Inception Is Real

(Cue theme music)

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 against the French!

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 let him convince himself.

But it is not easy to engineer a mechanism to let someone convince himself. Leonardo DiCaprio almost died in his attempt.

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.

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), he will create his own internal reasons for taking that action or making that decision. Then he will continue down that path, even if the catalyst is removed.

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.

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%.

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% - more than they had during the month they were promised their name in the paper!

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 they came up with them on their own. So even when the catalyst reason was removed, they continued in that course.

Inception.


Disclaimer: I'm not smart enough to have figured this out on my own. This is discussed thoroughly in Robert Cialdini's book, Influence.

How to Read a Mind

There are two types of discussions: useful and useless. Useless ones are also known as arguments. And you can't win an argument.

But the distinction can be subtle. How do you know which is which?

Simple: Is the other party trying to understand your thought before refuting it?

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.

If, however, the other party doesn't pursue that understanding but jumps directly into a rebuttal, you are now in a useless discussion. Congratulations!

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.

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 can't win an argument.

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.

Having Opinions Considered Harmful

A 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.

But we are not as rational as we may like to think.

The problem is: we have egos. We don't like to be wrong.

Another problem is: we have all sorts of cognitive biases. Our own brain is often working against us.

When you combine these two problems, you get a society in which people generally do not have the most accurate worldview possible.

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.

Other such issues could be abortion, vaccinations, or global warming.

So, what's your opinion?

Did you feel that? Did you feel that emotional response to simply the mention of the topic?

That is what is working against us.

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 confirmation bias to trick ourselves into thinking that the best available information supports our opinion.

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.

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

Of course, it's unrealistic to expect that people will just stop having opinions. I still have them, despite knowing all of this.

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.

(And yes, I appreciate the irony that this blog post is my opinion.)

Recognition Rather Than Recall

Have you ever forgotten to take your keys when you left the house?  Or your wallet?  Or your phone?

Let me guess why.  I bet it was because they weren't in the place where you normally leave them.  Right?

Because you didn't see them, you didn't think to take them.  "Out of sight, out of mind," as they say.

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.

Software user interface designers call this principle Recognition Rather Than Recall.  The basic idea is: don't make users have to remember to do (or how to do) something.  Rather, provide them some cue that they will recognize to help them along.  

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

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 recognize the button and know both that the operation exists and how to do it.

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 remember 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.  

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... remember the commands.  How exhausting!

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.

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.  A Google search!  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?

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 then you can access your apps.  Again, how is the user supposed to figure that out?

My point is, there is now nothing to recognize.  No button.  No visual cue of any kind.  It all relies on recall.  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?  

Your Mind Makes It Real

The Placebo Effect.  The Nocebo Effect.  Priming.  Um...  The Matrix.

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.

Check out this experiment:

http://pds15.egloos.com/pds/200910/18/78/Gaining_strength.pdf

If you're like me and are too lazy to read it, here's the gist:

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 imagined doing the same exercise but did not actually go through the physical motions.  The control group did nothing.

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%!

That's right: the group that didn't perform any physical exercise increased their physical strength by imagining they were exercising.  "They didn't have to lift a finger in order to convince their brains that they were, in fact, lifting a finger."

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:

http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/files/mind_over_matter_shackell_07.pdf

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%!

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.

Prototypical Remembrance

Your life is not as you remember it.  Neither is mine.

It's bold claim to make, I agree.  So let me elaborate:

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 if you knew that you would not remember anything about the vacation?

Think about it.

I'd wager you would spend a lot less money in the no-memory case... maybe nothing at all!

But why?  If we still get to enjoy the vacation, why should it make a difference if we remember it?  Therein lies the rub!

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 disagree!   

But how could they disagree?  I mean, we are the same person in both instances.  The trick lies in how we remember.

It turns out we don't store every moment in our memory.  Instead, we store prototypes 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 ("oh look, a Starbucks is opening") 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.      

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.

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: the two types of ratings almost always disagreed!

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.

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.

So, the way we remember our lives is not the way we have actually experienced them.

For a much more detail explanation, please do read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637

Why Negotiations Are So Hard

Say I offer you a 50/50 chance to either win $200 or lose $150.  Would you take that chance?

Most people wouldn't.

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).

