the wonder wanders

Hit play and let this be the soundtrack for this morning's post:

[i would prefer a live action video, but I didn't see any suitable PS originals, and the cover versions on youtube for this song seem...not great?]

There is a heavy fog in the Tennessee valley this morning, and when my little boy looked out the window to see the school bus hurtling by, and then later the trash truck doing its duties, he watched and reacted as he always does.  There was no concerned glance at dad, as if to communicate "why is the outside so fuzzy and white this morning?"  No, he just accepted this novelty (in his experience); he just took it in and rolled with it.

When do we lose that?  The phrase "childlike wonder" or "innocence" or similar have risen to the level of cliche, but of course their commonality derives from the fact that kids are more open.

Is it possible to extend that state a bit later in life than is typical for children in the US?  And would that be healthy or beneficial or wise?  Are adult attempts to rekindle that sense of wonder in their own lives appropriate, and is it even possible do regain that state, or are those childlike moments really just a quasi successful short term delusion?

Watching my boy engage with the world is fun, and it does in some ways give me a little wormhole window back into the child's eye perspective, but I also recognize the danger in allowing nostalgia to put a Instagrammed [ed note. too au courant] romanticized, sepia toned overlay on my actual experiences as a kid.

rolling bands of experience

So this idea has been tumbling around in my head for a few weeks, popping up in enough various contexts to warrant a blog post trying to flesh it out.

The basic idea is that for a given phase of life, there are basic set of skills that make the experience more something (productive, fun, safe, effective, etc).  What I'm thinking is that a person may accumulate that skill set for a given "band of experience", but that band eventually passes and it is then time to prep/learn how to manage the next band.

volatility

This post relates to NTTATS, but focused on our experience of life, and in particular our experience of volatility.

I have a core hypothesis that humans appreciate order, that we, in anticipation, expect our experiences to proceed linearly from our past, in an orderly progression, and that in retrospect we "smooth" experiences in our memory to make the past seem more orderly than it appeared in the moment.

Let's talk through some examples.

Consider your sleeping patterns.  How many hours do you sleep at night, taking as your data set the last 3 months?  7 hours?  9?  Chances are you  have a pretty good idea of your average night's sleep.  But dipping into the specific data will vary considerably.  If the average is 8 hours, but some nights you linger an extra half hour awake, playing Bejeweled on your phone, but still wake up at the same time.  That's a 6.25% difference in minutes slept!  And in the moment, when you wake up with 6% less sleep, you may well feel grumpy about it.  But two months later, that incident of less than average sleep will have faded in your memory to seem more or less the standard.

Now consider your moods (or those of someone in your life); looking back over those same 3 months, you may recall being "mostly" happy/content or sad/grumpy, but my suspicion is that your recollection will be seriously colored by your mood at the current moment.  And further, that your expectation for your mood in the near future proceeds primarily from your current state.

The upshot is this (I know this post is wordy, but my mind has been clouded by a sinus infection for days...) - the natural world and our experience of it exhibit significant volatility.  Everything observed closely reveals this volatility, but both society at large and our minds individually seek to flatten out or smooth the data to make it seem less volatile.  Put another way, we try to make the chaotic look orderly.

As with NTTATS, this volatility idea seems really obvious to me after talking it out, but when I first became aware of the concept it seemed novel.  And as with NTTATS, I'm struggling a bit to put into words the practical application of the knowledge.  I think that in both cases the real value is to alter our working expectations to accommodate a reality where the future will necessarily not proceed exactly per past experience.

We need to internalize that volatility is the rule, and not the exception, and then so many frustrating things about the world will look differently.

Let's flesh this out in the comments.  Maybe the pressure in my head will subside soon and I can be more coherent.

the good life?

I've been thinking about what I'll call the "Ebenezer Scrooge" dynamic, this scenario where someone lives the majority of their life in wealthy self-indulgence, driven primarily be ego-centrism, but undergoes some transformation late in life and "realizes their folly" with some consequent refocusing on "what really matters".

It's a wordy thing to describe, but I feel scenario recurs often in our story-telling culture.

My question is this: do we (the audience for these stories) secretly long to share that experience?  Does that story resonate with us because we want the opportunity to live a selfish (and comfortable) life with the chance of some sort of moral redemption before we die?

Consider the opposite situation: where are the stories warning against living a life of quiet and kind humility in the service of others, only to swing to a wealth obsessed selfishness in the twilight of life?

