Self-deception can be divided into at least two types:
1) Deluding yourself into thinking that you are better than the median in some particular trait, like driving ability, teaching ability, and etc.
2) Deluding yourself into thinking that the traits you just happen to be good at are considered objectively more virtuous. In this form of self-delusion, you do not actually think of yourself as better or worse at any particular trait, but rather rationalize traits you are good at as especially virtuous, and traits you aren't good at as especially useless or even evil. As Michael Vassar explains, people "delude themselves about what traits a human without specific information about his or her self sees as good, choosing to see many of their own traits as good rather than as bad and failing to notice that people who lack those traits consistently see things otherwise."
If you tested them, I'd bet that people will be more likely to self-deceive using type #1 self-deception for traits about which they cannot plausibly self-deceive using type #2 self-deception. For example, almost everyone in our society agrees that getting along well with others is a virtuous trait, and it would be relatively difficult to come up with a plausible argument otherwise. So, it makes sense that in one study (see pg 11 here), when asked how well they get along with others, all students thought they were above average, 60% thought they were in the top 10%, and 25% thought they were in the top 1%.
In the modern world type #2 self-deception has become especially common due to the desire to find one's own niche. Given arbitrary weights of values for traits and their interactions anyone can delude themselves into believing that they are the most virtuous person in the world.* This also helps explain some of the benefits for being part of an "in" group, as your group will validate your type #2 self-deception about what makes a virtuous person.
* This is provable via Arrow's impossibility theorem.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Is Toy Story 3 The Best Movie Of All Time?
Yesterday it was #8 and currently it is #7 on imdb's top 250 with a weighted average of 8.8. But on its own page it has an unweighted rating of 9.3, meaning that it is currently getting killed on the top 250 due to a low total number of votes. So, if it maintains the score once it has around 100k votes, its weighted average will approach its unweighted average asymptotically and it will take the reigns from Shawshank as The Greatest Of All Time.
However, such an upset is very unlikely. For example, look at the current demographic breakdown:
You'll note that the movie is doing really well with voters under 29. But right now the under 29 bracket represents 78.5% of total voters, and that number is going to drop. For example, if you look at the demographics of Toy Story One and Two, the under 29 bracket only has 51.9% and 49.0% of the overall totals, respectively. Also, US voters are likely to become the minority, which should further push the score down.
But the main problem is that right now, Pixar fanboys are much more likely to have seen the movie, and they are also more likely to enjoy it and rate it high. Once more average moviegoers join the party, they will curb some of the hype.
To give some perspective, The Dark Knight had a 9.6 on its own page and a 9.5 weighted average when it had 69,000 votes. But even The Dark Knight fell out of the top spot less than a month after it came out, and is now #11. So, you expect a rise for the next few weeks, and it may even take the top spot for a very brief time, but then it should fall fairly fast. I'd bet below #15 by this day next year. Toy Story 3 is cute and endearing, but it is certainly not the best movie of all time.
However, such an upset is very unlikely. For example, look at the current demographic breakdown:
You'll note that the movie is doing really well with voters under 29. But right now the under 29 bracket represents 78.5% of total voters, and that number is going to drop. For example, if you look at the demographics of Toy Story One and Two, the under 29 bracket only has 51.9% and 49.0% of the overall totals, respectively. Also, US voters are likely to become the minority, which should further push the score down.
But the main problem is that right now, Pixar fanboys are much more likely to have seen the movie, and they are also more likely to enjoy it and rate it high. Once more average moviegoers join the party, they will curb some of the hype.
To give some perspective, The Dark Knight had a 9.6 on its own page and a 9.5 weighted average when it had 69,000 votes. But even The Dark Knight fell out of the top spot less than a month after it came out, and is now #11. So, you expect a rise for the next few weeks, and it may even take the top spot for a very brief time, but then it should fall fairly fast. I'd bet below #15 by this day next year. Toy Story 3 is cute and endearing, but it is certainly not the best movie of all time.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Watching The Top 250
Late last night I finished watched my last of imdb's top 250 movies. As of today, I have watched every damned movie on the list. It's been a wild ride. And since Toy Story 3 comes out this weekend, I need to get a post up documenting the occasion while it's still technically true.
