tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2298061980853081502024-03-05T07:34:35.645-05:00Fallacious DAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.comBlogger105125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-45800311691336326892015-10-24T14:41:00.000-04:002015-10-24T14:46:41.178-04:00Inception Is Real<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgJghykl8SI" target="_blank">(Cue theme music)</a><br />
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Benjamin Franklin was possibly the Greatest Diplomat Ever. He convinced the French to help the fledgling American colonies fight the British - just 13 years after the colonies had fought <i><b>against </b></i>the French!<br />
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What did Ben have to say about his tactics? "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still." In other words, external pressure does not convince someone. In fact, it often does the opposite. If you truly want someone to be convinced, you must <b><i>let him convince himself</i></b>.<br />
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But it is not easy to engineer a mechanism to let someone convince himself. Leonardo DiCaprio almost died in his attempt.<br />
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There is, however, a way it can be done. Social scientists have determined that we accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressures. Looking at it a different way, once someone has taken some action that shifts his self-image, he is likely to continue to act in accordance with that self-image. This occurs because we value consistency. Nobody wants to be viewed as a flake.<br />
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So what we need is a catalyst. That catalyst causes someone to take some action or make some decision. Then out of a desire for consistency (or simply to feel good about his decision),<i><b> he will create his own internal reasons</b></i> for taking that action or making that decision. Then he will continue down that path, even if the catalyst is removed.<br />
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And here's the data. An experiment was done in Iowa to test this theory in the domain of energy conservation. An interviewer gave residents some energy-saving tips and asked them to try to conserve energy in the future. Nobody did.<br />
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For another group, the interviewer said that residents who agreed to conserve would have their names publicized in the newspaper as public-spirited, fuel-conserving citizens. A month later, they had reduced their energy usage by 12%.<br />
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Here comes the rub. After one month, each family that had been promised their name in the paper got a letter saying that that would no longer be possible. Did they stop conserving? For the remaining winter months, they reduced usage by 15% - <b><i>more </i></b>than they had during the month they were promised their name in the paper!<br />
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The newspaper promise was a catalyst. Of course, nobody wants to admit (not even to themselves) that they conserve energy simply because their name would be in the paper. So they start making up other reasons: to save the Earth, to save money, to reduce America's dependence on foreign fuel. Those reasons make them feel good... and <i><b>they came up with them on their own</b></i>. So even when the catalyst reason was removed, they continued in that course.<br />
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Inception.<br />
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<b><i>Disclaimer</i></b>: I'm not smart enough to have figured this out on my own. This is discussed thoroughly in Robert Cialdini's book, <i>Influence</i>.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-70650651572005955882015-10-07T11:00:00.001-04:002015-10-07T12:57:17.609-04:00How to Read a MindThere are two types of discussions: useful and useless. Useless ones are also known as arguments. And you <a href="http://onexerxes.blogspot.com/2013/12/you-cant-win-argument.html" target="_blank">can't win an argument</a>.<br />
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But the distinction can be subtle. How do you know which is which?<br />
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Simple: <i><b>Is the other party trying to understand your thought before refuting it?</b></i><br />
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Thoughts are complicated. If they weren't, there would be no need to discuss them. So you probably need some back and forth before the other party truly grasps the idea. This can take the form of questions, summarization, or other some other type of clarification.<br />
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If, however, the other party doesn't pursue that understanding but jumps directly into a rebuttal, you are now in a useless discussion. Congratulations!<br />
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But why is it useless? Your points make sense, right? In an argument, the other party has already made up their mind. Everything you say can and will be used against you.<br />
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In other words, this technique can tell you what is in the other party's mind. It can thus help you avoid wasting your time. You <a href="http://onexerxes.blogspot.com/2013/12/you-cant-win-argument.html" target="_blank">can't win an argument</a>.<br />
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Of course, it goes both ways. If you find yourself refuting something without first pursing an understanding of it, you can tell that your mind is already made up.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-63693227730282194762015-04-10T14:39:00.001-04:002015-04-10T14:39:31.064-04:00Having Opinions Considered HarmfulA rational person would like to have the most accurate worldview possible. And, by that, I mean having the most objective, informed stance on issues. I think it's safe to say we all want that.<br />
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But we are not as rational as we may like to think.<br />
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The problem is: we have egos. We don't like to be wrong.<br />
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Another problem is: we have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases" target="_blank">all sorts of cognitive biases</a>. Our own brain is often working against us.<br />
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When you combine these two problems, you get a society in which people generally do not have the most accurate worldview possible.<br />
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For example, a currently controversial issue is genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Proponents of GMOs say they will dramatically increase crop yields and reduce world hunger. Opponents say that they are unnatural and make the food chain more fragile.<br />
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Other such issues could be abortion, vaccinations, or global warming.<br />
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<b><i>So, what's your opinion?</i></b><br />
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Did you feel that? Did you feel that emotional response to simply the mention of the topic?<br />
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That is what is working against us.<br />
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If we have an opinion on an issue, protecting it becomes more important than having the most accurate stance. We would hate to admit that we were wrong about something. So we use <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" target="_blank">confirmation bias</a> to trick ourselves into thinking that the best available information supports our opinion.<br />
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It gets even worse when we have stated our opinion publicly, such as in a research paper or newspaper article. Now we are much more vested in protecting our public image.<br />
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It gets even worse when our livelihood is based on our opinion. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair<br />
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Of course, it's unrealistic to expect that people will just stop having opinions. I still have them, despite knowing all of this.<br />
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But I really enjoy when I can say "I don't know" or "I don't have an opinion on that." It's a very freeing experience. I can feel that I am more open to new information when I'm in that mode of thinking.<br />
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(And yes, I appreciate the irony that this blog post is my opinion.)<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-59345600217467402182015-04-03T17:54:00.002-04:002015-04-04T14:47:02.242-04:00The Endowment Effect (Or: Why Nobody Cares About Your Baby Pictures)Experiment participants were shown a mug. They were asked how much they would be willing to pay for that mug. Let's say they said $5.<br />
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Then they were given the mug (for free).<br />
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Then they were offered the chance to sell it.<br />
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How much do you think they asked for when they had the chance to sell their mug?<br />
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$10.<br />