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.  Indeed, the conclusion is that the emotional impact of a loss is about twice that of a gain of the same amount.  

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.

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:

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.  

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 cash discount rather than a credit surcharge.  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.

This is a clear case in which our emotions cloud our better judgement... as usual.  So what can we do about it?

Actually, it's not so hard to fix our thinking.  Let's go back to the gamble above.  What if, rather than giving you one chance at winning $200 or losing $150, I gave you a hundred 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.

In other words, taking a broader view 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.

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.    

This is just one of the themes discussed by Daniel Kahneman in his excellent, if dry, tome: Thinking, Fast and Slow:

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637

The Molecule That Shaped Society

Oxytocin.  It is a hormone that performs many functions in mammals, most notably the binding of mothers to their families, particularly their children.  It looks something like this:

Given its function, we could actually call it 'the empathy molecule.'  It is what makes people feel the joy and pain of other people.  It increases trust and reduces fear.  Hence, its role in familial binding is obvious.  But the implications of this are far-reaching.

The family unit is a microcosm of society as a whole.  Society is, of course, made up of families.  And society is, just as obviously, defined by the myriad social interactions of its members.  We all have certain norms and expectations of those interactions, independent of our culture.  For example, when having a conversation, you do not expect the other person to pull out a knife and stab you.  It is oxytocin that defines these norms - mostly based on empathy.  Therefore, we could say without exaggeration that oxytocin is the molecule that shapes society.

Indeed, the inability to secrete it is linked with psychopathy and sociopathy.

Since our happiness (or any emotional state) is simply the balance of such molecules in our brains, it's important to pay attention to what they are, why they are secreted, and how they interact with each other.  Ignoring or fighting our own biochemistry is a losing battle.

Paul Zak gave a great TED talk on exactly this:

Experience Resolution

Have you ever had a conversation and realized that the two of you were talking about slightly different things?  If so, you're ahead of the curve, especially if you stop and clarify the nature of the difference.  Many people don't realize this and continue simply to defend their point.  I've seen this so much that I wrote a post about it here:

http://onexerxes.blogspot.in/2011/01/cost-of-fixing-defects.html

I spent some time thinking about why this happens.  Why do we end up talking about different things?  A large part, I'm sure, is simply poor communication: perhaps we just don't articulate our idea properly.

But I think that an even larger part is that, often, we just don't have the experience to speak to a certain point.  So we [subconsciously?] pick the closest thing in our experience and speak on that.  Now, I'm using the word 'experience' a little loosely here.  I don't just mean what we have personally been through.  I also mean that which we may know through studying, conversing, or any other kind of learning.

I visualize it like this:

Imagine that the field represents all possible topics.  The black dots in the field represent our particular experiences.  The ring around each dot represents the topical area that we may feel is close enough to our experience to justify applying our experiential knowledge to the topic at hand.  So if the red dot is the topic at hand, we would apply our experience from the black dot in the center of the appropriate ring.  The area inside this ring, but outside of the black dot itself, is the area of experience mismatch.  This is the area that often leads to misunderstandings and disagreements.

If the red dot were to lie outside any ring, we would not speak on the topic at all.  Unfortunately, this is not a place most people want to be in.  This is the reason we have the rings in the first place: to expand our range of what we can speak about.  As the saying goes, "People don't care what you know.  They care even less about what they don't know.  What they do care about is what they know."

The image makes it immediately clear why two people would end up speaking about different things: because they have different experiences.  But it doesn't stop there.

The dot analogy may look familiar and that's because it is similar to the way pixels in a monitor, TV or phone work.  The dots come together to make up an image we see.  The more dots, the sharper the picture.  We refer to that as resolution.

So the lesson is not that we need to have the same experiences as someone else to communicate effectively with them.  The lesson is that there are two ways to increase our effectiveness: increase our experience resolution and decrease our experience mismatch zone.  

Increasing our resolution is definitely great, but that takes time and effort.  Decreasing the mismatch zone, however, could be done very easily.  Consider this field, with the zone removed entirely:

Wow, that leaves us much fewer topics to be able to discuss, right?  True.  But it also means that the quality and accuracy of the remaining discussions will be very high.  But to pull this off, it requires that when we don't know something, we say that we don't know it.  That's hard for a lot of people (especially men, actually).

