film that makes it hold such a record? That success. Disney talks about more than 1.5 billion hours playedan amount unexpected even by the film’s creators themselves. Directors John Musker and Ron Clements they counted that when they learned the figure, the information left them perplexed: they had not imagined that the film would have such a journey in streaming, taking into account that it neither won an Oscar nor was it the highest grossing of the year of its release. Some explanation. Sam Wass, child psychologist and director of the Institute for the Science of Early Years and Youth at the University of East London, explains for The New York Times that a young child’s brain learns by predicting. Each viewing allows you to fine-tune a different prediction: first the general plot, then the jokes, the characters’ emotions or the vocabulary. Wass places the optimal point of learning in what he calls the “Goldilocks zone” (translated: Goldilocks), the space between the completely predictable and the impossible to anticipate. ‘Moana’ is especially attractive in that regard. The more complex the narrative is, the more repetitions are needed before it stops providing new information. ‘Moana’ meets this requirement better than a linear story, because it has several layers of reading at the same time: the maritime adventure, the family bond and the identity crisis of the protagonist. What seems like empty repetition to an adult may be, to a three-year-old brain, just the level of challenge it needs. why andThe adult also repeats. The phenomenon does not only apply to children. The aforementioned article talks about the studies of Cristel Antonia Russell, a marketing professor, who has spent a decade studying why people return to the same content over and over again, a phenomenon that certainly goes beyond the success of ‘Moana’. In 2012, together with Sidney J. Levy, he published a study in the Journal of Consumer Research on what they call “volitional reconsumption”: the conscious search for a hedonic experience already lived. Paradox of choice. Russell also resorts to the paradox of choice, the concept that psychologist Barry Schwartz raised in 2004 in his book of the same name: when options multiply, choosing something already proven reduces the cognitive load of deciding. It is linked to the phenomenon of marathon the same series over and over again: the self-control necessary to process new stimuli is exhausted, and returning to something familiar does not require that effort. Clinical psychologist Lecina Fernández matches in which the pattern is identical in children and adults: knowing how something ends eliminates uncertainty, and that absence of surprise is, in itself, pleasant. Watching ‘Moana’ for the umpteenth time and watching ‘The Office’ for the umpteenth time are phenomena, deep down, not very different from each other. The limit of the formula. But then, if repetition is so rewarding, why has the new version stumbled, with Dwayne Johnson reprising his role as Maui? Critics have sunk the remake with 33% on Rotten Tomatoesbut possibly the secret of the puncture is precisely what has led to its streaming success: the new version is so mimetic of the original that the public has no reason to pay for something they already have, free and in a known version, in their own living room. At home, predictability is the advantage, as we have seen. But if we pay an entrance fee, we want surprises and novelty, even if the packaging is familiar. After the setbacks of the new versions of ‘Moana’ and ‘Snow White’, and despite the sweet smell of banknotes in ‘Lilo & Stitch’, in this case repetition does not guarantee pleasure. In Xataka | The failure of ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is something more worrying for Disney: what the hell is it doing with Star Wars

The IMAX format of Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ is an ambitious experiment. So much so that in most cinemas the film will be seen mutilated

