My short notes on Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely. An excellent book. Entertaining, and covers much fascinating ground from social psychology and behavioral economics. Some of the experiments Dan and his team designed are fiendish!
Value is relative
We only know what we want when we see it in context. The bike the Tour de France winner rides. A set of speakers compared to another.
We only know what something is worth, or how much we like it, when comparing to other similar things (purchases, partners, jobs, etc..
We tend to choose the middle option. A high price option on a restaurant menu increases average order price, because it makes the rest seem cheap in comparison.
As an Amazon reviews says, “arguably the best book ever on what is increasingly becoming the science of persuasion.”
If you want to understand why you felt compelled to give money to a Hare Krishna devotee, how car salesman or realtor’s work, and much more, you should read this.
It’s also a very easy and enjoyable read. These are my notes. They cover all the content in the book, but don’t link to research. In the book, most of the statements have links to research papers to back them up.
We can process incoming information cognitively in one of two ways:
Controlled responding, which is subjecting information to a thorough analysis. This is when we think a problem through, research it, etc. We only do this if we have the desire and the ability. It is intellectually taxing and time consuming.
Use judgmental heuristics such as:
Price as surrogate for value. Applies particularly to items which are hard to value: Wine, jewelry, art, employee salaries, etc.
Trust experts. This is why pseudo-science books always have ‘PhD’ or ‘MD’ after the author’s name.
Because – we want reasons to do something, even bogus ones.
By Thomas Gilovich, social psychologist and CSI Fellow, this well written book explains some of the reasoning and deduction errors we make when trying to understand the world, and ways to avoid making those errors.
This is an easy and engaging read, and offers several straightforward techniques to avoid making common reasoning errors. I recommend you look up How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
in your local library, or get it second-hand from Amazon for less than a posh cup of coffee.
These are my notes / summary of the book.
I. Cognitive determinants of belief
2. Something out of nothing: The mis-perception and misinterpretation of random data
We are predisposed to see order, pattern, and meaning in the world, and we find randomness, chaos, and meaninglessness unsatisfying.
As a consequence we tend to ’see’ order where there is none, and we spot meaningful patterns where only the vagrancies of chance are operating.
I recently received an advert for an investment fund in which, as the amateur social psychologist that I am, I noticed illustrated a couple of psychological principles. The are both covered in the email title:
Last chance to invest in a firm favourite
They are covered again in more detail in this paragraph:
The x y z Fund only launched six months ago, but has already attracted considerable interest. To keep it small and flexible the number of units has been capped at 200 million. Last week they had reached two-thirds of that total and interest is intensifying. In the last two days alone they sold over 6 million units, so it is likely to close very soon.
in a survey of 1,506 people last year by Nationwide Mutual Insurance, 81 percent of cellphone owners acknowledged that they talk on phones while driving, and 98 percent considered themselves safe drivers. But 45 percent said they had been hit or nearly hit by a driver talking on a phone.
That’s the Lake Wobegon effect, the tendency for overestimate their capabilities in relation to others.
In the prologue to The Science of Fear, by Daniel Gardner (published as ‘Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear’ in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada), which I have just started reading, as he talks about the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States:
When I first got my own server (a virtual private server with Linode which I highly recommend), I ran every Internet service I needed on it, and several for my friends. Over time, I gradually started replacing what I had with online services – I stopped running my own e-mail server and started using GMail, I stopped running my own gallery and used Flickr.
Now I really rely on those services, so I got to thinking what I would replace them with if one of them was no longer available, or appropriate. Here’s what I would use:
UPDATE As of February 2008 mytimestream.com is closed. I have changed jobs and stopped using it, and no-one else was using it. Life has moved on. If you are interested in the code (free), or acquiring mytimestream.com (not free), please contact me on the about page of this blog.
Cheers! Graham
Timestream is a fun, free, web based tool to analyse how your spend your time. You record in your Timestream what tasks you are working on throughout the day – it’s quick and painless. You can then look back and see where your time is going.
