Letters Remain

  • Anti-Patterns

    I’ve written about design patterns a couple of times in the past, but today I discovered anti-patterns: design patterns that “may be commonly used but [are] ineffective and/or counterproductive in practice”.

    One of the “key elements present to formally distinguish an actual anti-pattern from a simple bad habit, bad practice, or bad idea”:

    Some repeated pattern of action, process or structure that initially appears to be beneficial, but ultimately produces more bad consequences than beneficial results.

    The seven types of anti-pattern, with some examples:

    • Organisational: Moral hazard,Ā insulating a decision-maker from the consequences of his or her decision.
    • Project management: Groupthink, whereby members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking.
    • Analysis: Bystander apathy, when a requirement or design decision is wrong, but the people who notice this do nothing because it affects a larger number of people.
    • Software design: Gold plating, continuing to work on a task or project well past the point at which extra effort is adding value.
    • Programming: Cargo cult programming, using patterns and methods without understanding why.
    • Methodological: Golden hammer, assuming that a favorite solution is universally applicable (See: Silver Bullet).
    • Configuration management.
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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Calorie Counts Don’t Affect Food Decisions

    After New York City passed a law requiring many chain restaurants to post the calorific value of all food they sold on their menus (in the same size and font as the price), researchers started looking at how the posting of calorie counts affect consumer decision making and food consumption.

    The study’s findings, as summarised rather concisely in The New York Times, show that the law didn’t have the desired effect the legislators undoubtedly wanted:

    It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.

    But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect.

    Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner has his theory on the findings:

    I suspect that the people who will be most responsive to it, especially in the long run, are those who are already the most vigilant about their health and well-being. Think of it this way: what if the safest drivers on the road were the only ones to wear seat belts?

    I’m subscribing instead to the theory I first discovered after reading that the presence of salads on menus makes consumers more likely to eat unhealthily:

    Once you see the salad, realize it’s better for you and know that it’s anĀ option, your inner sense of self-satisfaction is triggered, and thenā€¦ you let yourself order fries, just because you were oh-so-smart enough to think about the salad, if only fleetingly.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Food Advertising Causes Unconscious Snacking

    Food advertising does much more than influence our brand preferences; it also ‘primes’ automatic eating behaviours, contributing to overall and longer-term weight gain.

    This is the conclusion of a recent study into whether food advertising (of both the healthy and non-healthy kind) can trigger unconscious snacking by leading our thoughts toward hunger and food.

    Children consumed 45% more when exposed to food advertising. Adults consumed more of both healthy and unhealthy snack foods following exposure to snack food advertising compared to the other conditions. In both experiments, food advertising increased consumption of products not in the presented advertisements, and these effects were not related to reported hunger or other conscious influences.

    Ryan Sager considers the research rationally and wonders what this means to the future of food advertising (political impotence):

    I’m sure the public-health community probably sees this as a nice rationale for banning food ads of any kind. But I think it points to a more basic truth that underlies why trying to control things like this is useless: We’re constantly influenced by subconscious effects like this. [ā€¦] There are a million things that can prime you to mindless eating. The individual just has to be aware of this and maybe not have snacks at hand at all times.

    Whatever one’s individual strategy, trying to control such influences at the societal level is most likely pointless.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The 50th Law

    Power is greater than happiness, contends Robert Greene inĀ an online discussion with Eliezer Yudkowsky about Fear, Power and Mortality (quality summary thereof), as happiness is fleeting and unremitting.

    Also discussed in this conversation is strategistĀ Robert Greene’s latest book, The 50th Law: 10 Lessons in Fearlessness, which is the result of an unlikely collaboration with hip hop artist 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson).

    Initially (very) sceptical of such a collaboration (hip hop and its culture is completely alien to my tastes), I’ve heard The 50th Law called a “hip hop bible” and a “how-to for applying The 48 Laws of Power” and so had to look deeper.

    With the life of Curtis Jackson as the narrative, the book looks at “how to succeed in life and work based on a single principle: fear nothing”. Based on the text of the chapter headings, there’s an ebook introduction available on Slideshare that gives you a good idea of what the book is like.

    I found the following excerpts rather inspiring on multiple levels and wanted to share them:

    On self-reliance:

    When you work for others, you are at their mercy. They own your work; they own you. Your creative spirit is squashed. What keeps you in such positions is a fear of having to sink or swim on your own. Instead you should have a greater fear of what will happen to you if you remain dependent on others for power. Your goal in every maneuver in life must be ownership, working the corner for yourself. When it is yours, it is yours to lose – you are more motivated, more creative, more alive. The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant, completely yourself.

    On opportunism:

    Your lack of resources can be an advantage, forcing you to be more inventive with the little that you have. [ā€¦] Do not let fears make you wait for a better moment or become conservative. If there are circumstances you cannot control, make the best of them. It is the ultimate alchemy to transform all such negatives into advantages and power.

    On calculated momentum:

    In the present there is constant change and so much we cannot control. If you try to micromanage it all, you lose even greater control in the long run.

    On connection:

    Most people think first of what they want to express or make, then find the audience for their idea. You must work the opposite angle, thinking first of the public. You need to keep your focus on their changing needs, the trends that are washing through them.

    On mastery:

    To [build the foundations for something that can continue to expand], you will have to serve an apprenticeship. You must learn early on to endure the hours of practice and drudgery, knowing that in the end all of that time will translate into a higher pleasure – mastery of a craft and of yourself.

    Thanks, Ryan

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Ability to Inhibit Prejudices Diminishes with Age

    As we age we become less able to inhibit prejudiced inferences, relying more on ethnic and sexist stereotypes to interpret situations, research into the science of prejudice suggests.