The bright side is that if we remove these rings, we may realize our resolution is low and be moved to increase it.  So the ideal would look something like this:

  Wouldn't that be great?   

Why Everything We Do to Motivate People Is Wrong

There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.  I mentioned this some time ago in this post:

http://onexerxes.blogspot.com/2010/06/money-doesnt-motivate-people.html

Basically the point is that for sophisticated tasks, money doesn't motivate people.  Actually, any extrinsic rewards do not motivate people.  You need intrinsic motivation.  Dan Pink puts it really well in the below video, quoting my favorite behavioral economist, Dan Ariely:

The Age of Spin

They call it the Information Age.  And it is certainly an appropriate designation.  The amount of information available at our fingertips today is unprecedented.  You can answer any question by pulling your phone out of your pocket and clicking around a bit.  Thirty years ago this would have been an impossible dream.

Unfortunately, directly proportional to the increase in information is the increase in "spin."  Spin, as commonly defined, is presenting something in a particularly biased manner.  This results in most people seeing it differently than they would have had it been presented clearly and directly.

This is an election year in the US, so there is spin all over the place.  But even without presidential candidates competing to see who can deceive the greater number of citizens, spin is extremely prevalent today.

For example, let's take a tobacco company and use some made up numbers.  Let's say that the number of cigarette-related deaths has been increasing by an average of 10% a year for the past 30 years.  But last year, they only increased by 5%.  A tobacco company could say, then, that "the growth of cigarette-related death rates is decreasing."  If you saw that quote in a newspaper, you might think that cigarettes are getting safer.  Or, even, that they already are safer.

Is the tobacco company lying?  No.  Are they being dishonest?  Yes.

One might object here and say that they are not being dishonest - that they are actually saying what is true.  Indeed, they are saying what is true.  But they are intentionally phrasing it in a way that would mislead the majority.  That, too, is dishonesty.

Of course, statistics can always be manipulated to support some side of an argument.  But if you demand to see all of the numbers, you can draw your own conclusions.  It becomes trickier when there are no numbers.

This "spin without numbers" can probably best be illustrated by what a lawyer may do on cross-examination.  Some witness presents a very powerful testimony against the defendant.  The defendant's lawyer intentionally poses questions to the witness to weaken his testimony, even if the lawyer really knows inside that the witness is correct.  That is the lawyer's job: to spin.

And here we arrive at the reason why people spin: it is because they care more about their position than the truth.  In the lawyer's case, his position means his paycheck.  So of course he cares about it more than the truth.  For a corporation, its position also means its paycheck.  For other entities, pride could be the reason why they value their position more.  Of course, in an ideal world none of these reasons would take precedence over truth.  

So, back to the Information Age.  A presidential candidate, corporation, or any entity with some position to defend knows that they cannot control the flow of information today.  Information will get out to the public.  So they try to control the spin of that information.  Whichever side can spin it better will win.

This is extremely harmful for all involved.  First, there are those who are deceived by the spin.  Obviously, they are hurt by developing a very biased opinion.  But even those who are not deceived are hurt.  They develop a cynical attitude toward any information.  They view everything as potential spin.  They essentially become calloused to all data and distrustful of any viewpoint.

For example, whenever I read of some scientific study, I always find myself asking 'where did the funding for this study come from?'  That single question, even without an answer, is enough to cast doubt on the validity of the results.  

It is certainly discouraging to see what should be a triumph of technology and knowledge marred by the agendas of powerful people and organizations.  One would think that information ubiquity would reduce dishonesty, but in fact we are seeing quite the opposite.  Imperfect humans will always find a way to be dishonest for selfish reasons.

And, as mentioned, this hurts everyone.

What We Want

I used to think that what we like and want is a deeply personal thing.  That it is something we think about and on which we make a conscious decision.  But after having lived in India for about 2 months, I'm realizing that is not at all the case.

When one arrives in India, it is immediately apparent that behavioral norms, customs, processes, priorities, and aspirations are very different than in the western hemisphere.  That's expected.  But what's interesting is that they like it that way.

For example, let's take a conversation I just had last night.  Where I come from, it is every kid's dream to move out on their own as soon as they become a young adult.  They want their own place and general independence.  In India, that would be viewed as disowning one's family and is thus a very negatively perceived practice.  But young people here want to stay with their families, oftentimes even after they are married.