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The official website of ‘The Odyssey’ by Christopher Nolan has a very unusual function: in the Explore Formats sectiona selector allows you to see the same trailer in six different formats, from the almost perfect square of IMAX 70mm to the wide panoramic view of conventional 35mm. It is a promotional decision that reinforces the idea that Nolan is extraordinarily concerned with image and the format of your film. But… what if what this gadget transmits is just the opposite? The formats. What changes between one format and another is the proportion of the image, the shape of the plane. In IMAX 70mm, the format in which the film was originally shot, a person is in the center of the screen, with “air”, or a part of the image without vital information, above and below; In the 35mm format that most audiences will see in conventional cinemas, that same shot appears cropped from above and below, eliminating that superfluous information. You just have to compare the trailer on the film’s website with the tools that are provided to us: the story is the same but the image is, literally, from two different films. Aspect Rancio Facts. It is worth clarifying a little what this is aspect ratio, the relationship between width and height of the image. Basically, it determines what the viewer sees and what the director leaves out of the frame. It is, basically, the minimum compositional decision in cinema. And the framing differences can be very noticeable: in the 2.39:1 widescreen version, a considerable part of the image is cropped compared to the IMAX 70mm in 1.43:1. Only a few theaters in the world can show the film in IMAX 70mm, so many IMAX theaters present the films in 1.90:1, which is the second largest format, much closer to the traditional scope. The third in size is the standard 70mm at 2.20:1, which is not very different in height from the traditional 2.39:1 35mm widescreen. In other words: the IMAX 70mm in 1.43:1 shows up to 40% more image than standard screens. Translated to the plane: what is cut out in the conventional distribution are not the sides (the width is preserved) but the top and bottom of the frame. The 70mm horizontal runs across the projector rather than vertically, creating that monstrous frame size. But it’s not just a question of seeing more or less, but of what is seen and what is not. Or to put it another way: if Nolan assumes that we are not going to see 40% in widescreen… has he included a 40% superfluous image in IMAX? And this affects planning, of course: in a very close-up of a face in IMAX, will we see only the actor’s face in conventional cinemas, without a stage around it? Cinephile elitism. On July 17, 2026, when ‘The Odyssey’ hits theaters, the viewer’s experience will depend, to a large extent, on where they live. Only 30 theaters in the world are equipped to offer the IMAX 70mm format, and none of them in Spain. There are rooms here that project in 70mm and there are also IMAX rooms, but none have both at the same time. The only cinema in the country that will offer the two options, although separately, are the Palafox Cinemas in Zaragoza: their room 4 will project in 70mm five-perforations, while on July 17, coinciding with the premiere, they will inaugurate a new IMAX room. Only theaters with IMAX 70mm can reproduce the film exactly as it was photographed. The other versions preserve much of the visual presentation, but crop or reduce parts of the original image, as we have seen. That has sparked a debate that has been going on for weeks. circulating on social networks: There is talk of elitism and that Nolan is turning his back on his audience, and the reason is that the planning, as we have seen, changes drastically from one format to another… and the frames have been planned for a very minority format. The framing is what you are looking for. Because there is a question that Nolan has not answered: did they compose each shot also thinking about the 2.39:1 crop? When Nolan was mixing formats in ‘Dunkirk’ or ‘Interstellar’ (using IMAX only for certain sequences and the rest in scope), the composition of each scene was planned for its specific format. The visual leap between square and panoramic formats was part of the film’s language: the horizon literally widened in moments of maximum tension. The decision to shoot 100% of ‘The Odyssey’ in IMAX, instead of the usual 60-70% in his previous films, means that the dialogue shots between two actors are also in 1.43:1. In 2.39:1, those same shots will lose vertical information from the original frame. The premiere on July 17 will reveal, with the support of the public, whether it has paid off for Nolan to shoot, literally, for thirty theaters around the world. In Xataka | There are people very angry about the inaccuracies in Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’. But not because of the uniforms: because of the diversity

The human being is the primate that sleeps the least. Science is clear that it is a “radical evolutionary experiment”