So... thanks to everyone who works at imdb and spends hours configuring their database. In particular, thanks to the nerds who suggested that they run their ratings data through a bayesian filter, whoever you are. Thanks to my mom and dad for subsidizing my video rentals and for not complaining when I was monomaniacal about the netflix queue two summers ago. Thanks to the workers at the reserve desk of the Vassar library, who were kind enough to waive a few late fees for a starving student. Thanks to everyone who ever sat through a weird old movie with me over the past four years. Gratitude. Finally, a shout out to all the playa haters, who never thought I'd make it here. What now, haters?
Among the subset of movies that I watched specifically due to my quasi-compulsive need to finish the list, my faves were On the Waterfront, The Killing, The Seventh Seal, Dial M for Murder, Kind Hearts and Coronets, M, Manhattan, Mulholland Drive, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Thing, Touch of Evil, and Yojimbo. These movies tend to be funny, short, and don't spell out too much for the audience. The movies that I tended to like the least were ones that seemed to be popular for political reasons, like Crash or Gran Torino.
All in all, the top 250 is undoubtedly violence obsessed. Every one of the current top 25 movies has violence as a major crux of the plot. And of the top 100, only 9 movies do not fit this criteria: It's A Wonderful Life, Citizen Kane, Forrest Gump (arguable), Amelie, Wall E, Spirited Away, Elephant Man, All About Eve, and The Apartment. In that sense they are nothing like my daily life.
My quantitative vote history on imdb is here. There is one useful site to track your own progress on the top 250, which, should you choose that path, you can find here. I warn you, it may not always be easy. There will be times you'll want to give up, times when you'll forget why you devoted a precious slice of your time to such a desolate and inhuman list in the first place. All I can say is, get busy living, or get busy dying.
So... thanks to everyone who works at imdb and spends hours configuring their database. In particular, thanks to the nerds who suggested that they run their ratings data through a bayesian filter, whoever you are. Thanks to my mom and dad for subsidizing my video rentals and for not complaining when I was monomaniacal about the netflix queue two summers ago. Thanks to the workers at the reserve desk of the Vassar library, who were kind enough to waive a few late fees for a starving student. Thanks to everyone who ever sat through a weird old movie with me over the past four years. Gratitude. Finally, a shout out to all the playa haters, who never thought I'd make it here. What now, haters?
Among the subset of movies that I watched specifically due to my quasi-compulsive need to finish the list, my faves were On the Waterfront, The Killing, The Seventh Seal, Dial M for Murder, Kind Hearts and Coronets, M, Manhattan, Mulholland Drive, The Ox-Bow Incident, The Thing, Touch of Evil, and Yojimbo. These movies tend to be funny, short, and don't spell out too much for the audience. The movies that I tended to like the least were ones that seemed to be popular for political reasons, like Crash or Gran Torino.
All in all, the top 250 is undoubtedly violence obsessed. Every one of the current top 25 movies has violence as a major crux of the plot. And of the top 100, only 9 movies do not fit this criteria: It's A Wonderful Life, Citizen Kane, Forrest Gump (arguable), Amelie, Wall E, Spirited Away, Elephant Man, All About Eve, and The Apartment. In that sense they are nothing like my daily life.
My quantitative vote history on imdb is here. There is one useful site to track your own progress on the top 250, which, should you choose that path, you can find here. I warn you, it may not always be easy. There will be times you'll want to give up, times when you'll forget why you devoted a precious slice of your time to such a desolate and inhuman list in the first place. All I can say is, get busy living, or get busy dying.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Niche Finding
Holding quality constant, I tend to enjoy movies more the lower my expectations are. This seems like a fairly universal tendency. For example, the main predictor of a student's enjoyment of a class is the extent of positive deviation in their actual grade from their expectations (here).
My explanation for this tendency is as a mechanism to spur niche finding. In this large world, it is hard to stake out our own identity. Thus, we constantly are on the lookout for things that we enjoy more than others to portray our unique values and thus define us.
As evidence for this, consider how much people love to note that some particular work of art is underrated. The next time you hear someone say something is underrated, probe a bit.
