Letters Remain

  • The Benefits of a Classical Education

    Asked by Forbes about his Classical education, Tim O’Reilly discusses at length lessons learnt from the classics that have influenced both his personal and business life. A great post looking at how the classics not only influence culture, but the adoption and adaptation of technology.

    The unconscious often knows more than the conscious mind. I believe this is behind what Socrates referred to as his inner “daimon” or guiding spirit. He had developed the skill of listening to that inner spirit. I have tried to develop that same skill. It often means not getting stuck in your fixed ideas, but recognizing when you need more information, and putting yourself into a receptive mode so that you can see the world afresh.

    This skill has helped me to reframe big ideas in the computer industry, including creating the first advertising on the world wide web, bringing the group together that gave open source software its name, and framing the idea that “Web 2.0” or the “internet as platform” is really about building systems that harness collective intelligence, and get better the more people use them.

    The comments on this post are also definitely worth your perusal, especially Tim’s response to someone asking him if he’s influenced by Marcus Aurelius.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Laziness, Impatience, Hubris

    The three virtues of a programmer, according to Larry Wall (in Programming Perl):

    1. Laziness The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about it.
    2. Impatience The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don’t just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.
    3. Hubris Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won’t want to say bad things about.

    According to Philipp Lenssen (of Google Blogoscoped), good programmers are not just lazy, but dumb, too.

    This also puts me in mind of Jason’s thoughts on simplicity (via Kottke) as his company, 37signals, approaches its 10th anniversary.

    I’m reminded of what we’ve always known to be true: simpler is better, clarity is king, complexity is often man-made, and doing the right thing is the right way to do things.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Parental Limit

    Birth order and parental influence matter much less than a child’s peer group when it comes to determining behaviour, according to Judith Rich Harris‘ polarising book, The Nurture Assumption.

    In the ten years since the book’s publication her ideas have gained support from prominent developmental psychologists (notably, Steven Pinker), and now Jonah Lehrer interviews Harris, asking ‘Do parents matter?’

    Questioning a cherished cultural myth is always risky. What most people don’t realize is that different cultures have different myths about the role of parents. The belief that parents have a great deal of power to determine how their children will turn out is actually a rather new idea. Not until the middle of the last century did ordinary parents start believing it. I was born […] before the cultural change, and [back then] parents didn’t feel they had to sacrifice their own convenience and comfort in order to gratify the desires of their children. They didn’t worry about boosting the self-esteem of their children. In fact, they often felt that too much attention and praise might spoil them and make them conceited. Physical punishment was used routinely for infractions of household rules. Fathers provided little or no child care; their chief role at home was to administer discipline.

    All these things have changed dramatically in the past 70 years, but the changes haven’t had the expected effects. People are the same as ever.

    […] I’ve put together a lot of evidence showing that children learn at home how to behave at home, and they learn outside the home how to behave outside the home. So if you want to improve the way children behave in school—for instance, by making them more diligent and less disruptive in the classroom—then improving their home environment is not the way to do it. What you need is a school-based intervention.

    For the Gladwell-obsessed, you may recall his ’98 New Yorker column looking at Harris’ theories.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • A Brief Summary of Group Psychology

    If, like me, you’re even remotely interested in the dynamics of group psychology you’ve probably already read a couple of these. Nonetheless, these 10 psychology studies highlighted as ‘rules’ governing groups are worth noting:

    1. Groups can arise from almost nothing
    2. Initiation rites improve group evaluations
    3. Groups breed conformity
    4. Learn the ropes or be ostracised
    5. You become your job
    6. Leaders gain trust by conforming
    7. Groups can improve performance…
    8. …but people will loaf
    9. [Rumours are] 80% accurate
    10. Groups breed competition

    via Mind Hacks

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Validation vs Correctness

    In order to avoid cognitive dissonance you have a number of choices. Primarily: selective exposure and/or confirmation bias. Researchers from a number of US universities are now attempting to quantify these phenomena, looking at how we seek validation as opposed to correctness.

    The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to consider an opposing idea (33 percent). Certain individuals, those with close-minded personalities, are even more reluctant to expose themselves to differing perspectives […] They will opt for the information that corresponds to their views nearly 75 percent of the time.

    The researchers also found, not surprisingly, that people are more resistant to new points of view when their own ideas are associated with political, religious or ethical values.

    […] Perhaps more surprisingly, people who have little confidence in their own beliefs are less likely to expose themselves to contrary views than people who are very confident in their own ideas.

