The problem with meritocracy, however, even in its purest imaginable form, is that few people are of exceptional merit. The realisation that the fault lies in us, not in our stars, that we are underlings, is a painful one; and in the nature of things, there are more underlings than what I am tempted to call overlings. A meritocracy is therefore fertile ground for mass resentment.Read the whole thing.
...
At the root of the problem is our belief in the perfectibility of life, that it is possible in principle for all desiderata to be satisfied without remainder, and that anything less than perfection, including in relationships, not only is, but ought to be, rejected by us. We cannot accept that we might at some point have to forego the delirium of passion for the consolation of companionship, that Romeo and Juliet is fine as catharsis but not very realistic as a guide to married life at the age of 56. We cannot have it all.
Showing posts with label Human Nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Nature. Show all posts
Thursday, October 6, 2011
On the Imperfectability of Human Relationships
Are there any serious doubt that Theodore Dalrymple is the most interesting writer alive today? Here is his latest offering in the New English Review, discussing the problems of modern relationships. A sample of some of the wisdom contained within :
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
My Worst Nightmare
Over at Reddit is this frightening post where this parent describes the problems he's having with his 17 year old child.
Your children have the ability to make your life into a complete miserable hell. And once you've had them, you're stuck. No matter how awful they are, you're legally obligated to keep looking after them until they're 18.
But that's not the full extent of the problem. Even once the kid is 18, suppose the parents kick him out of the house. It seems highly unlikely that this will actually be the end of the problem. If anything, you run the risk that he'll try to burn your house down or something - it seems more likely than him deciding to just peacefully leave you alone.
But even suppose you do manage to sever contact. What happens when your kid murders someone in 5 years time? No matter how much you try to detach yourself, you're going to go through incredible turmoil and sadness, and wonder if you might have been able to do something different.
And there's no good answer. There's not even an answer that qualifies as merely 'bad'. You'd try to get the kid committed, I suppose, but when that's the best option, you're in a lot of trouble.
Having children is a huge lottery, with a wide range of possible outcomes. I think that when potential parents visualise the kind of unlucky outcomes that might occur, they tend to think of things like having severely disabled children that will require lifelong care. But that's not the really worrying case - disabled children will be hard work, but probably will also be a source of a great deal of joy.
No, the much worse case is having children who are just incurably, irredeemably evil and nasty, no matter what you do.
l'enfer, c'est les autres, indeed.
Our oldest has, in the last two years, done the following:Jesus. What do you do if you have a child like that? It seems apparent that the kid as some serious psychiatric problems. The parents sound both very patient and sincere, and it doesn't sound like they've refused to impose discipline. Although all the lack of discipline in the world doesn't make teenagers act this way. It's like you've got Kim Jong Il as your son, or Uday Hussein, or Charles Manson.
-set fires in the house
-attempted to strangle his mentally disabled brother
-stolen alcohol, hundreds of pills, and drunk bottles of vanilla extract in an attempt to get high
-carved cabinets with knives
-took knives to school and threatened classmates
-made threats to kill everyone in church and burn it down
-sneaks girls in the house, unprotected sex, sexting, etc.
-broken several pieces of electronic equipment by slamming it down in rage
-peed and pooped on a classmate's backpack for fun
-stolen money from both us and his siblings
-animal abuse, can't leave him with siblings
-lies constantly, manipulates everyone he comes in contact with
-sexual harassment of young girls ages 13 or younger
-consistently poor grades
Your children have the ability to make your life into a complete miserable hell. And once you've had them, you're stuck. No matter how awful they are, you're legally obligated to keep looking after them until they're 18.
But that's not the full extent of the problem. Even once the kid is 18, suppose the parents kick him out of the house. It seems highly unlikely that this will actually be the end of the problem. If anything, you run the risk that he'll try to burn your house down or something - it seems more likely than him deciding to just peacefully leave you alone.
But even suppose you do manage to sever contact. What happens when your kid murders someone in 5 years time? No matter how much you try to detach yourself, you're going to go through incredible turmoil and sadness, and wonder if you might have been able to do something different.
And there's no good answer. There's not even an answer that qualifies as merely 'bad'. You'd try to get the kid committed, I suppose, but when that's the best option, you're in a lot of trouble.
Having children is a huge lottery, with a wide range of possible outcomes. I think that when potential parents visualise the kind of unlucky outcomes that might occur, they tend to think of things like having severely disabled children that will require lifelong care. But that's not the really worrying case - disabled children will be hard work, but probably will also be a source of a great deal of joy.
No, the much worse case is having children who are just incurably, irredeemably evil and nasty, no matter what you do.
l'enfer, c'est les autres, indeed.
Friday, September 23, 2011
The End of the Movie
If I had to give an award for the most understated but profound song written in the last decade, it would be hard to beat ‘End of the Movie’, by Cake.
As a diversion, The Greek complains that he doesn’t like my music posts. To which I pre-empitively respond, ‘that’s because you don’t click on the video and listen to any of the songs I’m talking about, dumbass.’
The song begins by listing a litany of misery that will befall all of us, eventually
‘People you love
will turn their backs on you
You’ll lose your hair, your teeth
Your knife will fall out of its sheath’
The second verse provides the counterpoint from lost pleasures to enforced misery:
‘People you hate
Will get their hooks into you.
They’ll pull you down, you’ll frown
They’ll tar you and drag you through town.’
It’s true. Thus is the first Noble Truth, as the Great Sage put it.
But the chorus is the most interesting part:
‘But you still don’t like to leave
before the end of the movie.
No you still don’t like to leave
before the end of the show.’
What a wonderful, fascinating metaphor for the human condition. No matter how crap life gets, people tend to hang on. But I think the psychology is exactly right. Sometimes, people just want to stick around to see what happens next, even if they’re not really enjoying it – just like sitting through to the end of a bad movie.
This is something broader than the sunk cost fallacy, where people throw good money after bad (so to speak). The tendency to hang on until the end goes beyond whether things are good or bad, to just the core aspect that people will keep on living, because that's the only stable outcome in evolution.
It’s also quite understated too. It’s not about the dramatic instances of people making ferocious determined efforts against the odds to stay alive. Instead, most of the time people do it fairly unconsciously, just the same way they sit through the whole film – you want to see what happens next, and there’s a chance that it might get better. Beyond that, you don’t give it much thought.
This may be one of my favourite metaphors in modern music. If most songs have, at most, one really interesting line or idea that makes the whole song, this is a pretty damn excellent one.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Derren Brown understands you better than you think
The worst mistakes are those that you don't even realise you're making.
I happened to learn about a bunch of them when I came across the work of Derren Brown. He does a lot of demonstrations of the power of suggestion, some hypnotism stuff (which I always thought was garbage, until I saw it in action), and things of that sort.
Bottom line, this guy is a genius. I spent about an hour watching tons of his videos, and they're fascinating.
To warm you up, here is a video of him convincing people at the dog track to pay out on losing betting tickets. You might think that this is a hoax. But if you watch everything else he does and figure out what's going on, you may yet be convinced.
The reason I think it might have a chance at being real real is partly because people generally aren't very good actors. I doubt the average bookie would be able to fake the confusion the woman displays when he points out she's paid out on the wrong ticket.
Most of the videos are prevented from being embedded, but here's a video of something that you probably will think is plausible, at least after the fact, but still be mega impressed by - a video of him pickpocketing a guy on camera, and stealing his watch, phone, wallet and tie. That's right, he manages to undo a guy's tie and take it off him without the guy noticing. On camera. I guarantee you would not have thought that was possible.