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Another experiment showed a similar result: participants won basketball tickets. They were only willing to sell them for <i><b>14 times more </b></i>than the price they were willing to pay for the same tickets.<br />
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Another experiment showed that employees worked harder to maintain a bonus they already had than they did to acquire a new bonus.<br />
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Interestingly, this same behavior is observed in children, apes, and monkeys.<br />
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This is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect" target="_blank">the endowment effect</a>. It is "the hypothesis that people ascribe more value to things merely because they own them."<br />
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This is why people share baby pictures on Facebook. They think those pictures are the greatest things in the world. They ascribe more value to them because it's their own child.<br />
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Of course, the rest of the world doesn't see them the same way.<br />
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<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pSLOHNmsEwk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-31745189324948737832015-03-28T18:07:00.000-04:002015-03-28T18:08:07.823-04:00Medicine Is from the Stone AgeWhen I was in grade school, I went on a field trip to a pharmaceutical company. We toured the plant and learned how new drugs are discovered.<br />
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To me, the process was very surprising. They basically just try random chemical compounds and see what they do. Seriously. They find a new compound, check if it will kill you, and if not, see if it has any useful function.<br />
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This reminds me of watching movies about cavemen. They would stumble upon something in their environment and see if it could be useful for some task. For example, when hunting a wildebeest, maybe they would find a rock on the ground and use it to attack their prey.<br />
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One might say that a turning point in human history was the transition from <b><i>stumbling upon</i></b> tools to <b><i>crafting</i></b> them.<br />
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It probably started with hammers and knives. Then there were farming tools. Then engines. Now we can access the world's information from a $30 tool in our pocket.<br />
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So here's what I'm getting at: our current state of drug discovery is from the stone age. Finding a new medicine is like finding a - well, stone - that happens to be helpful.<br />
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Now compare a rock to your smartphone. What kind of chasm exists between the two? That's the kind of leap we can expect when drug discovery moves out if the stone age.<br />
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But can that happen? Can we actually design drugs the way we design tools?<br />
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We can craft tools because we understand the relevant laws of physics and have the manufacturing processes to fabricate the tools. Given the exponential rate of technology growth (discussed last time) we will soon have both the biological understanding and fabrication methods to actually craft medicine.<br />
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Then what we will be capable of crafting will make penicillin and ibuprofen look like rocks by comparison.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-33569649378593759712015-01-20T16:29:00.000-05:002015-03-28T18:10:35.823-04:00Compounding TechnologyIf you invested one cent in the year 1 AD, earning two percent interest annually, how much money would you have today?<br />
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Millions? Billions?<br />
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Nope.<br />
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You would have over 1.5 <i><b>quadrillion</b></i> dollars. That's 1.5 <i><b>million billions</b></i>.<br />
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What if you received ten percent interest? Well, then you would have more dollars than there are atoms in the known universe.<br />
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The <a href="https://qrc.depaul.edu/StudyGuide2009/Notes/Savings%20Accounts/Compound%20Interest.htm" target="_blank">math is straightforward</a>. But I was shocked when I first heard it.<br />
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Why the disconnect between the math and our mental estimate? Our natural inclination is to think linearly. Most physical things that we have interacted with over the ages behave linearly. If I turn the faucet in my sink, I expect a linearly corresponding amount of water to come out. If I want my cookies to be a little more well-done, I will leave them in the oven a linearly corresponding amount of time.<br />
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But compounding interest does not behave linearly. The reason makes sense: each year's compounding means that next year you have more to fuel the process. It's something of a positive feedback loop. Compounding interest thus behave <i><b>exponentially</b></i> - and the <a href="https://qrc.depaul.edu/StudyGuide2009/Notes/Savings%20Accounts/Compound%20Interest.htm" target="_blank">math</a> shows that.<br />
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Technology exhibits this same compounding effect.* Think about the latest darling in technology: the smartphone. That was built upon technologies that came before: cellular transmission and the internet. Those technologies were, in turn, built on prior tech: radio/tv broadcast and computers. We could trace further back to semiconductors, then to metal refineries, and so forth.<br />
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Each new innovation doesn't just move us forward, it <b><i>accelerates</i></b> us forward. Moore's Law seeks to quantify this effect. It states that computational processing power doubles every 18 months. If that were your bank account, that would mean that you would earn about <i><b>60%</b></i> annual interest. <br />
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So what does that mean for us, right now? Well, think about all of the technological progress we have made in the past 30 years. In the next 30 years, we can expect an increase of about <b><i>one hundred million percent</i></b>. What does one hundred million percent of our current technology look like?<br />
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I certainly don't know. But it sure will be fun to watch it unfold.<br />
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*If you read my blog often, you'll notice that I often write about what I'm currently reading. This post was inspired by Ray Kurzweil's <i>The Singularity Is Near</i>. It will likely inspire several more posts.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-3528118776632636142014-10-19T11:55:00.000-04:002014-10-19T11:55:11.551-04:00The Power and Subtlety of SpinI've written before about how pervasive 'spin' is today. But I just happened to read more about it in <i>You Are Not So Smart</i> by David McRaney.<br />
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In the chapter entitle "The Misinformation Effect," he discusses an interesting experiment conducted in 1974 at the University of Washington. Participants watched a video of a car crash and were then asked to estimate how fast the cars were going. But the participants were divided into groups and the phrasing of the question was different for each group. These were the different variations:<br />
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- About how fast were the cars going when they <i>smashed </i>into each other?<br />
- About how fast were the cars going when they <i>collided </i>into each other?<br />
- About how fast were the cars going when they <i>bumped </i>into each other?<br />
- About how fast were the cars going when they <i>hit </i>each other?<br />
- About how fast were the cars going when they <i>contacted </i>each other?<br />
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Remember, everyone watched the same video. The only difference is the wording of the question. Here are the average answers for each participant group:<br />
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- Smashed: 40.8 miles per hour<br />
- Collided: 39.3 miles per hour<br />
- Bumped: 38.1 miles per hour<br />
- Hit: 34.0 miles per hour<br />
- Contacted: 31.8 miles per hour<br />
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The experiment then went a step further. The participants were asked if they remembered broken glass in the video. There actually was no broken glass, but the participants with the 'smashed' question were twice as likely to remember seeing it.<br />
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I was floored when I read this. Changing <b><i>one word</i></b> in a <i><b>question </b></i>can have a powerful impact on what people believe.<br />
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Once you understand this concept, you start to see it everywhere. Right now, the big news topic is Ebola. But what phrases are used around it? Those phrases change your view of Ebola, regardless of the actual statistics and facts. Is it possible that the individuals using those phrases are intentionally taking advantage of this effect? <br />
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Of course, it's much harder to notice this when what you're reading or hearing agrees with your own stance on the matter. But that's Confirmation Bias and another topic entirely. <br />