My current theory is that we, in Western cultures, (not so) secretly sympathize with the Ebenezer Scrooge model.

Impossible Germany, Unlikely Japan

Wilco's Sky Blue Sky album features a song called "Impossible Germany"; the song begins with the lyric quoted in the title for this post.  It came to mind this morning when I was reading the latest updates on the scenario that continues to unfold in Japan.

The devastation wrought there by the earthquake and tsunami is scary for all of us bearing witness, and the loss of life and pain experienced by the Japanese is heartbreaking to consider.

It also strikes me as a stark reminder of randomness and how we humans are prepared to deal with the random.

My friend AdanA and I exchanged a number of emails last week, some in a connected series and some stand-alone items, and about a variety of topics, but when I look back I see the imprint of the Japan disaster on all of them.  We discussed Japan's adherence to a higher standard in their building codes, and how that decision that assuredly cost more on the front end has ultimately reduced the cost to human life; one has only to look to the recent earthquake tragedies in Haiti and Chile to see what lower standards and lesser quality building materials can lead to (and this is not to be taken as a criticism of the people of Haiti or Chile, but a discussion of randomness and its outcomes.)

AdanA also offered up a question/suggestion, wondering aloud if there may be some mechanism we (people) could employ to compensate for an inbuilt flaw in our statistical understandings...while he did not specifically call out the events in Japan, I felt a connection.  See, even with Japan's relatively robust level of preparedness for both earthquakes and tsunamis, had you asked the average "man on the street" in the days before the 'quake hit what might happen to their nuclear reactor facilities in the event of a "double whammy" scenario, where the area got hit by a 9.0 Richter earthquake and massive tsunami waves, they would likely not have an answer at hand.

I read this morning that the nuclear facility that is in fact failing was built to withstand a quake in the mid 7s on the Richter scale (earthquake magnitudes are measured on a logarithmic scale - a 2.0 is 10 times larger than a 1.0); the quake in Japan clocked in at a 9.0, and the measures in place to keep the reactors cool failed in succession.  Radioactive clouds are escaping from the reactor.  This is a terrible thing.

But is it possible to plan for every contingency?  Is it possible to ever move forward when each step is subject to endless scrutiny and consideration?  How do we train ourselves to be aware of the existence of the highly improbable and to make an explicit accounting of the impact of that highly improbable?  Is it human (I mean in keeping with the way we conceive of our humanity) to say: "Some number of people will die of radiation exposure due to nuclear reactors failing in some number of scenario iterations."?  Is the question of our humanity contingent on the ratio of people dying vs the number of iterations being low enough?

I don't know the answer, but I know these are questions we all need to consider.  Now, for a palate cleanser:

the man period

Can we talk about my cycle for a minute?  There have been volumes written about ladies' menstrual cycles, but I'm not aware of much in popular literature about hormonal periods in men (or really much about other types of cycles in women beyond those associated with their monthly ovulation and expulsion.)

I know a little about circadian rhythms; I have heard some theories about Seasonal Affective Disorder, but in my experience of living my own life, I have come to recognize a fairly consistent ebb and flow of certain feelings, desires, moods, and motivations that are suggestive of a system at work.

I suspect that I am not alone in the experience of these macro and micro cycles.

just for visual interest...still trying to address super long blocks of text.  and it's a nice shot!

So what types of cycles am I talking about?  Maybe a bullet point list will provide an anchor for the discussion; the following is not an exhaustive list, but shows several that come to mind right away:

• sexual desire / libido
• motivation to exercise
• "productivity"
• clean the house (nesting?)
• increase effort at job
• home improvement
• give time to creative pursuits
• attention to diet
• tend to extra-family relationships
• general mood

The language in the above is mostly tilted to "positive" sounding ideas, mainly because I'm in an upbeat cycle today; I could have easily bulleted a cycle of "laziness" in place of "productivity."

In terms of sexual desire, I think there are some generally recognized, macro-level cycles...can we agree here that most young men enter a period of heightened sexual energy and desire in their mid-teens that persists into the mid 20s?  And it's not like there is a continental shelf-style drop-off thereafter, but by the time a man gets into his 50s, he can still be sexually active in a healthy way while still having half as much drive as at 16 years old.

phone cam snap while hiking in the Presidio

I believe there is a generally accepted similar cycle for the ladies, supposedly "peaking" in the late 20s / early 30s.  But what I'm interested in here are sub-cycles, material rises and falls in libido during the course of a month or quarter or a given year...