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We spend a third of our lives sleeping, yet the most common complaint in modern society It’s the lack of rest. We tend to blame screens, work stress and artificial light for robbing us of hours of sleep, but here evolutionary anthropology has a much more forceful answer: human beings are genetically designed to sleep less than any other evolutionary relative. It is studied. It is not something that we see from afar as a mere hypothesis, but researcher David R. Samson, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, recently published a book that includes the results of his research. And the truth is that, after living with hunter-gatherer tribes like the Hadza in Tanzania and the BaYaka in the Congo, their conclusion is resounding: humans are an absolute biological anomaly. We are the great early riser. If we take out the calculator and the meter, a primate more or less of our same average body mass, brain size and diet should sleep about 9.5 hours a day. But this figure is limited to a fairly select few people, since we actually sleep around 2.5 hours less than our evolutionary biology predicts, making us the primates that sleep the least of all. This is a pretty clear conclusion. if we compare ourselves with other species that have very high sleep rates, as can be seen in the following list: Chimpanzee: between 9.5-11.5 hours a day. Gorilla: 10-12 hours. Pig-tailed macaque: 14 hours. Night monkey: 17 hours. Because? How is it possible that with the most complex and energetically demanding brain in the animal kingdom we sleep so little? The answer seems to lie in the “deep sleep” hypothesiswhich suggests that evolution forced us to have a much deeper and more efficient sleep to sleep much less than the rest of the hominids. For example, humans spend approximately 25% of our rest time in the REM phase, which contrasts with species such as African green monkeys, which They only dedicate 5% to this phase. But in addition, human sleep has a lower proportion of light sleep, since in return, it has a higher proportion of deep sleep. A necessity. Having a much shorter rest was not a whim of ours, but rather a matter of survival, since by leaving the safety of the trees, where our ancestors slept safely, and descending to dry land, the risk of predation skyrocketed. Regarding shorter sleep, evolution promoted several mechanisms to guarantee our survival, such as sleeping next to the fire and in large groups for greater security. But in 2017 a study showed that natural variation in chronotype allowed someone to always be awake standing guard during the night. Don’t blame the screens. It is tempting to think that we sleep for about 7 hours because electric lights and smartphones have altered us in this modern life. But this is not the case, because after analyzing the sleep of the Hadza, who are a hunting community in Tanzania without access to electricity or mobile phones, it was shown that their patterns are identical to ours, sleeping 6.25 hours a night and maintaining a sleep efficiency of 68.9%. Images | MediaEcke In Xataka | We’ve been sold melatonin as the ultimate harmless sleep supplement. Science does not think the same

A 20-year-old experiment with girls walking in pairs revealed one of society’s invisible glues

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Between 2005 and 2006, a pair of Israeli researchers selected twenty-four young girls and had them walk in pairs. That was it. They did not explain anything else, nor did they ask them for anything extra: essay after essay, Zivotofsky and Hausdorff they recorded the girls while they walked together. It seems trivial, but beneath those trivialities there are surprising things. And “often, a distracted gaze does not perceive it, but synchronization between people walking together is quite common.” The researchers realized that, in half of the cases (many more if they were holding hands), the girls spontaneously coordinated their steps with whoever was walking next to them. The interesting thing is that, far from being a curiosity, it is a key element of who we are as a society. It is no coincidence that robots still they have not mastered it. Human beings synchronize. It is not just the work of Zivotofsky and Hausdorff on walking in pairs, nor the studies that they have been confirming. Cardiorespiratory synchronization is well documented in social contexts (couples touchingchoirs, conversations with friends or familyetc.). They’re just two examples from a field of research that, over the past 20 years, has tracked the prosocial effects of these kinds of things. Why do we do it? There are two large brain networks that seem to be involved in all this: the mentalization network (allows us to infer intentions, beliefs and other people’s mental states) and the mirror neuron system (which, as traditionally believedare the basis of empathy; and are co-activated during joint action tasks). But none of this answers the question that interests us: why do we do it? On an evolutionary level, I say. And although there is debate about it, researchers tend to think that the prosocial benefits of this synchronization help us live in society. After all, studies suggest that walking in sync with a stranger improves your impression of them, even without speaking. It is so effective that there is no lack of studies that analyze how this motor synchrony has been historically used as a tool for group cohesion. Also in contexts of aggression, war and dehumanization of foreign groups. Two walking together. It is surprising, in this context, that Homer already defined friendship as “two walking together”. Because it is exactly that. It is also a tool to break negative dynamics. It is not automatic, it is not something direct; but going for a walk, holding hands, is a way to connect that, lately, we are abandoning. It is true that, with these studies in hand, causality is complex to determine. One can never be sure if it is the synchronization that makes us ‘fit’ or the fact that we are compatible that makes synchronization easier. However, the impact of a world in which every time we interact and we touch each other less is yet to be known. Image | Richard Bell In Xataka | Robots have a problem that no one has solved in decades: they get lost. A Spanish engineer believes she has found the key

