Interestingness

In previous posts, I surveyed readers with seven questions about interest/curiosity and then posted the responses. This post is an attempt to answer those questions with research from psychology.

Most of the quotations in this post are from Paul Silva's short paper Interest -- The Curious Emotion (gated). The paper has such a high signal to noise ratio that I was tempted to reproduce the whole thing here, and, in fact, I practically did. (Dr. Silva, should you stumble upon this post, I am willing to take this post down if you think I have quoted excessively.)

A few other quotations come from Lennart Sjöberg's review of Paul Silva's book Exploring the Psychology of Interest.

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1. How is interest different from curiosity (if at all)?

The two concepts may refer to different psychological processes that are reflected in their semantics, but so far there has been no convincing empirical research supporting the distinction. Silvia treats them as synonyms, and so did Berlyne.

2. Is interest an emotion? If so, how does it compare to other emotions?

Interest is an eccentric emotion. Many theories don’t include interest in their lists of major emotions, and a few theories reject interest as an emotion altogether. ... Modern emotion psychology doesn’t know much about what I’ll call knowledge emotions: states such as interest, confusion, surprise, and awe.

A good case can be made for viewing interest as an emotion. Modern theories of emotion propose that emotions are defined by a cluster of components. Typical emotional components are physiological changes, facial and vocal expressions, patterns of cognitive appraisal, a subjective feeling, and an adaptive role across the lifespan. Interest appears to have these components: It has a stable pattern of cognitive appraisals, a subjective quality, and adaptive functions. Interest’s physiological and expressive components, not surprisingly, are associated with orientation, activation, concentration, and approach-oriented action. Interest lacks the smiling and eye-crinkling expressions of happiness. Instead, interest involves movements of muscles in the forehead and eyes that are typical of attention and concentration. When interested, people often still and tilt the head, which aids in tracking objects and sounds. Interest’s vocal expression involves a faster rate of speech and greater range in vocal frequency. Taken together, interest appears to have the features typical of emotions.

3. What makes something interesting? What are its causes?

This deceptively simple question has proved to be hard to answer. Any theory of what makes something interesting runs into two problems. First, people differ in whether they find something interesting. ... Second, the same person will differ in interest over time. A once-interesting book can become boring, confusing, frustrating, or aversive. These two problems ... confound theories that attribute interest to objective features of objects. For example, classic theories proposed that objective stimulus features—particularly novelty, complexity, uncertainty, and conflict—evoked feelings of interest. Even some modern theories assume that some things (e.g., themes of sexuality and death) are inherently interesting to nearly everyone, an assumption that is probably wrong.

But, Silva offers the appraisal theory:

Appraisal theories of emotion propose that emotions come from subjective evaluations of events: People appraise an event’s meaning, and these appraisals bring about emotions. Emotions are thus caused by how people appraise what is happening, not by what is actually happening. Because people will interpret a situation differently, they will have different emotions in response to the situation. ...

In my research, I have suggested that interest comes from two appraisals. The first appraisal is an evaluation of an event’s novelty–complexity, which refers to evaluating an event as new, unexpected, complex, hard to process, surprising, mysterious, or obscure. This appraisal isn’t surprising: Intuition and decades of research show that new, complex, and unexpected events can cause interest. The second, less obvious appraisal is an evaluation of an event’s comprehensibility. Appraisal theories would label this appraisal a coping-potential appraisal because it involves people considering whether they have the skills, knowledge, and resources to deal with an event. In the case of interest, people are "dealing with" an unexpected and complex event—they are trying to understand it. In short, if people appraise an event as new and as comprehensible, then they will find it interesting.

...Finding something understandable is the hinge between interest and confusion—a related knowledge emotion. New and comprehensible works are interesting; new and incomprehensible things are confusing. ... Experiments that manipulate participants’ appraisals find that people are more interested when stimuli are made both more complex and more understandable.

From this theory, Silva extrapolates advice for writers:

According to educational research, the largest predictors of a text’s interestingness are (a) a cluster of novelty–complexity variables (the material’s novelty, vividness, complexity, and surprisingness) and (b) a cluster of comprehension variables (coherence, concreteness, and ease of processing). Intuition tells us that we can make writing interesting by "spicing it up"; research reminds us that clarity, structure, and coherence enhance a reader’s interest, too.

Lennart Sjöberg notes that this theory does not explain everything:

I feel that something is missing in the psychological analysis of interest. Why, of all the thousands of alternatives, is Silvia (and I) interested in the psychology of interest? Silvia freely admits that he does not know (and neither do I). Let me take another example. My 10-year-old granddaughter is extremely interested in horses and riding, like so many girls of her age. Some of that interest possibly can be explained by collative variables and the activity of riding a horse, taking care of it, and so on, but there also seems to be a question of sheer fascination with horses per se, quite regardless of any activity having to do with horses. We may be hardwired to develop a lust for certain types of objects and activities. Genetic determination of part of the interest variance is a very real possibility.