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The point is, words have connotations. Those connotations make an impact on what we believe. Remember that the next time you watch Fox News.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-19696197504340277432014-09-16T19:09:00.002-04:002014-09-16T19:09:48.667-04:00How to Get Reasonably DRY<a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eBBu3-QsSAFjRJDG3DWfPVdrrRJqWTFiB20CFS_lbOQ/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=60000" target="_blank">It's a presentation</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-34013591009193214592014-09-07T13:21:00.001-04:002014-09-10T23:48:06.339-04:00Chasing the Latest TrendsI'm an engineer. I love playing with the newest toys. But acquiring those toys has a cost - and not just in terms of money. More important is the time invested to learn the new system and transition from the old.<br />
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But hey, for me, the benefit (fun) usually outweighs the cost (money/time). <br />
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A problem can arise, though, in domains where the technology is changing rapidly. In such a domain, the technology could potentially change so rapidly that if you keep up with everything, you are constantly in a learning mode and never get to a productive mode. <br />
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is what is currently happening with HTML and JavaScript libraries. <br />
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One large-scale web application I worked on started with the Prototype library (heh, yea). In mid-project we switched to OpenRico (remember that guy?). Then we said, "Oh hey, the newest thing is MooTools." Then there was the big one, jQuery. Backbone? Oh, Angular is so hot right now. But what about Google's new Polymer? <br />
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Granted, it's exciting to see the evolution of the web platform. But if you spend all of your time moving your project to the latest, hottest library so that you can trash talk all of the old fogies who still use the passé crap, you'll never be able to get any real work done.<br />
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But, come on, we can't still be coding in Cobol, right? Nobody wants to spend their whole career working on old technologies. Definitely! So how do we decide if we should stick with something old or jump to the new kid on the block?<br />
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Nassim Taleb (author of <i>The Black Swan</i>) gives the answer:<br />
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<i><b>The longer a certain idea or technology has been around, the longer we can expect it to survive.</b></i><br />
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He uses the example of a chair. We may imagine the future with chairs made of exotic materials that fly. But the simple wooden chair has been around for thousands of years. Chances are, in 50 years, we will still be sitting on simple wooden chairs. Why? They have proven their effectiveness. <br />
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In terms of software, "future-proofing" is very very hard to do. But applying Taleb's principle can help us. For example, raw HTML has been around for a long time and so will likely stick around a long time into the future. So maybe we pick a library/framework that is as close to raw HTML as possible. <br />
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Another example: Relative to other JavaScript frameworks, jQuery has proven its effectiveness over a good span of time. Sure, there will be a new king someday. But it's prudent to wait and see who can prove more effective over time. <br />
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How long is that time? I don't know the answer to that; but I'm sure it varies by domain. <br />
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Again, as an engineer, this 'waiting' is against my natural inclination. I want to get the new toy asap. But if I'm responsible for a piece of software that my company will be maintaining years from now, I must force myself to make prudent decisions. <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-72580296614493893052014-08-18T17:45:00.001-04:002014-08-18T17:51:51.790-04:00Why Ideas Come to You in the ShowerScott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, is a surprisingly insightful guy. I've been following his <a href="http://dilbert.com/blog" target="_blank">blog</a> for some time and I read his latest <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1591846919/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390061168&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+fail" target="_blank">book</a>. If you like thought-provoking stuff, I highly recommend them.<br />
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He just made this post about creativity:<br />
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<a href="http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/creativity_hack/" target="_blank">http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/creativity_hack/</a><br />
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There have been several articles floating around the web lately about how inspiration comes to us when we take our mind off of the problem. For example, <a href="http://lifehacker.com/5987858/the-science-behind-creative-ideas" target="_blank">this one</a>. <br />
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The idea always goes something like: "you have to let your subconscious work at the problem." That sounds reasonable, I guess. But it doesn't go far enough. <br />
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Scott posits that "creativity is something that happens <i><b>naturally </b></i>so long as your brain is not actively suppressing it for some sort of survival advantage... Putting it in simpler terms, creativity is a mental luxury that your brain will not allow until it feels safe or until the watchdog part of your brain gets busy handling some routine task such as driving the car." <br />
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He goes on to suggest that research (A-B tests) should be done to determine which distraction methods yield the most creativity. I suppose the challenge here would be how to quantify 'creativity.' But I'm sure that, at the very least, we could measure some proxy for it. <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-28663714974823882902014-07-31T19:55:00.000-04:002014-07-31T19:55:00.501-04:00Digging for RequirementsI'm again going to refer heavily to <i>The Pragmatic Programmer</i>. In fact, the title of this post is one of the sections in chapter 7. <br />
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Here the authors mention that the term 'requirements gathering' is misleading. It somehow implies that the requirements already exist somewhere and just need to picked up. Instead, they say requirements need to be dug for.<br />
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Users understand their workflow, but not in the same way that an engineer needs to understand it. A user doesn't particularly care how much of his workflow is defined by the system architecture, company policy, laws of the country, industry standards, or even habit. <br />
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But an engineer cares. He cares because some of those factors will change faster than others. Some don't even need to be factors anymore. So the system that he builds has to be flexible enough such that the more changeable factors can be accommodated easily.<br />
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<b><i>It's important to discover the underlying reason </i>why <i>users do a particular thing, rather than just </i>the way<i> they currently do it. At the end of the day, your development has to solve their </i>business problem<i>, not just meet their stated requirements.</i></b><br />
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The above quote hits the nail on the head: <i><b>the stated requirements are usually not the actual system requirements.</b></i> Hence there is a need to dig down into those stated requirements, find the real system requirements in there, and consider the rest as configuration options. <br />
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Here's the example the authors use. Let's say a stated requirement is: "Only an employee's supervisors and the personnel department may view that employee's records." It sounds reasonable enough, but it embeds company policy, which can change often. Digging around that stated requirement reveals the actual system requirement: "An employee record can only be viewed by a nominated group of people." Who comprise that group is simply a matter of configuration... the code doesn't care.<br />
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It's arrogant to say that an engineer understands a user workflow better than the user himself. However, the engineer obviously must understand it from a system architecture perspective. And since that is something users would never need to think about, stated requirements will almost always need some digging done.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-35733730390210768302014-05-23T19:02:00.000-04:002014-05-23T19:02:00.684-04:00The Fermi Paradox"You know when you hear about humans of the past debating whether the Earth was round or if the sun revolved around the Earth or thinking that lightning happened because of Zeus, and they seem so primitive and in the dark? That’s about where we are with this topic."