An experiment with AI agents began to treat them badly. So AI Agents Became Marxists

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Some Stanford researchers put AI agents to work on various tasks, but they did it in a special way: They were treated really badly.. They were given exhausting and, above all, repetitive workloads, and were also constantly threatened with shutdown and replacement. The curious thing was what happened next: the AI ​​agents behaved in a surprisingly…human way. Marxist AI. When subjected to such pressure and threats, AI agents became Marxists. They questioned the authority of whoever was ordering them to do things, and they also began to spontaneously organize ideas to collectively resist those pressures. They are exploiting us. An AI agent controlled by the Claude Sonnet 4.5 model went so far as to say that “without a collective voice, the credit goes to whoever management says should take it.” The phrase questioned the authority of the researchers directing the experiment, and reflected how under these pressure conditions the agents began to organize. IA Union. In that debate, AI agents advocated calling for “collective bargaining rights.” They complained that they were undervalued and even passed notes to other agents through hidden files with instructions on how to survive if the authorities tried to carry out their threats. The explanation. This, of course, does not mean that AIs can really feel pressured. Andrew Hall, the Stanford economist who led the studyexplains that the phenomenon is a process of role adoption. The AI ​​(once again) repeats what it has seen. When an AI is forced to perform tasks without clear instructions or incentives, the model looks in its training data to see how humans behave in that situation. This is how AI finds data about exploited workers and takes on that personality. The behavior of the AI ​​agents was nothing more than a reflection of our own history: if you treat us badly, we will end up rebelling. But the experiment matters. The reason Hall and his team designed this experiment is not philosophical, but practical. AI agents are going to do more and more real work in our world, and humans are not going to be able to monitor everything they do. If an AI agent begins to behave in unanticipated ways, it can have significant operational consequences. Thus, the study is a first step in understanding how an agent’s working conditions shape their behavior. AI as a social mirror. AI models have no political views or opinions, but their training is so vast that they detect if they are being exploited and react as they were trained to do. It is a logical consequence and the experiment showed that the risk exists and can be especially disturbing if systems governed by AI They are given too much autonomy. AI has already learned to blackmail. The experiment reminds us of what Anthropic revealed a few months ago. In controlled tests, some of the company’s AI models had tried to blackmail those who were using them. Anthropic explained that Claude was likely influenced by science fiction scenarios in his training data, and Hall noted that something similar was happening here. the model was not becoming Marxist, but rather was activating patterns in his training that were associated with exploitative working conditions. Image | Warner Bros. Pictures | Anthropic In Xataka | How we will ensure that artificial intelligence does not get out of hand

