I like this topic of under-the-radar yet critical skills, and I think it's deserving of more attention. Marty Nemko submitted his thoughts here. Mine are below. I'd love to hear others' opinions.
-- Ability to recognize that often your current bad mood stems not from external stimuli but because you need food, a nap, exercise, or a potty break.
-- Writing. Everyone knows that writing is crucial for communicating ideas to others, but what I think a lot of people fail to realize is how important it is to communicating and generating ideas for yourself.
-- Voice. Rightly or wrongly, people judge competence primarily by voice, and yet so few people practice sounding competent.
-- Knowing (and looking for) when tiny things could make a big difference. E.g., a small note to a friend to tell them you are thinking about them, or in marketing.
-- Deliberate, disciplined attention and reflection. A constant conscious questioning (i.e. curiosity) can take one a long way in life, but as I've experienced in the past couple of years, a regular system of tracking thoughts (for me, a notebook I carry everywhere, a ratings spreadsheet I fill out every night, and times I set aside for writing/reflection) has considerably accelerated my growth.
-- Imperviousness to mistakes. Notice I said “mistakes” and not “failures” -- a big part of how you become impervious is by re-framing it in a gentler way. I try to treat all I do (especially the risky stuff) as an experiment so that I can be delighted in whatever surprises result, "pleasant" or "unpleasant".
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 29, 2010
Material vs. spiritual well-being as viewed by Adam Smith
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith says that two roads are presented to us: one of "proud ambition and ostentatious avidity" and the other of "humble modesty and equitable justice".
Two different models, two different pictures, are held out to us, according to which we may fashion our own character and behaviour; the one more gaudy and glittering in its colouring; the other more correct and more exquisitely beautiful in its outline: the one forcing itself upon the notice of every wandering eye; the other, attracting the attention of scarce any body but the most studious and careful observer. They are the wise and the virtuous chiefly, a select, though, I am afraid, but a small party, who are the real and steady admirers of wisdom and virtue. The great mob of mankind are the admirers and worshippers, and, what may seem more extraordinary, most frequently the disinterested admirers and worshippers, of wealth and greatness.
Sep 28, 2010
How the estimated and ideal distribution of wealth compares to the real thing [chart]
From a paper by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely. See also the final page for a more detailed look at how estimates and ideals vary by gender, politics, and income bracket.
The actual distribution should not be that surprising because it obeys pretty closely the 80/20 rule.
I was mostly surprised at just how egalitarian the average person wishes the world would be -- they'd prefer that the bottom 20% earned more than 10% of the total wealth(!).
Sep 25, 2010
Perceived productivity survey results
Thanks to those who responded. Raw data with people's comments here. Charts and observations below.
Here are the results listed in order of average response:
(In case you don't know how to interpret box plots, the line at the bottom shows the minimum, the bottom of the red box shows the 25th percentile, the area between the red and blue box shows the median (50th percentile), the top of the blue box shows the 75th percentile, and the line at the top shows the maximum.)
Here are respondents' ages and average responses:
Observations and surprises:
I love it when responses range from 0 to 10. That happened with playing sports, doing volunteer work, reading the newspaper, and playing simulation video games.
On average, people perceived dinner with family or friends, quiet reflection/writing, and reading a non-fiction book as slightly more productive than doing the work your employer pays you to do.
I was surprised at how low the ratings were for video games, and that there was basically no difference between the perceived productivity of social games like World of Warcraft vs. non-social games like Grand Theft Auto. I wonder if people were thinking that the addictiveness of social games outweighs any social benefit, or just that the sociality in these games is not “real” enough to be valuable.
It’s not just me who seems to disagree with George Will on his assessment of the virtues of watching sports. Only fantasy video games came in lower, and, remarkably, people perceive watching romantic comedies to be more valuable.
I was shocked that people on average view reading the newspaper as considerably more productive/valuable than randomly browsing Wikipedia pages. Maybe the word “randomly” skewed the results?
Dinner with friends is about as good as dinner with family. But not dinner with strangers. Dinner with strangers is on par with housework. (I am aware that it’s a weird question because when do people have dinner with strangers except on a cruise ship? Still, I thought it was interesting.)
There is a high correlation between watching stand-up comedy and watching Academy Award-winning movies. That’s interesting since comedy and drama are typically seen as at opposite ends of the seriousness spectrum.
At least in this sample, older people place more value on dinner with family and friends, on doing housework, and on doing volunteer work, and less value on watching stand-up comedy.
This is interesting: There is a very high correlation between reading non-fiction books and reading novels, and there is a fairly high correlation between those two and reading the newspaper. And there is a pretty high negative correlation between any type of reading and quiet reflection/writing. That seems odd on both counts.
Wow, there is a high positive correlation between watching sports and watching romantic comedies. Anyone have an explanation for that? Maybe people see value in softening their macho side with a dose of Reese Witherspoon?