I’ve been working on it and using it for almost six months now, and I think it could be useful to other people. It is free software (licensed under the GPL). If you need to know how you’re spending your (work) day, give it a try:
It’s a really simple, easy, online tool. You can enter as little or as much information as you like about your activities – you can enter the information after the fact, or edit the information later. It makes some nice reports. It’s colorful ! It’s fun ! Isn’t it time you found out where your life is going ? :-)
Open questions invite the other person to express their thinking freely rather than allowing a “yes” or “no” response. Open questions usually begin with Who, Why, When, Where or How.
For example:
“How much petrol do you use per week ?”
“Where do you normally get your petrol from ?”
Closed questions can be answered with a yes or no. They tend to close a conversation down. However, they can be useful for checking facts, clarifying a point, or deliberately finishing a conversation. They can also control the length and form of the reply and allow a “yes” or “no” or brief response. They can be useful on the streets, especially as an opening line.
Multiple Questions combine many questions together, making it unclear which question to respond to. People can become confused. Less is more !
For example:
“Have you seen, heard or know about Greenpeace ?”
“Do you think Esso is bad, or just like the others, or what ?”
Leading Questions reflect an assumption, or give an obvious direction to the reply, indicating the desired response. Leading questions hint at what you want the answer to be. They don’t allow a person freedom of expression, or require them to really engage or think. They should usually be avoided and certainly abandonded if they are met with any resistance.
For example:
“You like peace don’t you ?”
“It’s the only way, isn’t it ?”
Hypothetical Questions can be good for opening up options and helping people to explore possibilities. However answers bear little relation to what would actually hapen.
For example:
“If I could prove to you that Esso have absolutely no commitment to the environment, would we get your support ?”
Probing Questions are good for following up information already received but can lead to a lengthy conversation which should be avoided!
For example:
Before we start, we’ll need a couple of definitions. Continuous Operations: Operations that extend over 24 hours at a normal rate. Each individual works a usual amount of hours, and is relieved at the end of a shift to return later. As the operation runs round-the-clock an individual will work different hours which may conflict with circadian rhythms, and disrupt sleep patterns. Sustained Operations: Involve continuous performance longer than 24 hours. Work is continued until a goal is reached. Sleep deprivation is common. Prevalent in ground warfare.
After a night without sleep mental and motor skill performance degrades to that of an individual who is considered to be legally drunk, (i.e. blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.10 %). Even 18 hours of wakefulness equates to BAC of 0.05%.
Sleep cannot be stored up prior to a continuous or sustained operation. Sleep loss, circadian rhythm disruption and hard work combine to produce fatigue. Fatigue is not due to lack of motivation or attitude. Fatigue needs to be managed.
The planning and organisation required prior to the start of an operation may mean a team is already tired. This is referred to as preload.
Prior experience with sleep loss does not provide training to maintain performance. Resistance to fatigue varies between individuals.
Combat naps, the military equivalent of a power nap, help to maintain performance. After a power nap, individuals may experience 5 – 20 minutes of sleep inertia characterized by confusion and sluggishness. Taking more naps (practicing) appears to reduce this problem. During sustained or continuous operations, power naps should be encouraged and sometimes mandated.
Power naps should last less than 40 minutes from the time one begins to attempt sleep to the time of awakening. It is designed to be too short to allow the individual to enter slow wave sleep (SWS) and yet still get a brief, hopefully restorative, nap. The first SWS epoch occurs within about 60 minutes.
Research suggests that these naps can provide between 2 to 4 hours of useful physical and mental activity, for about 2-3 days, sometimes longer. After a few days however, cumulative sleep debt would be overwhelming.
A short sleep is best when more time is available for rest during a mission but not enough for a full sleep. Short sleeps are recommended to be at least 3-4 hours in duration. They are designed to allow the individual to progress through and avoid the SWS epochs. These sleep periods can maintain useful waking performance levels for 4-10 hours and perhaps longer. Although few studies have been done, anecdotal military evidence suggests that 3-4 hour naps can maintain crews for 4-5 days before sleep debt becomes overwhelming.
The minimum amount of sleep required to maintain performance during sustained operations is 4 – 5 hours per day. Fragmented sleep is less effective.