4. What purpose does interest serve? What are its consequences?

Interest’s function is to motivate learning and exploration. By motivating people to learn for its own sake, interest ensures that people will develop a broad set of knowledge, skills, and experience. The need for learning is pressing in infancy. Baby humans are cute but ignorant—they have a lot to learn. Early research on infancy found that exploration, play, and diverse experience enhanced motor and perceptual learning. Beyond infancy, interest is a source of intrinsic motivation for learning. When interested, students persist longer at learning tasks, spend more time studying, read more deeply, remember more of what they read, and get better grades in their classes.

Interest attracts people to new, unfamiliar things, and many of these things will turn out to be trivial, capricious, dangerous, or disturbing. Some people ... might understandably see this as a dark side of interest. Nevertheless, it is because unfamiliar things can be harmful that people need a mechanism that motivates them to try new things. One never knows when some new piece of knowledge, new experience, or new friendship may be helpful. Interest is thus a counterweight to feelings of uncertainty and anxiety.

A related theory:

In his landmark work, Berlyne (1960) proposed that curiosity is a way of managing arousal. Because stimuli high in novelty, complexity, uncertainty, and conflict enhance arousal, people seek novelty and complexity when they are understimulated. In theories of optimal experience, feelings of absorption, concentration, and interest come from tasks in which a person’s skills match the task’s level of challenge.

The following idea, in particular, seems important:

Interest motivates learning about something new and complex; once people understand the thing, it is not interesting anymore. The new knowledge, in turn, enables more things to be interesting. ... In a sense, interest is self-propelling: It motivates people to learn, thereby giving them the knowledge needed to be interested.

So compounding interest is not a concept limited to finance!


5. Is interest merely another label for happiness?

No. Silva explains:

Interest is often lumped together with happiness, but interest and happiness diverge in three ways. First, they serve different functions. Interest motivates people to try new things, places, and experiences; happiness cultivates attachments to things, places, and experiences that have proved rewarding in the past. Because they motivate different actions, interest and happiness can conflict. ... Without interest, people would stubbornly stick with what they like instead of trying new things. Without happiness, people would capriciously flit from new thing to new thing instead of returning to proven sources of enjoyment.

Second, interest and happiness connect to different abstract dimensions of personality. Interest connects to openness to experience, a broad trait associated with curiosity, unconventionality, and creativity. Happiness, in contrast, connects to extraversion, a broad trait associated with positive emotions and gregariousness.

Finally, interest and happiness stem from different appraisals. In a recent experiment, we asked people to view a set of paintings. Some of the paintings—such as landscapes by Claude Lorraine and Claude Monet—were soothing and relaxing. Other paintings—such as works by Francis Bacon and Francisco Goya—were twisted and disturbing. People rated their interest and enjoyment for each painting, and they appraised each painting on a wide range of appraisal dimensions. Our results showed that interest and enjoyment had contrasting within-person relationships with appraisals of the paintings. Paintings rated as interesting were appraised as complex, unfamiliar, negative, and disturbing; paintings rated as enjoyable were appraised as simple, positive, and calming.

6. Should interest be used as a guide for time allocation? Why or why not?

Lennart Sjöberg advises caution:

Should people follow their interest? This is a common idea, often voiced in commemoration speeches and possibly supported by success stories about people who did so and achieved success. However, success also presupposes talent, luck, and the right contacts. Strong tenacity in pursuing an interest may lead to failure if these factors are not present. The notion that one should follow one's true interest is akin to Maslow's self-realization and disregards the problem of talent.

It seems to me, though, that nearly anyone can become an expert at something with practice, so initial talent should be of little concern. In that sense, I endorse following your interests.

This point, however, gave me pause:

In addition, interest may be elastic—that is, it may develop once an activity is started and has led to some stimulating and well-handled challenges.

So maybe there is an interest treadmill much like there is a hedonic treadmill, in which case maybe initial interest should be of little concern(!).

Regardless of whether one should use interest as a guide for time allocation, it seems that people do.

Interest is a strong factor in time allocation; people spend time on what they are interested in, if they have a chance to do so. When they sampled everyday actions at random, Sjöberg and Magneberg (1990) found that people rated most actions as interesting, often highly so.

7. Which typically comes first: interest or talent?

Lennart Sjöberg kind of sort of answers the question:

The development of excellence in any field takes time, a lot of time. Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer (1993) have argued that it takes about 10 years of intense training to become a high-achieving expert. Nobody would spend that amount of time without a sustained and very high level of interest and positive feedback. ... Talent for a certain activity and rewards for successes are probably needed for interest to develop and be sustained.