Here are the results listed in order of average response:
(In case you don't know how to interpret box plots, the line at the bottom shows the minimum, the bottom of the red box shows the 25th percentile, the area between the red and blue box shows the median (50th percentile), the top of the blue box shows the 75th percentile, and the line at the top shows the maximum.)
Here are respondents' ages and average responses:
Observations and surprises:
I love it when responses range from 0 to 10. That happened with playing sports, doing volunteer work, reading the newspaper, and playing simulation video games.
On average, people perceived dinner with family or friends, quiet reflection/writing, and reading a non-fiction book as slightly more productive than doing the work your employer pays you to do.
I was surprised at how low the ratings were for video games, and that there was basically no difference between the perceived productivity of social games like World of Warcraft vs. non-social games like Grand Theft Auto. I wonder if people were thinking that the addictiveness of social games outweighs any social benefit, or just that the sociality in these games is not “real” enough to be valuable.
It’s not just me who seems to disagree with George Will on his assessment of the virtues of watching sports. Only fantasy video games came in lower, and, remarkably, people perceive watching romantic comedies to be more valuable.
I was shocked that people on average view reading the newspaper as considerably more productive/valuable than randomly browsing Wikipedia pages. Maybe the word “randomly” skewed the results?
Dinner with friends is about as good as dinner with family. But not dinner with strangers. Dinner with strangers is on par with housework. (I am aware that it’s a weird question because when do people have dinner with strangers except on a cruise ship? Still, I thought it was interesting.)
There is a high correlation between watching stand-up comedy and watching Academy Award-winning movies. That’s interesting since comedy and drama are typically seen as at opposite ends of the seriousness spectrum.
At least in this sample, older people place more value on dinner with family and friends, on doing housework, and on doing volunteer work, and less value on watching stand-up comedy.
This is interesting: There is a very high correlation between reading non-fiction books and reading novels, and there is a fairly high correlation between those two and reading the newspaper. And there is a pretty high negative correlation between any type of reading and quiet reflection/writing. That seems odd on both counts.
Wow, there is a high positive correlation between watching sports and watching romantic comedies. Anyone have an explanation for that? Maybe people see value in softening their macho side with a dose of Reese Witherspoon?
Sep 22, 2010
Squibs
All of these are from or inspired by the final chapters of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.
---
Appreciating an object properly requires us to re-create it in our mind's eye. When you close your eyes and view something you seize upon its important details -- details that you would have previously *seen*, but not *noticed*.
Same holds true for relationships. It is impossible to love someone physically: you need imaginative possession -- dwelling on details.
With wealth and easy access, you are plagued by boredom because you have no opportunity to suffer the interval between desire and gratification.
Again, this holds true for both common objects and relationships. (This explains why prostitutes are unattractive -- not because of a lack of physical beauty, but because of excessive availability.)
The threat of infidelity and the injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit.
If you pay close enough attention you will notice how much of your life is a compulsive attempt to escape discomfort or pain.
In good books you can find experiences that you have never been more than semiconscious of raised and beautifully assembled in language. Good books can sensitize you to the visible world, the valuable yet neglected aspects of experience.
A genuine homage to an idol would look at our world though his eyes, not his world through ours.
"To make reading into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it."
Death makes life safe. We would not want to live in a world without that option.
---
Appreciating an object properly requires us to re-create it in our mind's eye. When you close your eyes and view something you seize upon its important details -- details that you would have previously *seen*, but not *noticed*.
Same holds true for relationships. It is impossible to love someone physically: you need imaginative possession -- dwelling on details.
With wealth and easy access, you are plagued by boredom because you have no opportunity to suffer the interval between desire and gratification.
Again, this holds true for both common objects and relationships. (This explains why prostitutes are unattractive -- not because of a lack of physical beauty, but because of excessive availability.)
The threat of infidelity and the injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit.
If you pay close enough attention you will notice how much of your life is a compulsive attempt to escape discomfort or pain.
In good books you can find experiences that you have never been more than semiconscious of raised and beautifully assembled in language. Good books can sensitize you to the visible world, the valuable yet neglected aspects of experience.
A genuine homage to an idol would look at our world though his eyes, not his world through ours.
"To make reading into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it."
Death makes life safe. We would not want to live in a world without that option.
Reminder to please tell us what you consider productive
I just peeked at the data and there are some very interesting correlations, but the sample size is pretty low at 21 responses. Please fill it out if you have not already. I'll post results this weekend.
Sep 20, 2010
Your morals ≈ your value to society?
Research in moral psychology suggests that people can be surprisingly cleanly divided into two groups:
1. People who (a) tolerate hierarchies and inequalities, (b) resist change, and (c) care about group loyalty.
2. People who don’t.
For convenience, let’s call the first group ‘conservatives’ and the second group ‘liberals’.