A ‘normal’ sleep is generally accepted as being 8 hours. Whatever the length of sleep, it should occur in 90 – 100 minute increments to avoid awakening during the deeper stages of sleep. This will minimize sleep inertia. Sleep should occur at the same time every day (including weekends), in a dedicated, quiet and dark place.
Sleeping more than 10 hours may cause sleep drunkenness and should be discouraged, even after a period of sleep deprivation.
There are numerous cyclic body rhythms in humans that collectively are described as circadian rhythms. Isolated from all external clues, humans seem to operate on a 25 hour cycle. External clues such as light and darkness (the most powerful cues), sleep, meals, social activities and clocks, reset the biological clock daily.
On an average circadian cycle, performance peaks between 12:00 and 21:00 hours (normally around 16:00), and falls to a minimum between 03:00 and 06:00 hours.
Continuous or sustained operations, trans-meridian travel (jet lag) and sleep deprivation all force the rhythmic systems of the body to re-adapt. They become out of phase with local time and with each other. Some phases will be delayed and others advanced. Seven continuous days of shift work are required to adjust the body temperature cycle. A single period of night work, or seven in a row, is more easily tolerated than three of four consecutive nights (which starts the process of circadian desynchronisation). If a round-the-clock operation is needed teams should specialise in either days or nights.
Extroverts, younger people, and those living on a more regimented schedule tend to have an easier time adjusting. As a general rule the body will adapt 40 minutes/day when traveling east and 60 minutes/day when traveling west. Westward travel requires lest time to acclimate. Bright lights maintain alertness and are a strong factor in accelerating circadian adaption.
It is easiest to initiate sleep twice a day; in the early afternoon and just before normal sleep time. Alcohol, while initially relaxing, significantly worsens the duration and quality of sleep. Caffeine interferes with sleep, and prevents effective napping. A nap or short sleep is most effective during the low point of the circadian cycle (03:00 – 06:00 hours).
Fatigue is both physical and mental. Physical aspects involve a loss of the power of muscles and sensors to respond. Mental fatigue includes the subjective feeling of weariness followed by worsening performance of cognitive tasks. This subjective sense of fatigue is the first indicator that people are getting tired. A useful external indicator is that the fatigued person loses their sense of humour.
During the Falklands conflict sedatives were used by the British to regulate sleep for pilots. Amphetamines were used by the British and Germans in WWII. During Vietnam both the American Air Force and Navy made amphetamines available to aviators. Intermittently since Vietnam up through Desert Storm the Air Force has used both amphetamines and sedatives in selected aircraft for specific missions. A combination of dextro-amphetamine (Dexedrine) and scopalomine are used by the Navy and NASA to combat motion sickness.
5mg of dextro-amphetamine (Dexedrine) help maintain alertness without causing other changes in mood and perception. 200mg caffeine compares favorably to amphetamine in improving cognitive performance but is less effective in maintaining alertness. 5mg of Dexedrine can be taken every 2 hours if required; dose should not exceed 30mg per 24 hour period.
Benzodiazepines produce the ‘most natural’ quality of sleep, and are used as sleep initiators. 5mg of zolpidem (Ambien) or 15mg of temazepam (Restoril) is used as an aide to sleep. A 7 - 8 hour period of restriction from higher cognitive activities is needed after taking this medication. No more than 10mg of zolpidem or 15mg of temazepam can be taken per 24 hour period.
Medication should be tested prior to it being needed, to allow individuals to adapt and gain familiarity with it. The Navy states that the use of stimulants or sedatives is appropriate only in combat or during exceptional circumstances of operational necessity.
Merge two previously separate concepts that are in conflict with one another. For example, combinations such as ‘friendly enemy’ and ‘healthful illness’. The more discrepant the concepts, the more likely they are to result in novel properties.
Tom Ward, senior research fellow in the Center for Creative Media at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and editor of the Journal of Creative Behaviour.
Get a really good part-time job, preferably to do something you like. For example, if you like reading, work in a book shop and do lots of evening classes.
Tracey Emin, artist, London.
Creativity demands that you leave your comfort zone, that you continually challenge yourself and be prepared to confront conventional wisdom. When you become an expert, move on. Especially, engage in that for which you have not been schooled.