I liked this point of clarification offered by a respondent to my survey:

I do not believe that it is possible to judge talent, except in relation to another, rendering this question unanswerable. For example, does a late bloomer who didn't thrive until their tenth year playing "have talent"? Does an early star who peaked in her first season "have talent"? Does the kid who didn't make the varsity team, but is the best player on the JV team "have talent"?

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I learned a lot from this. I hope you did too.

I will leave you with a few other questions to ponder, offered by Silva at the conclusion of his paper:

What role does interest play across the lifespan?
How do enduring interests, hobbies, and avocations develop?
Why are some people generally more curious than others?

Why vocabulary matters

Wikipedia lists four reasons, including the following three:

• An extensive vocabulary aids expressions and communication.
• Vocabulary size has been directly linked to reading comprehension.
• A person may be judged by others based on his or her vocabulary.

None of these seem very convincing. (The second, I suspect, is more correlation than causation.)

The fourth reason, however, gave me pause:

• Linguistic vocabulary is synonymous with thinking vocabulary.

The more words you know, the better able you will be to communicate experiences to others and to yourself. The more words you know, the deeper your understanding of the world around you.

A simple point, maybe, but an important one.

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I happened upon this quote tonight while reading Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis:

Controlled processing requires language. You can have bits and pieces of thought through images, but to plan something complex, to weigh the pros and cons of different paths, or to analyze the causes of past successes and failures, you need words.

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Part of a quote I posted earlier from Buckminster Fuller:

All the words in all dictionaries
Are the consequent tools
Of all men's conscious
And conscientious attempts
To communicate
All their experiences—
Which is of course
To communicate
Universe.

There are forty-three thousand current words
In the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
We don't know who invented them!
What an enormous, anonymous inheritance!

Shakespeare used ten thousand of them
With which to formulate
His complete "works."
It would take many more volumes
Than Shakepeare's to employ
The forty-three thousand—
Logically and cogently.

Words are tools to communicate and organize experiences. I would be surprised if Scott Adams' hypothesis for how the brain stores words was not confirmed by neuroscience.

Stupider than you realize (part II)

Alain de Botton in his book Status Anxiety:

When we begin to scrutinize the opinions of other people, philosophers have long proposed, we stand to make a discovery at once saddening and curiously releasing: that the views of the majority of the population on the majority of subjects are permeated with extraordinary confusion and error. Chamfort ... put the matter simply: 'Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.'

The reason for this defectiveness of opinion lies in the public's reluctance to submit its thoughts to the rigours of rational examination and its reliance on intuition, emotion and custom instead. 'One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be an idiocy, because it has been able to appeal to a majority,' observed Chamfort, adding that what is flatteringly called common sense is usually little short of common nonsense, suffering as it does from simplification and illogicality, prejudice and shallowness.

The implication being that if you recognize this fact, it might help ease our anxieties about status.

...rather than letting every case of opposition or neglect wound us, we are invited first to examine the justice of others' behaviour. Only that which is both damning and true should be allowed to shatter our esteem. we should halt the masochistic process whereby we seek the approval of people before we have asked ourselves whether their views deserve to be listened to; the process whereby we seek the love of those for whom we discover, once we study their minds, that we have scant respect.

Alain entertainingly illustrates the point in this video, where he walks around Socratic-ally interrupting random people with questions a la "Excuse me, sir. Can I just ask you -- what do you think the good life is?" (Begins around 9:30.)

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I wrote a post last July criticizing a similar idea. I still think we need to be careful about how far we take this. Less thoughtful that you realize, sure. Stupider, I'm not so sure.

Also:
All of Alain de Botton's Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness videos.
Wisdom Test.

Reason #4392 my mom should have a blog

Being a fourth grade teacher, she would have no shortage of entertaining material. Like such:

Your answers to questions about interestingness

I was impressed by the responses. It's clear these questions can be intelligently answered in a wide variety of ways.

I hope to post some of what I learned in the next couple of days but before I do, do any of you university-affiliated people have access to this article: Interest -- The Curios Emotion? If so, could you send it along? It should help answer some of the questions.

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Earlier: Questions about interestingness

Garrison Keillor on public speaking

If I could pick one person from whom to take a public speaking course, without hesitation I would pick Garrison Keillor, the man behind the News from Lake Wobegon monologue on NPR's A Prarie Home Companion. Unfortunately he is not teaching any courses that I am aware of, but I have compiled here some of his advice from various sources.


Lesson 1: You don't need to be born a performer to be an effective public speaker.

Standing at a microphone is always scary. If you weren't scared, then it's time to quit, I think. I love doing it, but I'm not a performer; I never was. I'm a writer, and so I'm leading a charmed life, and at some point the charm runs out.

Lesson 2: Avoid over-preparedness and don't treat your nervousness as a weakness to overcome. A little bit of danger can be a good thing.