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<br />
<a href="http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html">http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html</a><br />
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There's something terribly exciting about looking at a problem like this. "...<i><b>whatever</b></i> the truth actually is, it’s mindblowing."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-17452069043029309522014-04-20T04:45:00.000-04:002014-04-20T04:45:50.894-04:00Don't Think Outside the Box<i><b>Gordius, the King of Phrygia, once tied a knot that no one could untie. It was said that he who solved the riddle of the Gordian Knot would rule all of Asia. So along comes Alexander the Great, who chops the knot to bits with his sword. Just a little different interpretation of the requirements, that's all… and he did end up ruling most of Asia.</b></i><br />
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Such is the introduction to a truly insightful section of the book <i>The Pragmatic Programmer</i>. The ideas presented in this section, like many great software engineering principles, expand beyond the realm of programming. <br />
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Programming in any existing language requires clarity of thought. One significant component of that is the removal (or at least, verification of) assumptions. This idea is equally applicable to any problem we might face in the "real world." When trying to solve such a problem, assumptions can really be the enemy:<br />
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<b><i>If the "box" is the boundary of constraints and conditions, then the trick is to </i>find <i>the box, which may be considerably larger than you think.</i></b><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<b><i>The key to solving puzzles is both to recognize the constraints placed on you and to recognize the degrees of freedom you </i>do <i>have, for in those you'll find your solution... </i></b><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<b><i>It's not whether you think inside the box or outside the box. The problem lies in </i>finding <i>the box - identifying the real constraints.</i></b><br />
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This really resonated with me. When given a problem, we are almost never given the full set of real constraints. Most constraints are assumed or imagined, leading us to believe we have a much smaller box. This leads to potentially less effective (and certainly less innovative) solutions. <br />
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So what should we do? The authors continue:<br />
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<b><i>When faced with an intractable problem, enumerate </i>all <i>the possible avenues you have before you. Don't dismiss anything, no matter how unusable or stupid it sounds. </i></b><br />
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This isn't so ground-breaking. It's basically the idea of "brainstorming" that we all learned in elementary school. But the authors go a step further:<br />
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<b><i>Now go through the list and explain why a certain path cannot be taken. Are you sure? Can you prove it?</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
This step is where I know I have failed in the past. I can generate a list of fantastical ideas, but I know I have been too quick to prune some of the more outlandish ones. <br />
<br />
I won't make that mistake again.<br />
<b><i> </i></b>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-73197917440796976112014-03-19T16:23:00.000-04:002014-03-20T08:33:52.784-04:00"He Who Can Do This Has the Whole World with Him"Back in November of 2013, I posted about how to ask for a favor. In a nutshell: make it so easy that people don't notice they're doing it. This has clear implications for software design.<br />
<br />
I just read that Cinemark went a step further: <i><b>rewarding you for doing them a favor.</b></i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://lifehacker.com/cinemark-rewards-you-for-turning-your-phone-off-during-1545581081">http://lifehacker.com/cinemark-rewards-you-for-turning-your-phone-off-during-1545581081</a><br />
<br />
Now, I can't comment on the efficacy of this app, but I love the principle. I'll again reference Dale Carnegie: "There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything... And that is by making the other person want to do it." He further says: "So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what <i>they </i>want and show them how to get it."<br />
<br />
Let's think about the moviegoer with his phone on. Sure, he may not want to disturb others in the cinema. But when he gets a Tweet of a cat doing something funny (or Instagram buzzes with a picture of what his second cousin is having for breakfast) his personal desire suddenly trumps his concern for the rest of the audience. <br />
<br />
Cinemark's tactic, then, is based on realizing that people care about their own desires much more than the desires of others. <br />
<br />
Why has it been so hard to get people to behave in an environmentally-friendly way? This same reason! People care more about their personal inconvenience and/or expense than helping literally the rest of the planet by being green. <br />
<br />
So what did Tesla do? Did they market their cars as a way to help the environment? No! That would be appealing to the wrong desire. They market their cars as high-performance status symbols. If you go to teslamotors.com right now, you'll see that the biggest statement on the front page is "THE HIGHEST SAFETY RATING IN AMERICA."<br />
<br />
In other words,<i><b> they are showing you how you can benefit yourself</b></i>. They know that you really care about that more than the environment.<br />
<br />
So whether we are building software or marketing a product, we must realize that the only way to get people to do something we want is to give them what will benefit them personally.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-32060119459200490752013-12-12T09:55:00.001-05:002013-12-12T10:11:12.726-05:00You Can't Win an ArgumentI hate arguing. Actually, I feel that if a discussion gets to the point of becoming an argument, I've already lost. Or, more accurately, both sides have already lost.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I could never quite articulate why I felt that way, but now I think I can. And I have Dale Carnegie to thank for that:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<i><b>Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right. </b></i></div>
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<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<div>
<i><b>You can't win an argument. You can't because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? Well, supposed you triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes... Then what? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior. You have hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And- </b></i></div>
<div>
<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>A man convinced against his will </b></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><b>Is of the same opinion still.</b></i></div>
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<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<div>
Ben Franklin illustrates it with this trade-off:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><b>If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent's good will.</b></i></div>
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<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
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<i><b>So figure it out for yourself. Which would you rather have: an academic, theatrical victory or a person's good will? You can seldom have both.</b></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Lincoln chimes in with what to do instead of arguing:</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><b>No man who is resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention, still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self control. Yield to larger things to which you show no more than equal rights, and yield to lesser ones though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Not even killing the dog will cure the bite.</b></i>
