Friendly Reminder

I see a lot of people complaining on the Facebox about how underappreciated they feel; "I always doing nice things for other people, but no one ever does nice things for me." It's possible that there is a small group of people who are on the receiving end of all of everyone else's good deeds and so these complaints are warranted. However, I suspect the real explanation is a lot simpler than that: it's a lot easier to notice the nice thing you did for someone else than to notice the nice thing someone else did for you. Next time you're feeling underappreciated, try to remember this. The point is,

1. keep doing nice things for people but don't expect them to notice and,
2. try harder to notice nice things people have done for you (and when you do, express your gratitude overtly).

Law of Conservation of Market Congestion

The fewer the people at the market, the more awkward their choices of standing place and the more unpredictable their movements.

Liberating

I know this TED talk is aimed at "youth," but I can think of some adults who might benefit from this message. And I'm sure the rest of us could use a reminder every now and then. Enjoy!

Contrast

In light of all the news about the apparent selfish douchebagery of the captain of the Costa Concordia, I would like to highlight this piece I read in the Star a few weeks back about a very different kind of reaction to a not-disimilar problem: The Case for Virtue.

Nothing to blame but blame itself

I got some engaging feedback yesterday from a mysterious commenter who goes only by MZ*. One thing MZ said that caught my attention was "I'm not sure it's the electorate to blame."

I feel like I need to explain a little bit where I'm coming from.

I am a lazy, selfish man. Like most men, I suspect. And I think the adjectives apply equally well to women and people of whatever other gendered noun they choose to identify with. People are, by-and-large, lazy and selfish. Now, there's something a little tricky in there: I think that most people associate the word "selfish" with words like "greedy," "inconsiderate" and "thoughtless." I think of it more as seeking to improve my own happiness to the greatest extent possible. And by "lazy" I don't mean "not willing to do work." I mean "not willing to do more work than necessary."

I am optimising for most personal happiness for least personal work. Think of it like value. Imagine you want to buy a refrigerator. You're standing in the appliance store looking at two nearly identical models: they're they same size, the same power rating, the same colour. The difference is that they're made at different factories to different quality standards and you know from reading the internet reviews that, while they both will do an exactly equal job of keeping your food cool, keeping your electricity bill low and looking good in your kitchen, one has a motor that will crap out after 3 years while the other lasts 12. So fridge A costs $600 and lasts for 3 years while fridge B costs $1200 but lasts for 12 years. It seems painfully obvious to me that you should buy the $1200 fridge because, assuming that you want a fridge for at least the next 12 years, fridge B costs you $100/yr while fridge A (and its 3 additional replacements over the 12 years) wind up costing you twice that much, $200/yr.

I'm spelling this out painstakingly not because I think you, dear reader, are an idiot, but because I feel there is a lot of evidence that while fridge B seems like the obvious choice, many, many people will opt, metaphorically, for fridge A when given a similar situation to the above proposition. And there are lots of reasons for that -- maybe you simply don't have access to $1200 and need a fridge now. Or, perhaps, you have somehow been tricked into thinking that $600 is a more reasonable price for a fridge. And we're none of us immune to this kind of behaviour economic thinking. Although I talk a big rational talk in the privacy of my own blog, I've certainly bought fridge A in many situations over the years.

But I like to think and talk about these kinds of things, because I am lazy and selfish. If I allowed myself to get tricked into buying fridge A then I am not on my optimal happiness-for-work curve: either I've worked $100/yr too hard to pay for the refrigeration‡ I need or I have lost out on $100/yr I could have spent on something in addition to fulfilling my refrigeration needs.

I think that there is quite a lot of evidence that we, as a society, are not living on the optimum happiness-for-work curve. That doesn't mean that everyone is miserable, or that everyone is working too hard. Just that the overall level of happiness is lower than it could be for the amount of work people are doing. Could we all be a lot worse off? Certainly. But, as I am fond of saying, "things could be worse," is not generally meant as a challenge.

Which brings us back to the original point.

Blame. I am not, in general, all that interested in blame. I think that blame is useful only insofar as it helps point to the source of a problem and suggest a solution. When I say "the problem is", I'm not trying to point the finger at someone and shame them (which is I think what blame evolved for) because that's not really a meaningful punishment in modern society.

What I have figured out, over the years, is that I am happiest when surrounded by other happy people. And there tends to be an amplifying effect: if I put a little work into making someone else a little happier, they can put some more work into making still others happier and eventually this will all return to me in happiness dividends. Admittedly, I have only ever tried this on fairly small groups, but I have no good reason to believe that it doesn't extend to the much larger communities of which I am a member in the modern, global world°.

And so, again, when I say "the problem is" what I am really saying is "I think I am working harder than I have to for the level of happiness that I am experiencing and I think the reason for that is." What I want is for you to be happy. Because when you are happy, it is easier for me to be happy.

* This reminds me of the time someone donated to a friends' marathon run under the anonymous name mz-197† and to this day, nobody seems to know who it was.

† "mz" is the mass-to-charge ratio. The marathon guy worked on mass-spec data.

‡ Why is there no "d" in "refrigeration"? It feels wrong to spell it that way...

° There is, of course, always the problem of freeloaders. But this entry is far too long already, so I'm not going to talk about it here.

Remember Acid Rain?

A facebox friend of mine, an old coworker, asked today "remember acid rain?" As an air quality researcher, I do, in fact, remember acid rain. It comes up fairly regularly in my work and in discussions with other people at the university. But the point he was trying to make was that acid rain was a big, big deal for a long time. I remember the news and the people talking at my grade school. But now, the news never (hardly ever) talks about it anymore. My friend then asked if there was any other thing which seems to be following the same pattern. I assume he meant climate change.

Acid rain occurrence in the developed world has been greatly reduced through regulation. I think a lot of that was because people are inherently afraid of acid. It sounds dangerous. Another part is that people didn't really have to do anything. Regulations were made and cars, gas and industrial processes changed, but most people didn't have their daily routine changed.

CO2, on the other hand, is not something that most people would think of as bad. It's plant food, right? Everyone makes it, therefore it can't be bad. And global warming, well, I mean, who wouldn't want things a bit warmer? And the solutions require major, major changes in the way the developed world runs. Instead of saying you have to improve the catalytic converter on your car, you need an electric car, or a hydrogen car, or no car at all. Instead of scrubbing the effluent from industrial processes, it's an end to industrial farming. On top of that, it's a very slow process. It's basically a recipe for people to avoid dealing with it:



So, while acid went away in the media, it was in large part because regulations have helped decrease it to a point where other stuff is more important / interesting. We can only hope that climate change goes away from the media for the same reasons.

Altogether now!

We all of us have our vices, not least of all me. Being aware, however, that I am subject to various shortcomings, I try to plan in advance for them; to trick my future self, if you will, into doing the right thing.

I would like you to, just for a moment, open your mind to the possibility that it (your mind) plays tricks on you. It's easy to admit that other peoples' minds play tricks on them, but I can assure, without even knowing you, that your own mind does it to. One category of these trick is Cognitive Biases. They are surprisingly universal. I'm not saying that every single person is guilty of every single cognitive bias all of the time. But it is possible to test how often they come up and under what circumstances and the answers are quite surprising to most people.

So it is important to be aware that these biases exist and that, without even knowing it, you may be suffering from one or more at any point in time. With that in mind, please listen to this song.

Next time you're absolutely sure about something, remember the song and think about which biases you might presently be suffering from.

Everyone is susceptible to cognitive biases.

Except for me. I know because the only examples I can think of right now fit my expectations, which are that I have no cognitive biases.