This division has many implications, only one of which I will discuss here. I want to discuss what this division means for careers.
As an employer, the people you hire are ideally both loyal to the company and tolerant of change. But the Division of Morality theory suggests that you can’t have it both ways – each employee will either be loyal OR tolerant of change. The best an employer can do is hire some mix of liberals and conservatives to create the ideal ratio of loyalty to change tolerance, and it’s interesting to think about how the ideal ratio might vary with different contexts...
Start-Ups Herd Cats
The start-up's objective is fast iteration. The final product is rarely what the entrepreneur originally envisioned (at least if he’s doing it right). In fact it is a bit of a misnomer to say ‘final product’ because in start-up philosophy there is no such thing as a final product. The only constant is change. If the Division of Morality theory is correct, and if start-ups operate efficiently, you would expect that the employee composition in start-ups is highly liberal. My very rigorous empirical analysis confirms this hypothesis:
Most entrepreneurial cities: San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, NY
Most liberal cities: San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, NY
A second prediction regarding start-ups is that, since they lean heavily liberal, they would have a very flat hierarchical structure. My rigorous empirical analysis again confirms this hypothesis:
Google, while not exactly a start-up anymore, relies heavily on innovation (change), and therefore employs a bunch of liberals. Google also has an extremely low manager to employee ratio (something like 1 to 30?) – therefore I am right.
Bankers and Dry Cleaners Are Patriotic
In contrast, companies who have followed pretty much the same business model since the early 1800s probably value loyalty above innovation. The Division of Morality theory therefore predicts that banks and dry cleaners will primarily employ conservatives, and their structure will be strongly hierarchical. It predicts that car companies who design the cars (requiring innovation) will be highly liberal and flat, while the car dealerships that sell the cars (ancient business model) will be highly conservative and hierarchical. It predicts that architecture firms (requiring innovation) will be highly liberal, and construction companies (ancient business model) highly conservative.
In most cases, a company is going to be highly liberal or highly conservative – seldom will the equilibrium hover somewhere in the middle. Examples of in-between companies might include companies whose business models are tried and true but who need to stay keenly aware of trends in order to capitalize on changes. Maybe big retail chains or publishers are examples.
CEOs are Liberals, Factory Workers are Conservatives
The Division of Morality theory has allowed me to make a prediction that would normally seem passé and discriminatory (but, hey, it’s science!): The greater the need for innovation, the more liberal the employee composition. There will be pockets in large companies with more liberal and conservative employees. CEOs, designers, and “knowledge workers” will be heavily liberal while managers, bean counters, and factory workers will be heavily conservative.
Here is where the typical Conservative Republican / Liberal Democrat line gets muddied: Many CEOs vote republican (but probably for tax reasons), and many factory workers vote democrat (but probably because democrats are more generous to the working poor). My bet is that if CEOs took Jon Haidt’s morality test, most would be liberals, and if factory workers took the test, most would be conservatives.
The prediction can be extended another step to make an even more passé claim: Innovation being what drives wealth, the world’s wealth creators are primarily liberal. (I just saved you from reading all the books in the Creative Class series and watching as Richard Florida daintily skirts around this very statement. You’re welcome.)
---
If this post offended you, please direct your hate mail to Jonathan Haidt -- I am only extrapolating from his research. (Like how I deflected that?)
(P.S. - On the moral foundations test linked to above, I scored as very liberal. I was on par with conservatives on harm and fairness, slightly below liberals on loyalty, and way below both liberals and conservatives on authority and purity. That might not be unusual for a libertarian. While we libertarians (lowercase 'l') typically think of ourselves as conservatives and vote republican, by the moral definition, we are, on average, (although I know there are many different types of libertarians) even more liberal than your typical liberal democrat.)
###
Perhaps related: Authoritarians and Party Alliances
1. People who (a) tolerate hierarchies and inequalities, (b) resist change, and (c) care about group loyalty.
2. People who don’t.
For convenience, let’s call the first group ‘conservatives’ and the second group ‘liberals’.
This division has many implications, only one of which I will discuss here. I want to discuss what this division means for careers.
As an employer, the people you hire are ideally both loyal to the company and tolerant of change. But the Division of Morality theory suggests that you can’t have it both ways – each employee will either be loyal OR tolerant of change. The best an employer can do is hire some mix of liberals and conservatives to create the ideal ratio of loyalty to change tolerance, and it’s interesting to think about how the ideal ratio might vary with different contexts...
