Letters Remain

  • The Science of Persuasion

    Persuasion is not an art; it’s a science.

    That’s according to Yes!—the book by social psychologists Robert Cialdini, Noah Goldstein and Steve Martin that proposes to offer 50 ‘scientifically proven ways to be persuasive’. 

    For his review of the book, Alex Moskalyuk lists these 50 ways to be persuasive, as gleamed from dozens of psychology studies.

    2. Introduce herd effect in highly personalized form. The hotel sign in the bathroom informed the guests that many prior guests chose to be environmentally friendly by recycling their towels. However, when the message mentioned that majority of the guests who stayed in this specific room chose to be more environmentally conscious and reused their towels, towel recycling jumped 33%, even though the message was largely the same.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Problems with Saving

    In 2007 the average American saved 0.6% of their income. By February of this year that had risen to more than 4%, but in the 1980s it was 10%.

    With this in mind, Tim Harford asks why are we such awful savers, and what can we do to improve the situation?

    Behavioral economists […] have uncovered three reasons why people find it so difficult to save. The first is temptation: Although we often later regret it, we just can’t resist spending. The second is lack of understanding: Our brains can’t quite grasp the profitability of saving. The third is optimism: We believe that everything will work out, even if we don’t save.

    The solution offered to counter temptation sounds very similar to the behaviour Ramit encourages in his readers:

    [Researchers at UCL] found that imagining a future purchase is almost as good as getting it. For example, when we daydream about buying a new car, our brains respond in much the same way as when we actually make the purchase.

    We can harness this buzz to our benefit by discarding vague ideas of “saving for a rainy day” and focusing instead on particular items we need or want. […] Reinforce this connection in your mind by opening a different savings account devoted to each of your goals: one for a new car, one for a vacation, one for a child’s college tuition fees.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Advice for Design and Life, from Milton Glaser

    Milton Glaser, the designer best known for creating the ‘I ♥ NY’ logo, offers ten pieces of advice from a life in design:

    • You can only work for people that you like: “all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client”.
    • If you have a choice, never have a job: “if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age”.
    • Some people are toxic; avoid them.
    • Professionalism is not enough, or: the good is the enemy of great: “Professionalism does not allow for [continuous transgression] because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success”.
    • Less is not necessarily more: “Just enough is more”.
    • Style is not to be trusted: “anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist”.
    • How you live changes your brain: “The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on, [than a computer]”.
    • Doubt is better than certainty: “Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience”.
    • On aging: nothing matters.
    • Tell the truth.

    via Green Oasis

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Introverted Traveller

    Starting with the declaration that “We introverts have a different style of travel, and I’m tired of hiding it”, Sophia Dembling looks at the differences in how introverts and extroverts travel, and what this means.

    I’m always happy enough when interesting people stumble into my path. It’s a lagniappe, and I’m capable of connecting with people when the opportunity arises. And when the chemistry is right, I enjoy it.

    But I don’t seek people out, I am terrible at striking up conversations with strangers and I am happy exploring a strange city alone. I don’t seek out political discourse with opinionated cab drivers or boozy bonding with locals over beers into the wee hours. […]

    For some of us, meeting people is not the sole purpose of travel. I travel for the travel. […] It’s good to know that I might be a loner, but I’m not alone.

    This is exactly what I needed to read: considering any extensive travel I always feel like I’ll enjoy it less due to my moderate introversion. This article and the corresponding tips make me realise that it’s OK.

    Like Jason (via), this reminds me of one of my favourite essays: Caring for Your Introvert (which in turn reminds me of The Nerd Handbook). I loved these two essays when I first read them, and think of them both often.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Story of Big Numbers

    Physicist Albert Bartlett is quoted as saying that “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”.

    Starting with a thought experiment in which two competitors are challenged to come up with the bigger finite number, Scott Aaronson has written an accessible and fact-filled essay about large numbers, touching on topics such as AI, NP problems, the computational power of our brains, and much more besides.

    Place value, exponentials, stacked exponentials: each can express boundlessly big numbers, and in this sense they’re all equivalent. But the notational systems differ dramatically in the numbers they can express concisely. […] It takes the same amount of time to write 9999, 9999, and 9999—yet the first number is quotidian, the second astronomical, and the third hyper-mega astronomical. The key to the biggest number contest is not swift penmanship, but rather a potent paradigm for concisely capturing the gargantuan.

    Such paradigms are historical rarities. We find a flurry in antiquity, another flurry in the twentieth century, and nothing much in between. But when a new way to express big numbers concisely does emerge, it’s often a by-product of a major scientific revolution: systematized mathematics, formal logic, computer science. Revolutions this momentous, as any Kuhnian could tell you, only happen under the right social conditions. Thus is the story of big numbers a story of human progress.