I start out with a story in my head and I try to write down as much of it as I can without creating a script which would then bind me to repeat back to the audience what I had already written on a page, which I don't want to do because in the moment when you stand on stage on a live radio broadcast in front of an audience and being aware of a larger audience beyond it in the dark, some marvelous things are possible there, when you're scared and on the spot. Some wonderful things are possible which you should not deny yourself of by being overly prepared. You always want to leave yourself in a little danger so that things will come to you -- possibly may come to you -- as you talk.

Contrast this with Malcolm Gladwell's scripted-down-to-the-inflection-point strategy. Both strategies can be effective, I think, but I am especially attracted to Keillor's idea of using your body's biological stress response to create magic. I try to live by the Bucky Fuller motto "Don't Fight Forces, Use Them", and this perfectly illustrates the point. Instead of seeing your anxiety as a barrier to overcome, remember its purpose: to mobilize your energy to do things you are not ordinarily capable of.

There is such a thing as under-preparedness, of course. And at some point anxiety becomes destructive. The optimal strategy, I submit, is to be very well prepared about exactly what you want to say, but not how you want to say it. Leave room for improvisation because you never know what wonderful places your anxious mind will lead you.


Lesson 3: Use insecurity as motivation.

What holds my interest is a profound sense of failure. I was born with it, I think. I grew up to Calvinist people -- they were fundamentalist members of the sanctified brethren -- and they pretty much did away with self-esteem. We didn't have any. And so I have this perpetual sense of having fallen short, sometimes seriously short. And this is a sort of engine that you carry around in your back pocket, and it keeps motivating you. I do a live show every week and I've never done a show and finished it and the audience claps and you walk off stage -- I've never finished the show with any sense of accomplishment, and this is what keeps you going.

Lesson 4: What makes a story-teller great is not his technical prowess but his powers of observation.

When asked how far his on-stage persona is from the real Garrison Keillor:

That's a very good question, but I wouldn't be the one to answer it; my wife would be the one answer it. I think she would say they are fairly close, but, in real life -- as would be true of any writer -- I'm pretty much a silent person. I mean it would be weird to do a show for your own wife and daughter, no? I think that would be absurd. You want to listen to your daughter and listen to your wife. And this is what a writer is supposed to do, is to be still and to pay attention.

Again, driving home lesson 4:

My advice to writers is very simple, it is to get out more. Don't sit in the house. Go for long walks. It's good for you. Writing is an obsessive activity and it's too easy to get too tied to what you're doing. When your deadline is the most serious, that's the most important time to get out of the house and go for a walk, to walk for 2 or 3 miles every day -- rapidly, if necessary -- but to get out and to look at the world.

Writing is not narcissism. Writing is about the world that we live in, and when writing loses touch with the beautiful surface of the world, it loses its way. So much writing is about the alienation of superior intelligence that is the writers -- that's the writing to avoid. You always want to be in touch with how things look, and what people say, and what they call their dogs. You always want to be there.

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The source material for this post:
1) The 1985 interview from Wired for Books.
2) The Q TV interview from last December. (link goes straight to download)
3) Keillor's advice to writers (on YouTube)

If you've never *seen* (as opposed to heard) one of his monologues, try one. Here is one I like, not for the story as much as for how incredibly focused he seems:

Best uses of my time this week

Roughly in order...

Planning for how to get better at the skills I want to be top 25% in.

Reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

Pondering the best questions to ask in order to get the most out of a conversation. (Will share thoughts later, maybe.)

Lunch with my friend Pavs talking about side projects.

Learning about interest/curiosity.

Strolling around downtown Asheville with the lady.

Reading Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety.

Radiolab podcast on stress.

Radiolab emergence podcast, particularly the last section about neurons and consciousness beginning around 44:00.

Scott Adams hypothesizes that we're all "energy junkies".

Reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed.

Pondering the best way to choose which skills to focus on.

Radiolab podcast on morality. (Yes, I've been catching up on old Radiolabs -- I only recently discovered the show's brilliance.)

Garrison Keillor 1985 interview from Wired for Books. (The 1983 one was decent.)

Will Wilkinson and David Shenk Bloggingheads.

The cultural exposure of Rosetta's Kitchen "farm fresh vegan soul food" in downtown Asheville.

Radiolab podcast on numbers.

The idea that noise (or perhaps other sensory assaults) can be exhausting.

Miller McCune article on self-control.

Guy Kawasaki Q & A, particularly the last one.

This post.

The losingest teams in recent NCAA tournament history

Forget predicting who will win the tournament. I think a much more interesting question is who will lose the tournament. Specifically, I am talking about the team who lost to the team who lost to the team who lost to the team who lost to the team who lost.

Think for a moment, which seed would you expect to be the losingest team?

If the favored team always won, the losingest team would be the 11th seed in the region with the fourth number 1 seed.