But rather than just see it as magic (or, more likely, some kind of setup) it's far far more interesting to understand what he's actually doing. Start with the assumption that it's not all a hoax, and see how far it gets you.
This is a video of his where he influences Simon Pegg's choice of a gift. He got the guy to write down what he wanted a few days ago, and then led him through a series of discussions all subtley suggesting to him a red bmx bicycle as the gift he'd want, which Pegg actually says.
At the end, he goes back and replays the dialogue and shows you how his words keep suggesting it:
Look at the room. You've got the reel-to-reel playing, suggesting rolling wheels, and round shaped objects everywhere. All of this was set up in advance. He also starts Simon Pegg off by getting him to describe a range of sensory emotions when buying a gift, another old hypnotist trick.
Here's another one of Brown paying for items in Manhattan with pieces of white paper instead of actual money. At first, it just looks like magic. But pay attention to what he says to the guy:
But there's a lot more to it than that.
To really understand it, watch this video of him convincing a guy on the street to give him his wallet. Seems so ridiculous it has to be fake, right?
Not necessarily. The following video has a guy explaining all the steps that go into the hypnotism part. One of the tricks is apparently to take a gesture that people do unconsciously, and interrupt it halfway through - in this case, starting a handshake, but instead taking the guys hand and moving it over to your left hand. (If you go back and watch the Simon Pegg video, you'll see he does it there too). That apparently puts the guy in a very suggestible state.
The other part is that a lot of his stuff involve incredibly careful planning beforehand. Here, he uses subliminal messages to convince advertising executives to write a particular ad campaign about a taxidermist. This is a combination of all the subliminal cues (which he shows you at the end), but also the choice of a subject that is very unlikely to suggest many obvious alternatives, making the subliminal images stronger.
And once you start to see this stuff, you start figuring out what he's doing. Not to the point that you could do it yourself, but to the point that you recognize the parts afterwards.
Magic Box, the same guy who explained the 'giving him the wallet' scam, explains how the dog track one I showed you earlier works here. The key bits:
1. He slaps the window to break her out of her unconscious state
2. He says, 'This is the dog you're looking for'. In this case '4' was the number of the winning dog.
3. He then says, 'That's why we came to this win-dow.
I bet you didn't notice all that the first time, huh? Go back at and watch it again.
In the comments to the original of the Dog Track video, user 'JohnnyAlpha100' posts the following:
My question to you is the following: what probably do you now attach to JohnnyAlpha1000's story being a) true, and b) being likely to work if you tried the same thing?
Myself, I rate both probabilities as pretty high.
In this sense, an hour of watching Derren Brown has caused my priors about hypnotism to shift far more on this point that I would have ever thought possible.
I happened to learn about a bunch of them when I came across the work of Derren Brown. He does a lot of demonstrations of the power of suggestion, some hypnotism stuff (which I always thought was garbage, until I saw it in action), and things of that sort.
Bottom line, this guy is a genius. I spent about an hour watching tons of his videos, and they're fascinating.
To warm you up, here is a video of him convincing people at the dog track to pay out on losing betting tickets. You might think that this is a hoax. But if you watch everything else he does and figure out what's going on, you may yet be convinced.
The reason I think it might have a chance at being real real is partly because people generally aren't very good actors. I doubt the average bookie would be able to fake the confusion the woman displays when he points out she's paid out on the wrong ticket.
Most of the videos are prevented from being embedded, but here's a video of something that you probably will think is plausible, at least after the fact, but still be mega impressed by - a video of him pickpocketing a guy on camera, and stealing his watch, phone, wallet and tie. That's right, he manages to undo a guy's tie and take it off him without the guy noticing. On camera. I guarantee you would not have thought that was possible.
But rather than just see it as magic (or, more likely, some kind of setup) it's far far more interesting to understand what he's actually doing. Start with the assumption that it's not all a hoax, and see how far it gets you.
This is a video of his where he influences Simon Pegg's choice of a gift. He got the guy to write down what he wanted a few days ago, and then led him through a series of discussions all subtley suggesting to him a red bmx bicycle as the gift he'd want, which Pegg actually says.
At the end, he goes back and replays the dialogue and shows you how his words keep suggesting it:
'Here's how I bike gifts for people. And this is the best way to handle, bar none, the problem of what to saddle for when you're gonna buy gifts for someone who's a little difficult to buy for. Now, what I do, is rather than recycle the same two-tyred bottles of wine or box of chocolates, which are no fun to receive, I go out and buy anything, and make the person fall in love with it, bike creating a strong feeling of desire for it. Does it make sense? And it works, they get all sort of pumped up, that feeling of positivity, they Beam ex-citement for it..."and so on.
Look at the room. You've got the reel-to-reel playing, suggesting rolling wheels, and round shaped objects everywhere. All of this was set up in advance. He also starts Simon Pegg off by getting him to describe a range of sensory emotions when buying a gift, another old hypnotist trick.
Here's another one of Brown paying for items in Manhattan with pieces of white paper instead of actual money. At first, it just looks like magic. But pay attention to what he says to the guy:
'I was a bit intimidated by the subway system, I didn't want to go on it. But someone said, you know, take it, take it, it's fine. And, uh... where did you live before this sir?.. etc.And he times it so that the lines 'take it, take it, it's fine' are being said as he hands over the paper. This is the power of suggestion at work.
But there's a lot more to it than that.
To really understand it, watch this video of him convincing a guy on the street to give him his wallet. Seems so ridiculous it has to be fake, right?
Not necessarily. The following video has a guy explaining all the steps that go into the hypnotism part. One of the tricks is apparently to take a gesture that people do unconsciously, and interrupt it halfway through - in this case, starting a handshake, but instead taking the guys hand and moving it over to your left hand. (If you go back and watch the Simon Pegg video, you'll see he does it there too). That apparently puts the guy in a very suggestible state.
The other part is that a lot of his stuff involve incredibly careful planning beforehand. Here, he uses subliminal messages to convince advertising executives to write a particular ad campaign about a taxidermist. This is a combination of all the subliminal cues (which he shows you at the end), but also the choice of a subject that is very unlikely to suggest many obvious alternatives, making the subliminal images stronger.
And once you start to see this stuff, you start figuring out what he's doing. Not to the point that you could do it yourself, but to the point that you recognize the parts afterwards.
Magic Box, the same guy who explained the 'giving him the wallet' scam, explains how the dog track one I showed you earlier works here. The key bits:
1. He slaps the window to break her out of her unconscious state
2. He says, 'This is the dog you're looking for'. In this case '4' was the number of the winning dog.
3. He then says, 'That's why we came to this win-dow.
I bet you didn't notice all that the first time, huh? Go back at and watch it again.
In the comments to the original of the Dog Track video, user 'JohnnyAlpha100' posts the following:
"I've tried something similar on a bus. I pretended to fall over and hit the perspex barrier (hard) protecting the driver. I said (at once) "it's ok" while flashing the driver a joker card feigning a bus pass . It's worked everytime so far!
When I removed the "it's ok" statement, it didn't work. Also when I removed hitting the screen, it didn't work. Not very scientific, I know, but it seems to me that in this situation the interrupt and embedded command appear to work."Now, dear reader, I bet before you started this post that you would have been highly skeptical of this whole story.