If you disagree with how good that work of art objectively is, they may give some playful rebuttals but won't really mind. However, if you disagree with their assumption that the work of art is rated low by the majority, and thus imply that they are not really unique for liking it, they will get rather annoyed. So, it is not the actual quality of the underrated thing that people mostly care about, but rather their own uniqueness in liking it.
My explanation for this tendency is as a mechanism to spur niche finding. In this large world, it is hard to stake out our own identity. Thus, we constantly are on the lookout for things that we enjoy more than others to portray our unique values and thus define us.
As evidence for this, consider how much people love to note that some particular work of art is underrated. The next time you hear someone say something is underrated, probe a bit.
If you disagree with how good that work of art objectively is, they may give some playful rebuttals but won't really mind. However, if you disagree with their assumption that the work of art is rated low by the majority, and thus imply that they are not really unique for liking it, they will get rather annoyed. So, it is not the actual quality of the underrated thing that people mostly care about, but rather their own uniqueness in liking it.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Trade Offs Between Status And Interestingness
In a response to Kaj Sotala's post about how to have interesting conversations, HughRistik mentions two problems with asking questions:
A higher status person will tend to be more aggressive, smile less, and act more selfishly. But being aggressive raises everyone's blood pressure, smiling releases endorphins, and being selfish makes it harder to create long lasting friendships of any value.
To me, these qualities that raise status don't seem to be worth it.
On a more macro level, Elena Kagan is now a very high status person and likely to become a supreme court justice. But she sacrificed interestingness along the way. Was it worth it? I'd say no.
As another example, blogging is fairly low status. But lots of people choose to do it anyway, in large part because they find it interesting.
On both a micro and macro level, it seems that there are trade-offs between status and interestingness. So, where do you stand on this widespread trade-off?
1) If you are beginning a conversation with some who you don't know well, they may not give you very extensive or useful answers to your questions. 2) You can only ask so many questions in a row before you are interviewing them. Worse, it looks low status.Asking questions lowers your relative status. I certainly buy this, as questioning is a sign that you care about the other person's opinion, which the higher status person will tend not to do. But asking questions is also one of the best ways to learn new info, satiate curiosity, and generally expose oneself to interestingness.
A higher status person will tend to be more aggressive, smile less, and act more selfishly. But being aggressive raises everyone's blood pressure, smiling releases endorphins, and being selfish makes it harder to create long lasting friendships of any value.
To me, these qualities that raise status don't seem to be worth it.
On a more macro level, Elena Kagan is now a very high status person and likely to become a supreme court justice. But she sacrificed interestingness along the way. Was it worth it? I'd say no.
As another example, blogging is fairly low status. But lots of people choose to do it anyway, in large part because they find it interesting.
On both a micro and macro level, it seems that there are trade-offs between status and interestingness. So, where do you stand on this widespread trade-off?
Four Distinct Claims In The Web Attention Debate
Claim #1: The internet is changing our brains (e.g., see here). This is a tautology, as everything we experience changes our brains. Even no activity should change the strength of our synaptic connections! Now, the typical connotation is that these brain changes are for the worse, as the assumption is that deviations from normal biology are bad. But from what I can tell, we just don't know enough about systems neuroscience to correctly evaluate the effects of web-induced brain changes. So let's stick to psychology and behavior, which brings us to...
Claim #2: Overall, the internet decreases our attention span and makes us less likely to engage in contemplative deep-reading and thinking (e.g., see here). Carr and Lehrer primarily extrapolate from controlled psyc studies to address this claim, but those do not longitudinally track the same subjects. Instead, Cowen seems more on track in focusing on the "market data." Unfortunately, longitudinal book reading stats are very difficult to come by, although see here for one aggregation of survey stats. Book revenues did not change much from 2002 to 2009 (see here), but that is confounded by pop growth, inflation, and the shrewdness of Amazon. So, we need better data. Another strategy is to look at previous tech advances and how see people's contemplative deep thinking has changed. I would say, not much. For example, introspection habits haven't don't differ drastically between the 150 CE Marcus Aurelius and the internet-era's own Katja Grace.