Start-Ups Herd Cats
The start-up's objective is fast iteration. The final product is rarely what the entrepreneur originally envisioned (at least if he’s doing it right). In fact it is a bit of a misnomer to say ‘final product’ because in start-up philosophy there is no such thing as a final product. The only constant is change. If the Division of Morality theory is correct, and if start-ups operate efficiently, you would expect that the employee composition in start-ups is highly liberal. My very rigorous empirical analysis confirms this hypothesis:
Most entrepreneurial cities: San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, NY
Most liberal cities: San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, NY
A second prediction regarding start-ups is that, since they lean heavily liberal, they would have a very flat hierarchical structure. My rigorous empirical analysis again confirms this hypothesis:
Google, while not exactly a start-up anymore, relies heavily on innovation (change), and therefore employs a bunch of liberals. Google also has an extremely low manager to employee ratio (something like 1 to 30?) – therefore I am right.
Bankers and Dry Cleaners Are Patriotic
In contrast, companies who have followed pretty much the same business model since the early 1800s probably value loyalty above innovation. The Division of Morality theory therefore predicts that banks and dry cleaners will primarily employ conservatives, and their structure will be strongly hierarchical. It predicts that car companies who design the cars (requiring innovation) will be highly liberal and flat, while the car dealerships that sell the cars (ancient business model) will be highly conservative and hierarchical. It predicts that architecture firms (requiring innovation) will be highly liberal, and construction companies (ancient business model) highly conservative.
In most cases, a company is going to be highly liberal or highly conservative – seldom will the equilibrium hover somewhere in the middle. Examples of in-between companies might include companies whose business models are tried and true but who need to stay keenly aware of trends in order to capitalize on changes. Maybe big retail chains or publishers are examples.
CEOs are Liberals, Factory Workers are Conservatives
The Division of Morality theory has allowed me to make a prediction that would normally seem passé and discriminatory (but, hey, it’s science!): The greater the need for innovation, the more liberal the employee composition. There will be pockets in large companies with more liberal and conservative employees. CEOs, designers, and “knowledge workers” will be heavily liberal while managers, bean counters, and factory workers will be heavily conservative.
Here is where the typical Conservative Republican / Liberal Democrat line gets muddied: Many CEOs vote republican (but probably for tax reasons), and many factory workers vote democrat (but probably because democrats are more generous to the working poor). My bet is that if CEOs took Jon Haidt’s morality test, most would be liberals, and if factory workers took the test, most would be conservatives.
The prediction can be extended another step to make an even more passé claim: Innovation being what drives wealth, the world’s wealth creators are primarily liberal. (I just saved you from reading all the books in the Creative Class series and watching as Richard Florida daintily skirts around this very statement. You’re welcome.)
---
If this post offended you, please direct your hate mail to Jonathan Haidt -- I am only extrapolating from his research. (Like how I deflected that?)
(P.S. - On the moral foundations test linked to above, I scored as very liberal. I was on par with conservatives on harm and fairness, slightly below liberals on loyalty, and way below both liberals and conservatives on authority and purity. That might not be unusual for a libertarian. While we libertarians (lowercase 'l') typically think of ourselves as conservatives and vote republican, by the moral definition, we are, on average, (although I know there are many different types of libertarians) even more liberal than your typical liberal democrat.)
###
Perhaps related: Authoritarians and Party Alliances
Sep 19, 2010
George Will on the virtues of sports spectating
In case you need to rationalize all the time you spend watching sports (as I do), here are some George Will quotes from his 330 page love story of baseball titled Men at Work.
Sports educate our morals and passions:
Watching sports can be intellectually demanding:
As much as I would like to rationalize my sports watching habits, I would challenge George Will to explain how watching sports, even for the so called "serious fan", is any better than watching sitcoms or movies, or even playing video games as they seem to me to carry at least as much potential for intellectual demandingness and moral education.
While one can find value in all these activities, it's not a question of absolute value but relative value, and watching sports seems to me to fall pretty low on the relative scale, even within the entertainment domain. (The survey I just posted was inspired by this, wanting to know others' perceptions of the relative worth of various activities.)
Sports educate our morals and passions:
Greek philosophers considered sport a religious and civic -- in a word, moral -- undertaking. Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand love and beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions.
Watching sports can be intellectually demanding:
Being a serious baseball fan, meaning an informed and attentive and observant fan, is more like carving than whittling. It is doing something that makes demands on the mind of the doer. Is there any other sport in which the fans say they "take in" a game? As in, "Let's take in a game tomorrow night." I think not. That is a baseball locution because there is a lot to ingest and there is time -- although by no means too much time -- to take it in. [...]
In a sense, sports are not complicated. Even the infield fly rule can be mastered, in time, without a master's degree from MIT. The object of a sport can be put simply. You put a ball in an end zone or through a hoop, or you put a puck in a net, and prevent the other fellows from doing so. Sports are not complicated in their objectives, but in execution they have layers of complexities and nuances. There is a lot of thought involved, however much many players deny or disguise the fact.