I love my wife, and I'm consistently attracted to her and by her, so let's assign a baseline level of sexual interest for me at a level 5 (level 1 being "I have the flu, she has the flu, and we're staying the night at my grandmother's house" and level 10 being "it's the second night of a vacation in San Francisco and we are fully rested and have just enjoyed hyper-fresh seafood and just enough Sonoma red wine and we have nowhere to be in the morning and no distractions tonight and my breath smells just fine, thank you very much and several additional things are just right so get over here right now or we may both explode apart instead of together").

So if a normal day is a 5, why is that I find myself cycling through days-long periods of sustained 7s or a week or so of 3s?  To date, I have not found any consistent correlation to exercise or diet or good days / bad days at work...

Binder Park Zoo in MI, a must visit

I have found similar cycles in my moods...my friends and family can surely attest (thank you to not do so here in this space with too much volume) that every six to nine weeks I enter these foul mood periods, where my sensitivities spike and my relationships feel the strain.  As easy as it would be to make this all about me, I really do suspect other people have similar cycles (maybe to a greater or lesser degree than my own experience), and in that commonality, I see an opportunity to learn some things about human nature.

In terms of productivity, I have these bursts of thoughts that lead to things like the laundry shelf, and other ideas about expanding my business, or landscaping the yard, and while having these thoughts it all seems so clear: the way forward, the value of the idea, the desire to start right away.  But if life's practical considerations prevent an immediate start, often a few days after the idea struck, the inspired momentum fades...and then a sort of self-perpetuating depression cycle sets in as I try to regain that original inspired feeling.

FRODO!

I guess what I want is to better understand my cycles, to get a better sense of the normal duration and intensity, with a goal of managing or anticipating both the valuable opportunities and also the troubling aspects.  Sort of like how by 17 or so, young ladies start figuring out whether menses makes them too crazy (I've known women who have virtually no emotional volatility around their period, and those who really could benefit from a visit to the menstrual hut; what further complicates the situation is that some of the emotionally volatile category recognize this challenge and try to accommodate while others always seem to be surprised by those days...I'm now thinking about the possible repercussions of this parenthetical aside).

I imagine that it's not "healthy" to try to prolong the "good" periods too long, and I further imagine that the "down" parts of the cycle are also important to our emotional development...but I have to think that there are mechanisms we (I, in the event that this sort of cycle is something unique to me) could employ to amplify the positive that comes out of the "up" cycles and to mitigate the damage caused by the "downs".

my wife's first attempt at ikebana - great huh?

So?  Do you have cycles?  Do you have ideas on how to measure or manage them?

other people's faith

OK, so the article in the New Yorker about Scientology was fascinating (but long, very very long).

Framed as a long form profile of Paul Haggis, a prolific and award winning screenwriter/director, the article uses Paul's longtime association with Scientology to segue into a bit of an expose` of the church.

Haggis had been an adherent for much of his life, and had attained a high level of status in the church (in Scientology, believers progress through a highly organized system classes and grades).  He had also been a very vocal and financial supporter of the church until a family issue brought him into conflict with church and he began a very public and at times vitriolic separation from Scientology.

Not only is the mini-bio of Haggis interesting (in my experience, I generally assume that people who enjoy a high degree of artistic success do not simply burst onto the scene one day and crank out a hit, but it is always revealing to see how long it takes for some people to see success), but the story of his relationship with his chosen religion provides a crash (ha!) course in cognitive bias and the intersection of faith and human nature.

“I had such a lack of curiosity when I was inside,” Haggis said. “It’s stunning to me, because I’m such a curious person.” He said that he had been “somewhere between uninterested in looking and afraid of looking.” 

and

“I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t.”

There are more and better quotes in the piece that speak to my ideas, but I'm typing one handed, holding my little sleeping son in the other arm right now, so my internet navigating skills are compromised.  Suffice it to say that I see that there is always an emic/etic consideration with religion - by definition, really - and that consideration, or the tensions that arise from the emic/etic disconnects, have to be addressed in the quest for understanding.

And here's some Bible for you:

Test everything. Hold on to the good.

the corporate vs the individual

the wide vs the narrow of experience
        society vs person
               church vs zealot

The dynamic between the "one" and the "many" is of tension and volatility.