Claim #3: Developmentally, if one is not forced to focus for long periods of time often during adolescence, one will be less able to focus as an adult (e.g., see here). It is certainly true that teens will on average be more impulsive than adults, which may be because the amygdala and nucleus accumbens develop more quickly than the prefrontal cortex. So, it makes sense that internet multitasking will be particularly tempting to teens. Indeed, teens may lose time that could have been spent studying. But school is largely zero-sum anyways. Plus, once adolescents become adults their focus should improve. This is a very controversial claim though, as people differ both on their beliefs about focus and on their values with respect to paternalism.
Claim #4: The gains we reap from more immediate access to info and more efficient reading are not worth the costs of habitually skimming and a reduced willingness to commit to valuable but demanding texts (e.g., see here). I mostly agree with Steven Pinker's assessment of this claim as bullshit, because the internet is the best / only way to keep up with the exponentially accelerating increase in knowledge. But he also says that deep reflection, thorough research, and rigorous reasoning "must [!] be acquired in universities," to which I call bullshit. The existence of autodidacts and other individuals self-educated primarily on the internet proves the non-necessity of universities.
Full Disclosure: By the end of writing this post, I have 24 tabs open in my Firefox browser. Namaste, cabrónes.
Claim #2: Overall, the internet decreases our attention span and makes us less likely to engage in contemplative deep-reading and thinking (e.g., see here). Carr and Lehrer primarily extrapolate from controlled psyc studies to address this claim, but those do not longitudinally track the same subjects. Instead, Cowen seems more on track in focusing on the "market data." Unfortunately, longitudinal book reading stats are very difficult to come by, although see here for one aggregation of survey stats. Book revenues did not change much from 2002 to 2009 (see here), but that is confounded by pop growth, inflation, and the shrewdness of Amazon. So, we need better data. Another strategy is to look at previous tech advances and how see people's contemplative deep thinking has changed. I would say, not much. For example, introspection habits haven't don't differ drastically between the 150 CE Marcus Aurelius and the internet-era's own Katja Grace.
Claim #3: Developmentally, if one is not forced to focus for long periods of time often during adolescence, one will be less able to focus as an adult (e.g., see here). It is certainly true that teens will on average be more impulsive than adults, which may be because the amygdala and nucleus accumbens develop more quickly than the prefrontal cortex. So, it makes sense that internet multitasking will be particularly tempting to teens. Indeed, teens may lose time that could have been spent studying. But school is largely zero-sum anyways. Plus, once adolescents become adults their focus should improve. This is a very controversial claim though, as people differ both on their beliefs about focus and on their values with respect to paternalism.
Claim #4: The gains we reap from more immediate access to info and more efficient reading are not worth the costs of habitually skimming and a reduced willingness to commit to valuable but demanding texts (e.g., see here). I mostly agree with Steven Pinker's assessment of this claim as bullshit, because the internet is the best / only way to keep up with the exponentially accelerating increase in knowledge. But he also says that deep reflection, thorough research, and rigorous reasoning "must [!] be acquired in universities," to which I call bullshit. The existence of autodidacts and other individuals self-educated primarily on the internet proves the non-necessity of universities.
Full Disclosure: By the end of writing this post, I have 24 tabs open in my Firefox browser. Namaste, cabrónes.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
The Neuroplasticity Of Doing Absolutely Nothing
Piggybacking on Vaughan Bell's account of how the word "neuroplasticity" is abused in the public sphere, here's one specific example from to show how fuzzy the picture really is. This particular study by Minerbi et al, available via open access here, measures the structural changes to synapses over a fairly long time frame (~ 5 days) in the presence and absence of electrical input.
The researchers cultured rat neurons in dishes and tethered the genetic expression of a common post synaptic protein (PSD-95) to the expression of green fluorescent protein, in order to measure changes in synapse size over time.
At the population level, increases in electrical network activity (i.e., more action potentials) correlate with increases in post synaptic size, as expected. And at the population level, blocking electrical action potentials with the tetrodotoxin stops the increase in post synaptic size.