Here is how it has actually played out since 2002:

Year - Seed - Team
2009 - 4 - Wake Forest
2008 - 11 - Kentucky
2007 - 13 - N Mexico St
2006 - 3 - Iowa
2005 - 14 - Winthrop
2004 - 5 - Florida
2003 - 4 - Dayton
2002 - 16 - Boston

Of these 8 seasons, the losingest team came from the following first round match-up.

1 vs 16: 1/8
2 vs. 15: 0/8
3 vs. 14: 2/8
4 vs. 13: 3/8
5 vs. 12: 1/8
6 vs. 11: 1/8
7 vs. 10: 0/8
8 vs. 9: 0/8

Christianity U.S. map

(Click to enlarge)

I have been staring at this for probably 20 minutes. I find it thoroughly fascinating and I am not quite sure why -- I think because this is probably the single best variable to tell you about the culture of a region. There are a couple more similar maps, including one of Europe, at Floating Sheep.

Some observations/questions:

• How do you explain the thin red streak of methodists across the nation's belly?
• Most diverse states: California, Washington, and Michigan?!
• The Southeast looks dreadfully boring, though as I have learned, there are many flavors of baptists.
• Interesting to see a few LDS communities in Mexico.
• Why are the big cities in Texas more methodist? And what's with the cluster of lutherans in, what is that, N. San Antonio?
• Catholics don't seem to have much of a pattern except that they are disproportionately found along the border.

Squibs

It's amazing what people will believe when it's in their interest to believe it.
"Judge truth not by its origins, but in terms of its usefulness."

It is impossible to put words together without meaning.
"Language is an instinctive tendency to acquire an art." -Darwin

My friend Bob says that most human problems are because of expectations. I say most human problems are because someone is hungry, in need of a nap, or in need of a potty break.

Virtues change over time and across cultures, but according to Martin Seligman & co. there are six universally endorsed virtues:
wisdom and knowledge
courage
love and humanity
justice
temperance
spirituality and transcendence

Other ubiquitous but not universal virtues:
good looks, wealth, competition, self-esteem, celebrity, uniqueness

Treat your worldview as nothing more than a default position -- a starting point from which to assimilate contradictory evidence.

Expert advice leads to dormant brains. No, really: We literally turn off cost-benefit/probability computation parts of our brain when listening to an expert.

Cemeteries leave a lot to be desired. All visitors have to learn about the deceased is their name and dates born and died, and if you're lucky some vague quote that does little to distinguish anyone from their gravemates. Headstones hardly seem worth the expense for such a low information quotient.
Call me narcissistic, but I want people to know more about me than that, which is why in place of a headstone I plan to have a big infographic detailing my life as best as possible and sharing my accrued wisdom. The gaudiness is likely to irk some folks but I'll have little use for humility when I'm dead.

People do not allocate enough time to thinking about a problem properly. We spend our time gathering information, which feels like progress and appears diligent, but information without context is falsely empowering.

Questions about interestingness

This question was posed to me by reader Blake Riley: "What do you think makes a person interesting?"

The question seemed innocent at first, but the more I thought about it the more fascinated and perplexed by the question I became. I see two ways of looking at it: 1) what characteristics to me personally make a person interesting, or the far more *interesting* question of 2) what is it psychologically that makes one interesting to another?

I did a little digging on the psychology of interest and learned that there is not a lot to be found. The Wikipedia pages on interest and curiosity are surprisingly weak. However, I did come across some fairly insightful research that I will share next week after you've had some some time to chew on the following questions.

Ben Franklin on the way to wealth

Timeless wisdom from 1748:

The way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality -- that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them every thing. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary expenses excepted), will certainly become rich, if that Being who governs the world, to whom all should look for a blessing on their honest endeavors, doth not, in his wise providence, otherwise determine.

My adaptation into blessing: May you use your time and money efficiently, and may Lady Fortune not screw you over.

The best uses of my time

One of the things I wish more people (anyone) would blog about is not just the books, movies, blog posts, or magazine articles they liked, but rather what in their estimation were the best uses of their time. Was it a chapter of a book or a particular article from the New York Times? Beyond just the content they consumed, was it maybe a conversation with a friend?

I have decided to try such a thing at least once a month. Below is my first attempt.

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Best uses of my time this week (roughly in order)...

Reflecting on and declaring in writing (1) what marketable skills I want to become top 25% in, (2) what skills, though tempting, I will *not* pursue, (3) what weaknesses I need to improve, and (4) other important skills deserving of my care and attention though not for career's sake.

Reading the book NurtureShock, which improved my understanding of child psychology by orders of magnitude, and in some ways disrupted (in a good way) my worldview.

Analyzing living like you're about to die.

Time spent in my backyard at lunch, just letting my mind wander and following the thoughts wherever they lead me.

Radiolab podcast on "New Normal", particularly the part about baboons.

Lunch at Thai China Buffet with the lady.

Writing about what makes a work of art "good", using Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather" as inspiration. (Post soon, maybe.)