"It's just business; it's not personal" can be a legitimate concept on a corporate level, but the actual incidence of application is inevitably personal.

The Twin Towers were not brought down by Islam, but by a handful of individuals, each autonomous beings.

"people" break up their relationships all the time and the world keeps turning; when it happens to you, the effects can be more profound.

One guy shot Gabby Giffords, not some organized group of political fanatics who also happen to suffer from mental illness; America really does care about our mentally ill, but guy was among those that "slipped through" the system.

This post is striking me as more jumbled and less coherent than most of mine, but this issue keeps presenting itself to me, and I just wonder sometimes how we humans have evolved the ability to manage two separate universes: the one that applies to us directly, and the one that applies to everyone else.


Ramble, ramble...Have you seen the polls that ask "ordinary Americans" if they favor cutting government spending?  People inevitably agree that the federal government should massively reign in their spending; when presented with options to cut, people largely fail to make the "cut" election on something that touches them personally.

And to file in the same category: "they ought to do something about that"; "people need to make some sacrifices"; "I deserve to be happy, don't I?"

ugh...is it obvious I didn't sleep much last night?  But, on the bright side, Baby's got a healthy set of lungs and a rapidly developing mastery of inflection and structure in his vocalizing.

I wanna hold your hand!

So this thought occurred to me one morning over the weekend (early in the morning, with the dulcet tones of Baby Boy's screams reverberating around the room):

Is it possible that early in a relationship, when those first few tentative kisses are shared or those two sweaty palms touch for a little sweet hand holding, that both bodies are actually taking a small chemical sample of the other back to the "lab" for analysis?

Could it be that "chemistry" between two people actually is based on chemical compatibility, screened for reproductive fitness from an evolutionary perspective?

It is not necessarily the case that both labs would turn back favorable results; it could be that He is not a good match for Her, but that She is for Him...

The mechanism would also allow for chemical signaling driven by current environmental factors: say that when She sees Him, her pulse quickens in response to 1) His looks, 2) His wittiness, or 3) the sight of Him caring for a puppy...and when they touch, her "interest" is communicated via the chemical exchange.

Of course, the introduction of pheromones to the discussion allows for over the air sampling - you don't even have to touch...

Compelling?

update on my quest for lean

This week provided some frustrations (weight gains, each day!) but also some opportunities for insights, into both my diet and my life in general.

If you've been following along with my diet, you know that it calls for eating lots of protein, fiber, and leafy greens for 6 days and then a "carb load" day that is essentially a free-for-all for the carbs I wanted but couldn't eat during the 6 days.  (My carb day is on Saturday, and I CAN'T WAIT)

Well, I have been following the plan like a champ, and I have been experiencing some challenges.

1.  I have been tracking my pounds and inches faithfully, and my inches have not budged (the book suggests I should be dropping inches like Palin drops boneheaded comments).  And my weight?  That deserves its own spot in my outline:

2.  The pattern last week and this week are similar, with a steady rise in pounds coming out of carb day, and continuing into the middle of the week, peaking Wednesday or Thursday and then sliding a bit into the weekend. Last Saturday's morning weigh-in (before the carb-tastrophe began) was my lowest weight I recorded in a VERY long time...but then?  I basically gained it all back, back to my "pre-diet" weight.  Which has led me to this critical insight:

3.  Poop is very important.  4HB doesn't address poop at all.  Reading on a Kindle gives you the ability to search by keywords pretty easily, so I'm pretty sure I didn't miss some critical section on keeping the bowels moving.  The closest the book comes is when it address "gastric emptying" as triage for the carb day...and I can honestly say that I have no problem "going" on carb day.  Carb day is wonderful, even if a bit gross.

Now, I know that several of my readers are well versed in nutrition and exercise and whatnot, and I'm sure that several of you are shaking your heads and saying "what did you think would happen after eating a whole cow's worth of beef in 3 weeks?!"

To which, I respond, "I didn't really know."

no particular reason, just wanted to share.  Cheese, Gromit!

I guess if I had thought about it more, but here's the rub:  as previously mentioned, I'm eating TONS more fiber and healthy greens than ever before in my life, and I would have also thought that these would keep the wheels a-turnin', so to speak.  As it turns out, you also needs massive amounts of water to allow the fiber to do its job...

