Be friends with Failure

An interesting article about success:Be friends with Failure

The Worldly Philosophers

I just finished the book The Worldly Philosophers which paints a historical portrait of some important names from economics and their ideas. The book covers:

- Adam Smith: The first to build a theory about the market and the powerful mechanism driven by self-interest and competition;

- Parson Malthus: Which saw the tendency for species to outstrip their means of subsistence, which would make progress pointless;

- David Ricardo: Which saw the landowner as the sole beneficiary of progress, through his monopoly on rent;

- John Stuart Mill: The economist which realised that once profit is realized, society should decide how to best distribute it;

- Karl Marx: Which saw the inevitable failure of capitalism and the great opposition between the capitalist and the employee;

- Thorstein Veblen: Who saw in the modern society the struggle between the leisure class and the worker class, with work itself being denigrated and making workers wish they ascend to the leisure class;

- John Maynard Keynes: The famous economist which saw economic depression as a spiral which could endure unless government would stimulate the economy through spending;

- Joseph Scumpeter: Which saw the innovation as the driver of capitalism and the collapse of capitalism once innovation is destroyed by bureaucratic management, among others.

The book paints a vivid historical picture of the lives of these men and the times in which they lived. This gives a good perspective from which to understand their ideas.

I wish Friedrich Hayek was included, in order to present the other major school of economics still important today.

When examining current political and economic debates, it is easy to see the basis for the current policy proposal in the economy theory of these great names in economics. This shown the great power of ideas to influence future generations, and gives a more subtle and long term way for improving society, not through direct action, but through insightful thought into how to organize a better world.

Predictably Irrational

Dan Ariely, in the book Predictably Irrational shows us how people are not just irrational, but irrational in a consistent way:

- adding an expensive option, increases sales of the moderate expensive one;

- we evaluate our income/wealth more as a relation to our peers than in actual numbers;

- anchoring on any information leads our estimations and old prices anchor us to new situations;

- a cost of zero, makes the item irrationally attractive, to the detriment of opportunity cost and other alternatives;

- social norms cannot be mixed with market norms;

- something for free makes us more altruistic than a low price;

- we underestimate the effect of arousal on our decisions;

- once we own something, we value it much more;

- we value having options more than those options give us;

- more expensive food, wine, placebos, have a better effect than cheap ones;

- expectation greatly influences our experience and enjoyment;

- procrastination can be addressed with imposed schedules (but not self-imposed variable ones);

- in order to achieve long-term goal, it must be tied to short-term rewards that compensate for the short-term effort.

It's fascinating to see how advances in psychology uncover hidden forces which guide us in predicable ways.

The honest truth about dishonesty

In the book The honest truth about dishonesty, author Dan Ariely, shows an interesting theory about honesty.

It seems that most people want to think of themselves as good honest people, but also want to benefit from cheating.

To achieve these conflicting goals people use rationalizations and the culture around them. This leads to most people cheating a little, with their combined effect dwarfing the cheating of the few big cheaters.

The book then shows how many different factors influence cheating behaviour:

Ability to rationalize, creativity, conflicts of interest, previous cheating, cognitive depletion, peer dishonesty, culture examples of dishonesty, helping others through cheating are factors which increase dishonesty.

The amount to be gained and the probability of being caught seem to have no effect.

RSA Animate Presentation of the ideas in the book.

Raising happiness

The book Raising happiness presents some interesting and insightful ideas about happiness.
First of all children cannot be happy if the parents aren't happy, so parents should take care of themselves if they want happier children. This includes taking time for yourself, taking care of each other, learning to manage conflicts better.
Children need a network of kind support to flourish, from parents and family to neighbours and friends. Also kindness is a major source of happiness.
Success is driven a lot by effort, so parents should praise effort not outcome in a growth mind-set.
One can actively focus on gratitude, forgiveness and optimism, which lead to a happier disposition.
Children need to learn emotions, and parents can help them by empathizing, labelling and validating.
Children respond better to requests when parents show empathy, offer meaningful rationales and use non-controlling language.
Self-discipline can be taught using games that teach self-regulation, can be improved by self-talk, self distracting and reduced stress.
Mindfulness (staying aware of the present) and meditation (keeping your mind relaxed and focused) significantly improve happiness. Mindfulness is actually something that children do better than parents most of the time during play.
Rats give up addiction when placed in a very good environment, without counselling. Likewise we should try give children an interesting and engaging environment for them to explore and free play.
And all can be brought together in the simple act of eating dinner together.
I think a "good" life cannot be an unhappy one, so learning to use these practical skills will improve your and your children lives.