But when researchers looked at individual synapses, their simple relationship breaks down. The fluorescence of the post synaptic protein, a measure of the size and thus strength of the synapse, varies somewhat randomly over time. This is true even when the activity blocker tetrodotoxin was applied to the neurons.
If the structure of synapses were constant, there would be little change in the flourescence of the post synaptic protein over time. In the following 8 second video, each circle represents one synaptic puncta, the Y-intercept shows fluorescence, and as you can see, the fluorescence is definitely not constant:
Bottom Line: When marketers and pundits claim that "[something] changes the brain!", what they are saying is technically true. But the connotations are misleading, because any sort of stimulation changes your brain in some way. And moreover, even with no electrical at all stimulation individual synapses are constantly changing their size and configurations and exhibiting "neuroplasticity."
The researchers cultured rat neurons in dishes and tethered the genetic expression of a common post synaptic protein (PSD-95) to the expression of green fluorescent protein, in order to measure changes in synapse size over time.
At the population level, increases in electrical network activity (i.e., more action potentials) correlate with increases in post synaptic size, as expected. And at the population level, blocking electrical action potentials with the tetrodotoxin stops the increase in post synaptic size.
But when researchers looked at individual synapses, their simple relationship breaks down. The fluorescence of the post synaptic protein, a measure of the size and thus strength of the synapse, varies somewhat randomly over time. This is true even when the activity blocker tetrodotoxin was applied to the neurons.
If the structure of synapses were constant, there would be little change in the flourescence of the post synaptic protein over time. In the following 8 second video, each circle represents one synaptic puncta, the Y-intercept shows fluorescence, and as you can see, the fluorescence is definitely not constant:
Bottom Line: When marketers and pundits claim that "[something] changes the brain!", what they are saying is technically true. But the connotations are misleading, because any sort of stimulation changes your brain in some way. And moreover, even with no electrical at all stimulation individual synapses are constantly changing their size and configurations and exhibiting "neuroplasticity."
Monday, June 7, 2010
The Mathematical Improbability Of Being The Best
The unheralded gem Eric Falkenstein muses that,
So, it's just as useful and probably less stressful to just try to be really good than to try to be the very best.
The key is doing the best with what you can, the self-awareness and motivation to develop one's strengths so that your hard work generates a maximum payoff going forward. As Muhammad Ali once said, "You can be the best garbage man or you can be the best model--it doesn't matter as long as you're the best." 'The best' is mathematically improbable, 'really good' generates the same result. If you are really good at your job your day is filled with sincere gratitude by colleagues and customers....There are two reasons that being "really good" generates the same outputs as being "the best." First, in professions that scale really well, randomness is going to play by far the largest role. This is the implication of Dean Simonton's equal odds rule (here) that the average publication of any particular scientist does not have a statistically significant chance of having more citations (a proxy for impact) than any other scientist's average publication. Furthermore, in Csikszentmihalyi's interviews of highly creative individuals (here), the most commonly mentioned explanation for success was luck. Second, in professions that don't scale well, it is really hard to determine who is the best anyways, because context becomes so important.
So, it's just as useful and probably less stressful to just try to be really good than to try to be the very best.
Friday, May 28, 2010
In Defense Of Searching
Robin Hanson's interesting post today distinguishes between reading that actively attempts to answer a question ("chasing") and reading that broadly looks for new questions ("searching"). I have three thoughts:
1) Let's think of chasing vs searching as a continuum. Reading further towards the chasing end has the goal of finding specific facts, while reading further towards the searching end has the goal of exposing oneself to general thought processes. Most reading modes will not fall on either end of the extreme but instead will be somewhere in between. You might have more conscious critical thoughts about the subject matter towards the chasing end of the spectrum, but whatever, conscious thinking is overrated anyways.
2) Thought processes matter, because having more ways to approach problems is useful. Exposing yourself to different thought processes can help you find ways to test for causality (e.g., dose-dependence), see different frames for thinking about the world (boosting divergent thinking), and etc. As evidence for this, Dean Simonton notes in Creativity in Science (here) that the best scientists tend to read broadly outside their particular field and maintain active correspondence with people outside their specific pursuit. Sure, this could merely be due to an openness to experience / IQ selection bias, but I'd bet there is at least some treatment effect of searching mode reading on improving cognitive style.