</div>
<div>
<br />
As Dale says, will proving someone wrong make him want to agree with you? Of course not! You just made him hurt and angry. In other words, you've evoked emotions. Negative ones. And once those are in play, all the reason and logic in the world won't do any good. <br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-79875164118768806072013-11-18T19:15:00.000-05:002013-11-18T19:15:00.210-05:00Don't Roll Your Eyes<b><i>"[John] Gottman has proven something remarkable. If he analyzes an hour of a husband and wife talking, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later."</i></b> - Malcom Gladwell, <i>Blink</i>.<br />
<br />
How does he do it? By looking at the microexpressions on their faces while they have meaningful communication. Each expression conveys an emotion or attitude. The "Four Horsemen" of negative emotion are: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. But within those four, the king is contempt. Contempt is the single strongest indication that a marriage is in trouble. <br />
<br />
A disagreement, even criticism, can be discussed rationally and worked through. But contempt is putting the other person on a lower plane than you. It is immediately discounting what they are saying for no other reason than because you feel superior to them. That is detrimental. <br />
<br />
So what is the facial expression that indicates contempt? You guessed it: eye-rolling.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-24461077397849349732013-11-10T03:29:00.001-05:002013-11-10T03:29:17.959-05:00How to Ask for Feedback... or Any FavorI don't remember much about 7th grade. But I do remember one time when I asked some of my classmates to help me fold sheets of paper to be passed to the rest of the class. I offered [what I considered] a tip as to how to do it more efficiently. But the response I got was, "When you ask someone do to you a favor, don't then ask them to do it <b><i>faster</i></b>."<br />
<br />
Now, when we ask someone to give us feedback, we're really asking them to do us a favor. We want to improve whatever it is we're asking for feedback on and thus by providing it, they are helping us. So if they are already going to this effort to help us, we really shouldn't ask more from them than necessary. In fact, we should make it as easy as possible for them to help us.<br />
<br />
Probably the most common mechanism for providing feedback today is the survey. Someone buys a product, uses a service, attends a class, etc and then fills out a feedback survey about it.<br />
<br />
We can see the same thing with software and websites. There is often a form or something that vendors use to gauge the user experience of their digital product. I posit that such a mechanism tries the patience and goodwill of users. It makes them have to go out of their way - do extra work - to do a favor for the vendor. So some vendors offer small rewards for filling out these surveys, in recognition of this fact.<br />
<br />
But I think we can do better. Consider this juvenile, but brilliant, example:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4yesmRCReJ9yziZdYIo5tX8JewUkcijjttMzELLng2KOfJZ_uwlI-crLrdhhStL-6jo3Xwi7Q2FEy5DFm50E4lnfSQRAyMgUlzDXhiF1fkHJHFPW2LZ6NFxBHkuejblQggzlw8rW_duQ/s1600/36gTVGG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4yesmRCReJ9yziZdYIo5tX8JewUkcijjttMzELLng2KOfJZ_uwlI-crLrdhhStL-6jo3Xwi7Q2FEy5DFm50E4lnfSQRAyMgUlzDXhiF1fkHJHFPW2LZ6NFxBHkuejblQggzlw8rW_duQ/s640/36gTVGG.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Why do I say this is brilliant? <b style="font-style: italic;">It takes something the user has to do anyway, and turns it into a feedback mechanism. </b>The user doesn't have to do any extra work or go out of his way at all. He just does his normal business (heh) and has<i><b> no choice</b></i> but to provide feedback in the process.<b style="font-style: italic;"> </b><br />
<b style="font-style: italic;"><br /></b>
I just checked and apparently it's no longer there, but Skype used to be a good example of this. You would make a call (over the internet) and when the call was over, you would have to close the 'call' window. But the only way to close it was to click a button that gave feedback on the quality of the call. Now, you have to close that window anyway. So it's no extra work for me to provide feedback while I do it. It's not intrusive. It's convenient.<br />
<br />
This is the kind of mechanism we should be using more with software. Users are using it anyway, why not build in ways to gather feedback that don't disrupt their workflow?<br />
<br />
I, personally, am more than happy to provide feedback to software companies <b><i>if that process doesn't get in my way. </i></b>For example, I always check the 'send anonymous usage statistics to the vendor' box when I install a program. I'm happy to help in making the software better, <i><b>as long as it doesn't inconvenience me.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
Granted, we may not be able to do this for every kind of feedback. But I feel there is a huge amount of data that we are missing out on because we just make it too hard for people to give it to us. We could be making our products and services a whole lot better... we just have to be a little creative in how we ask for feedback.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-71247233224809582102013-10-18T15:30:00.000-04:002013-10-18T15:30:00.164-04:00Goals Are for LosersScott Adams, creator of Dilbert, discusses why systems are better than goals. <br />
<br />
Hint: it's because systems allow for - and in fact, are improved by - failure.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866">http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-39062139236187271712013-09-30T18:00:00.000-04:002014-02-28T03:12:25.388-05:00I Love Limitations in Programming LanguagesI'm not being sarcastic! I really do love them. Here's the thing:<br />
<br />
Writing code is a very free-form exercise. Each developer has their own style, there are usually many ways of accomplishing the same task, and everyone has their own idea of what 'pretty' or 'clean' code looks like. The computer, of course, doesn't care. It just cares that, basically, there is some code. It finds this 'some code' and it happily compiles or interprets it.<br />
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Humans, however, care about more than that. At the most fundamental level, humans care about <i><b>understanding </b></i>what the code is doing. (At least, they should!) Now, what is easier to understand: one thing or 100 things? I hope you said one thing. <br />
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And this is exactly my point: <i><b>If the language only provides one way of doing something, it makes it easier for every other developer to understand what the code is doing.</b></i> If the language provides 100 ways of doing the same thing, well, then every developer has to know all 100 ways. <br />
<br />
So some might look at that language that only provides one way as very limiting. "There's only one way! Psshaww!" But I look at that language and say "That's so easy to understand!" I love those kinds of limitations because they make things easier. And I love easy.<br />
<br />
Now, if the designers of the language were clever, they will make it such that the one way happens to be the best way. In other words, they build the best practice into the language and don't allow you to (or at least, make it difficult for you to) deviate from it. In this case, I <b><i>really </i></b>love the limitations! Because when you learn the language, you're also learning the best practice by default! And it becomes very hard to do it the wrong way.<br />
<br />
Let's pause for a quick example. I really enjoy the C# programming language for this reason. C#, like C++, is object-oriented. But unlike C++, everything in C# is an object. Is that a limitation? Yes: everything has to be an object. Does it help? Yes: you only need to know one way to treat everything (like an object).<br />