As much as I would like to rationalize my sports watching habits, I would challenge George Will to explain how watching sports, even for the so called "serious fan", is any better than watching sitcoms or movies, or even playing video games as they seem to me to carry at least as much potential for intellectual demandingness and moral education.
While one can find value in all these activities, it's not a question of absolute value but relative value, and watching sports seems to me to fall pretty low on the relative scale, even within the entertainment domain. (The survey I just posted was inspired by this, wanting to know others' perceptions of the relative worth of various activities.)
How valuable are these "everyday" activities?
Please take a few minutes to respond to the survey below. I am extremely excited to see the results (and, as usual, I'll share them with you next week).
Sep 18, 2010
Blogging habits and frustrations
Please take two minutes to respond to the survey below, and, as usual, I will post the results next week.
Sep 15, 2010
The rewards of reading
I found this comment from Xan (wheninrome15) really thought-provoking.
So in Xan's view, reading is mostly useful not as much for transferring thought as for prompting it. I find that really interesting, especially since I have long struggled with the question of what is the optimal ratio of reading to writing/thinking. I have gone in swings from about 5 hours of reading for every hour of writing, to, some weeks, 2 hours of writing for every hour of reading. I have not settled at any particular ratio, and I am still trying to discover what exactly are the benefits (and costs?) of each.
Maybe I would like the thousands of feeds equilibrium, but it ain't the one I'm in. In any case, I'm not sure it's discipline that's keeping me here [with only 36 feeds in Google Reader].
The reality is I actually find reading to be less rewarding than pursuing my interests in a (relative) vacuum. That's driven by the facts that:
a) I'm a slow reader, so not so many benefits to reading per minute
b) I really enjoy the personal feeling of discovery that comes from thinking through an issue with relatively little help
c) the sorts of things I like to think about actually _are_ truths that do not require external verification, i.e. I can know they are true without having to go look up the consensus of the field.
Reading informs me, and certainly that's a sensible reason to do it, but in honesty I mostly do it because it gives me things to think about. (Like what feynman said, that physics is like sex: sure there's a plenty good reason to do it, but that's not why we do it!). And I find that for whatever reason, it takes relatively little reading to give me enough to think about.
So in Xan's view, reading is mostly useful not as much for transferring thought as for prompting it. I find that really interesting, especially since I have long struggled with the question of what is the optimal ratio of reading to writing/thinking. I have gone in swings from about 5 hours of reading for every hour of writing, to, some weeks, 2 hours of writing for every hour of reading. I have not settled at any particular ratio, and I am still trying to discover what exactly are the benefits (and costs?) of each.
Work and Death
This is another one of those Alain de Botton quotes that I hate to pull out of context (from his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work), but I feel it's still better shared than not at all.
Death is hard to keep in mind when there is work to be done: it seems not so much taboo as unlikely. Work does not by its nature permit us to do anything other than take it too seriously. It must destroy our sense of perspective, and we should be grateful to it for precisely that reason, for allowing us to mingle ourselves promiscuously with events, for letting us wear thoughts of our own death and the destruction of our enterprises with beautiful lightness, as mere intellectual propositions, while we travel to Paris to sell engine oil. We function on the basis of a necessary myopia. Therein is the sheer energy of existence, a blind will no less impressive than that which we find in a moth arduously crossing a window ledge, stepping around a dollop of paint left by a too-hasty brush, refusing to contemplate the broader scheme in which we will be dead by nightfall.
The arguments for our triviality and vulnerability are too obvious, too well known and too tedious to rehearse. What is interesting is that we may take it upon ourselves to approach tasks with utter determination and gravity even when their wider non-sense is clear. The impulse to exaggerate the significance of what we are doing, far from being an intellectual error, is really life itself coursing through us. Good health encourages us to identify with all human experiences in all lands, to sigh at a murder in a faraway country, to hope for economic growth and technological progress far beyond the limits of our lifespan, forgetting that we are never more than a few rogue cells away from the end.
Sep 14, 2010
Should homeless people be allowed to have dogs?
If you are a typical human, your reaction to this question was probably to flash through your mind ever-so-briefly a sad looking scene of a desolate and ragged-looking human and dog sprawled on the sidewalk, and whatever emotions that prompted – probably some mixture of pity and disgust – subsequently influenced your initial response to the question.
The example illustrates how morality works. The fact that this question even gives us pause is strong evidence that morality is based on emotions, not rationality. It’s perfectly natural that some people might say homeless people should not be allowed to have dogs – it’s just not rational.
Let’s ponder this logically for a moment:
-- Consider how many stray dogs exist in the world.
-- Consider that by saying homeless people shouldn’t be allowed to have dogs you are saying it’s okay for people to be homeless, but not dogs.
-- Consider how much joy a dog could add to that person’s life.