    This essay inspired the 2007 Big Number Duel at MIT.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Advice from Hoehn’s Year

    One year after setting his personal goals Charlie Hoehn takes a look back at his achievements and offers some fantastic advice:

    Your friends who don’t care or are stupid will use Monster, CareerBuilder, and Craigslist (I was one of these stupid people for a few weeks). They will compete with hundreds of people for mediocre jobs that they won’t get. There will be exceptions to this rule, of course, but not many. Your smarter friends will search for jobs through their network (e.g. a friend’s dad, their cousin’s former boss, etc.). Your smartest friends will travel. The ambitious will start their own company.

    You don’t have to walk down the path that everyone else takes. If you haven’t realized it by now, there is no such thing as job security. You’re fooling yourself if you think a steady paycheck will ensure a safe future. The only real form of security is working on yourself.

    There’s more great advice in the post—especially for those who are soon to graduate. This is the type of advice I wished I had read three years ago.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Can Technology Solve Our Climate Problems?

    After reading Cambridge physicist David MacKay’s much lauded Sustainable Energy (free download available), the FT Economist Tim Harford worries that we are “too complacent about technological fixes for the twin problems of climate change and finite oil and gas reserves”.

    Harford suggests that if we contemplate the idea that technological progress may not solve these problems, we must therefore start thinking realistically about behaviour shifting incentives—specifically, higher carbon ‘taxes’.

    Technological progress and economic growth loosen the corset of cost-benefit analysis, but not the laws of physics. No matter how cheap and efficient solar collectors become, there is only so much solar power available per square metre of land. Hydroelectric energy is constrained by the quantity of rainfall and the height of reservoirs above sea level. The most perfectly designed windmill is limited by the energy of the wind. It would barely be possible to make the numbers add up even if renewable energy generators were free.

    To power a modern country through renewable energy requires country-scale facilities. […] Technological progress will be essential but, barring a breakthrough in nuclear fusion, it will not set us on a path to an energy system purged of fossil fuels.

    […] The challenge is to encourage the right behaviour. Centrally mandated efforts will not do the trick, in part because “the right behaviour” is not a universal constant. […]

    Dealing with climate change will need many small decisions to be made differently. The government cannot micromanage these. This is why a carbon price, whether set through taxes or emissions permits, is needed. It is not so much a nudge as a shove in the right direction.

    The full article requires (free) registration to the FT site.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • 25+ Etiquette

    Bringing to mind something I wrote about last week (The Quarterlife Crisis), this advice to those 25 and over is more etiquette lesson than antidote to the 20-something malaise.

    It is time, if you have not already done so, for you to emerge from your cocoon of post-adolescent dithering and self-absorption and join the rest of us in the world. Past the quarter-century mark, you see, certain actions, attitudes, and behaviors will simply no longer do, and while it might seem unpleasant to feign a maturity and solicitousness towards others that you may not genuinely feel, it is not only appreciated by others but necessary for your continued survival.

    Three that particularly struck a chord:

    • Develop a physical awareness of your surroundings (“You […] need to learn to sense others and get out of their way.”).
    • Have something to talk about besides college or your job (“Be interested so that you can be interesting”).
    • Rudeness is not a signifier of your importance (“Be civil or be elsewhere”).

    via Kottke

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Social Cognition and Staving Off Dementia

    A longitudinal study of health and mental lucidity in the aged—focusing on the huge retirement community of Laguna Woods Village south of Los Angeles—is starting to show some results.

    From studying members of the so-called ‘super memory club’ (people aged 90+ with near-perfect cognitive abilities) it is being suggested that not all mental activities are equal when it comes to staving off dementia, and social intereactions may be vastly more important that previously thought.

    The researchers have also demonstrated that the percentage of people with dementia after 90 does not plateau or taper off, as some experts had suspected. It continues to increase, so that for the one in 600 people who make it to 95, nearly 40 percent of the men and 60 percent of the women qualify for a diagnosis of dementia.

    So far, scientists here have found little evidence that diet or exercise affects the risk of dementia in people over 90. But some researchers argue that mental engagement — doing crossword puzzles, reading books — may delay the arrival of symptoms. And social connections, including interaction with friends, may be very important, some suspect. In isolation, a healthy human mind can go blank and quickly become disoriented.

    via Mind Hacks

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Learn Statistics, Damn You!

    Thanks to my moderate knowledge of statistics, I know that I have a lot more to learn in the field and should never make assumptions about data or analyses (even my own).

    Because of this I share a grievance with Zed Shaw who says that “programmers need to learn statistics or I will kill them all”. Required reading and advice not just for programmers, but for everyone who looks at data, creates models, or even reads a newspaper.

    I have a major pet peeve that I need to confess. I go insane when I hear programmers talking about statistics like they know shit when its clearly obvious they do not. I’ve been studying it for years and years and still don’t think I know anything. This article is my call for all programmers to finally learn enough about statistics to at least know they don’t know shit. I have no idea why, but their confidence in their lacking knowledge is only surpassed by their lack of confidence in their personal appearance.

    My recommendation? Read this article to realise that you know nothing, and then pick up a copy of John Allen Paulos’ Innumeracy and Darrell Huff’s How to Lie with Statistics in order to realise that you know even less than you thought (but a hell of a lot more than the average person).

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    Lloyd Morgan