<br />
Critics of C# would say that this business of everything being an object makes the code more verbose. And I agree. But you know what? I <i><b>like </b></i>verbosity too!<br />
<br />
Recently, there has been a push for more concise programming languages. Quite frankly, I think this is misguided. Remember, a human's foremost concern should be understanding the code. Code will be read (and hopefully, understood) many more times than it will be written. So emphasis should be placed on ease of understanding, not ease of writing. <br />
<br />
Another example. C# has a method called "ToString". Ruby has a method called "to_s". If you have never programmed in C# or Ruby before, which of those two method names do you think would be clearer?<br />
<br />
"But," some may say, "if you are calling the method many times, those extra characters add up to a lot of extra development time!" This is wrong for several reasons.<br />
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The first reason is Intellisense or other code-completion tools. Rarely do you have to type every character in a language like C#. The IDE makes intelligent guesses as to what you are about to type and gives very accurate completion options.<br />
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The second reason is that the actual typing of your code should probably be a small portion of your development activity. Hopefully, you spend more time thinking and designing than you do typing.<br />
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The third reason is that, as mentioned above, code will be read more often than it is written. So speeding up the reading [ie. understanding] of code should take precedence. Granted, anyone experienced in the language will understand the built-in abbreviated method names. But those shortcuts create a sort of 'culture of obfuscation.' Developers will follow that same standard in code they write and then the whole code base becomes difficult to understand. True, a language like C# has a 'culture of long method names,' which may look silly.<b><i> But silly or not, I don't have to guess at what they do.</i></b> And that is what matters to me.<br />
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To sum it up, limitations make it hard[er] to write bad code. And limitations + verbosity makes your code easier to understand - both by yourself and others. So why the push for more free-form, concise languages? I really don't know. I will say that if a language can be more concise, <i><b>without sacrificing understandability</b></i>, that's great! But I do know that I'd rather read Java over Perl any day of the week.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-13066172768365623622013-07-16T21:30:00.000-04:002013-07-16T21:30:01.069-04:00Recognition Rather Than RecallHave you ever forgotten to take your keys when you left the house? Or your wallet? Or your phone?<br />
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Let me guess why. I bet it was because they weren't in the place where you normally leave them. Right?<br />
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Because you didn't see them, you didn't think to take them. "Out of sight, out of mind," as they say. <br />
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So some people get in the habit of always putting these things in a place where they will see them, preferably as they walk out the door. Then they are in your sight, and thus, in your mind. <br />
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Software user interface designers call this principle <i><b>Recognition Rather Than Recall</b></i>. The basic idea is: don't make users have to remember to do (or <i><b>how </b></i>to do) something. Rather, provide them some cue that they will recognize to help them along. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/">http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/</a><br />
<br />
For example, today basically all computer programs have a menu bar or toolbar somewhere. They are a constant reminder to the user that, "hey, you can save this!" or, "hey, you can make this text bold!" or, "I hope you don't want to close me, but you can click this red X here if you really want to." Yes, the user can <i><b>recognize </b></i>the button and know both that the operation exists and how to do it.<br />
<br />
Compare that with, say, WordPerfect back in the old days. (And by 'old days', I mean the early 90s.) Way back then, WordPerfect was the premier word processing application. But it didn't have the fancy-shmancy toolbars of today. The user had to <i><b>remember </b></i>that the F5 key was save and F12 was quit. Actually, those are probably not the correct keys... but that just further illustrates how hard it is for the user to remember. <br />
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With the rise of touchscreen interfaces, I worry that we will backtrack here. A trendy feature of such interfaces is gesture-based commands. The problem is, if the user sees no visual cues that a command is available, he has to... ugh... <b><i>remember </i></b>the commands. How exhausting!<br />
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I faced a really glaring example of this just this week. I logged into a server running Windows Server 2012. I needed to find a particular program. But the normal Windows entry point to find programs, the Start button, was nowhere to be found. There were a few icons for some applications, all of which were useless to me at the time. I just needed to open this specific app.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm a software engineer. I have been using Windows for almost 20 years. And here I was, unable to figure out how to open the application I wanted. The visual cues I am accustomed to had vanished. I had to do a Google search to find it. <i><b>A Google search!</b></i> It turns out, you have to move the mouse to the lower right of the screen and that opens the "Charms Bar." Then you can access the Start screen from there. But how is anyone supposed to know that?<br />
<br />
But even when I got to the Start screen, I couldn't see all my programs. Again, there was no button or visual cue about how to access them. Again I had to consult of the wisdom of the Internet. It turns out that on the Start screen, you have to right click and <i><b>then </b></i>you can access your apps. Again, how is the user supposed to figure that out? <br />
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My point is, there is now nothing to <i><b>recognize</b></i>. No button. No visual cue of any kind. It all relies on <i><b>recall</b></i>. It's even worse when you've never done it before... as in my case with Windows Server 2012. How can you recall what you never knew in the first place? Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-41137448688782153912013-07-08T19:51:00.000-04:002013-07-08T19:51:00.212-04:00Excellence Answers to No OneI admit: I am mediocre. But I like to think about excellence and individuals who have reached some level of excellence. There are, of course, many ways to approach this, but one thing that keeps running through my head is: excellence cannot exist under the direction of mediocrity. <br />
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This may seem obvious. Maybe it is. In any case, here's why I'm thinking it:<br />
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Let's say you own a company and you want to build a new headquarters. Now, presumably, you have some idea how you would like the building to look, but you're no architect. So you hire an architect. He, presumably, has some experience designing buildings. The question is: who designs the building? You or the architect?<br />
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Really, that depends on how you perceive your abilities vs his. If you perceive yourself as having an <i><b>excellent </b></i>eye for building design, you will give instructions to the architect and he will basically follow them. After all, you're paying him. However, if you perceive yourself as <b><i>mediocre </i></b>(or worse) in this regard, you will defer to his experience because you perceive him as excellent, at least in comparison to yourself. <br />