My question to you is the following: what probably do you now attach to JohnnyAlpha1000's story being a) true, and b) being likely to work if you tried the same thing?
Myself, I rate both probabilities as pretty high.
In this sense, an hour of watching Derren Brown has caused my priors about hypnotism to shift far more on this point that I would have ever thought possible.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The joys of being nobody
I remember reading Bob Dylan's autobiography a few years ago. At one point, he described what it was like to move to an isolated place in Woodstock and have hippies still turning up on his doorstep, hoping that he'd lead them somewhere or be their voice or leader or whatnot (man, if that's not a reason to be a folk singer, I don't know what is).
But the line that really stuck with me was his observation that privacy is something that you can sell, but you can't buy back.
And it was immediately obvious that
a) he was exactly right, and
b) supposing I was in the position where such a sale was possible, I, like most people, would probably not have properly understood the tradeoff until it was too late.
And for that, I was quite grateful.
You only get one chance to be nobody. Once you become famous, you may get loads of women and adoring fans and free entry to nightclubs and no more speeding tickets.
But you might find that you can't just walk down the street without people hassling you. You might find that you can't go on a date without reading about it in a magazine.
And all this can continue long, long after the dividends of fame have stopped. Think about someone like Gary Coleman. 8 years as the child star of a sitcom, then 24 years as the butt of jokes and the occasional subject of 'Where Are They Now?' specials that can barely conceal their delight at your downfall, a cathartic morality tale that signifies nothing more than the fact that people enjoy seeing their nominal betters being humbled and humiliated.
Rudyard Kipling understood this, and sought to protect his privacy after his death in one of my favourite short poems, 'The Appeal'
Personally, I think Kipling's appeal was largely unnecessary - once you're dead, people already tend to stop caring (although lines 5 and 6 indicate that he knew this - agree or disagree with some of his views, there is a lot of wisdom in Kipling). But as long as you're alive, celebrity culture demands that your appeals will be worthless. The public demand to know, and their voyeurism will be satisfied one way or another.
I am glad I am nobody.
But the line that really stuck with me was his observation that privacy is something that you can sell, but you can't buy back.
And it was immediately obvious that
a) he was exactly right, and
b) supposing I was in the position where such a sale was possible, I, like most people, would probably not have properly understood the tradeoff until it was too late.
And for that, I was quite grateful.
You only get one chance to be nobody. Once you become famous, you may get loads of women and adoring fans and free entry to nightclubs and no more speeding tickets.
But you might find that you can't just walk down the street without people hassling you. You might find that you can't go on a date without reading about it in a magazine.
And all this can continue long, long after the dividends of fame have stopped. Think about someone like Gary Coleman. 8 years as the child star of a sitcom, then 24 years as the butt of jokes and the occasional subject of 'Where Are They Now?' specials that can barely conceal their delight at your downfall, a cathartic morality tale that signifies nothing more than the fact that people enjoy seeing their nominal betters being humbled and humiliated.
Rudyard Kipling understood this, and sought to protect his privacy after his death in one of my favourite short poems, 'The Appeal'
It I have given you delight
By aught that I have done,
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon:
And for the little, little, span
The dead are born in mind,
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.
Personally, I think Kipling's appeal was largely unnecessary - once you're dead, people already tend to stop caring (although lines 5 and 6 indicate that he knew this - agree or disagree with some of his views, there is a lot of wisdom in Kipling). But as long as you're alive, celebrity culture demands that your appeals will be worthless. The public demand to know, and their voyeurism will be satisfied one way or another.
I am glad I am nobody.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The Number of Traffic Accidents
Sometimes it seems odd how comparatively safe driving is. When you're barrelling along the freeway at 65 miles an hour, you don't actually have much margin for error. It's a fair assumption that if you crash badly, you'll die. Even if the car cushions the blow, the real problem is that your brain is also decelerating against the inside of your skull, and that tends to be problematic.
In addition, there are lots of ways that you can make mistakes. The range of human abilities is vast, ensuring a reasonable number of woeful drivers on the road at any one time. In addition, there are loads of people who are tired, or fiddling with the radio, or text messaging their friend.
Given all this, it's not surprising that people have fatal accidents. What's surprising is that there aren't a whole lot more of them. In a major city, hundreds of thousands of people drive around every day without incident.
If I were from 100 years ago and were explained how the road system works, I think I would estimate far more accidents than there are.
I think it shows the surprising ability of the average person to act in a safe manner, anticipate other people's mistakes, and correct course before there's a problem.
Humans - they'll do all sorts of stupid stuff, but every now and again they'll surprise you with a pretty damn good and resilient system that operates with a fairly low level of central oversight.
In addition, there are lots of ways that you can make mistakes. The range of human abilities is vast, ensuring a reasonable number of woeful drivers on the road at any one time. In addition, there are loads of people who are tired, or fiddling with the radio, or text messaging their friend.
Given all this, it's not surprising that people have fatal accidents. What's surprising is that there aren't a whole lot more of them. In a major city, hundreds of thousands of people drive around every day without incident.
If I were from 100 years ago and were explained how the road system works, I think I would estimate far more accidents than there are.
I think it shows the surprising ability of the average person to act in a safe manner, anticipate other people's mistakes, and correct course before there's a problem.
Humans - they'll do all sorts of stupid stuff, but every now and again they'll surprise you with a pretty damn good and resilient system that operates with a fairly low level of central oversight.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Hearing Aids and Sexual Appeal
Evolution has equipped humans with powerful urges to select mates based on traits linked to genetic fitness. It's amazing how deep these instincts go.
One I always found interesting is how strongly people react to indicators of disability. This makes total evolutionary sense - sickly or disabled offspring are less likely to reproduce on the savanna, and the open-minded ancestors who didn't care were outbred by the picky ones that did.
But what's strange is that this applies to cases where the cosmetic effect of the disability is quite small. Take the case of hearings aids. Their physical appearance is barely different to ordinary headphones. They're also not something that was selected for specifically. That is, we may have instinctive responses to a cleft lip or an asymmetric face because of ancestors who observed the same things and reacted accordingly. But it's not like our forebears reacted to hearing aids directly, or even anything that looked like them. All you have is the gut instinct.
And yet I think the average person has a strangely strong negative reaction to them, for reasons that they'd struggle to articulate.
If you're interested in testing your own reaction, compare this:
(image credit)
The shape is very similar. The photos aren't quite the same - if you want a more representative hearing aid one, there's a more comparable stock photo here.
For the male version, compare this with this.
The difference is the mental associations of the deafness. And we're not talking about you selecting a life mate here - we're just talking about your subconscious reaction to a picture on a computer. I bet you that if you're honest with yourself, you react very differently to the two images, even when just rating their physical attractiveness.
Obviously, I have no specific data to back me up on this, other than a few anecdotal conversations with people over the years. You can take my lack of any specific data here in at least two ways.
The first is that without data, this post is nothing better than a hunch of mine (which is a fair criticism).
The second is that I'm confident enough of this hunch that I'm willing to bet by writing this post that you share the same response. Because if you don't react the way I think, you're going to read this thinking 'What the hell is that guy talking about? What an asshole!'.
Positive not normative, as they say.
One I always found interesting is how strongly people react to indicators of disability. This makes total evolutionary sense - sickly or disabled offspring are less likely to reproduce on the savanna, and the open-minded ancestors who didn't care were outbred by the picky ones that did.