So I have added water, along with a probiotic (acidophilus capsules) and a daily multi-vitamin in search of a better poop.  Because, again, I have to tell you, poop is important.  As I mentioned before, I can apparently carry well over a pound of pee in me, and now I suspect that my midweek weight gains point to the amount of poo in my trunk (sorry if this is TMI or too gross...I'm sympathetic now to Dooce's fear that people think her blog is poo-centric)

I also tweaked my food consumption on Wednesday and Thursday of this week (and so far for Friday) to drastically reduce the amount of meat...the last two days I've mainly eaten eggs, beans, spinach, and broccoli (I had a little salami last night and a late night bite of chorizo...), and things seem to be loosening up a bit.  And, tellingly enough, the weight has slid lower each trip to the water closet.

I'm still able to follow the diet, as I can get the 20+ grams of protein from 3 - 4 eggs and from the beans, but the lack of variety (and frankly, the missing tasty tasty fatty meat taste) will make this version of the diet less attractive and sustainable for me.

So let's take stock of this diet for a minute, and what else it has led to:

• Basic rules:  don't eat carbs at all for 6 days; eat tons of protein, fiber, and greens; "cheat" one day
• Don't exercise (much) - the book suggests that intense work-outs will affect the results of the bio-chemistry at play
• so I eat lots more veggies than before (unqualified positive, right?)
• I eat lots more fiber (should be good for cholesterol, colon health, etc)
• For 6 days out of 7 I consume no soft drinks, beer, HF corn syrup, cookies, candy...
• I've restarted taking a robust multi-vitamin / mineral supplement (I've been on again / off again on the supplements for years...)
• and I've begun taking a probiotic (should have started a long time ago)
• I'm drinking considerably more water (good for kidney and liver function, complexion, toxin removal, etc)

My point is that the diet has turned into far more than a diet...it's a lifestyle shift.  And that shift has brought both positive and negative externalities to the diet process.  The diet has led to a significant and expanding commitment to new routines...And this point leads to some more general life lessons.

ducks at the mall - again, just breaking things up a little for visual relief

There is a reason that our plans often fail; it's hard for humans to stick to a plan.

My friend knows that yoga will help his back and his mood, but occasionally "forgets" to practice.

Another friend knows she needs to save money consistently, period over period, but struggles to maintain the plan.

The faithful see themselves fail in their struggle with sin, and rededicate themselves to the fight, only to see the cycle repeat.

We resolve each year at the holidays to make a better plan for the next year, a more practical AND loving plan...

I plan every day to manage my family's tiredness in more effective ways...

Heck, New Year's resolutions are probably still fresh on everyone's mind right now, and those jokes provide plenty of fodder for this discussion.

So what is to be done?  We have to plan, right?  Maybe we just need to make different sorts of plans, create a system that allows for slippage and reconsiderations on the fly, a pragmatic approach to the 1 hour - 1 day - 1 week - 1 year - 5 year - 10 year plans...

My bias is to apply the "everything is relative" and "just stoically roll with it" model to this discussion, but I could be wrong.

"you just bloody never know"

Two Men from Dominic Allen on Vimeo.

There are just so many things we do not know.

beautifully rendered video of a bias

A Mystery: Why Can't We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

statistics = ignorance?

This post on BoingBoing today provides a good opportunity to explore a pet peeve subject for me: statistics are a problem.

It's a common joke to say "90% of statistics are made up" - common, but funny.  It's also common to claim that "correlation does not imply causation", which seems to be the main message of the BoingBoing post.

My primary beef with statistics is that humans do not seem to possess an innate ability to intuit statistical truth; we almost seem predisposed to "short cut" to conclusions, regardless of what the statistical evidence is trying to tell us.  My secondary beef with statistics is that is almost absurdly easy to game the system; whether you are studying biological systems, economics, sports...in every case you can create a statistical set of data that seems to support almost any contention.

Unfortunately, we exist in this space where one of our best tools for understanding and analysis is a deeply flawed tool.  The example from the BoingBoing post is perhaps a little simplistic, where a skeptical reader of data can apply some "common sense" to sniff out the next level of macro data hiding behind the surface level, but many studies of sufficiently complex systems are challenged by the inability to "step back" and see the subject in a wider context.

So what to do?  We have a flawed tool and a problem with confidence in the outcomes of using that tool...

and as XKCD suggests, sometimes correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, but rightly does suggest the possibility of a relationship.