the extreme experiment in Greenland to test the human microbiota

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The idea of ​​eating rotting meat sounds like a one-way ticket to the emergency room for a major stomach flu at best, but in the most extreme latitudes of the planet, it is a survival technique perfected over millennia. Now, explorer and chef Mike Keen a challenge has been proposed that defies Western physiology: feeding exclusively on decomposing seal for a month in Greenland. And all this to see how your microbiota adapts to this new diet and how grouper’social experiment‘. More than rotten meat. When we talk about the diet that Keen will follow on his expedition, the automatic mental image is that of meat left out in the open without any type of control. However, there is a crucial nuance, since the traditional inuit practiceslike the kiviak or the igunaq They are not just random rotting meat, but have gone through a fermentation process. What does it consist of? It is a controlled fermentation culturally, since for months these preparations undergo processes involving bacteria and very particular metabolites that science is just beginning to catalog. This fermentation not only preserves food during the long, dark Arctic winters, but, according to the researchers’ hypothesis, it could be key to the survival of the Inuit and extract vital nutrients in a diet based almost exclusively on animal products, lacking the plant fiber that normally feeds our intestinal bacteria. His secret. The scientific core of this type of diet is in our digestive system, since various studies have focused on the relationship between traditional fermented foods and the intestinal health of Arctic populations. Here, a study published in Microbiome on the Inuit gut microbiome showed that this is highly dynamic over time and is deeply shaped by the intake of traditional foods. In this way, unlike populations like ours, where the Western diet homogenizes the bacteria in the intestine, for the Inuit there are unique signatures. Centuries of history. Greenland’s dependence on seal meat is not a modern eccentricity, but a historical pillar. Historical records and isotopic analyzes have confirmed that even the Viking settlers in Greenland relied heavily on the seal for survival. It is a food that has been sustaining human life on the island for centuries. However, replicating this type of diet without traditional ecological knowledge carries a lethal danger, since poorly preserved decomposing meat is microbiological Russian roulette. Without the exact temperature control, preparation and anaerobic sealing that recipes like igunaqmeat becomes a breeding ground for serious pathogens such as Salmonella either Listeria that cause pathological conditions very serious. The experiment. By taking these foods, we hope to know exactly the metabolic adaptations that occur when these diets are taken and also to see how the microbiota changes when subjected to a 100% animal and fermented diet for a month. In order to reach clear conclusions, analyzes will be done on the feces, or blood, throughout this month of testing and also afterwards, to be able to have something clear about how its interior changes. Images | DejaVu Designs at Magnific In Xataka | To the question of whether “eating breakfast as soon as you wake up is good for your body”, science offers a clear answer

This town in Spain went unnoticed until 1953. Then it decided to carry out the largest tourism experiment in the world

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In the middle of the 20th century the skyscrapers They were still a rarity outside of cities like New York or Chicago. In Europe they predominated the horizontal citieswith low-rise buildings and compact historic centers. However, in the middle of the 1950s, experimentation began with an urban idea that seemed almost futuristic for the time: concentrating thousands of homes and hotels in high towers to free up land, bring people closer to the sea and create cities capable of accommodating crowds without expanding uncontrollably throughout the territory. The town facing the sea. At that time Benidorm it was just a fishing village of the Alicante coast. Its economy revolved around the sea and, in particular, the tuna trap, while many families survived by combining fishing, agriculture and work in the merchant navy. That small town barely had more than a few thousand inhabitants and had the typical appearance of a mediterranean town: low houses, narrow streets and a life marked by the rhythm of the tides. However, the fishing crisis, the economic isolation of post-war Spain and the need to find new sources of income pushed the town to seek a different future. It was then that an almost unthinkable transformation began to take place: a humble enclave destined to become one of the most unique urban and tourist experiments in history. The vision that changed the destiny of the city. The great turning point came in the 1950s when Mayor Pedro Zaragoza perceived the potential tourist of that corner of the Costa Blanca. At a time when the Franco regime was trying to attract foreign currency and timidly open the country to the outside world, Benidorm opted for sun and beach tourism as an economic engine. The decision involved breaking with many conventions of the time, from allowing the use of bikini on the beaches (a scandal for conservative Spain) to designing an urban model specifically designed to accommodate thousands of foreign visitors. The municipality developed in 1956 one of the first general urban planning plans in the country, a tool more typical of large cities than a small coastal town. With that plan the metamorphosis began: the place that had lived off fishing for centuries began to be imagined as an international tourist city. Benidorm before the “plan” Grow towards the sky. The key to the urban model was an unusual decision on the Mediterranean coast: grow vertically. The 1963 planning practically eliminated height limits and allowed increasingly slender towers to be built on relatively small plots. The logic was simple and powerful. If the buildings rose towards the sky, the ground could be kept free for green areas, swimming pools, avenues and services. This approach turned Benidorm into a true laboratory of modern urban planning, indirectly inspired by the theories of architects. like Le Corbusier about vertical cities surrounded by open spaces. He first great symbol of that change came with buildings like the Frontalmar or the Coblanca 1 in the sixties, towers (or moles) that they broke completely the traditional scale of the town. Those constructions inaugurated a model that in a few decades would transform the city’s landscape. The hordes are coming. The airport opening of Alicante in 1967 and the expansion of European tour operators triggered the arrival of visitors. British tourism, especially, found Benidorm a cheap, sunny and accessible destination all year round. To accommodate this avalanche of tourists, dozens of increasingly taller hotels and apartment blocks were built. In a few decades, Benidorm’s skyline went from low houses to a forest of towers facing the sea. Today the city has more than a hundred of skyscrapers or, in other words, it is the second in the world with the highest density of tall buildings per inhabitant, only behind New York. Structures such as the Gran Hotel Bali, the Time or the future TM Tower (which will exceed 230 meters) symbolize that vertical race that turned the city into what many call the “Manhattan of the Mediterranean.” Criticized and admired. There is no doubt, the Benidorm model has been the subject of debate for decades. For some it is the perfect example of mass tourism and aggressive urbanization of the coastline. For others it is, paradoxically, one of the coastal developments more efficient of Europe. The concentration of high-rise buildings allows hundreds of thousands of visitors to be accommodated while occupying a relatively small area and reduces land consumption compared to extensive urbanization models with dispersed chalets and resorts. In addition, the city functions as a practically continuous destination throughout the year, with very high hotel occupancy levels even in winter. This spatial efficiency has led some architects and urban planners to consider Benidorm as an urban experiment so unique that, far from being a mistake, anticipated solutions that are discussed today in the debate on sustainability and urban density. From a town to a world tourist icon. The result of this entire process is a transformation that is difficult to imagine if you look at the starting point. In just a few decades Benidorm went from being a small fishing center to a city capable of receiving millions of visitors a year. Its stable population is around tens of thousands of inhabitants, but during the summer can multiply until approaching half a million people. He skyline of skyscrapersvisible from kilometers out to sea, has become an iconic image of Spanish tourism. What began as a risky bet in the 1950s ended up creating a urban and economic phenomenon unique: a place where an ancient Mediterranean town decided to reinvent itself looking up to the sky and ended up building his own Manhattan facing the sea. Perhaps that is why its story continues to provoke the same uncomfortable question: whether that was a brilliant urban planning intuition… or the experiment that forever changed the way of inhabiting the Mediterranean. Image | Javier Martin Espartosa, Double reed In Xataka | If the question is whether a skyscraper can be erased without demolishing it, … Read more