But what's strange is that this applies to cases where the cosmetic effect of the disability is quite small. Take the case of hearings aids. Their physical appearance is barely different to ordinary headphones. They're also not something that was selected for specifically. That is, we may have instinctive responses to a cleft lip or an asymmetric face because of ancestors who observed the same things and reacted accordingly. But it's not like our forebears reacted to hearing aids directly, or even anything that looked like them. All you have is the gut instinct.
And yet I think the average person has a strangely strong negative reaction to them, for reasons that they'd struggle to articulate.
If you're interested in testing your own reaction, compare this:
(image credit)
The shape is very similar. The photos aren't quite the same - if you want a more representative hearing aid one, there's a more comparable stock photo here.
For the male version, compare this with this.
The difference is the mental associations of the deafness. And we're not talking about you selecting a life mate here - we're just talking about your subconscious reaction to a picture on a computer. I bet you that if you're honest with yourself, you react very differently to the two images, even when just rating their physical attractiveness.
Obviously, I have no specific data to back me up on this, other than a few anecdotal conversations with people over the years. You can take my lack of any specific data here in at least two ways.
The first is that without data, this post is nothing better than a hunch of mine (which is a fair criticism).
The second is that I'm confident enough of this hunch that I'm willing to bet by writing this post that you share the same response. Because if you don't react the way I think, you're going to read this thinking 'What the hell is that guy talking about? What an asshole!'.
Positive not normative, as they say.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Venues Engineered for Conflict
I was at a rock concert the other day, and it was in one of those theatres with seats the whole way through, and only a small area for the mosh pit at the front.
I really dislike concerts at these types of venues (but liked the band enough to put up with it). When the show started, there were a few people who initially stood up, but most kept sitting down. Things settled down into the equilibrium of 'I guess we're sitting down then'. This gives the whole atmosphere one of a picnic or a movie, neither of which is really what I'm aiming for.
But there were a couple of enthusiastic people that really wanted to stand up and dance. And this produced the following obvious argument (I couldn't hear them, but I'm pretty sure it went down like this):
Now, both parties were sure the other one was a complete dickhead. And honestly, they were probably both right. But what's more interesting is how likely this conflict is in any stadium with seats.
The basic setup of the problem is:
1. People have variation in whether they personally would prefer to stand or sit.
2. Standing up imposes a cost to the person behind you, unless they're also standing.
3. Most people dislike imposing the cost in #2, but this decreases with the number of people doing it with them.
This can result in the equilibrium of everyone standing up. It can also result in the equilibrium of everyone sitting down. And at the start, people are often uncertain, watching others to see what's going to happen.
But there's always a few people with very strong preferences on point 1. In the 'everyone stands' equilibrium, there may be a few people sitting anyway, but we decide that the odd guy sitting anyway must just have tired legs, and that's his decision since we're all standing.
In the 'everyone sits' equilibrium though, things get tense when the (inevitable) small number of people want to stand. Because the person at the front usually isn't a sociopath, imposing costs without caring, although sometimes they are. Usually they're trying to set off a cascade towards the 'everyone stands' equilibrium - if I stand, the guy behind me will stand, the guy behind him will stand, etc. Then they'll feel better, because they get to stand AND not feel like they're imposing a cost.
But the person behind may resist, and continue sitting down (daring the person in front to keep imposing the cost). They can also raise the stakes by bitching them out.
The problem is, in an audience of thousands of people that are predominantly sitting at the concert, there will always be a small number sociopaths wanting to stand regardless, and a larger number trying to set off a decision cascade.
And this is completely inevitable when you organise a concert in this kind of place. At every one of these concerts that end up in the 'everyone sits' equilibrium (which happens maybe half the time, depending on the type of music), there will be people having exactly the same heated argument, having their enjoyment of the show ruined.
There are, as I see it, a couple of solutions to the problem.
The first is if you happen to end up in the 'everyone stands' equilibrium - the people with tired legs may grumble, but it probably won't be directed at the person in front of them specifically.
The second is if the singer is savvy, and directly asks the crowd to please all stand up. This is almost always enough to shift the equilibrium, and I'm always grateful when they do.
The third is to hold rock concerts in places without seats. This is my preferred option, but not always available alas.
My guess is that the two people yelling at each other probably didn't stop to blame the concert promoter for scheduling the concert at such a venue, which made this type of thing quite likely.
But they should have. Co-ordination games rarely work well when thousands of people are involved, and architects ought to plan accordingly.
I really dislike concerts at these types of venues (but liked the band enough to put up with it). When the show started, there were a few people who initially stood up, but most kept sitting down. Things settled down into the equilibrium of 'I guess we're sitting down then'. This gives the whole atmosphere one of a picnic or a movie, neither of which is really what I'm aiming for.
But there were a couple of enthusiastic people that really wanted to stand up and dance. And this produced the following obvious argument (I couldn't hear them, but I'm pretty sure it went down like this):
Person Behind: Sit down, we can't see.
Person in Front: It's a rock concert, you're not meant to sit down. Stand up if you can't see.
Person Behind: I don't want to stand up, I want you to sit down.etc. With this one girl near me, it ended up getting quite heated.
Now, both parties were sure the other one was a complete dickhead. And honestly, they were probably both right. But what's more interesting is how likely this conflict is in any stadium with seats.
The basic setup of the problem is:
1. People have variation in whether they personally would prefer to stand or sit.
2. Standing up imposes a cost to the person behind you, unless they're also standing.
3. Most people dislike imposing the cost in #2, but this decreases with the number of people doing it with them.
This can result in the equilibrium of everyone standing up. It can also result in the equilibrium of everyone sitting down. And at the start, people are often uncertain, watching others to see what's going to happen.
But there's always a few people with very strong preferences on point 1. In the 'everyone stands' equilibrium, there may be a few people sitting anyway, but we decide that the odd guy sitting anyway must just have tired legs, and that's his decision since we're all standing.
In the 'everyone sits' equilibrium though, things get tense when the (inevitable) small number of people want to stand. Because the person at the front usually isn't a sociopath, imposing costs without caring, although sometimes they are. Usually they're trying to set off a cascade towards the 'everyone stands' equilibrium - if I stand, the guy behind me will stand, the guy behind him will stand, etc. Then they'll feel better, because they get to stand AND not feel like they're imposing a cost.
But the person behind may resist, and continue sitting down (daring the person in front to keep imposing the cost). They can also raise the stakes by bitching them out.
The problem is, in an audience of thousands of people that are predominantly sitting at the concert, there will always be a small number sociopaths wanting to stand regardless, and a larger number trying to set off a decision cascade.
And this is completely inevitable when you organise a concert in this kind of place. At every one of these concerts that end up in the 'everyone sits' equilibrium (which happens maybe half the time, depending on the type of music), there will be people having exactly the same heated argument, having their enjoyment of the show ruined.
There are, as I see it, a couple of solutions to the problem.
The first is if you happen to end up in the 'everyone stands' equilibrium - the people with tired legs may grumble, but it probably won't be directed at the person in front of them specifically.
The second is if the singer is savvy, and directly asks the crowd to please all stand up. This is almost always enough to shift the equilibrium, and I'm always grateful when they do.
The third is to hold rock concerts in places without seats. This is my preferred option, but not always available alas.