Reviewing and digitally archiving old notes from my notebook.

Reading outside with pooch in lap.

Seth Roberts on Optimal Daily Experience.

Jonah Lehrer on Q TV about depression's upside.

Radiolab podcast on blinking. (~12 minutes)

Diane Rehm's interview of Sheena Iyengar on "The Art of Choosing" (~50 minutes, but can safely be listened to at 2x speed.)

Should you live like you're about to die? (a suffocatingly rational analysis)

This is a question I have been thinking about a lot lately. At first the answer might seem obvious. Here's Steve Jobs:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

But choosing to live this way has serious consequences. Consider:

If you expected to die soon, would you...

Work the same job?
Read the same books?
Save/spend as much money?
Spend your money on the same things?
Spend the same amount of time with friends and family?
Talk about the same things?
Think about the same things?

The bottom line is that people live radically different lives depending on how soon they expect to die, and rightfully so.

The crux is this: For certain things like saving for retirement we can make decisions based on life expectancy, but for most things it's not so straightforward. Say you have a 0.5% chance of dying this year -- it does not make a lot of sense to spend 0.5% of your time living as if you are about to die; you must choose between living as if you (a) will die this year, or (b) will not die this year. There is no in-between. But how to decide?

Here is where the suffocatingly rational analysis come in. It is almost painfully rational, but if you stick with me I think you will find it somewhat revealing. Or chicken out and go straight for the results, if you must.

To wait until the year you have a 50% chance of dying to start living like you are about to die would mean waiting until the ripe old age of 107. (Sorry, but you probably won't make it that long.) A rational approach has to take into account more than just the probability of dying -- it needs to consider the expected value of dying.

Expected-Value(Living like you're about to die at a given age) = Probability(Dying at that age) x Magnitude(How much you'd like to avoid dying at that age)
EV(Living like you're not about to die at a given age) = P(Not dying at that age)

To cut down on the wordage:
EV(Death) = P(Die) x M(Death)
EV(Life) = P(Live)

So if EV(Death) > P(Live) for a given year then better to live like you're about to die.

The probability of living and dying is easy to come by (see this actuarial table, for example), but to determine how much it would suck to die (as compared to how pleasant it would be to live) is internal and subjective.

I should probably take a moment to clarify this "how much it would suck to die" business. Of course after you're dead the suckage is over. I got that. This is getting more at how strongly you want to avoid dying. You can imagine how this changes with age and life events -- newlyweds and expecting parents typically want to avoid death more than disgruntled teens or elderly people with chronic health problems. To give this concept a numerical value, we must compare it to the baseline of how pleasant it would be to live.

Look at it this way: Let's say you know for certain that you are going to survive this year. That gives you a certain pleasant feeling that we will assign the quantity of 1. Now, let's say you know for certain you are going to die this year -- compare the magnitude of this feeling to the one we just assigned a quantity of 1. Is it 10x stronger? 100x? 1,000x? If so, the value you would input for how much it would suck to die is 1,000.

Using the method above, you can input your estimates and solve for whether it's better to live like you're about to die. Another exercise we can do is set EV(Death) = P(Live) and solve for the break-even point. I have done both in this spreadsheet.

The probability of dying in a given year (taken from actuarial tables):



The break-even points = P(Live) / P(Die):



This shows that at age 10 the suckiness of death must be nearly 10,000x stronger than the pleasantness of living for it to be worth living like you are about to die, while at age 60 it need only be 100x stronger.

The chart below shows the later ages better:



Finally, I inputted some of my own estimates to come to a conclusion. I assumed the suckiness of dying peaks between the ages of 29 and 36 at around 160x (totally arbitrary) and stays strong through the 50s before steadily declining to 20x at age 90. (Nerd note: I also subtracted a constant of 20 to represent the suckiness of thinking about your impending death.) Below is the resulting chart, which I find thoroughly fascinating.



My estimates suggest that it is best to live like you are going to survive until about age 70, after which the clear choice is to live like you are going to die. That is until (and unless) you make it to age 90, after which it's best to go back to living like you are going to survive.

I find this all weird, fascinating, and a little confusing. Would love to hear your thoughts.

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Now, to take a slightly more nuanced and less suffocatingly-rational approach:

I think the choice for whether to live like you're about to die should come down to certain domains.

When it's best to go strictly rational with life expectancy estimates (like above)...

• Saving and Spending.
• Level of investment in your own learning, skills, or education.
• Certain aspects of the type of job you choose and how long you do it for.
• Diet, exercise, and lifestyle.
• Time allocation in general.

When it's best to assume you are about to die...

• Level of interest, curiosity, and passion for the things you do and for the world around you.
• Appreciation/gratitude.
• Attitude towards and affection for others.
• All those other words that do not convey well-enough the feelings I wish to express.

Different definitions of normal

I have been enjoying Nick Rapp's blog about his $45,000+ globe-trotting road trip (posted about here).