When I consider these points, I feel disgusted with myself that I even paused to think about the question, but I know I shouldn’t because that’s just the way morality works. And ironically, my feelings of disgust went from influencing my moral judgments of whether homeless people should be allow to have dogs, to whether I was a decent person for pausing to answer the question, to whether morality itself and its use of emotional short-cuts is a “decent” system, whatever that means.
The example illustrates how morality works. The fact that this question even gives us pause is strong evidence that morality is based on emotions, not rationality. It’s perfectly natural that some people might say homeless people should not be allowed to have dogs – it’s just not rational.
Let’s ponder this logically for a moment:
-- Consider how many stray dogs exist in the world.
-- Consider that by saying homeless people shouldn’t be allowed to have dogs you are saying it’s okay for people to be homeless, but not dogs.
-- Consider how much joy a dog could add to that person’s life.
When I consider these points, I feel disgusted with myself that I even paused to think about the question, but I know I shouldn’t because that’s just the way morality works. And ironically, my feelings of disgust went from influencing my moral judgments of whether homeless people should be allow to have dogs, to whether I was a decent person for pausing to answer the question, to whether morality itself and its use of emotional short-cuts is a “decent” system, whatever that means.
Sep 13, 2010
Squibs
It's never been true that the best businesses are built by MBAs with reams of data. There's nothing wrong with thinking about market need, it just should never be primary.
"Crowdsourcing" is a terrible word. People don't work for free, they have fun for free.
Medicine is mostly communication: pixie-dust, white coat, the appearance of certainty.
The lesson of placebos is that truth and lies are not as far apart as we'd like to think they are.
The most-emailed TED talks are rational ideas. Most favorited are emotional ideas. Most commented are actions.
Complexity = system with components that interact with one another dissapatively (using energy) and usually do unexpected (emergent) things.
Simplicity = reliable, predictable, repeatable.
Perfection in design is nothing more to take away.
Making friends is the transition from (1) awareness of opportunity to (2) surface contact (small talk) to (3) mutuality.
Fear of failure makes a man afraid of competition, of changing his methods, or of doing anything which might change his condition. -Henry Ford
"Crowdsourcing" is a terrible word. People don't work for free, they have fun for free.
Medicine is mostly communication: pixie-dust, white coat, the appearance of certainty.
The lesson of placebos is that truth and lies are not as far apart as we'd like to think they are.
The most-emailed TED talks are rational ideas. Most favorited are emotional ideas. Most commented are actions.
Complexity = system with components that interact with one another dissapatively (using energy) and usually do unexpected (emergent) things.
Simplicity = reliable, predictable, repeatable.
Perfection in design is nothing more to take away.
Making friends is the transition from (1) awareness of opportunity to (2) surface contact (small talk) to (3) mutuality.
Fear of failure makes a man afraid of competition, of changing his methods, or of doing anything which might change his condition. -Henry Ford
Sep 10, 2010
Reading habits in Google Reader
Thanks to those who took the survey. Data here. Summary and observations below.
Observations
-- Is there such a thing as a half-assed Google Reader user? All 24 people who responded appear to use it quite regularly. I am curious to know the fraction of users who set up a Google Reader account and eventually stop using it.
-- I thought my 900+ subscriptions was pretty unusual but it turns out three respondents other than me have over 600 subscriptions, and one dude is holding down 1,208 subscriptions. Coincidentally, the same person is also the newest Google Reader user of the sample, adding subscriptions at a rate of 38 per day. Person, please contact me -- I want to know who you are and I want to know more about your reading habits.
-- We have some early adopters in the sample. Google Reader was released October 7, 2005, and three people in the sample have been using it since December 2005, including one person who signed up a day after release. (I'd like to know who you three are, too.)
-- The person who wins the award of showing the most restraint / being the pickiest subscriber has 33 subscriptions in total, and adds new subscriptions at a rate of about once per month. (P.S. - I am honored that WitW is one of your 33 subscriptions.)
-- I'd love to know how these numbers compare to readers of other blogs. Any other bloggers out there, I encourage you to post the same survey. I'd be happy to throw the data into my spreadsheet to pop out some charts for you.
-- Reading habits fascinate me to no end. I am not sure why.
{Click to enlarge}
Observations
-- Is there such a thing as a half-assed Google Reader user? All 24 people who responded appear to use it quite regularly. I am curious to know the fraction of users who set up a Google Reader account and eventually stop using it.
-- I thought my 900+ subscriptions was pretty unusual but it turns out three respondents other than me have over 600 subscriptions, and one dude is holding down 1,208 subscriptions. Coincidentally, the same person is also the newest Google Reader user of the sample, adding subscriptions at a rate of 38 per day. Person, please contact me -- I want to know who you are and I want to know more about your reading habits.