My guess is that the two people yelling at each other probably didn't stop to blame the concert promoter for scheduling the concert at such a venue, which made this type of thing quite likely.
But they should have. Co-ordination games rarely work well when thousands of people are involved, and architects ought to plan accordingly.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Best Thing You'll Read This Week
Friday, August 12, 2011
Aesthetes vs. Sensualists
Among the myriad ways you can divide up the world to try to understand human behaviour, I think it's interesting to note the different attitudes (straight) men have towards women.
As I see it, the male world is roughly divided into two camps - the Aesthetes, and the Sensualists.
Both the Aesthetes and the Sensualists love sleeping with hot women. (The Couch: Duh! They also enjoy eating food and breathing oxygen). Let's assume they enjoy this equally.
But the difference comes in how they react to hot women that, for one reason or another, they can't sleep with.
Aesthetes are so-called because they love female beauty. They enjoy being surrounded by attractive women, even if nothing is going to happen. They enjoy having attractive female friends, partly for the validation of knowing that hot women enjoy their company, but partly just for the improvement in view. They see a pretty girl walk down the street, and reflect on how good it is to live in area with pretty girls around them. Sure they'd love to bang her, but the fact that they can't doesn't stop them enjoying seeing them.
Sensualists, on the other hand, are driven only by the sensual and carnal aspects of the opposite sex. For the sensualist, being around desirable girls is important mainly for the potential that he might one day be able to hook up with them, however remote that possibility is. If he can't, their attractiveness doesn't bring him any pleasure. Indeed, for the hardcore sensualist, being surrounded by attractive but taken women actually is a source of psychological discomfort - he can't stop being bothered by the fact that he'd like to sleep with them, but can't. Their beauty only serves to remind him of their unattainable nature. He wouldn't ever admit to himself that he might be happier if some of the women around him were less attractive (because he is likely to overestimate the probability that something might still happen), but it is nonetheless so.
The aesthetes I know are generally happier, as it's much easier to find someone attractive to merely look at rather to have sex with. But they are also less driven in their quest to actually sleep with the women they meet, because they derive more satisfaction without that, and hence the marginal change in happiness is smaller. The guys I know who sleep with lots of girls are, to a man, sensualists - beautiful women who they haven't hooked up with are a challenge and a torment, but not a source of pleasure.
On the other hand, the men I know who had any substantial number of female friends were all aesthetes. This isn't always just driven by the simplified logic of surrounding themselves with hot women - they are also more likely to appreciate the female sex for reasons other than just physical attractiveness, such as the different ways that women tend to view the world. Aesthetes are more broadly interested in eligible women, of which being young and physically attractive is a large part, but not the only part.*Aesthetes tend to objectify women less - not in the OMG SEXISM OBJECTIFICATION!!!11!! sense, but more broadly in terms of viewing the opposite sex mainly as a means to an end. I think this view tends to be more common among sensualists, and it makes friendship unlikely.
For the men, if you want to know which camp you fall into, there is an easy test. Suppose you're 45 and married with two young children. You're also a committed husband, and determined not to stray. In your job, you get assigned a super hot secretary with a huge rack and a penchant for wearing slightly too revealing clothes for an office setting.
How would you feel when you walked in each morning and saw her?
The first thought will probably be, 'Man, she's hot!'. But what's the second thought?
Your answer will tell you not only which side you fall on, but also tends to reveal quite a lot about how you think, which is why I think it's a useful categorisation.
If you have to judge whether someone else is an aesthete or a sensualist, here's a rule of thumb - men that are greedy in other aspects of their personality are more likely to be sensualists.
*If this post dwells on physical attractiveness as the main salient characteristic of women, it is from a conviction that this is a large component of how most men actually perceive them. A sad fact this may be, but it is a fact nonetheless.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Backwards Induction
Thinking too much like an economist can sometimes get in the way of satisfying cathartic feelings of anger.
For instance, I ordered 4 USB flash drives, and as always they came in the infuriating clam-shell packaging. As I jammed the scissors through each one, it seemed that justice would require that there be a circle of hell for whoever designed this monstrosity, where they have a never ending pile clam-shell cases to open using only their hands, and on Christmas, a blunt pair of scissors.
But then you start thinking that these people are only responding to the demand of shop owners. And they in turn are responding to the actions numerous imbeciles that apparently view flash drives as such a designer item that they can't wait to steal them en masse.
From there, it's only a short step to wondering whether there actually is that much shoplifting to justify this stuff, and whether the Amazon campaign to get rid of them has had any effect, and whether its plausible for consumers to respond by only buying non-clam-shell devices...
And before you know it, you're still irritated, but can't decide at whom.
Bah.
For instance, I ordered 4 USB flash drives, and as always they came in the infuriating clam-shell packaging. As I jammed the scissors through each one, it seemed that justice would require that there be a circle of hell for whoever designed this monstrosity, where they have a never ending pile clam-shell cases to open using only their hands, and on Christmas, a blunt pair of scissors.
But then you start thinking that these people are only responding to the demand of shop owners. And they in turn are responding to the actions numerous imbeciles that apparently view flash drives as such a designer item that they can't wait to steal them en masse.
From there, it's only a short step to wondering whether there actually is that much shoplifting to justify this stuff, and whether the Amazon campaign to get rid of them has had any effect, and whether its plausible for consumers to respond by only buying non-clam-shell devices...
And before you know it, you're still irritated, but can't decide at whom.
Bah.
Friday, August 5, 2011
'Nice Shirt'
It is my rough experience that when people say 'Nice Shirt/Tie/Jumper', at least half the time what they actually mean is 'That shirt is ugly, but distinctive'. They first register the need to comment on the odd-looking thing, and since 'your shirt is crap' is not polite, you end up with 'nice shirt'.
For some reason, the expression 'I like that shirt on you' doesn't ring quite as false. It may well be motivated by the desire for false flattery, but that is a much easier problem to deal with. For starters, it's unlikely to lead me to wear an ugly shirt too often because someone once said something nice about it.
For some reason, the expression 'I like that shirt on you' doesn't ring quite as false. It may well be motivated by the desire for false flattery, but that is a much easier problem to deal with. For starters, it's unlikely to lead me to wear an ugly shirt too often because someone once said something nice about it.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Cute ~= Small
Cuteness in animals is largely a matter of scale.
A kitten is cute.
A sparrow is also cute.
But a kitten is not at all cute if you're a sparrow. It's the equivalent (to us) of a man-eating tiger the size of an elephant. And if you're an earthworm, a sparrow is like Jaws, but a Jaws that comes crashing through your living room wall and eats you as you're minding your business one day.
Bear this in mind next time a butterfly seems reluctant to land on your finger. After all, to it you are the Death Star.
Some people do not adhere to this idea of cute. To them, a tiger is just as cute as a kitten. It's just a big, cuddly kitten!
Those people, however, tend to get eaten. And thus evolution once again forces the rough definition that cuteness can only be perceived in things much smaller than you.
A kitten is cute.
A sparrow is also cute.
But a kitten is not at all cute if you're a sparrow. It's the equivalent (to us) of a man-eating tiger the size of an elephant. And if you're an earthworm, a sparrow is like Jaws, but a Jaws that comes crashing through your living room wall and eats you as you're minding your business one day.
Bear this in mind next time a butterfly seems reluctant to land on your finger. After all, to it you are the Death Star.
Some people do not adhere to this idea of cute. To them, a tiger is just as cute as a kitten. It's just a big, cuddly kitten!