So what's going on here?  How can one entire society want one thing and another want the opposite?  If what we want is indeed a personal choice, this is not what we would expect.  We would expect a random distribution within each society.

The only reasonable explanation is that what we want is really not our own decision but is largely shaped by our environment.  Perhaps we do have some flexibility within that framework, but we like the framework as a whole because it is what we are used to.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a bad thing.  In fact, I'll generalize and say that anytime we choose something implicitly, without truly thinking about it, it's a bad thing.  And that is exactly what we are doing when we choose to like something simply because our environment tells us it's the norm.  

Let me be clear: I am not saying that one or the other view in my example above is good or bad.  I'm saying it's bad to choose one simply because our environment tells us to.

There are some people who buck the trend of choosing to like what their environment dictates.  These are generally viewed as pioneers, visionaries and revolutionaries.  Sometimes they are viewed as heretics and terrorists.  This viewpoint, too, is often determined by the environment.

After arriving here, I was forced to examine for myself why I like or want certain things.  What I found was that I, too, had implicitly chosen things based on what my society expected.  I also found that, even after realizing such, it is a very difficult thing to change what I like and want.  Perhaps I haven't yet encountered sufficient reason to do so.  Not sure.

So what is the point?  I'm afraid I don't really have one.  But I think it's important to realize the depth at which our society can shape us.  At least for me, it is deeper than I thought.

[Mis]application

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but, as usual, I couldn't clarify my thoughts well enough.  However, just now, I was swinging in a hammock in a penthouse in Copacabana and the ideas started to solidify.  They are not completely solid yet, but here we go anyway:

The difference between knowledge and wisdom is application.  You can know something, but until you apply it, it really doesn't do any good.

For example, mankind has gained tremendous knowledge of natural laws, but is the application of these laws that leads to useful innovations.  An obvious example is electricity.  It's great to study how electricity works, but until you actually do something with it, it doesn't provide any benefit.  What would you rather have?  A book full of formulas like V=IR, or, I don't know, lights in your house?

So application is extremely important.  And really, the example of natural laws is overly simplistic.  Their application is easy.  With electricity, you can easily make a circuit and test it.  If it works, you have successfully applied your knowledge.  It becomes much more difficult when we have to apply some bit of knowledge in our own life.

And herein is the reason I'm writing this post: I have seen a lot of misapplication lately.  More times than I care to count, I have seen people take a bit of advice, an analogy, an illustration, or even a personal experience, and misapply it.  (I don't want to give specific examples, so I apologize if this is overly vague.)

I'm sure they are not doing this on purpose.  In fact, they are to be commended for seeing a useful bit of knowledge and trying to apply it in their life.  But they are missing the mark.

I've spent a lot of time trying to determine why, exactly, they are missing it.  Sometimes it is failure to consider the context.  Sometimes it's oversimplification - or overcomplication - of the situation.  Sometimes it's simply seeing what they want to see.  If there is a single, unifying reason, I have yet to find it.

So I really don't have any conclusions yet.  Since I started noticing this in others, I've really tried to examine my own application to make sure its valid.  I guess that's all I have right now.  I would like to revisit this once I learn more...

It Alters Your Mind

In The Big Short, one of the investors who saw the subprime collapse coming said that one day he realized something:

"We turned off CNBC," said Danny Moses. "It became very frustrating that they weren't in touch with reality anymore. If something negative happened, they'd spin it positive. If something positive happened, they'd blow it out of proportion. It alters your mind. You can't be clouded with stuff like that."

"It alters your mind."

In the November Awake, there is a great article about DNA.  When I was in school, I was taught that 98% of our DNA is "junk," left over from evolutionary dead-ends.  The idea immediately felt wrong to me, for multiple reasons, but I never pursued a better answer.

A single scientist coined the term in his paper So Much 'Junk' DNA in Our Genome.  That single paper repelled other scientists from studying this noncoding DNA.  It turns out, of course, that this DNA is not junk at all, but codes for important regulatory RNA.  But that took much longer to figure out than it should have.

That paper altered the minds of these scientists.

This happens all the time.  We may have a very well-defined and well-supported position on something, but if we hear something to the contrary, it 'clouds' us, as Danny put it.