The upshot from me is that one needs to take statistics with a grain of salt, and just as in other areas discussed in this blog, one needs to be aware of the bias built in, both in the statistics and in the mind of the audience.

*****************
update: After I posted this I wondered if more examples of faulty statistical reasoning would be helpful...so would they?

no apologies

I wonder when the word "apology" in the modern, English usage changed from the Greek apologia meaning (basically a defense).

We have this word "apologist" that we use to describe a person who writes or speaks in defense of an idea: CS Lewis is a great example of a popular culture Christian apologist.

But our noun "apology" or verb "to apologize" is a different bird.

I've known people in my life that apologize all the time, for everything...I find myself saying "I don't want you to be sorry...I don't want you to say "sorry"..."

And I've known people that cannot seem to say their sorry, even when they kick the dog (metaphorically).




What I don't get is why there isn't any sort of standard understanding of what it means to apologize, how it works, how one is supposed to respond to an apology...

I dated a young woman who suggested that I should apologize if her feelings were hurt, whether such hurt was my intention or not...it was a powerful suggestion and I have incorporated it into my life in the years since.  It sometimes leads to an apology like this:

I'm sorry that you are upset.  It was not my intention to

hurt you, and I'm trying to understand what happened

in this case so that I can avoid that in the future.

Some people resent this sort of apology; to them it may sound to similar to the non-apology that goes "I'm sorry, but...".  The "but" is the problem.

A lesson that took me a long time to learn was that relationships are hard.  We all hurt each other all the time, generally in unintentional and unaware ways.  This isn't cynicism or "darkness" in my perspective; it's a realization that proceeds from something like the NTTATS theory...we experience life in nuanced ways that differ from those around us.  We hear things in "the tone" of people speaking to us that they may not be aware of; we perceive slights and social awkwardness in a way particular to our lifelong collected conditioning.

So what to do?  My therapist (it's been a few years since I sat on the couch) suggested that in my own life I needed to find the "sensitivity dial" and roll it back a few levels.  Apparently mine "goes to 11" and to function in the outside world you need to be set around 5...too much higher and you are a bundle of perceived hurts; too much lower and you are a sociopath.

In honor of the holiday season and all that it brings, I'm going to tweak my dial and shoot for these two goals:

1. have my apology engine cranked up and ready to go
2. lower my expectations for apologies from everybody else

__________________________________________________________________________________
it may be obvious but I'm experimenting with embedded videos!

uh-oh, Anthropology no longer a "science"

I'm a big fan of critical thinking and the scientific method, even if I don't always believe that the method produces future robust conclusions; I'm a little bummed by this article in the Times today, even though it did feature a great quote:

 “Even if the board goes back to the old wording, the cat’s out

of the bag and is running around clawing up the furniture,” he said.

And so now I'm wondering if I need to tweak my labels on my posts...I've been using "anthropology" pretty often, but now I might need to qualify it, since most of my anthro-posts are anecdotal and navel gazing, not truly scientific.

on price transparency in health care

Are you concerned with the cost of "health care"?  I think everyone in the States is concerned, but there appear to be a few critical disconnects and troubling social phenomena around the topic.

A few thoughts, in no order:

1. health insurance =/= health care.
2. a lot of people know what they pay for insurance, but a lot of people have no idea what they pay for health services
3. "people" hate the idea of "socialized" medicine, except (apparently)
1. when they qualify for medicare
2. when they are on a group plan through work
3. when they live in the States
4. there exists a deeply entrenched, "selfish actor" hypocrisy in the rhetoric around health care

The next time you go to the doctor or the pharmacy, ask them for a price list for their services/products; take note of their reaction.

If you want to take it to the next level, ask if there are different price lists for different payers (insured, medicare, cash, etc) and ask what they expect to actually get in final payment from those various payers.

It's my opinion that there exist some rational and fairly straightforward "fixes" to the health care cost explosion, but that most people don't actually want to change the system.

tell me a story

Thinking more about cognitive bias today and how our brains run in some directions time and again.  Earlier, I touched on the survivor bias and on confirmation bias; today I want to talk about the way people's minds seem to like a good story.  Taleb calls it the "narrative fallacy".  Terry Pratchett makes use of a similar idea in his Discworld novels.  The basic idea here is that people* like for sequences of events to "fit", to "make sense", and to conform to a clean line of causality.  When trying to explain how something happened, we look back at the available data and essentially pick those bits that fit into a story.  Taleb mainly focuses on our attempts to apply a causal trail to explain unexpected "Black Swan"-style events, but it applies more generally as well.  I'm going to suggest that this bias has it's root in humanity's basic need for cosmology.