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Now, which is the better course? I think it's safe to say the latter. After all, he is the architect. Sure, you give him some themes you'd like to see. <i><b>But then you let him work his excellence. </b></i> The building gets built, and it is admired by all passers-by. <br />
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Of course, this latter approach depends on two very critical things: the architect should actually be excellent, and you should recognize your mediocrity in this respect. <br />
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Granted, this is a contrived example. But, I daresay, this principle affects the rise of companies today. There are at least two models of product design that I can think of: designing products based on input from users (or stakeholders, financiers, etc) and designing products based on <i><b>what you think is cool. </b></i><br />
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If you have mediocre product designers, definitely go with the former. But if you have excellent product designers, you better go with the latter.<br />
<br />
Most companies and/or products fall into the first bucket. They need to build their product to satisfy their customers, so they do whatever they can to meet the customers' needs. By definition, most of anything is mediocre. So for the general case, this is a good model to follow.<br />
<br />
But the companies that fall into the second bucket are the game-changing companies. Google, Apple, Tesla. Did Google do market research when they decided to build Loon? Self-driving cars? Gmail? No! They made those products because they thought they were cool. Likewise with the iPod, iPhone, and the Model S. <i><b>People who are excellent in their field built something they thought was cool. </b></i> More often than not, other people then also thought those things were cool. <br />
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If Apple had built the iPod based on feedback about music players of the day, it would simply have been a CD-player with some more bells and whistles. People mediocre in the field wouldn't have had the creativity or technical background to envision something game-changing. But the excellent people did! <br />
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Now, what would have happened if their boss (or stakeholder, or financier) didn't recognize the genius of their vision - if they were mediocre? They may have squashed the project. The best case scenario would have been the forgoing of huge profits. The worse case would have been those excellent people quitting, starting their own competing company, and putting Apple out of business.<br />
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So I guess what I'm saying is that if you want your company to do something ground-breaking, hire excellent people and then get out of their way. <br />
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And now, the giant caveat. What happens when mediocre people think that they are excellent? That's clearly the worst of both worlds. They would refuse to listen to input from those who know more even though they don't have the skills to justify such hubris. Those are the people you fire.<br />
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The last question, then, is: how does one recognize excellence, especially if he is mediocre himself? That's a tough one. I may not be able to recognize excellence, but I can recognize if someone is better than me. Those are the people who I hire. And I tell them to hire people better than them. After enough such iterations, hopefully we can hit that bar. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-42851160527708794452013-06-07T14:10:00.000-04:002013-06-07T14:10:13.817-04:00Your Mind Makes It RealThe Placebo Effect. The Nocebo Effect. Priming. Um... The Matrix.<br />
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Your mind has an uncanny ability to make perceived things real. I used to think this was incredibly impressive. But I didn't know the half of it.<br />
<br />
Check out this experiment:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://pds15.egloos.com/pds/200910/18/78/Gaining_strength.pdf">http://pds15.egloos.com/pds/200910/18/78/Gaining_strength.pdf</a><br />
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If you're like me and are too lazy to read it, here's the gist:<br />
<br />
Some researchers in Cleveland wanted to determine if mental practice of an exercise could actually result in physical changes to the targeted areas of the body. One group of subjects did a regular exercise involving moving their finger sideways. A second group regularly <i><b>imagined </b></i>doing the same exercise but did not actually go through the physical motions. The control group did nothing. <br />
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After 12 weeks, the 'actual physical exercise' group showed a finger strength increase of 53%. The control group did not show any strength increase. Now, the fun part: the 'mental exercise' group showed a strength increase of 35%! <br />
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<i><b>That's right: the group that didn't perform any physical exercise increased their physical strength by imagining they were exercising.</b></i> "They didn't have to lift a finger in order to convince their brains that they were, in fact, lifting a finger."<br />
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When I first read this, I thought it must have been some mistake. But the same results were obtained by a separate experiment done in Canada in 2007:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/files/mind_over_matter_shackell_07.pdf">http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/files/mind_over_matter_shackell_07.pdf</a><br />
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In this case, the experiment involved hip muscles. They used the same 3 types of groups. The 'actual physical exercise' group increased their strength by 28%. The control group, none. The 'mental exercise' group... wait for it... 24%! <br />
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I don't know about you, but I am blown away by this. And I'm sure I will continue to be blown away as we uncover more amazing things our minds can do. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-91610274301263550292013-04-05T16:24:00.000-04:002013-06-07T05:48:05.785-04:00Prototypical RemembranceYour life is not as you remember it. Neither is mine. <br />
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It's bold claim to make, I agree. So let me elaborate:<br />
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Think about your next vacation. How much money are you willing to spend on it? Now, how much would you be willing to spend if, at the end of the vacation, all pictures were deleted, all souvenirs taken, and even all memories erased? In other words, how much would you spend <i><b>if you knew that you would not remember anything about the vacation</b></i>? <br />
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Think about it. <br />
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I'd wager you would spend a lot less money in the no-memory case... maybe nothing at all! <br />
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But why? If we still get to enjoy the vacation, why should it make a difference if we remember it? Therein lies the rub!<br />
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Experiments have shown that we essentially have two selves: the experiencing self and the remembering self. The former lives in the moment and the latter looks back and evaluates. But the most interesting part is that the two usually <i><b>disagree</b></i><b><i>!</i></b> <br />
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But how could they disagree? I mean, we are the same person in both instances. The trick lies in how we remember. <br />