-- We have some early adopters in the sample. Google Reader was released October 7, 2005, and three people in the sample have been using it since December 2005, including one person who signed up a day after release. (I'd like to know who you three are, too.)
-- The person who wins the award of showing the most restraint / being the pickiest subscriber has 33 subscriptions in total, and adds new subscriptions at a rate of about once per month. (P.S. - I am honored that WitW is one of your 33 subscriptions.)
-- I'd love to know how these numbers compare to readers of other blogs. Any other bloggers out there, I encourage you to post the same survey. I'd be happy to throw the data into my spreadsheet to pop out some charts for you.
-- Reading habits fascinate me to no end. I am not sure why.
Sep 9, 2010
Chart of the month: Religiosity and GDP
From NYT. (Hat tip: FlowingData)
My geeky self is dying to see a regression. I might need to pull together the data myself to make it happen.
Sep 7, 2010
The origin of enlightenments
Steven Berlin Johnson's book The Invention of Air is the biography of an overlooked eighteenth-century thinker named Joseph Priestly, in part exploring the environment that allowed the emergence of a striking series of seemingly unrelated inventions. I have collected below a series quotes hypothesizing the factors that influence enlightenments. (While it sounds grandiose, I suspect it has practical implications for our individual lives.)
Continuously changing perspective from the very small to the very large:
Ample leisure time:
Ideas having sex:
The almost radically open sharing of ideas:
Cross-disciplinary exchange:
The "shallow soil" of limited existing knowledge:
So if the ideal environment for innovation includes all of these things (continuously changing perspective from the very small to the very large; ample leisure time; ideas having sex; the almost radically open sharing of ideas; cross-disciplinary exchange; and the "shallow soil" of limited existing knowledge), where might we expect to find the most innovation today? There are a number of possibilities, but the "Hacker" community seems to me like an especially good one.
Continuously changing perspective from the very small to the very large:
When something big happens in the culture -- when a man in Leeds goes on a streak of pioneering natural philosophy; when several nations clustered together in a small subsection of the planet simultaneously reinvent science and government -- that event is rarely the exclusive result of a single layer: one man's genius, say, or the rise of a new economic class. Epic breakthroughs happen when the layers align: when energy flows and settlement patterns and scientific paradigms and individual human lives come into some kind of mutually reinforcing synchrony that helps the new ideas both emerge and circulate through the wider society.
Ample leisure time:
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but most of the great inventors were blessed with something else: leisure time.
Ideas having sex:
Theoretically, it is possible to imagine good ideas happening in a vacuum -- a lone Inuit scientist conjuring up breathtaking discoveries in his igloo, and then keeping them to himself. (Mendel's pea-pod experiments were not that far from this model.) But most important ideas enter the pantheon because they circulate. And the flow is two-way: the ideas happen in the first place because they are triggered by other people's ideas. The whole notion of intellectual circulation of flow is embedded in the world "influence" itself ("to flow into," influere in the original Latin). Good ideas influence, and are themselves influenced by, other ideas. They flow into each other.
The almost radically open sharing of ideas:
The open circulation of ideas was practically the founding credo of the Club of Honest Whigs, and of the eighteenth-century coffeehouse culture in general. With the university system languishing amid archaic traditions, and corporate R&D labs still on the distant horizon, the public space of the coffeehouse served as the central hub of innovation in British society. How much of the Enlightenment do we owe to coffee? Most of the epic developments in England between 1650 and 1800 that still warrant a mention in the history textbooks have a coffeehouse lurking at some crucial juncture in their story. The restoration of Charles II, Newton's theory of gravity, the South Sea Bubble -- they all came about, in part, because England had developed a taste for coffee, and a fondness for the kind of informal networking and shoptalk that the coffeehouse enabled.
Cross-disciplinary exchange:
You can't underestimate the impact that the Club of Honest Whigs had on Priestly's subsequent streak, precisely because he was able to plug in to an existing network of relationships and collaborations that the coffeehouse environment facilitated. Not just because there were learned men of science sitting around the table -- more formal institutions like the Royal Society supplied comparable gatherings -- but also because the coffeehouse culture was cross-disciplinary by nature, the conversations freely roaming from electricity, to the abuses of Parliament, to the fate of dissenting churches.
The "shallow soil" of limited existing knowledge:
The everyday world was teeming with mysterious phenomena -- air, fire, animals, plants, rocks, weather -- that had never before been probed with conceptual tools of the scientific method. This sense of terra incognita also helps explain why Priestly could be so innovative in so many different disciplines, and why Enlightenment culture in general spawned so many distinct paradigm shifts. Amateur dabblers could make transformative scientific discoveries because the history of each field was an embarrassing lineage of conjecture and superstition. Every discipline was suddenly new again. If Priestly and his comrades had unearthed an amazing trove of scientific treasure during these exceptional decades, it was at least in part because the soil was so shallow.