DIY Brain stimulation

The Transcranial magnetic stimulation has many interesting applictions. For example:
Treat Alzheimers
Improve spatial memory
Improve math ability
Change attractiveness
It's interesting to see people going the Do-It-Yourself route. For example one claims he got a better pitch.
I thought that the edge of (relatively) low cost and unexplored science, where amateurs can have an impact by taking risks, had almost disappeared. It's interesting to see new avenues opening up.

A playlist of amazing ideas

TED has a playlist of amazing new ideas Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong Charity is low because it's discriminated compared to for-profit enterprises Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change Desertification can be fought by moving large herds over the deserted areas. Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice Too many choices produce paralysis and worst satisfaction. Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset The world has advanced significantly in the last 60 years, except the bottom billion. Terry Moore: How to tie your shoes Emily Oster flips our thinking on AIDS in Africa Low life expectancy leads to riskier behaviour, education is not enough. Bjorn Lomborg: Global priorities bigger than climate change How do we prioritize the global problems? Most effient: Malaria, Free trade(cut subsidies), Malnutrition(Micro-nutrients),Control HIV Sean Carroll: Distant time and the hint of a multiverse The entropy which make the universe is just a random fluctuation in the multiverse.

Yet another hit against counter-causal free will

Parasites probably have behavioural influence on humans.

http://style.uk.msn.com/health/zombie-nation-the-outside-forces-controlling-human-brains

The Happiness Project

This is a book about trying to improve the happiness in ones life. The approach of making this into a project makes it very personal. Being personal it doesn't translate to what makes other people happy. I found some advice that I would like to apply to my life: "Exercise better", "Blog more", "Enjoy now", "Acknowledge children's feelings", "Make new friends", "Be more grateful", "Pursue a passion", "Be mindful", but also a lot of advice which didn't appeal to me. The idea that stuck with me most is making a plan to change or improve your life and then, most importantly, following through. While increasing my happiness is not something I'm concerned about, there are other changes I would like to make. So I'll make a plan of small easy steps and put it into action.

Charity is kept low by discrimination

Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend -- not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let's change the way we think about changing the world.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html

Confusing correlation and causation in success stories

I recently read a interested take on the field of management/success/leadership: Management/Success/Leadership: Mostly Bullshit

We humans like to feel as if we understand and control our environments. We don't like to think of ourselves as helpless leaves blowing in the wind of chance. So we clutch at any ridiculous explanation of how things work.

I wonder if we could change our culture to demand better evidence for the explanations we trust, accept the lack of knowledge when the evidence is bad or missing and allow for chance to play a bigger role in our lives instead of false certainty. Could we get people to value honesty and doubt more than assertiveness and conviction, as to elect a politician that says: "I don't know, I'll look for more evidence before having an opinion on that.", "The evidence is unclear, I'll try what seems best and see if it works.", "I was wrong, I'll try something else now.".

Alone together

http://alonetogetherbook.com/

Shallow communication technologies may lead to shallow lives.

First we have sociable robots which have very limited ability to simulate emotions, yet children and adults seem eager to imbue them with personality and find their simplicity sometimes better than a complex demanding human companion.
I think the answer to the question "Don't we have people for this jobs?" referring to babysitters or companions for the elderly is a clear "No". The changing demographics, the long gone multi-generational home and the demand for better productive jobs, are all factors which push society to have a greater need and smaller availability for companions. While current robots are inadequate to replace human companionship, I think technology has a greater change to improve, than culture to fill in the gaps.