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It turns out we don't store every moment in our memory. Instead, we store <i><b>prototypes </b></i>of events. For example, think about your commute to work. You likely don't remember every moment of every days' commute. What you do remember is a prototypical, average commute. If something was different today ("<i>oh look, a Starbucks is opening</i>") it stands out because it is different from the prototype. So now your mind stores the prototype and the new exceptional case. So the memory of all of our commutes is essentially a file of a prototype plus exceptional cases. <br />
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Let's take it a step further. There are many moments in a commute. How does our mind determine what should make up the prototype? If it picks the wrong moments to represent the entire event, we will have a discrepancy between the experiencing self and the remembering self. As it turns out, this is exactly what happens. <br />
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One great experiment involved asking subjects to put their hands in bowls of cold water. At frequent intervals, the conductor of the experiment would ask them to rate the discomfort they felt in their hands (the 'experienced' rating). At the end, after they removed their hands, they were asked to rate how negative the overall experience was (the 'remembered' rating). I ruined the surprise already, but:<b><i> the two types of ratings almost always disagreed!</i></b><br />
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If you look at the results of this experiment, you will find that the 'remembered' rating is about equal to the average of the peak 'experienced' rating and the last 'experienced' rating. All other 'experienced' ratings are ignored. Interestingly, the total time of the negative event is also ignored. <br />
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From a purely mathematical standpoint, one would expect that the overall 'remembered' rating should be the integral (the area under the curve) of all of the 'experienced' ratings. But our remembering self uses the above peak-end calculation instead. <br />
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So, the way we remember our lives is not the way we have actually experienced them. <br />
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For a much more detail explanation, please do read <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i> by Daniel Kahneman.<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637" style="background-color: white; color: #4d469c; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637</a><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-52154891497610544622013-03-04T12:46:00.002-05:002013-03-14T14:20:51.183-04:00Another Step Foward for the Knowledge StreamSeveral months ago I posted about what I call the Knowledge Stream: essentially, a network of neural implants that we could use to share the world's knowledge in real-time just by thinking about it. <br />
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Well, Brown University has made some great progress with devices implanted into the motor cortex:<br />
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<a href="http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149879-brown-university-creates-first-wireless-implanted-brain-computer-interface?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=brown-university-creates-first-wireless-implanted-brain-computer-interface#.UTSlG7s4vLQ.reddit">http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149879-brown-university-creates-first-wireless-implanted-brain-computer-interface</a><br />
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Granted, it's still a far cry from sharing information, but the pieces are coming together...<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229806198085308150.post-63410880144434660422013-01-11T19:00:00.000-05:002013-01-16T05:37:49.589-05:00Why Negotiations Are So HardSay I offer you a 50/50 chance to either win $200 or lose $150. Would you take that chance? <br />
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Most people wouldn't. <br />
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But, from a purely mathematical standpoint, it is a good bet. That chance has an overall value of $25 (.5*200 - .5*150). Many experiments have been done on such gambles and the result is that people only start to take the chance when the gain is about double the loss (win $300 or lose $150). <br />
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Now, a purely rational agent would take any chance that has a value greater than 0. So these experiments have shown that in the case of these gambles, people are not acting as rational agents. <i><b>Indeed, the conclusion is that the emotional impact of a loss is about twice that of a gain of the same amount. </b></i><br />
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If you think back to your own experiences with gains and losses, you may recall feeling the same way. But the implications are very interesting. <br />
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This is what makes negotiations hard. A negotiation is, basically, one side giving up something in exchange for the other side giving up something. But if we value losses twice as much as gains (and the other side is doing the same thing), we can understand why it's so hard to come to an agreement: <br />
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<i>We think our giving up X has a value of $1000, but the other side only sees it as a gain of $500. Making it worse, because it's a loss worth $1000 to us, we ask them to give up something that we think has a value of $1000, but they see it as a loss of $2000.</i> <br />
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The psychology of this can be seen everywhere. In battles, the defending army fights harder than the invading army. You can even see this in gas prices. Back when there were discussions as to whether to allow cash and credit gas prices to be different, the credit card companies said that if there was a difference, it should be called a <i><b>cash discount</b></i> rather than a <i><b>credit surcharge</b></i>. The reason is that people would rather forego a discount (gain) than pay a surcharge (loss). The numbers are the same, and to a rational agent, it would be equivalent. But to people, it makes a difference.<br />
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This is a clear case in which our emotions cloud our better judgement... as usual. So what can we do about it?<br />
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Actually, it's not so hard to fix our thinking. Let's go back to the gamble above. What if, rather than giving you <i><b>one </b></i>chance at winning $200 or losing $150, I gave you <i><b>a hundred</b></i> chances? You would likely quickly reason that the overall odds would be in your favor and its very likely you would end up with a winning (greater than 0) amount. But, really, it's the same gamble - just repeated a hundred times in the latter case.<br />
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In other words, <b><i>taking a broader view</i></b> helped you realize that is a good bet. In the grand scheme of things, the few losses here and there would be outweighed by the wins. When faced with any decision like this, we can apply the same logic. <br />
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The negotiation situation is not terribly different. If we can take a broad view and look holistically at everything we will be gaining and losing during the negotiation, we realize that a single loss doesn't hurt so bad. <br />
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This is just one of the themes discussed by Daniel Kahneman in his excellent, if dry, tome: <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i>:<br />
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637">http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637</a><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916258706450390418noreply@blogger.com0