Those people, however, tend to get eaten. And thus evolution once again forces the rough definition that cuteness can only be perceived in things much smaller than you.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Things I should have done a long time ago
So yesterday I purchased a new bed. Queen size, pillow-top, the works. It's pretty sweet, but that's not important right now.
What's amazing is that I put up with my double bed for so many years. I bought a double instead of a queen because once upon a time, when I first moved to these shores, I was staying in a tiny room. I wanted the length of a queen - the double bed was 6 feet long, which would fit me as long as my head was within about half an inch of the top edge of the bed. Which, as you can imagine, is not exactly where one typically tends to place one's head on a pillow.
The reason I got the smaller bed was actually because I couldn't afford the extra width. My desk was jammed right next to my bed, and the extra four inches was in fact the entire distance that my desk chair could move in or out. Deciding that I was going to spend more hours at my desk than my bed (and probably being right), I went for the chair space.
The bed also had numerous other quirks. Some of the sheets I had were for a queen bed, and hence kept getting pulled off the bed in the night. They always managed to bunch up in a ball somewhere underneath my lower back, which was convenient, since the mild back pain would let me know where to find them.
The reality, dear reader, is that I would/could/should have replaced my bed years ago. I was only in my tiny apartment for two years, and then in places that would support a bigger bed. I easily blew the cost of the new bed on all sorts of stupid junk.
"Sensible" procrastination (if there exists such a thing) involves doing something really fun now and putting off something necessary but unpleasant. The worst kind of stupid hyperbolic discounting is putting off something that will bring long-lasting benefit, while instead doing something that's not even that fun. Like, you know, wasting months of my life on the internet instead of buying a new bed.
I leave it to the imagination of the reader how many years of poor decisions this has constituted, and how many of those I can claim the fig leaf of income constraints versus pure procrastination.
What's amazing is that I put up with my double bed for so many years. I bought a double instead of a queen because once upon a time, when I first moved to these shores, I was staying in a tiny room. I wanted the length of a queen - the double bed was 6 feet long, which would fit me as long as my head was within about half an inch of the top edge of the bed. Which, as you can imagine, is not exactly where one typically tends to place one's head on a pillow.
The reason I got the smaller bed was actually because I couldn't afford the extra width. My desk was jammed right next to my bed, and the extra four inches was in fact the entire distance that my desk chair could move in or out. Deciding that I was going to spend more hours at my desk than my bed (and probably being right), I went for the chair space.
The bed also had numerous other quirks. Some of the sheets I had were for a queen bed, and hence kept getting pulled off the bed in the night. They always managed to bunch up in a ball somewhere underneath my lower back, which was convenient, since the mild back pain would let me know where to find them.
The reality, dear reader, is that I would/could/should have replaced my bed years ago. I was only in my tiny apartment for two years, and then in places that would support a bigger bed. I easily blew the cost of the new bed on all sorts of stupid junk.
"Sensible" procrastination (if there exists such a thing) involves doing something really fun now and putting off something necessary but unpleasant. The worst kind of stupid hyperbolic discounting is putting off something that will bring long-lasting benefit, while instead doing something that's not even that fun. Like, you know, wasting months of my life on the internet instead of buying a new bed.
I leave it to the imagination of the reader how many years of poor decisions this has constituted, and how many of those I can claim the fig leaf of income constraints versus pure procrastination.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Mental Accounting and Countries
Mental accounting is the idea that people think about outcomes in terms of particular categories, or mental accounts. You think of the profits on your risky share portfolio as being one set of money, and the profits on your kid's college fund invested in safe bonds as another set of money, and evaluate them differently. In reality, it's all your money, and it's all transferable. You ought to be optimising over the whole portfolio, but people usually don't.
Another area this shows up is in terms of travelling to countries. There is a certain class of traveller who I refer to as a 'list-checker'. They view it as their mission to go to as many countries as possible. But crucially, they tend to only go to each one once, and each one is somewhat interchangeable. Typically, these people are amongst the worst bores for telling travel stories, constantly interjecting 'I've been there' whenever a country comes up. This interruption is rarely associated with an actually interesting anecdote related to the current discussion, but instead is merely there to remind you how cultured and worldly they are. Their aim is not necessarily 'seeing more stuff', but more 'getting to tell people they've been to dozens of countries'.
If you want to see how this makes no sense at all, consider a map of South America.
(image credit)
According to wikipedia numbers, Brazil has about 48% of the total land area of South America, and about 52% of the people in South America. So regardless of whether you're after a representative sample of seeing different geography in South America or meeting different people in South America, you ought to spend half your South American vacations in Brazil, and the other half in the rest of the countries combined.
The list-checker doesn't work this way, of course. They'll spend a week in Brazil doing 4 days in Rio and 3 in Sao Paulo, and declare victory. "I've already been to Brazil!", they'll declare. "Let's check out what's in Suriname."
The answer is of course, "f*** all", and they'd be much better off seeing more of Brazil. That's assuming that they're actually after more interesting experiences. On the other hand, if you take their preferences seriously and think that there really is nothing more important than checking off that list, then they should stick to what they're doing. Tick off that country!
Here's the way to tell if you're a list-checker or not. If the northern half of Brazil decided to split off into a separate country called 'Holmesia', would you feel a subtle urge to go there that you don't currently feel?
If you would, you are mega lame. (Unless you're so enamoured of yer 'umble narrator that you're drawn by the name alone - in that case, think of it as 'Amazonia', and do the exercise again.)
Don't be that guy. Nobody likes a list-checker.
Another area this shows up is in terms of travelling to countries. There is a certain class of traveller who I refer to as a 'list-checker'. They view it as their mission to go to as many countries as possible. But crucially, they tend to only go to each one once, and each one is somewhat interchangeable. Typically, these people are amongst the worst bores for telling travel stories, constantly interjecting 'I've been there' whenever a country comes up. This interruption is rarely associated with an actually interesting anecdote related to the current discussion, but instead is merely there to remind you how cultured and worldly they are. Their aim is not necessarily 'seeing more stuff', but more 'getting to tell people they've been to dozens of countries'.
If you want to see how this makes no sense at all, consider a map of South America.
(image credit)
According to wikipedia numbers, Brazil has about 48% of the total land area of South America, and about 52% of the people in South America. So regardless of whether you're after a representative sample of seeing different geography in South America or meeting different people in South America, you ought to spend half your South American vacations in Brazil, and the other half in the rest of the countries combined.
The list-checker doesn't work this way, of course. They'll spend a week in Brazil doing 4 days in Rio and 3 in Sao Paulo, and declare victory. "I've already been to Brazil!", they'll declare. "Let's check out what's in Suriname."
The answer is of course, "f*** all", and they'd be much better off seeing more of Brazil. That's assuming that they're actually after more interesting experiences. On the other hand, if you take their preferences seriously and think that there really is nothing more important than checking off that list, then they should stick to what they're doing. Tick off that country!
Here's the way to tell if you're a list-checker or not. If the northern half of Brazil decided to split off into a separate country called 'Holmesia', would you feel a subtle urge to go there that you don't currently feel?
If you would, you are mega lame. (Unless you're so enamoured of yer 'umble narrator that you're drawn by the name alone - in that case, think of it as 'Amazonia', and do the exercise again.)
Don't be that guy. Nobody likes a list-checker.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Need advice on your poor decisions? Screw up spectacularly enough and the world will provide!