3) As Hanson notes, a reading mode towards the chasing end of the spectrum has advantages, as you are more likely to put down something that is impressive but not actually useful. What he underplays is that reading mode towards the searching end of the spectrum also has advantages, as it can allow you to think critically about general thought processes without getting bogged down in the details. In general, a more chasing reading mode should be more helpful in the short run, while a more searching reading mode should be more helpful in the long run. Another reason to prefer at least some searching is that without it you never would have gotten so far down in this post. And then where would you be? Screwed.
1) Let's think of chasing vs searching as a continuum. Reading further towards the chasing end has the goal of finding specific facts, while reading further towards the searching end has the goal of exposing oneself to general thought processes. Most reading modes will not fall on either end of the extreme but instead will be somewhere in between. You might have more conscious critical thoughts about the subject matter towards the chasing end of the spectrum, but whatever, conscious thinking is overrated anyways.
2) Thought processes matter, because having more ways to approach problems is useful. Exposing yourself to different thought processes can help you find ways to test for causality (e.g., dose-dependence), see different frames for thinking about the world (boosting divergent thinking), and etc. As evidence for this, Dean Simonton notes in Creativity in Science (here) that the best scientists tend to read broadly outside their particular field and maintain active correspondence with people outside their specific pursuit. Sure, this could merely be due to an openness to experience / IQ selection bias, but I'd bet there is at least some treatment effect of searching mode reading on improving cognitive style.
3) As Hanson notes, a reading mode towards the chasing end of the spectrum has advantages, as you are more likely to put down something that is impressive but not actually useful. What he underplays is that reading mode towards the searching end of the spectrum also has advantages, as it can allow you to think critically about general thought processes without getting bogged down in the details. In general, a more chasing reading mode should be more helpful in the short run, while a more searching reading mode should be more helpful in the long run. Another reason to prefer at least some searching is that without it you never would have gotten so far down in this post. And then where would you be? Screwed.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Solemn Higher Ed Vows
Tomorrow I will take my last exam in college. It is on math stats. In case I ever end up teaching in higher ed, I want to make a record of which rules I would need to follow in order to respect myself as a teacher. There are two main points, to which, in publishing this blog post, I hereby solemnly swear to follow:
1) I will grade essays / short answers / papers based on the content of the writing, including the precision of the claims made, the relevance of the evidence cited, and, depending upon the context, its originality. To give the content more weight, I will eschew the importance of spelling, formatting, the proper dictionary use of phrases like "begs the question," the alphabetization of references, and other irrelevant tics that apparently haunt so many professors. Whenever possible I will encourage or at least accept the use of words that I have to look up in urban dictionary, or its equivalent thirty years from now, however horribly newfangled they may appear to raggedy old me.
2) Whenever possible, I will attempt to channel students' competitive urges for the good of the world by having them play non-zero-sum games. That includes collaborating on unsolved problems, writing wikipedia pages (or its equivalent), and articulating hitherto unarticulated or poorly articulated sentiments.
All praise be to the god of integration by parts, in whose holy presence I tremble with mortal fear, amen.
1) I will grade essays / short answers / papers based on the content of the writing, including the precision of the claims made, the relevance of the evidence cited, and, depending upon the context, its originality. To give the content more weight, I will eschew the importance of spelling, formatting, the proper dictionary use of phrases like "begs the question," the alphabetization of references, and other irrelevant tics that apparently haunt so many professors. Whenever possible I will encourage or at least accept the use of words that I have to look up in urban dictionary, or its equivalent thirty years from now, however horribly newfangled they may appear to raggedy old me.
2) Whenever possible, I will attempt to channel students' competitive urges for the good of the world by having them play non-zero-sum games. That includes collaborating on unsolved problems, writing wikipedia pages (or its equivalent), and articulating hitherto unarticulated or poorly articulated sentiments.