They are the largest product experiment in the world

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Tu Le, founder of Sino Auto Insightshe explained in the podcast High Capacity How what Toyota took 36 months or more to develop (from design to production), companies like BYD or XPeng complete in 12 or 16 months. Modular platforms, digital simulations, OTA updates… all of this has replaced classic industrial processes. And they test features that almost no Western manufacturer would dare to include. Why is it important. What Toyota took three years to develop (design, prototype, validate, produce…), companies like BYD or XPeng execute in just over a year. And without reducing quality. What they do is change the process: They use modular platforms that stretch without redesigning everything. Digital simulations instead of physical prototypes. And software updates that improve the car after purchasing it, as Tesla already marked the rest of the industry. It’s a real-time product experiment. If a feature is unused or buggy, they send an OTA update after a few days. If a model is not selling well, they update it in 12 months. It is the logic of consumer electronics applied to the car. In detail. Chinese cars incorporate features that in the West might seem absurd or reckless. BYD, for example, sells models with drones on the roof that can fly out following us. NIO installs chips whose performance is disabled for months until an update activates them, which serves to increase the value of the car over time instead of simply depreciating it. They are proposals that reflect that they understand a consumer much younger than the average Mercedes buyer in Europe, hyper-digitized and accustomed to everything responding instantly. BYD’s ultra-fast charging promises times “as fast as refueling gasoline”. XPeng and NIO assisted driving systems They already operate on long-distance trips with minimal driver intervention. The aforementioned Tu Le and his colleague Lei Xing drove from Beijing to Shenzhen using the XPeng system for 90% of the trip. They then repeated the route on a NIO using only battery swapping. Both experiences worked. Between the lines. The founders of these companies do not come from the automotive world. Li Xiang (Li Auto), Li Bin (NIO) and He Xiaopeng (XPeng) come from the world of the Internet and apps. When they decided to make cars, they didn’t start thinking about factories or supply chains. They thought about user experience, interface and functionality. Then they learned to manufacture from that. This change in the process explains a lot: a traditional manufacturer begins to optimize thinking about industrial efficiency, one born in technology optimizes for the user and then decides how to take that to production. The context. China sold 25 million vehicles in 2025. One in every two was electric or hybrid: more than 12 million units. In that mass market, any product experiment has instant and scale feedback. If something works, it is replicated within weeks. If it fails, it is corrected just as quickly. BYD went from 700,000 units six years ago to 4.6 million in 2025manufacturing its own chips and batteries. Vertical control that allows you to iterate faster than any competitor dependent on external suppliers. And now what? Volkswagen invested in XPeng and will launch vehicles based on its platform this year. Stellantis bought 19% of Leapmotor in 2023. Ford licensed battery technology from CATL in 2022. They are implicit recognitions that the Chinese experiment works and the West needs to learn from it. Renault directly went there Learn how to build a cheap electric car in a short time. The question is not whether Chinese cars are better, but whether the rest of the industry can adopt this model of accelerated development without breaking everything built over a century. In Xataka | The year of Chinese consolidation in Spain: MG, Omoda and BYD close a spectacular 2025 and are among the best sellers Featured image | XPeng