So if the ideal environment for innovation includes all of these things (continuously changing perspective from the very small to the very large; ample leisure time; ideas having sex; the almost radically open sharing of ideas; cross-disciplinary exchange; and the "shallow soil" of limited existing knowledge), where might we expect to find the most innovation today? There are a number of possibilities, but the "Hacker" community seems to me like an especially good one.
Sep 5, 2010
How local news relieves existential anxiety
For me, this quote from Alain de Botton in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work was a beautiful and long-awaited explanation for the existence of a stupidly large market for local news:
I have a theory that 99% of the mysterious things people do can be explained either by attempts to signal status or by attempts to relieve existential anxiety. It could even be said that those are the two primary driving factors behind everything we do.
---
See also: Using Twitter to relieve existential anxiety
Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper. To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity. Today there is a story about a man who fell asleep at the wheel of his car after staying up late into the night committing adultery on the Internet -- and drove off an overpass, killing a family of five in a caravan below. Another item speaks of a university student, beautiful and promising, who went missing after a party and was found in pieces in the back of a minicab five days later. A third rehearses the particulars of an affair between a tennis coach and her thirteen year-old pupil. These accounts, so obviously demented and catastrophic, are paradoxically consoling, for they help us to feel sane and blessed by comparison. We can turn away from them and experience a new sense of relief at our predictable routines; we can be grateful for how tightly bound we have kept our desires, and proud of the restraint we have shown in not poisoning our colleagues or entombing our relations under the patio.
I have a theory that 99% of the mysterious things people do can be explained either by attempts to signal status or by attempts to relieve existential anxiety. It could even be said that those are the two primary driving factors behind everything we do.
---
See also: Using Twitter to relieve existential anxiety
Sep 2, 2010
Google's super sweet new feature
The big news coming out of Google this week is their new priority feature in Gmail. I am looking forward to seeing it, but that's not the super sweet new feature I am talking about. The new Google feature that excites me so much more is one tiny little line added under the Google Reader Trends page. For me it says: Since January 10, 2008 you have read a total of 69,760 items.
I am dying to know stats for other people. If you use Google Reader, please feed a data geek by responding to the quick survey below. As usual, I'll post the results later.
I am dying to know stats for other people. If you use Google Reader, please feed a data geek by responding to the quick survey below. As usual, I'll post the results later.
Life as Habits
My life is so habitual that I not only drive home the same way every day, but I fix my gaze in the same places. I look on the same side of the road, at the same parts of people’s houses. And it’s not just me. Using cell phone data, one study found that you can predict with something like a 95% accuracy where the average person will be to within 100(?) yards at any given moment. While the predictability of the average person is stunning in itself, what’s even more shocking is how predictable are even the most unpredictable people. I don’t remember the exact statistics, and I am not going to listen to the interview again to find out, but what matters is that it’s not just a general trend that people behave habitually; rather, it seems to be more accurately described as a fundamental law of nature. That’s not to say that the law can’t be overcome, or that no one does, only that nearly everyone is really, really habitual.
The fact that I am really, really habitual does not bother me much, especially when I consider the law of nature part – but what I find really eerie is that I do not notice how habitual I am without some serious consciously-directed attention. It’s things like stepping in the same exact place on the stairs, or, when I am trying to think of how to phrase something, turning my head to the right and rubbing my left eyebrow. I mean it would just be weird to turn my head to the left and rub my right eyebrow, but I don’t notice that unless I stop and consider it.
What does this mean, practically, for me or for you? While it may not matter much to notice our eyebrow-rubbing habits, it is important to remember that our lives are dominated by habits – habits we often fail to notice. Whatever your ideal self is, wherever you want your life to go, you better be nurturing the habits that will help you get there. It is obvious advice that has been repeated thousands of times, and we all nod and agree, but I submit we don’t realize just how much habits dominate our lives until we start paying close attention to myriad of tiny little ways unconscious responses shape who we are.
The fact that I am really, really habitual does not bother me much, especially when I consider the law of nature part – but what I find really eerie is that I do not notice how habitual I am without some serious consciously-directed attention. It’s things like stepping in the same exact place on the stairs, or, when I am trying to think of how to phrase something, turning my head to the right and rubbing my left eyebrow. I mean it would just be weird to turn my head to the left and rub my right eyebrow, but I don’t notice that unless I stop and consider it.
What does this mean, practically, for me or for you? While it may not matter much to notice our eyebrow-rubbing habits, it is important to remember that our lives are dominated by habits – habits we often fail to notice. Whatever your ideal self is, wherever you want your life to go, you better be nurturing the habits that will help you get there. It is obvious advice that has been repeated thousands of times, and we all nod and agree, but I submit we don’t realize just how much habits dominate our lives until we start paying close attention to myriad of tiny little ways unconscious responses shape who we are.
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