Although I am sure Nick will remember the trip with a grand feeling of pride and satisfaction, I am so glad he is the one doing it and not me. Having not even escaped the Americas yet, they have already run into dozens of serious problems threatening complete failure. The latest problem came in Bolivia, where they had to disguise themselves as American press to avoid road blocks created by citizen protesters (pictured above).

The fascinating part is what they were protesting:

We [heard] previously it was the first day of a two-days nationwide blockade. Drivers of the whole country [Bolivia] are upset. The government wants to pass a new law making it harder to drive under alcohol influence. They want to drive and drink, and they will block the whole country so everybody will know.

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On a related note, below is a sample of observations on Denmark from reader Jeff Huber, an NC State student in economics and industrial engineering studying abroad in Copenhagen:

- The Danes don't really respond to typical economic incentives, which
blows my mind. Neither are they very ambitious with their careers.
Some say this is because they still follow what is called Jante Law
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jante_Law)
- Danes are perfectly paying their average 50% income taxes.
- Danes will not cross a crosswalk at 3 AM if it is red (even if there
is not a car in sight).
- When it was snowing everyday and the Danish DMV was running out of
salt, they gave preference to the bike paths that line nearly every
street over the sidewalks and roadways.

Squibs

A lot of things the body does (e.g., hiccups) are accidents of evolution. The brain is the same way. Much of evolutionary psychology debate is over what is adaptation vs. pure accident.

Emotions (1) set goals and (2) establish priorities and without them you could not do anything.

"If in 1.3 million years the sun will warm up so much that there won't be photosynthesis on Earth, then there's no reason to do my homework, is there?" -Woody Allen

Most good engineering is some adaptation of what nature does.

The most profitable products are (1) addictive, (2) hard to reproduce, and (3) producible at declining cost.

Our minds shape and frame truth as much as track it. Our general tendency to clutch at the thought of reality is just one more instance of clinging to the illusion of self-control.

Adam Smith: The tragedy of human condition is the (1) reliance on fortune, (2) enslavement to opinions of others, and (3) inability to stop thirsting over that which we do not have.

"Hunger is the best sauce."

Practical intelligence: knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.

One of the most precious gifts a parent can give a child is to show that they are happy working.
Satisfying work requires autonomy, complexity, and connection between effort and reward.
"Hard work is only a prison sentence if it does not have meaning."

If you met someone who literally knew everything, would he appear sane?

A few dandies from NASA's Earth Observatory

Today's image from NASA's Earth Observatory shows an irrigation project in South Africa:


(click through for a much larger, high-resolution view)

I also enjoy the ones of snow:

Wisdom test results

I knew it would be tough assigning letter grades to these, but not until I tried did I realize how ridiculous it would be to even attempt. So instead of grading these I just left thoughts/comments immediately below some of the responses. This is not to say that all the responses were equally as good -- if you must know, I thought the last two stood above the rest.

Results here.

Squibs

Organized religion is just a system for journeying into transcendence. God (if one exists) is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew.

Bucky Fuller: God is recognizable as the passion drive for the comprehension of all the interconnections of all experiences.

"Everything that constitutes science is unteachable." (I had to think hard about the last two.)

It is such a strange fact that there exists nothing resembling a "cure" for obesity. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of all people who lose a significant amount of weight are able to keep it off. Think of the billions of dollars already spent on weight loss (wiki puts it at $33 - $55B annually), and how much more would be spent if there were an effective medical or even cognitive therapy. Yet still no effective treatment? Either there is something devilishly difficult about obesity (and possibly other behavioral problems), or capitalism does not work as well as I thought. (Not that other systems work better.)

Elizabeth Gilbert paraphrased: I refuse to burden another person with the obligation of completing me. That doesn't mean my partner is off the hook; it doesn't mean he has no obligations. It means I own my incompletions.

"I write in order to find out how I feel about things."

Bucky Fuller again: All the great religious and political systems have concluded and decreed that "nobody should make mistakes". It is only by mistakes that we can learn. Our present anti-mistake-making laws and customs tend to frustrate our further growth. Humanity is taught to play the game by rules and not by thinking.

"Learning and knowledge are not sold in the same place."

Grade my wisdom

I have started to grade your responses to the wisdom test and intend to finish in the next couple of days. In the meantime, my responses to the questions are below. This is by no means an answer key.

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First, a preface:

Underlying all of these shoulds is the question of what are we here for? What should we be doing with ourselves? Like everybody else, I don't have the answer. I do, however, have a guess. For the purpose of these questions, I will be operating under the assumption that the reason why we are here is something like: to be the best humans we can be.

Too vague, I know. If my vagueness is killing you, read the next paragraph; otherwise, skip to the first question.