    As an author of the study (pdf) suggests, maybe those who fall victim to selective exposure and the confirmation bias do so because the new information “might prevent them from living the lives they’re living”. Sounds almost like an evolutionary response to prevent dissonance.

    via @anibalmastobiza

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Benefits of Child Bilingualism

    Outside of the UK, bilingualism (or even trilingualism+) is the norm in Europe and, in some countries and/or regions, even expected. With that said, The Economist takes a look at the effect bilingualism has on a child’s brain.

    Monitoring languages and keeping them separate is part of the brain’s executive function, so these findings suggest that even before a child can speak, a bilingual environment may speed up that function’s development. Before rushing your offspring into Tongan for Toddlers, though, there are a few caveats. For one thing, these precocious cognitive benefits have been demonstrated so far only in “crib” bilinguals—those living in households where two languages are spoken routinely. The researchers speculate that it might be the fact of having to learn two languages in the same setting that requires greater use of executive function. So whether those benefits accrue to children who learn one language at home, and one at school, remains unclear.

    It’s worth noting that the executive function is only a theoretical system, supposedly responsible for “planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, rule acquisition, initiating appropriate actions and inhibiting inappropriate actions, and selecting relevant sensory information”.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Traffic Psychology and The Commuters Paradox

    There aren’t many people, I believe, who are able to drive and who are not interested in traffic dynamics. Jonah Lehrer, in a recent column for Seed, takes a brief look at traffic psychology; including ‘the commuters paradox’ and the ‘critical density’.

    They found that, when people are choosing where to live, they consistently underestimate the pain of a long commute. This leads people to mistakenly believe that the McMansion in the suburbs, with its extra bedroom and sprawling lawn, will make them happier, even though it might force them to drive an additional forty-five minutes to work. It turns out, however, that traffic is torture, and the big house isn’t worth it. According to the calculations of Frey and Stutzer, a person with a one-hour commute has to earn 40 percent more money to be as satisfied with life as someone who walks to the office.

    Apparently, the reason we dislike commutes so much is because “the flow of traffic is inherently unpredictable”–once on the roads we are at the mercy of the traffic all around us.

    For more information on this topic, William Beaty’s Traffic Waves site is full of interesting theories and observations on traffic ‘physics’. Lehrer suggests Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic–a book I’ve seen recommended many times.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Weather Forecasts and Economic Development

    The economic impact of meteorological forecasts is wide-ranging and, sometimes, unexpected.

    A few of these influences are described briefly before this (tongue-in-cheek, yet still somewhat logical) piece of advice is offered to developing countries:

    A study from the mid-1990s […] concluded that every dollar invested in weather forecasting services would save $10 in economic losses.

    The World Bank broadly agrees, and is supporting Russian efforts to reinvigorate forecasting systems that have been deteriorating since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    The World Bank’s researchers reckon that the benefits of such efforts outweigh the costs by five to one. If those numbers stack up, that suggests an unlikely development tactic for poor countries: hire more weather forecasters.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Harnessing Collective Intelligence Online

    The ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ theory, as popularised by James Surowiecki’s 2004 book of the same name, is an important—if misunderstood—theory that has influenced a lot of recent online ventures that rely on social networks and collaboration to work intelligently.

    For those who want to take advantage of the wisdom of crowds for their own ventures, Derek Powazek (who has worked at least one such site; Technorati) offers a primer on the wisdom of crowds theory and how to successfully implement it online.

    The web, with its low barrier to entry and permeable social boundaries, is the ultimate medium through which to explore the finer points of the wisdom of crowds. You’re surrounded by online examples: Google’s search results. BitTorrent. The “Most E-mailed” stories on your favorite news site. Each is powered by wisdom gleaned from crowds online.

    You need a few things to enable online crowds to be wise.

    For other related information (i.e. how attempts at harnessing collective intelligence succeed and fail) the Wikipedia entry for Surowiecki’s book is a great place to start.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Cognitive Benefits of Exercise

    Walter van den Broek (AKA Dr Shock) provides a summary of the research on the neuroscience of exercise, or: the cognitive benefits of an active lifestyle. Exercise…

    • improves learning and intelligence scores.
    • increases the resilience of the brain in later life resulting in a cognitive reserve.
    • [attenuates] the decline of memory, cortex and hippocampus atrophy in aging humans.
    • improves memory and cognition.
    • protects against brain damage caused by stroke.
    • promotes recovery after brain injury.
    • can be an antidepressant.

    Reporting on a study conducted at the Neuroplasticity and Behavioral Unit, National Institute on Aging (part of the National Institutes of Health), van den Broek also looks at foods that have been shown to be beneficial for learning (among other brain functions), in addition to providing a bit of neuroscience on how exercise actually “improves the brain”.

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    Lloyd Morgan