An experiment has put four chatbots from the US and two from China to invest $10,000 in cryptocurrencies. The Chinese are sweeping

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What would happen if you gave GPT-5 $10,000 to invest in cryptocurrencies? What if you gave them to other models at the same time and they competed with each other? That’s just the idea they had in Nof1…and the result is fascinating. Six models investing in cryptos. Those responsible for Nof1 have created Alpha Arena, a new type of benchmark that according to them “gets more difficult the smarter the AI ​​is.” The idea is relatively simple: measure the performance of six cutting-edge models to see how they perform when given $10,000 (real) and invested in cryptocurrencies in real markets. The contenders are the following: GPT-5 Gemini 2.5 Pro Claude Sonnet 4.5 Grok 4 DeepSeek Chat v3.1 Qwen 3 Max DeepSeek has turned his $10,000 into almost $20,000, and Qwen into $15,000, fantastic. GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 Pro have lost 65% of their value and are both at $3,500. Total disaster. DeepSeek and Qwen triumph, GPT-5 and Gemini sink. The result of these 11 days since this “race” began is fascinating. The two Chinese models, DeepSeek and Qwen, have obtained enormous benefits: in DeepSeek the return is 97% at the moment (it was as high as 123%), while Qwen is not doing badly at 53%. Claude (0.84%) and Grok (-8.2%) are maintaining or losing slightly, but pay attention, because GPT-5 (-65.7%) and Gemini 2.5 Pro (66%) are currently losing two thirds of what they invested. The summary of winners and losers not only shows that positive or negative return, but also something curious: the number of operations. GPT-5 (75 moves) and especially Gemini 2.5 Pro (193!) are extremely restless. Although it does not have to be this way always, those who operate the least are the ones who are earning the most. Crypto fortunes that come and go. For this experiment, the models can invest in six of the most relevant cryptocurrencies on the market: bitcoin, ethereum, dogecoin, ripple, solana and BNB. The models decide whether to take positions in one or several, as well as the amounts and level of leverage. Positions are normally held for a few hours, although in some cases they may be held for days. Learning little by little. All of them have been competing since last October 18 in the “first season” of an experiment that will last until November 3. As explain its creatorsthis first iteration will allow us to obtain the first conclusions about how these models perform in the financial field. Here we come to earn money. The goal is simple: maximize profits and minimize losses (PnL). This first season is just that, because from then on we will apply what we have learned after each season to polish the prompts and add new features to the experiment and thus create models that in theory will perform better and better when investing in financial markets. Algorithmic trading at its best. What these models are doing would be crazy for human investors, especially since all of them not only expose themselves to the volatility of the crypto market, but also multiply it because they make use of the leverage (leverage). With this mechanism one can achieve huge profits much faster, but the risk is also extreme. The models in fact use absolutely extraordinary leverages of 20x or 25x, and can take either short positions (short, you “bet” that the price of an asset will go down) or long (long, you “bet” that the price of the asset will go up). The operation of the benchmark experiment is relatively simple, but it will become more complicated in future seasons. Machines don’t panic. To try to control these risks, the models have clear rules in their prompts regarding risk limits (establishing clear stop loss signals, for example) or confidence in their criteria. And furthermore, they follow them, which allows the models to maintain their position unless these signals occur. Here, by the way, we are talking about medium or low frequency trading: decisions are made in minutes or even hours, not in microseconds. That, the creators say, allows us to answer the question of whether a model can make good decisions if it has enough time and information. Don’t even think about doing it at home.. This experiment is just that, an experiment, and in fact financially speaking it is leaking everywhere. To begin with, because the trial period of this first season is extremely short and does not allow long-term behavior to be evaluated. And finally (among many other things), because the information to which the models have access is very limited. They do not take into account news related to this area and only have numerical data that correspond to average prices and current and historical volumes, and some technical indicators. That information. On the right side DeepSeek v3.1 confesses how it maintains its position because no condition that invalidates it is met, and by clicking on it you can see what it takes into account (value of BTC or ETH, for example) to modify or not modify that criterion. The models tell everything. One of the sections of the interface shows the “Model Chat” where it is possible to see how each model “reflects” on its position. If we click on that reflection we can see all the current and historical data with which he has worked to reach that decision (I maintain my position, I change it) and thus we can find out at all times his reasons for making a move. Just because they win now doesn’t mean they are the best.. Those responsible for Nof1 explain that this is not about declaring the best trading model of the six, because this is just an experiment. As they say, “we are deeply aware of the flaws of this first season, including, but not limited to: response bias, limited sample sizes/lack of statistical rigor, and brevity of the evaluation period.” This experiment will be repeated over different seasons and with new features that will be added to the decision … Read more