Maybe this has happened to you, because it's happened to me:

The internet is great in that it is an excellent medium for two-way communication.  Articles and blogs often allow for comments.  Now, at first glance, this seems like a great way to have a discussion and develop the points even further.

But here's what often happens to me.  I read a well-thought-out article on whatever subject.  I think, "Hmm, this makes sense.  The author seems to be an expert on this topic.  His arguments are clearly laid out.  I like it."

But then I read one or two comments.  Invariably, one or more comments disparage the author and his article.  Usually, the commentor presents no valid reasons for his criticisms.  He presents no credentials to establish himself as an authority on the topic.  And he offers no satisfactory counter-proposals.

I understand all of this.  Yet, his comment has already done damage to my view of the article.

It altered my mind.

This is, albeit, a silly example.  But it is one that is easily observable today.  There is so much information readily available, and so many people spouting their opinions, that this kind of mind-altering is ubiquitous.

How do we fight it?  As usual, the first step is identifying the issue.  Only then can we protect our mind from being altered.

Danny had to turn off CNBC.  I have decided to stop reading the comments.  

Predictably Irrational

On the recommendation of a friend, I recently read this book.  Excellent.  So I started to read the second book by the same author.  As I was doing so, I noticed that I was already forgetting what I read in the first book.  I realized I should probably write down the interesting points from books I enjoy.

So here we are. 

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions is all about how humans behave in... drumroll please... predictably irrational ways.  Each chapter starts with an anecdote or observation that leads to a hypothesis.  The hypothesis is then tested via carefully crafted experiments.  Here are some highlights.  The videos below are not nearly as good as the chapters, but they give you an idea:

Chapter 1: The Truth About Relativity: Why Everything is Relative, Even When It Shouldn't Be

Chapter 2: The Fallacy of Supply and Demand

Chapter 3: The Cost of Zero Cost

Chapter 4: Why We Are Happy to Do Things, but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them

Chapter 7: The High Price of Ownership: Why We Overvalue What We Have

Chapter 8: Why Options Distract Us From Our Main Objective

Chapter 9: The Effect of Expectations: Why the Mind Gets What It Wants

The second book is equally engaging.  More on that later...

Cognitive Biases... All of Them

I noticed that recently I have written a lot about various cognitive biases.  I didn't plan it that way... I just kept seeing them and found them interesting.  So imagine my delight at stumbling upon this article the other day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

It's the cognitive biases.  Like... all of them!  In one awesome list!  I almost started drooling.

I am tempted to highlight one or two of them, but there are so many good ones it's hard to pick.

So... enjoy!

The Ostrich Algorithm

I have never actually seen an ostrich do this, but supposedly, when in trouble, an ostrich will hide its head in the sand.  Its apparent rationale is that if it can't see the problem, the problem is not there.

In Computer Science, we have: The Ostrich Algorithm. 

It says, in short: "Solve a problem by pretending it doesn't exist."  So, clearly, the term 'algorithm' here is used very liberally.

At first glance it seems rather ridiculous to use this as a precept in software engineering, but at times it is a reasonable course - particularly when the problem in question happens exceedingly rarely and countermeasures are not cost-effective.

Well, you know me: I am a little over-zealous in applying software engineering principles to real life. 

In this case, it fails miserably.

I have tried ignoring problems and hoping they will go away.  I learned something.  If 'hoping' is part of your plan of action... you need a new plan of action. 

That's an important point, so I'll say it again: If you find yourself simply 'hoping' a situation will improve, you're not doing it right.  Stop hoping and start doing something.

I have, on several occassions, not done this.  I invoked the Ostrich Algorithm.  Usually because it's easy.  Actually, always because it's easy.  But now, whenever I catch myself 'hoping' for something, I remember the ostrich and how silly he looks with his head in the sand.

Don't Do What I Did

We have all heard this, right? It's often the beginning of some advice from a well-meaning individual. He made some real or perceived mistake and now he does not want you, his younger friend, to make the same mistake.  

I have heard this many times. And I think I have said it to others a fair amount of times too.

Now before I go on, I should be very clear that I really appreciate good advice. If someone feels strongly enough about something to come and talk with me about it, I always give his thoughts serious consideration.

But...