For example, say you are tasked with writing an essay explaining the causes of the US Civil War (or WW2, or the migration of the Irish in the early 1900s, or anything else).  If you are starting with zero preconceptions about the answer, you might read some other people's explanations (this can lead to clustering, a phenomenon I'll address in a later post), but at some point you will look at the mountain of data available and start picking some. In the Civil War example, it's likely that slavery, economics, taxes, and regional differences in the evolution of industrial capacity will come to play a role in your explanation.  The effect of the bias towards a narrative will influence your essay to come to conclusions that fit together nicely; the run is that reality as experienced in forward progressing real-time rarely follows a clean narrative.  "Some people kept slaves; other people felt that slavery was incompatible with a basic view of human rights; the two parties fought over the issue."  All of the steps in the preceding are true enough in their own right, and in some sort of macro view of one part of the bundle of issues present in the years preceding the US Civil War these data points create a compelling narrative.  The problem is that the story may be the one true explanation of the cause of the Civil War; it may be a true piece of the portfolio of causes; or it may not have figured in the actual sequence of events in any straightforward way at all.  Life, lived in real time and in forward progression, is often more nuanced (and conversely, sometimes much less nuanced!) and more "random" than any narrative we are able to construct afterwards.

Back to Pratchett - several of his books refer to the tendency for people to respond strongly to known stories.  For example, in the book Witches Abroad, the protagonists are fighting against the power of fairy tale stories that are sweeping events along per the fairy tale pattern (princess meets prince, events conspire against their joyful union, prince and princess overcome obstacles and live happily ever after).  The "story" resonates with people and overrides their ability to be critical or skeptical; "everyone knows" that the witch in the story is an evil hag from the woods and will be overcome; "everyone knows" that kissing the frog results in the princess having a handsome prince on hand to marry.

The power of the story and our desire for an apparent narrative also plays into creation of conspiracy theorists.  For some people, when looking back at the events of September 11, 2001, it just seemed to "make sense" that the US government had to have prior knowledge, that our president and Congress must have played some role.  Adding the government's involvement to the events around 9/11 helps to "make sense" of it all, for some people, by filling in some gaps in "the story."

As with other instances of innate bias in our thinking, half the battle is just being aware of the existence of the bias.  Conclusions derived under the influence of a bias are not necessarily wrong or flawed, but have to be evaluated with consideration given to that influence.


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*I always hesitate when writing something general like this, expecting that some in the audience will challenge me to explain who "people" are (or "they" or "most of us", etc).  I hope in the space of this blog to keep generalities to a minimum and to only use them when it seems safe to do so.

Knights in White Satin

This is how I heard the Moody Blues song when I was a kid - a kid obsessed with all things "medieval" and spent my nights in Star Wars print cotton, reading about knights and dragons and fair ladies waiting to be courted.

It's pretty much a non-sequitur for you guys, but a friend asked me to write about "moods and productivity".  I guess the inspiration for the request comes from the fact that he (and I!) can both be moody bastards and tend to bounce from periods of excited insight and desire to produce to somewhat more subdued periods when we are convinced that our labors are for naught and our ideas are unworthy.

In my experience, the environment strongly affects my productivity.  The scene above was the site of a frenetic writing spell I went through over a course of 2 days when I hand wrote a couple of chapters of a lovely story in the tradition of Carl Hiassen or Christopher Moore...the relative ability to not think about anything more pressing than when I was going to get my next Balashi somehow freed me up to think about interesting characters involved in a whacky plot.  Of course, I didn't finish that novel, which may be fodder for a future blog post dealing with unfinished projects...

But back to moodiness and productivity!  I also have anecdotal evidence to offer that a nice walk (alone or in company) or a long run often sets my mind onto tracks of Ideas, and Plans, and Lists of Things to Do.  But a funny thing about (my) human nature is that tiny little setbacks to the implementation of the Ideas/Plans/LoTtD can absolutely blow me up.  Why is it, in that moment of setback (just prior to the blowing up) is it so hard to remember that original inspiration, that feeling of possibility that infused the moment of inspiration...and why is it so hard to remember to go for a walk when you're feeling down?