Them the attention turns to the change in communication patterns from letter, to phone, to e-mail, to IM and from landline to tethered virtual office and high-frequency text messaging. I found the lack of experience with real-time human communication (in-person or phone) displayed by teenage subjects in the book alarming. This training in having shallow text message communications might interfere with these teenagers ability to adapt to the real world of interpersonal relationships, but it might make them better able to have a wider contact network on which to rely. Maybe with advances in technologies all these communications can be integrated into a single audio-visual stream which might be efficient and engaging enough.

On the other hand, we should frown upon mixing real-time communication (in-person, phone) with virtual-time communication (texting, IM, facebook, email), because this mixing is what turn potential personal and intimate moments into a shallow distributed attention moment.

"Technology is bad, because people are not strong enough to resist its pull." This sums up a lot of the problems of modern life, including appealing food which makes us fat, convenient transportation which makes us immobile, advertising which makes us buy unneeded stuff, casinos which build alluring devices to part us from our money, illicit drugs which give us instant pleasure for a later crash, manipulative politicians which blind us to our best interest, tv which gives entertainment for no effort, video games which give strong rewards for little real effort and communication technology which makes us build barriers to live human interactions. When confronted with these problems, I don't think the standard appeal to 'willpower' is enough, because we are not evolved to resist this wave of temptations. So maybe we should acknowledge our limitations and build our culture around them.

Why nations fall

http://whynationsfail.com/
The book presents the theory that economic and political institutions drive the success or failure of nations.

First by using compartive analysis of regions with similar culture, geography, climate or resources the author makes a good cases that these differences don't explain success or failure as some have assumed (see Guns, Germs and Steel). While the outcome of civilization clashes is influenced by the technology, the root causes that make some contries use and expand technology, lies in the institutions those civilizations adopt.

The rest of the book gives a large number of examples of the political and economical organization of the region having a major effect on the outcomes people get and the incentives each part of society has. We readily see two fundementally different systems.
For the politics there are exclusive institutions designed to concentrate power in the leader and his circle of friends (tyrannies and monarchies), or inclusive institutions which distribute power widely (democracies and republics).
For the economics there are extractive institutions which exploit the work of many for the benefits of few or inclusive institutions where everyone has a right to the fruits of his labor.
This dichotomy is seen as the basis for success or failure.
While the thesis of the book is interesting it does seem to simplify the world a bit too much.
The simplicity of the theory has also the advantage that it can be readily tested by watching the success or failure of nations while assessing there inclusive vs. exclusive institutions. This is something interesting to think about while watching international politics.

Bill Gates has written a review of this book at:
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Books/Personal/Why-Nations-Fail

Respecting the elders

Everyone seems to have anecdotal evidence of "The kids these days don't respect their elders", while I have a suspicion all generations say that. Is there some good evidence?

The only study I found is: http://www.benetas.com.au/Portals/0/Respect%20in%20an%20Ageing%20Society%20full%20report.pdf

which seems to say that because elders have lost contact with children and adults, they have also lost their respect.

How should we handle talentless "Alpha male" ?

http://phinnweb.blogspot.com/2004/10/right-man-and-fear-of-losing-face.html

I always thought it's important to teach children to be confident in themselves and not be bothered by misguided outside disapproval. I wonder if that would alleviate this "fear of losing face".

Reason is not for getting to the truth, but for arguing what you already are convinced is true. Everything makes sense now...

"Reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That's why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. So, as they put it, "The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things."


http://edge.org/conversation/the-argumentative-theory

An interesting take on problem solving.

Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff

This seems like a good idea to improve political discourse

Michael Sandel: The lost art of democratic debate

A fact based view of the world

Hans Rosling has put together an awesome site gapminder.org where you can get an impressive statistics tool for understanding the world.

Terror management theory

I never heard of this before listing to the last episode of Reasonable Doubts podcast.
Terror management theory gives an interesting explanation to some of the irrational behaviors we meet sometime.