So I'm late to the party in having anything to say about the Schwarzenegger love-child affair. And I don't have much to say on it directly.
But it did make me think that it must be strange to be the subject of a sex scandal, and seeing every detail of your personal choices ridiculed, analysed and oogled at by the great and the good, the unwashed and the elites.
Most people immediately think of the horror of it all. And that's obviously true. On balance, I doubt anyone would want to go through it.
But to someone who's a thick-skinned narcissist (as most celebrities probably are) AND intellectually curious enough to wonder about what things they deceive themselves about (as most celebrities probably aren't), it would be most interesting to have all of the world's commentariat telling you what they thought of your personal decisions.
If I had Steve Sailer, Roissy in DC, Popehat and Ace of Spades, poring over all the choices I make in my life, it may not be pleasant, but I'd sure learn a lot.
But it did make me think that it must be strange to be the subject of a sex scandal, and seeing every detail of your personal choices ridiculed, analysed and oogled at by the great and the good, the unwashed and the elites.
Most people immediately think of the horror of it all. And that's obviously true. On balance, I doubt anyone would want to go through it.
But to someone who's a thick-skinned narcissist (as most celebrities probably are) AND intellectually curious enough to wonder about what things they deceive themselves about (as most celebrities probably aren't), it would be most interesting to have all of the world's commentariat telling you what they thought of your personal decisions.
If I had Steve Sailer, Roissy in DC, Popehat and Ace of Spades, poring over all the choices I make in my life, it may not be pleasant, but I'd sure learn a lot.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Don't you know who I am?!
There is a very high likelihood that if you ever have cause to ask 'Don't you know who I am?', you are, in fact, nobody.
In this case, you're an accused rapist. Beyond that, you're some French socialist, and the guy that runs the IMF in part because of an absurd arrangement that an American gets to run the World Bank and a European gets to run the IMF.
Don't believe me?
Quick, who's the head of the World Bank?
Yeah, I'd forgotten too. It's Robert Zoellick
But this gives us a useful proxy for roughly how important Dominique Strauss-Kahn was before he allegedly raped a maid.
Google reports about 72 million hits for 'IMF'. By comparison, it reports about 65.7 million hits for 'World Bank'. Separating out the effect of the two leaders "IMF -Dominique -Strauss-Kahn " returns 58.7 million hits, and ""World Bank" -Robert -Zoellick" returns 64.6 million. So they run roughly equally important organisations.
So how about the relative newsworthiness of the two heads of the organisations?
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn" records 18.9 million results.
'Robert Zoellick' records 1.55 million results.
Let's make the somewhat heroic assumption that Robert Zoellick and Dominique Strauss-Kahn were equally important people before this latest scandal broke.
In other words, according to Google hits, allegedly molesting a maid was around 11 times more important than everything Dominique Strauss-Kahn had done up to that point.
The irony, of course, is that at the time Dominique Strauss-Kahn was asking the question 'Don't you know who I am?', he was about to become vastly more important, but not in the way he'd like. He's certainly put the IMF on the map to a lot of rubbernecks who hadn't heard of it before!
By contrast, 'Justin Bieber' has 296 million hits. He also probably doesn't have to ask people whether they know who he is.
That's depressing in its own way, but at least should serve as a useful antidote to pompous clowns like Strauss-Kahn.
In this case, you're an accused rapist. Beyond that, you're some French socialist, and the guy that runs the IMF in part because of an absurd arrangement that an American gets to run the World Bank and a European gets to run the IMF.
Don't believe me?
Quick, who's the head of the World Bank?
Yeah, I'd forgotten too. It's Robert Zoellick
But this gives us a useful proxy for roughly how important Dominique Strauss-Kahn was before he allegedly raped a maid.
Google reports about 72 million hits for 'IMF'. By comparison, it reports about 65.7 million hits for 'World Bank'. Separating out the effect of the two leaders "IMF -Dominique -Strauss-Kahn " returns 58.7 million hits, and ""World Bank" -Robert -Zoellick" returns 64.6 million. So they run roughly equally important organisations.
So how about the relative newsworthiness of the two heads of the organisations?
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn" records 18.9 million results.
'Robert Zoellick' records 1.55 million results.
Let's make the somewhat heroic assumption that Robert Zoellick and Dominique Strauss-Kahn were equally important people before this latest scandal broke.
In other words, according to Google hits, allegedly molesting a maid was around 11 times more important than everything Dominique Strauss-Kahn had done up to that point.
The irony, of course, is that at the time Dominique Strauss-Kahn was asking the question 'Don't you know who I am?', he was about to become vastly more important, but not in the way he'd like. He's certainly put the IMF on the map to a lot of rubbernecks who hadn't heard of it before!
By contrast, 'Justin Bieber' has 296 million hits. He also probably doesn't have to ask people whether they know who he is.
That's depressing in its own way, but at least should serve as a useful antidote to pompous clowns like Strauss-Kahn.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Loud Talkers
One of the most insidious forms of anti-social behaviour is talking loudly in public. It's inconsiderate, because it inflicts your conversation on everyone around you, even though almost certainly don't want to hear it. The problem is compounded by the fact that the people oblivious to this social courtesy are also more likely to be engaging in banal, obtuse conversation at loud volume, rather than say discussing the merits of Wittgenstein vs. Nietzsche, or the latest offering from the Lyric Opera.
In this regard, people seem to generally fall into one of two categories:
a) People that instinctively moderate the volume of their voice so as not to be easily audible to others nearby who aren't part of the conversation.
b) People that just talk at a loud fixed volume, regardless of the the level of background noise, how many other people are around, and how many people are likely to hear them.
This behaviour is inconsiderate in the true sense of the word - failing to consider whether your actions will impact other people. It's a class of antisocial behavior that's different from, say, farting loudly or urinating on the sidewalk. In those cases, the people who do it broadly know that it won't be appreciated, but just don't care. The loud talker is, as often as not, completely oblivious to how many people they're pissing off.
Loud talking persists because most people are unlikely to actually request the person keep their voice down. To do so is to provide a public good - you personally look like a dick as well when you complain, and the beneficiaries are those who get quiet but don't have to hassle the person. This doesn't happen much, because the people who prefer quiet are less likely to be brash enough to request others to shut up.
Every now and again, though, the quiet folk will get tipped over the edge, and ask the person to keep their voice down.What happens next determines whether the person is an oblivious loud-talker, or an obnoxious loud talker.
The oblivious loud talker will probably say, 'Uh, sure' or something like that. They'll think the complainer is weird, but probably just go along.
The obnoxious loud talker will react like Lakeysha Beard:
And was she chastened by the experience? Has she seen the error of her ways?
Every now and again, I reflect on my policy of never, ever riding public transport unless absolutely necessary. Stories like this remind me of the wisdom of this rule.
In this regard, people seem to generally fall into one of two categories:
a) People that instinctively moderate the volume of their voice so as not to be easily audible to others nearby who aren't part of the conversation.
b) People that just talk at a loud fixed volume, regardless of the the level of background noise, how many other people are around, and how many people are likely to hear them.
This behaviour is inconsiderate in the true sense of the word - failing to consider whether your actions will impact other people. It's a class of antisocial behavior that's different from, say, farting loudly or urinating on the sidewalk. In those cases, the people who do it broadly know that it won't be appreciated, but just don't care. The loud talker is, as often as not, completely oblivious to how many people they're pissing off.