I have a heuristic I apply to my friends that seem stymied or "down" but that I often fail to apply to myself.  I ask:

Have you had enough water today?

Have you done any stretching /yoga?

When did you last eat and/or have a poop?

Have you tried going for a walk?

It's amazing how often this works and I don't have to resort to next level heuristics (which involve standing on a chair, lying in the floor, and possible doing a handstand.

performance review

Have you read the Ribbon Farm blog, in particular the explication of the categories of actors in the workplace, using the sitcom "The Office" as a reference?  Check it out, and get comfortable with the specialized meanings of "sociopaths, losers, and the clueless".  It's really very interesting stuff, whether you buy in wholesale or not.

I was reminded of this blog post (really a series of posts if you dig in) when considering my annual performance review.  On the off chance my reviewer reads my blog (hi there!) let me here carefully and sincerely qualify that I don't consider him a sociopath, loser, or clueless in any pejorative sense (believe me, there are non-pejorative ways to be called a loser - read the other blog!)

Allowing for the possibility that other, non-American, cultures may differ from us in this regard, I suspect that one of the least comfortable experiences of the modern office place is the performance review.  I'm going out on a generalizing limb, but people do not enjoy being judged.  And for all but the most boneheaded and/or ego-maniacal folks, being the judge is tough too.

I have strong memories of the first few reviews I had in my first real "professional" job, and how I felt like a jumble of anxious, emotional, volatile, and contradictory reactions were all jostling for the opportunity to be expressed.  Going into the review knowing that I had checked off all the boxes, had acquitted myself well against any reasonable set of expectations, etc did nothing to quell that feeling that I was somehow going to be called out...and the managerial masochism that informs how a review must go always snuck up on me and pulled the carpet from under my feet.

If you've been there, on either side of the desk, you know what I mean.  If the scale is 1 - 5 or 1 - 10, or A - F the rule is the same:  managers can't give out 5/5 scores (or can't give out many).  The rationale goes something like this:  Nobody's perfect, and if an employee gets too many ratings of "strongly exceeds expectations" then one of two things will happen, and both of them are bad.  1. the employee doesn't think there's room for improvement; or 2. the employee will ask for a raise


The trap for most managers is that there is no room for secret choice number 3: some employees really are competent, self-motivated, conscientious, and will not take all 5s as an allowance to coast for a while, but will take it as a challenge to figure out what lies on the other side of a 5.

And this segues to a future post (coming soon to a small screen near you!): my version of the Ribbon Farm study, slightly different in its calibration, and based on a scale of relative competencies.

tell me I'm right

Another quick hit on the cognitive bias topic; let's talk "confirmation bias", because it's everywhere.

But first, this deck of slides was an early (and robust!) source of inspiration and education for me about cognitive biases.  Be warned, it is a wide and deep resource, and can be a major timesuck for the curious.

So, "confirmation bias".  The wife says that its like the opposite of "buyer's remorse" (if you are unfamiliar with buyer's remorse, go find a few of your friends that spent $500+ on an iPad and ask them how they feel about it now).

The thumbnail is that people commonly seek out "confirmation" of a thesis they hold.  The thesis could be that buying something was a good idea (and so the opposite of buyer's remorse, per my wife), or the thesis could be an idea: "Coldplay is the bestest band EVER".  The way this proceeds, for example:

1. person hears "Yellow", a single from Coldplay's first album Parachutes
2. person is overwhelmed by the awesomeness of a ringing D chord
3. person calls their buddy: "have you heard "Yellow"?  It's awesome, you have to hear it"
4. if the buddy agrees, everyone relaxes in a warm glow of "Yellow" together
5. if the buddy doesn't agree, person likely calls a second buddy: "hey, have you heard..."

Confirmation bias afflicts people in every profession and in so many different kinds of situations that once you become aware of the risk of this bias, you will start to see it everywhere.  You may even try to get other people to confirm the presence of this bias...  =)

Don't try to fit the data to the thesis.  If you care about the data, let it say what it says.

Defense wins championships - I know it!  And I can prove it:

just look at the '85 Bears, or the Steelers in the 70s!

What?  The '99 Rams?  The '06 Colts?  Um...exceptions that prove the rule?