Our purpose is not to maximize the sensation of happiness or any other feeling, nor is it to be mindlessly productive or useful without self-regard, nor is it to survive or reproduce. Our purpose, as best as I can tell, is to do the best we can, where "best" is subjectively measured with a feeling most closely resembling what we call "satisfaction" or "fulfillment". What's "best" is different for different people, and will vary over time or even over the course of the day. It is horribly subjective, but it's the best I've got. I do not have enough space here to argue for it because currently the only way I know how is by arguing against every other theory. So, for now, you will just have to take it as given.

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Ordered by how confident I feel with the response... (you will notice that the answers become progressively longer as they become harder to answer.)


2. How can one tell if one is in love or infatuated?

Love is intimacy, passion, and commitment. Infatuation is just passion.


5. What should one do when anxious?

Typically attacking the anxiety head-on is better than band-aid solutions like deep-breathing exercises. Mindfulness helps, so does trying to keep things in perspective, but only marginally. Fears and anxieties are all about conditioning, and they can be conditioned out of you -- see here, for example.


7. What should one do if one is shy?

Shyness is a form of anxiety. Like I said in my response to that question, there are band-aid solutions (it helps, for example, to recognize that your shyness is not unique or unusual), but it's best to attack it head-on. Importantly, one should recognize that shyness is not inherently bad, and in fact many desirable qualities are associated with shyness. This podcast explains it well.


3. How much love should one have for oneself?

People often talk of striking a healthy balance between arrogance and self-loathing, but I think it's more nuanced than that. Some people think that if you unconditionally love yourself then you will tolerate your poor behavior. I have a different take: I think one should always love oneself to the utmost degree in the sense that love means a deep admiration and respect of what you are as a living, breathing, conscious organism. The fact that we are here at all is amazing (dare I say miraculous?), and should always be treated preciously, with love. Contentment is something different. We should never be content with who we are or what we have accomplished. Some days we should be more content with our behavior than others, but we should never be fully content because there is no such thing as "good enough".


4. Should one worry what other people think?

I love this question. One should treat others' opinions as information in the equation, more evidence for one thing or another. (Theoretically, if we were all intellectually honest and respected others' opinions, no one would disagree.) For optimal decision making, there is a healthy balance between ignoring what everyone thinks and basing judgments exclusively on what others think. Not that others' opinions should be weighed equally, but I think many people place too much weight in too few opinions. How much weight should be placed on others' opinions depends on the context, and there are too many subtleties to explore here.


6. How should one deal with death?

With your own pending death, treat it as an inspirational reminder:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

With the death of a loved one, don't hide from the emotions: mourn and cry and remember and let the anger fill you. By allowing yourself to be vulnerable, you will form an intimate bond with the other mourners that will give you the most deeply human experience imaginable -- this is what it is to be alive. Remember that the fact that people are now or were ever alive is miraculous and to be treasured, no matter how brief.


8. How should one end a relationship?

If you have good reasons for believing the relationship should end, and that person is reasonable, you ought to be able to convince them. Maybe you are not able to verbalize the reason(s), and if so, tell them that, but at least show them that you are trying hard to understand and communicate your reasons. Always be respectful, and show that by listening.

If the person is unreasonable, you don't need to worry about explaining yourself. But rule #1 in break-ups, whether or not the person is reasonable, is don't be a jerk. Rule #2 is show that you are serious.


9. How can one live happily with other people?

Above all, recognize that happiness is not something that happens to you -- it is an internal experience, one that you have significant control over. So I will take this question to mean "how can one live well with other people?"

The important thing is that you like each other. There are all sorts of psychological tricks that are useful for this purpose, such as imitating a person's mannerisms, but more important, I think, is being reasonable, caring, and courteous. Mindfulness, as cliché as the words has become, is of central importance in being attentive to the events, feelings, and status of your relationship. It helps to believe in your ability to solve your own problems.


1. What is a good parent?

A big part of parenting is over at the point of conception. Much of parenting is simply finding and courting a suitable mate. This may sound horribly cold -- thinking that a child’s genetic inheritance is much of what a parent is good for -- but in fact our subconscious biological processes matter a great deal to ensuring a child’s health and ultimate success. The good news that can be taken away from this is that this whole finding and courting process is often ignored in the parenting equation, taken as given, exactly because it is so automatic, requiring so little thought or effort.

If what I say in the paragraph above is true, that would mean if genetically enhancing technology were available and reliably safe, the definition of a good parent would be expanded to include those who provide this technology for their children. So those who pay the big bucks to have their children genetically altered to boost their immune system, intelligence, creativity, etc. would by this definition be better parents. It's an uncomfortable thought, but one I can live with.

On the nurture side, a good parent is one who assists their child in being the best human they can be. That, to me, means nudging them in the right direction, particularly exercising their mind, and most importantly, providing a foundation from which to grow -- to be a tough but loving figure, and to provide security while helping the child mature to a point that they no longer need your security.