Loud talking persists because most people are unlikely to actually request the person keep their voice down. To do so is to provide a public good - you personally look like a dick as well when you complain, and the beneficiaries are those who get quiet but don't have to hassle the person. This doesn't happen much, because the people who prefer quiet are less likely to be brash enough to request others to shut up.
Every now and again, though, the quiet folk will get tipped over the edge, and ask the person to keep their voice down.What happens next determines whether the person is an oblivious loud-talker, or an obnoxious loud talker.
The oblivious loud talker will probably say, 'Uh, sure' or something like that. They'll think the complainer is weird, but probably just go along.
The obnoxious loud talker will react like Lakeysha Beard:
"Lakeysha Beard of Tigard was charged with disorderly conduct after police said she got into a “verbal altercation” with train passengers on Sunday. Passengers complained she refused to put down her cell phone and conductors had to stop the train in Salem, where police got involved."Okay, so maybe the people complaining were way out of line.
"Salem police reported she had been on the phone non-stop since the train pulled out of Oakland, Calif. 16 hours earlier....Holy hell! 16 straight hours of drivel! And it gets better:
"Amtrak does have a policy that riders can’t use cell phones in designated “quiet cars,” like the one in which Beard was riding."Good God, this horrendous boorish woman sat down in a designated quiet car, talked on her mobile phone for 16 hours straight, and then got in a "verbal altercation" with passengers who asked her to stop, which was bad enough to result in the police being called.
And was she chastened by the experience? Has she seen the error of her ways?
"[She] said she felt “disrespected” by the entire incident."Lakeysha Beard of Tigard, you are a repulsive, obnoxious human being.
Every now and again, I reflect on my policy of never, ever riding public transport unless absolutely necessary. Stories like this remind me of the wisdom of this rule.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Valet Parking
Every now and again, you stop and think that we live in a very remarkable society.
One of the things that brought this feeling was giving my car to a valet the other night. Just consider for a second how his institution works. Guy A pulls up and gives his $80,000 Mercedes, keys and all, to Guy B. Guy B is likely making about $10 per hour and may very well have a net worth significantly less than the car he is entrusted with, and yet Guy A lets him drive it away to park it. Guy A probably walks away without even checking what happens when he leaves and without asking where it will be parked. At the end of the meal, Guy B brings the car back intact, possessions all inside.
To make things stranger, this happens for run-of-the-mill restaurants, amongst people who've never met before and may never meet again. It's not just at some high-end country club with repeated interactions.
How many countries in the world do you think this kind of norm could reasonably work in? How many periods in history did people exhibit this much trust towards complete strangers? My guess is that the rate of theft wouldn't need to get very high at all before this institution would collapse completely.
And yet there it is.
Luigi Zingales, who's done a lot of work on this area, would argue that trust is linked to economic development. There's all sorts of value-increasing transactions that can only take place among strangers when there's strong norms of co-operation and low rates of screwing people over.
In other words, we shouldn't be surprised that institutions like valet parking only exist in highly developed nations.
Strange times.
(from a conversation with The Greek).
One of the things that brought this feeling was giving my car to a valet the other night. Just consider for a second how his institution works. Guy A pulls up and gives his $80,000 Mercedes, keys and all, to Guy B. Guy B is likely making about $10 per hour and may very well have a net worth significantly less than the car he is entrusted with, and yet Guy A lets him drive it away to park it. Guy A probably walks away without even checking what happens when he leaves and without asking where it will be parked. At the end of the meal, Guy B brings the car back intact, possessions all inside.
To make things stranger, this happens for run-of-the-mill restaurants, amongst people who've never met before and may never meet again. It's not just at some high-end country club with repeated interactions.
How many countries in the world do you think this kind of norm could reasonably work in? How many periods in history did people exhibit this much trust towards complete strangers? My guess is that the rate of theft wouldn't need to get very high at all before this institution would collapse completely.
And yet there it is.
Luigi Zingales, who's done a lot of work on this area, would argue that trust is linked to economic development. There's all sorts of value-increasing transactions that can only take place among strangers when there's strong norms of co-operation and low rates of screwing people over.
In other words, we shouldn't be surprised that institutions like valet parking only exist in highly developed nations.
Strange times.
(from a conversation with The Greek).
Friday, May 13, 2011
An Instant Bookmark
My guess is that you will fall into one of two categories. You will find this to bring you an unexpected joy, like meeting an old friend in a foreign country where you didn't expect to find them.
Or, if you never read Calvin and Hobbes, you'll have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.
To a lot of people, myself included, Calvin and Hobbes occupied a strangely deep attachment. Lots of the great comic strip writers I know and enjoy (Scott Adams immediately comes to mind) list it as one of their big influences. I think Adams described it as the best comic ever, and I'd agree.
I think the strength of the nostalgia associated with this comic (and the emotions that the current redoing provoked) is twofold. Firstly, it's a comic about childhood, but with the protagonist being a strange combination of childhood petulance and aims with adult jokes and insights. As a result, it captures an idealized image of childhood from the perspective of an adult - knowing what you know and enjoying what you do, but still partaking in the innocence of it.
But there's a second sense of it. For a lot of twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings, Calvin and Hobbes is also of their childhood. The time when the comics were still written was long ago, and Bill Watterson has shown a Seinfeld-esque level of timing, leaving on a high note and resisting all calls for an encore. Calvin and Hobbes is thus like a 1950's chevy - they just aren't making them any more.
I think this explained the strange outpouring of emotion this comic got on Reddit. There were some people who complained that it was ruining their image of the comic, but many more that seemed overjoyed at the prospect, however fleeting, of a new Calvin and Hobbes comic. It let them, just briefly, be reminded of that glorious time when you could open up the morning paper and find a new Calvin and Hobbes strip waiting for you.
Those were great times.
I had not heard of 'Pants are Overrated' before this, but they've earned my readership loyalty for quite some time to come.
Or, if you never read Calvin and Hobbes, you'll have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.
To a lot of people, myself included, Calvin and Hobbes occupied a strangely deep attachment. Lots of the great comic strip writers I know and enjoy (Scott Adams immediately comes to mind) list it as one of their big influences. I think Adams described it as the best comic ever, and I'd agree.
I think the strength of the nostalgia associated with this comic (and the emotions that the current redoing provoked) is twofold. Firstly, it's a comic about childhood, but with the protagonist being a strange combination of childhood petulance and aims with adult jokes and insights. As a result, it captures an idealized image of childhood from the perspective of an adult - knowing what you know and enjoying what you do, but still partaking in the innocence of it.
But there's a second sense of it. For a lot of twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings, Calvin and Hobbes is also of their childhood. The time when the comics were still written was long ago, and Bill Watterson has shown a Seinfeld-esque level of timing, leaving on a high note and resisting all calls for an encore. Calvin and Hobbes is thus like a 1950's chevy - they just aren't making them any more.
I think this explained the strange outpouring of emotion this comic got on Reddit. There were some people who complained that it was ruining their image of the comic, but many more that seemed overjoyed at the prospect, however fleeting, of a new Calvin and Hobbes comic. It let them, just briefly, be reminded of that glorious time when you could open up the morning paper and find a new Calvin and Hobbes strip waiting for you.
Those were great times.
I had not heard of 'Pants are Overrated' before this, but they've earned my readership loyalty for quite some time to come.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)