All praise be to the god of integration by parts, in whose holy presence I tremble with mortal fear, amen.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Failure And Creativity In Lost
In his podcast yesterday with Bill Simmons, writer Carlton Cuse explains a bit of the driving philosophy behind the composition of Lost. First, he argues that the premise of a TV show is much less important than its execution. Seinfeld, the "show about nothing," is his example here. I do wonder whether this is will be different for comedies, though. The preponderance of movies based on previously successful books / plays in imdb's top 250 suggests to me that the plot is critical for a drama.
Second, he argues that to be successful creatively in any endeavor, one must risk failure. Apparently, Cuse and Lindelof (the other writer) basically expected to fail. Their goal in writing the first twelve episodes in 2004 was to make them as cool as possible so that if / when the show was canceled, it could become some sort of cult classic that they would be proud of. That would make it like Firefly, which only aired in 2002 for eleven episodes but killed it in DVD sales. The writers being cool with conventional failure for such a plausible and specific reason could explain the show's success and its love of ambiguity.
This post is dedicated to Colin Marshall, who ostensibly hates Lost (see here, here, and here), but who loves the idea that risking and / or embracing failure is essential to success in creativity (see here, here, here, and here).
Second, he argues that to be successful creatively in any endeavor, one must risk failure. Apparently, Cuse and Lindelof (the other writer) basically expected to fail. Their goal in writing the first twelve episodes in 2004 was to make them as cool as possible so that if / when the show was canceled, it could become some sort of cult classic that they would be proud of. That would make it like Firefly, which only aired in 2002 for eleven episodes but killed it in DVD sales. The writers being cool with conventional failure for such a plausible and specific reason could explain the show's success and its love of ambiguity.
This post is dedicated to Colin Marshall, who ostensibly hates Lost (see here, here, and here), but who loves the idea that risking and / or embracing failure is essential to success in creativity (see here, here, here, and here).
Friday, May 14, 2010
Where Are Other Cross Subsidies?
In his article on the future of news, James Fallows discusses the model wherein certain high-yield aspects of newspapers subsidize less profitable aspects. The net is cutting this down:
One particularly interesting use of student funds is in supporting the research pursuits of faculty members. To the extent that higher ed is mostly about classroom learning, research support is merely a cross-subsidy and should eventually be cut out by the growth of the internet. But, to the extent that paying to participate in higher ed is mostly about associating with high status professors, supporting faculty research is not a cross-subsidy and should remain despite the internet. Time may tell which factor is more important.
“Newspapers never made money on ‘news,’” Hal Varian said. “Serious reporting, say from Afghanistan, has simply never paid its way. What paid for newspapers were the automotive sections, real-estate, home-and-garden, travel, or technology, where advertisers could target their ads.” The Internet has been one giant system for stripping away such cross-subsidies.So, in which other industries do such cross-subsidies exist? The most obvious one is higher ed. Students and / or their parents pay for some variable combo of signaling, learning, and networking. Yet, colleges and (especially) universities use this money on tons of other things that benefit students only indirectly.
One particularly interesting use of student funds is in supporting the research pursuits of faculty members. To the extent that higher ed is mostly about classroom learning, research support is merely a cross-subsidy and should eventually be cut out by the growth of the internet. But, to the extent that paying to participate in higher ed is mostly about associating with high status professors, supporting faculty research is not a cross-subsidy and should remain despite the internet. Time may tell which factor is more important.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Two Ringing Bullshit Meters
1) Vaughan Bell chides certain psychologists for erroneously claiming that cortisol rises during crying can be damaging to the brain:
2) Andrew Sullivan elucidates his qualms about US supreme court nominee Elena Kagan:
One question is whether these people are deliberately attempting to fool others or are merely deluding themselves. In the case of the cortisol experts, sure they might be telling only their side of the story, but might not they also merely be the victims of confirmation bias? In the case of Kagan, might not she have convinced herself that she merely didn't hold any stances on controversial opinions?
In achieving one's own ends through nefarious means, there is a spectrum between the extremes of total self-delusion and total intentional fooling. Fall closer to the self-delusion side, and you'll seem stupider. Fall closer to the deliberately fooling others side of the spectrum, and you'll seem eviler. Ah, the quandaries and trade-offs of careerism.