    There are a lot of clichĆ©s thrown around about the elderly, but one that seems to be trueā€”or at least is backed up by researchā€”is the belief they tend to be more prejudiced than younger people. This phenomenonā€”noted in The New York Times as early as 1941ā€”is widely assumed to be the result of socialization. After all, today’s senior citizens grew up in an era when racism was widespread and gays stayed in the closet. Of course they aren’t as open-minded as their children and grandchildren.

    A decade ago, a research team led by William von Hippel of the University of Queensland challenged that assumption. The psychologists proposed that older people may exhibit greater prejudice because they have difficulty inhibiting the stereotypes that regularly get activated in all of our brains. They suggested an aging brain is not as effective in suppressing unwanted informationā€”including stereotypes.

    Matthew Yglesias recently noted that current marriage equality acceptance in the U.S. decreases with age,Ā suggesting that equal marriage rights are inevitable as the older generations cease to have voting power and/or die. When I consider this in light of the above, however, I wonder if this really is the case?

    via Intelligent Life

    The abstracts of the two papers discussed in this article:Ā Stereotype Activation, Inhibition, and Aging andĀ Aging and Stereotype Suppression.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Simplicity in Japan

    Simplicity, says Kenya Hara, creative director of Muji, is a “central aesthetic principle” in Japan and is what differentiates the visual appeal of the East from that of the West.

    In an interview for The New York Times looking at the unique design of Japanese bentō, Hara provides a comparison of the East and West’s vision of simplicity and further thoughts on Japan’s unique aesthetic.

    While Japanese are known for their particular aesthetic sense, I would say we also have an incapacity to see ugliness. How come?

    We usually focus fully on what’s right in front of our eyes. We tend to ignore the horrible, especially if it is not an integral part of our personal perspective. We ignore that our cities are a chaotic mess, filled with ugly architecture and nasty signage. And so you have the situation where a Japanese worker will open a beautiful bento box in a stale conference room or on a horrendous, crowded sidewalk.

    via @zambonini

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • 100 Tips for Providing Perfect Restaurant Service

    Bruce Buschel–author, co-creator of a musical, director and producer–isĀ opening a seafood restaurant in New York. In his Small Business column forĀ The New York Times he offers 100 tips to ‘restaurant staffers’ (waiting staff) on how to behave front of house (that’s the first 50 tips;Ā here are the second 50).

    I (unexpectedly) found myself agreeing with every item on this list. If only all restaurants were like this.

    The series ends with a fitting quote that we can all learn from:

    Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

    via Kottke

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • In Defence of Fixed Service Charges (or: Why Only Tip for Service?)

    Tipping: that most contentious of issues that–depending on your location–can be illegal, required, or the most heinous of etiquette crimes. It’s a complicated business (as the Wikipedia entry indicates by the size of the Tipping by region section), and an odd and occasionally uncomfortable tradition.

    As a self-proclaimed ‘socially awkward Briton’ David Mitchell laments the removal of the automatic, fixed service charge at D&D London’s group of restaurants primarily because, as The Browser summarised it, “they minimise embarrassment, and you sometimes get a bargain”.

    Mitchell goes one further, of course, wondering why is it only the service we commend and reprimand through tipping?

    Tips are embarrassing and stupid ā€“ they’re vestigial haggling in a society that has otherwise moved on. If you’re going to a restaurant to be served and eat a meal, why is the price of the delivery open to negotiation but not that of the food itself, the ambience, music, heating or use of the furniture? All of these things can disappoint or delight. It’s illogical to fix the price of one element but not the others.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Importance of Information Literacy

    The future of the Internet as a credible source of information is under threat due to the proliferation of spam and inaccurate information online, suggests Howard Rheingold, proposing that the most efficient way to counter this worrying trend is for “a great many people [to] learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon”.

    To start, Rheingold offers what could be called a comprehensive introduction to online crap detection (critical thinking). I was won over by the introduction:

    The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge – the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part – the part a machine can do. The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it’s up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. “Crap detection,” as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before, now that the automation of crapcasting has generated its own word: “spamming.”

    Suggesting thatĀ “Who is the author?” is the root question, the article continues with links to essays and tools to aid in education and online researching before offering this on how important the issue is:

    To me, the issue of information literacy could be even more important than the health or education of some individuals. Fundamental aspects of democracy, economic production, the discovery and use of knowledge might be at stake. Some of the biggest problems facing the world today seem to be far beyond the ability of any individual or community, or even the whole human race, to tackle. But the noise death of the Internet is something we can take on and win.

    via @finiteattention, @bfchirpy

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Resources on the Psychology of Security and Risk

    Professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Ross Anderson, has compiled a comprehensive resource page on the psychology of risk and security. The resources themselves are divided into seven section, to wit:

    • Introductory Papers
    • Deception
    • Security and Usability
    • Social Attitudes to Risk
    • Behavioural Economics of Security
    • Miscellaneous Papers
    • Other (Conferences, Websites/Blogs, Books)

    From the introduction:

    A fascinating dialogue is developing between psychologists and security engineers. At the macro scale, societal overreactions to terrorism are founded on the misperception of risk and uncertainty, which has deep psychological roots. At the micro scale, more and more crimes involve deception. [ā€¦] Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they’re different. The gap gets ever wider, and ever more important.

    At a deeper level, the psychology of security touches on fundamental scientific and philosophical problems. The ‘Machiavellian Brain’ hypothesis states that we evolved high intelligence not to make better tools, but to use other monkeys better as tools: primates who were better at deception, or at detecting deception in others, left more descendants. Conflict is also deeply tied up with social psychology and anthropology, while evolutionary explanations for the human religious impulse involve both trust and conflict.

    via Schneier

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    Lloyd Morgan