Recently I saw this kind of advice fail. The advice-giver had the best of intentions, but the advice just didn't work. And it was no small failing. The repercussions will likely effect the 'young friend' for her entire life. 

So I got to thinking: "How could such loving advice from an experienced person be wrong?"

The answer is multifold. The prime piece of it is strikingly simple when you think about it. And it is this:

I only know the outcome of the decision I made. I don't know the outcome of 'not doing what I did.'

Let's take an example. The older friend says, "I bought a used car for $3000. It was full of problems. I spent $100 every few months fixing it. Don't buy a used car!"

The younger friend thinks, "Yea, that makes sense." So he leases a new car with an intial payment of $3000. But now he is spending $200 every month making the payments.

See the problem? The older friend didn't realize that the alternative to his choice actually resulted in a worse outcome. Why? Because that's not the choice he made. How could he know the outcome?

This is, albeit, a silly example. One could easily do the research about a car and calculate the cost.

But most of this kind of advice is not such a simple matter - not so easy to confirm by a quick Google search.   

Maybe we are unhappy with a course we took. So it is easy to recommend an alternative course to others. But we should be careful with that. Because we really don't know the outcome of that alternative course. Maybe it's worse.

I will reiterate that advice is great. It's just that we need great caution, both when giving and receiving it.  We shouldn't give advice about what we don't know. Perhaps even more importantly, we shouldn't accept advice about what the advisor doesn't know.

Paralysis by Analysis

Conventional wisdom dictates that when making a decision the more options we have, the better.  And I admit immediately that I subscribe to this philosophy.

But I am beginning to question the universality of this idea.

Enter Analysis Paralysis.  The gist is that having too many options actually stifles decision-making. 

But wait.  How can more options be worse?  It does seem to defy logic.  But as we look at some examples, like those included in the Wikipedia article above, it becomes clear.

We see it in the real world all the time.  My old fallback, Gladwell, discusses the example of 401k participation in the workplace.  Everybody wants control over their own retirement investments.  However, as the number of available 401k investment options increases, participation in the program actually decreases.

He also discusses a more everyday example: that of jelly.  Studies were conducted in which free samples of jelly were given to shoppers at a grocery store.  One group was offered 6 types of jelly, the other 24.  The group offered 6 types ended up purchasing statistically more jelly than the 24 group.

So what happens?  We face too many options.  We become paralyzed by the abundance of choices before us and we choose to do nothing. 

Why?

It is not the options themselves that pose a challenge.  It is the fear of choosing the wrong one. 

Think about it: if you have just 1 option, your odds of picking the right one are 100%.  No problem! 

If you have 2 options, now the chances are 50% that you will pick the optimal one.

If you have 24 options (like the jelly), now you only have a 4% chance that you will pick the best one.

This is exactly what causes the paralysis.  It's great to have so many choices, but now you face the problem of how to pick the best one.  As free people we would normally balk at the idea of someone limiting our choices.  But in actuality, a little limiting may be exactly what we need.

Let's go back to our 401k example.  Say you have 100 options for your plan.  Now you have only a 1% chance of choosing the best one.  Paralysis.  So you sit down with your financial planner, and what do you do?  Do you ask him for more options?  Of course not!  You ask him which ones he recommends.  Why?  Because you are trying to get him to limit your options for you.  You want him to pick the best 1 or 2 or 3 to make it easier for you to decide.

Of course, in reality, this is not limiting your options.  You still have the 100.  But you are removing the fear of making the wrong choice by invoking the advice of an expert.  Maybe the expert is wrong.  It doesn't matter.  The fear has been removed, or at least mitigated.

The point?  Fear of making the wrong choice leads to paralysis.  So we need to remove the fear.  As in the above example, this can often be done with information.  But in some cases it may not be possible or practical to accumulate all the needed information about each option.

So, back to our opening statement.  Yes, options are great.  But we have to pare them down to a manageable amount.  How do we do that in the general case?  Where is the balancing point?  These are excellent questions.  And I certainly don't have the answer.

But as I've said before, you can't solve a problem if you don't know what it is.  Now we know what the problem is.  That's a step in the right direction.   

Perception

I wrote a post about Behavorial Context Projection some time ago.  Soon after, I read a quote that summarizes it oh-so eloquently:

We don't see things as they are.  We see things as we are.

Flawless!