Allan Synder, director of Centre for the Mind, Australian National University, Canberra, and University of Sydney.
Creativity is fostered by a particular, if poorly understood, brain state. It often seems to be induced when you feel under pressure to perform and at the same time free to let your mind wander. Some authors go to the mountains or the seashore, others take a walk in a park. But this might be easiest to do by simply going to bed. As our brain cycles through REM and non-REM sleep, it appears to go in and out of this state.
Robert Stickgold, associate professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.
I have a great big cupboard stuffed with ideas, and when I want one I open the door and take the first one that falls out. Alternatively, if you want and idea, do the following. Close your eyes, put your left hand on the ground, raise our right hand into the air. You are now a conductor.The ideas will pass through you. Sooner or later one will pass through your brain. It never fails, though the waiting times vary and sometimes lunch intervenes.
Margaret Atwood, novelist, Toronto.
Hold the intention or the question. Trust it and will it to happen. Leave a space – daydream, relax, doze… you’ll be amazed because you are not doing it.
F. David Peat, author and physicist, director of the Pari Centre for New Learning near Siena, Italy.
The main ingredients in science are intensive immersion in a problem, fanatical desire to solve it (big problems are rarely solved by accident), familiarity with previous attempts leading to an original critique of where they went wrong, reckless disregard for what other experts think, and the courage to overcome your own doubts and hesitations, which are much scarier than anything anyone else can say because you know best how vulnerable your new idea is.
Lee Smolin, theoretical physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.
Think about the big problems while working on the small ones and vice versa. A larger perspective can be the best guide when approaching a detailed problem. On the other hand, details can reveal profound insights about larger questions. Listen carefully and pay close attention. You might learn more than people, or the objects you’re studying, superficially reveal.
Lisa Randall, professor of physics at Harvard University.
Creativity is enhanced by having a prepared mind, and then being stuck on a problem. I also need a space of silence and calm, where I am free from distractions.
Alan Lightman, novelist and physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Know your stuff: creativity requires expertise; but don’t know it too well: overspecialisation puts blinders on. Imagine the impossible: many breakthrough ideas at first seem outright crazy; but you have to be able to impose your idea: crazy ideas remain crazy if they cannot survive critical evaluation. Finally, be persistent: big problems are seldom solved on the first try, or the second, or the third; but remember to take a break: you may be barking up the wrong tree, so incubate a bit to get a fresh start.
Dean Simonton, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis.
This section presents a system for getting things done. It is inspired by Getting Things Done by David Allen – a valuable book which I recommend.
This system takes the e-mails in your In-box, the ideas and reminders in your head, on scraps of paper, in your notebook, your PDA, wherever, and organizes them so that none of them get lots, and the important ones get acted upon.
Gather everything together
Make or buy an in-tray. Then gather those unpaid bills, scraps of paper, books, printouts, TO-DO lists, jot down the ideas from your head, and pile it all in the in-tray. Next do the same for your electronic data, using your e-mail In-box. Most likely there will already be quite a few e-mails in there. E-mail yourself with anything else you need recorded and processed.
Make two special folders in you mail client – one called @action and one @waiting. Make or buy two similar trays for the real world. Buy a sectioned / expanding file. If you haven’t already got a diary, get one.
Process
Once you have everything gathered take e-mails or pieces of paper one by one and run through this diagram:
Everything starts at stuff and ends up in one of the circles.
Calendar should be only actions with a hard date / time (meetings, appointments, birthdays). Things that you would like to get done on a particular day go into Actions.
If needed, Actions can be split by location: Calls, At Computer, Errands, At Office, At Home, Read / Review.
Look at the Calendar daily, first thing. Then look at the Actions list.
Do a Weekly Review of everything – this is whatever needs doing to keep the system up to date – get the ideas in the world onto paper. In a business context, Friday early afternoon is good for this.
This section is inspired by Software for your Head, by Jim and Michele McCarthy.
Most teams have no explicitly defined, full-blooded, decision-making apparatus. Yet the quality of life of that team is determined by the choices they make. Every meeting, and each creative act, expresses a team choice. Without a clear process for making decisions the choices are often incoherent, to the point of team members not knowing exactly who decided what, when.