I have a bullshit switch. It gets triggered when I hear certain phrases. 'Neuroplasticity' is one, 'hemisphere' is another and 'raises dopamine' is a regular button pusher. That's not to say people can't use these phrases while talking perfect sense, but I find it useful that they put me on my guard. Most recently, I've found the phrase 'raises cortisol' to be a useful way of alerting me to the fact that the subsequent words may be a few data points short of a bar graph - potentially some poorly understood drivel....
These claims both reflect one-dimensional thinking about how the brain works. Yes, stress tends to raise cortisol levels and there is good evidence to suggest that chronically high levels of stress and cortisol may be detrimental to brain, but this conclusion is typically drawn from people who have been through some fairly serious shit, wars, deprivation, trauma, or have specific hormone problems. There is remarkably little research on cortisol, everyday stresses in young children and none to suggest normal variation damages the brain in any way.
2) Andrew Sullivan elucidates his qualms about US supreme court nominee Elena Kagan:
Her life, so far as one can tell, is her career, and her career has been built by avoiding any tough or difficult political or moral positions, eschewing any rigorous intellectual debate in which she takes a clear stand one way or the other, pleasing every single authority figure she has encountered, and reveling in the approval of the First Class Car Acela Corridor elite....
Kagan strikes me as the Democratic elite's elitist: free of any conviction that is not caged in a web of Clintonian caution, punctiliously diligent in every aspect of her career, motivated by a desire never to offend those with power, and rewarded in turn by the protection and praise of these elites. Here is Walter Dellinger's almost comically balanced, well-polished, piece of bullshit.... David Brooks calls this generational elite pattern - which is far broader and wider than Kagan's lone example - "disturbing." I find it depressing.
One question is whether these people are deliberately attempting to fool others or are merely deluding themselves. In the case of the cortisol experts, sure they might be telling only their side of the story, but might not they also merely be the victims of confirmation bias? In the case of Kagan, might not she have convinced herself that she merely didn't hold any stances on controversial opinions?
In achieving one's own ends through nefarious means, there is a spectrum between the extremes of total self-delusion and total intentional fooling. Fall closer to the self-delusion side, and you'll seem stupider. Fall closer to the deliberately fooling others side of the spectrum, and you'll seem eviler. Ah, the quandaries and trade-offs of careerism.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Alcohol And Vocab Aptitude
Vocabulary, which seems to be a pretty good proxy for general intelligence, shows a positive and dose-dependent correlation with being an alcohol drinker, among Americans:
Woah. Razib first found this relationship (here; HT R Wiblin) and we both used UC Berkeley's awesome SDA to do the crunching. The error bars are 95% confidence intervals, and their non-overlap between groups means most of these differences are very unlikely (< 5%) to be due to random chance. The general trend holds for all kinds of different age groups (18-30, 30-50, 50-60, 60-70, 70-100, etc.).
Allow me a couple stabs in the dark as to the relationship here:
1) Alcohol reduces anxiety (see here) and, as Steven Pinker has speculated, "people with higher intelligence are better at overcoming their anxious temperament and more likely to see their own worry list as a problem to be solved, minimizing unnecessary anxiety while still being anxious enough to get things done.” So, people with higher intelligence may be more likely to be self-medicating their anxiety with alcohol.
2) People with higher vocabs are more likely to be more highly educated, and thus been introduced to the drinking culture that is commonplace in institutes of higher ed. It may be a part of the culture there because it is more impressive (see bottom here) to be able to succeed in school and party on the weekends. And most people seek to maximize their relative impressiveness.
Allow me a couple stabs in the dark as to the relationship here:
1) Alcohol reduces anxiety (see here) and, as Steven Pinker has speculated, "people with higher intelligence are better at overcoming their anxious temperament and more likely to see their own worry list as a problem to be solved, minimizing unnecessary anxiety while still being anxious enough to get things done.” So, people with higher intelligence may be more likely to be self-medicating their anxiety with alcohol.
2) People with higher vocabs are more likely to be more highly educated, and thus been introduced to the drinking culture that is commonplace in institutes of higher ed. It may be a part of the culture there because it is more impressive (see bottom here) to be able to succeed in school and party on the weekends. And most people seek to maximize their relative impressiveness.
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