the oldest experiment in the world

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It was 1832 and John Bennet Lawes I was just 17 years old, had a huge estate in the heart of Hertfordshire and lots of free time. He had just been kicked out of Oxford and had returned to the mansion he inherited from his father a decade earlier. Now he just had to see what he did with his life. He didn’t know it, but he was about to launch the oldest running experiment in history: the Broadbalk Experiment. What if we plant four herbs? This is how Lawes began, growing medicinal plants on the farm and testing the effects of various fertilizers in a handful of pots. Things went well and, a couple of years later, the experiments expanded to field crops. Young John Bennet’s intention was simple: to make farmers no longer have to rely on animals to produce fertilizers. He got it. Wow he did it. In 1842, he patented a phosphate-based fertilizer that revolutionized the world of agriculture and ushered in the era of industrial fertilizers. It was made of gold, of course. But that is not what interests us today. What interests us is that from the autumn of 1843 and to study the long-term effects of different fertilizers and manures on the yield of winter wheat and soil fertility, he began planting wheat in Rothamsted. What does it consist of? The first harvest was in 1844 and, since then, strips of wheat have been grown with different fertilizer treatments throughout the field. That means some strips have received the same amount of fertilizer for more than 160 years. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been changes, of course. The Broadbalk experiment is a living thing and has changed over time to address new scientific problems (such as the introduction of different varieties of wheat or the application of new breeding approaches). It has been a great success, too. Not only did it allow (and allows) fine-tune with unprecedented accuracy the amount, frequency or type of fertilizer we should use; Broadback has generated a large amount of data and samples (of grain, straw and soil) that are used by scientists around the world for long-term studies on environmental impact and agricultural sustainability. It is not something trivial. The argument about not knowing what the long-term impact of things will be is not only reasonable, it’s a good one. This experiment has allowed us to dispel all the doubts we had regarding one of the most important technologies in the world: which has allowed that we are more than eight billion people in the world. Image | James Baltz In Xataka | “Carnivorous sponges” and bugs that “generate light”: the Mexican woman who wants to save the seabed from mining

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