The Decider protocol is a decision making process. It provides a formal way for teams to achieve unanimous decisions in an efficient manner.
The Decider Protocol
The proposer says, “I propose…”.
The proposer offers a concise, actionable proposal.
No more than one issue is resolved per proposal. The behavior expected of the voters if the proposal is accepted is clearly specified.
The proposer says “1-2-3”, then all team members vote simultaneously in one of three ways:
Yes voters give a thumbs-up.
No voters give a thumbs-down.
Support-it voters show a hand flat.
Voters requiring more information must vote “no” to stop the proposal before seeking information. Passing is not allowed.
A yes vote means “yes I support this proposal and I am ready to champion it”.
A support-it vote can be translated as “I believe that this proposal is probably the best way for us to proceed now. I support it, though I have some reservations. I don’t believe I can lead the implementation of this proposal, but I commit not to sabotage it”.
A no vote means “No, right now I can’t support this proposal”, because it is plain wrong, because some details need clearing up and looking into, or because I don’t understand it.
Once the vote is taken, the proposer counts the votes and takes a decision:
If the combination of “no” and “support-it” votes is too great (> 30%, as determined by the proposer), the proposer drops the proposal.
If any of the “no” votes states their absolute opposition to the proposal, the proposal is dead. An absolute “no” means that there is no condition that the voter can imagine that would change their vote. It is a tradition, though not mandatory, for an absolute “no” voter to make a new proposal following the death of the proposal killed by their vote.
If there are just a few “no” voters (outliers) the proposer uses the Resolution protocol to resolve those people’s concerns.
Otherwise, i.e. if everyone voted “yes” or “support-it”, the proposal passes, and becomes part of the team’s plan of record.
Voters do not state why they voted as they did.
During the proposal no-one speaks except:
the proposer when stating the proposal or using Resolution
any no-votes when using Resolution or declaring their “no” an absolute one.
Any absent team members are responsible for acquiring information about the vote, and are bound by the decision as if they voted for it. If the person would of voted “no”, they must now make a new proposal as soon as possible.
Once a proposal passes, each team member is accountable for personally carrying out behaviors specified in the Decider decision, and no member has more or less accountability than any other. Each is also accountable for insisting that the behavior is carried out by the other team members.
Resolution
When there are only a few “no” votes (outliers), the team uses the Resolution protocol to attempt to bring those outliers in.
The proposer asks each outlier in turn: “*What will it take to get you to endorse the proposal ?*”
The outlier may state at any time, but no later than in response to the above question, that his vote is an absolute “no”. The proposal is then dead.
More often, the outlier states succinctly, declaratively, and precisely what he requires to endorse the proposal. If given what he requires, the outlier promises to drop all resistance to the proposal and to provide affirmation and support for it instead.
As needed and as possible, the proposer makes an offer to the outlier.
If in the judgment of the proposer the adaptations to the proposal are minor, the proposer may employ an unofficial ‘eye-check’ of the non-outliers to see if there is general acceptance to the changed proposal.
If you are opposed to this implicit new proposal or require a formal re-statement and a new vote, you make make this requirement know during this interval.
If the required changes are more complex, the proposer makes a new proposal, and the Decider protocol starts again.
“Yes” and “support-it” voters do not speak during Resolution.
If the outlier changes his vote to “yes” or “support-it”, then the decision to adopt the proposal is committed, and becomes part of their plan of record.
The best advice I have every been given was to take the highest paying job you can get until you figure out what you want to do.
The best advice I have ever heard is the now famous speech below:
Wear Sunscreen
By _Mary Schmich_
from the The Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1997
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ‘97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yoursel f either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth .
But trust me on the sunscreen.
This speech was set to music Baz Luhrmann and performed by Quindon Tarver, and called ‘EVERYBODY’S FREE (to wear sunscreen)’.
An e-mail hoax claimed that this speech was made by Kurt Vonnegut to the MIT class of 1997. The actual commencement address was made by Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, and can be found here.
from your local library, this has sold so many copies they are bound to have some.
in your local library, or get it second-hand from Amazon for less than a posh cup of coffee. 
, by 
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