Thinking About Other People's Thoughts

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Summary
The right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) appears to be dedicated to thinking about other people's thoughts. You can alter people's judgments of others by interfering with the rTPJ's activity.

(Video: TED)

Correction
In the video, Rebecca Saxe mistakenly attributed the following quote to Alan Greenspan when it was actually said by Robert McCloskey:

I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.

Commentary
Moral thinking is critical in many legal systems. In fact, the insanity defense depends on demonstrating that the defendant is incapable of moral thinking (temporarily or permanently). I imagine this research has far-reaching consequences.

Meta
Suppose you know that someone has a deficient rTPJ; how does that alter your perception of their judgments?

Crowdsourcing & Crowd Wisdom

Definition
Crowdsourcing is a combination of the words "crowd" and "outsourcing." It refers to work done by volunteers (usually online) that is traditionally outsourced.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
Crowdsourcing is a popular concept that harnesses the wisdom of crowds to solve a problem. This communal wisdom is especially popular online where we vote, rate, and assess content. James Surowiecki published a book called The Wisdom of Crowds on this subject (I haven't read it).

Many famous demonstrations involve a large audience guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar and having the guesses averaged. There have been interesting discussions about how it works, how it fails, and how it could have saved us from the financial crisis.

Meta
The answer to the previous meta is crowds.

See Also

• Amazon Mechanical Turk (Wikipedia) for an archetypal example.
• Netflix Prize for another example.
• Crowdsourcing - Controversy on Wikipedia for a brief discussion of possible issues.

Vending Machines for Crows

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Summary
Josh Klein has a fascinating discussion about crows, their intelligence, and potentials for mutually-beneficial (between humans and crows) scenarios.
Enjoy.

(Video: TED)

Meta 
So we've harnessed the power of children playing and the intelligence of crows; what's next?

Playgrounds that Generate Electricity

Summary
Empower Playgrounds has installed a carousel for children that generates electricity in Ghana.

(Photo: hlusta on Flickr)

Commentary
In 2008, the children at the Golden Sunbeam Montessori School in Ghana received a most welcome gift: a merry-go-round. But unlike other carousels, this one generates electricity that is used in LED lamps. A zip-line that generates electricity is set to go into operation soon.

Meta
What other naturally fun forces could be harnessed (but not enslaved)?

See Also

• BYU and Empower Playgrounds install electricity-generating merry-go-round in Ghana.
  
• Could it become a workwheel? for a statement of how students are not forced to play on the playground.
• Empower Playgrounds on Wikipedia.
  

Chiropractic Destroyed from Within

Summary
Chiropractors make numerous claims about their ability to treat symptoms by a method called chiropractic subluxation (not to be confused with medical subluxation with is visible in x-rays). A group of chiropractors has shown that the work of chiropractors provides no benefit over physical therapy.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
Like homeopathic remedies (a rant for another day), many have suggested that sublaxation is ineffective. Simon Singh was sued for libel for writing an article highlighting the ineffectiveness of chiropractors (the UK has "interesting" libel laws).

However, Harriet Hall, of the Science-Based Medicine blog, suggests that the "death knell" of chiropractic may have been rung. It is one thing for members of a profession to be introspective; it is another for them systematically refute the entire basis of their own profession. In the study they published, the chiropractors used a standard method for establishing causation known as Hill's Criteria. The criteria show the possibility of a causal relationship; not that it definitely exists. Yet, subluxation fails to satisfy any of the criteria. Sounds pretty bad for a field that's existed for 114 years.

Meta
What other professions should apply similar systematic rigor to their claims?

See Also

• The Dilute Homeopathy

Fear of Spiders and Snakes

Summary
Fear is an important part of how we make decisions. Everything from selecting car seats for our children to our policy decisions.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
Fear of snakes and spiders is relatively common (among humans). And thanks to shows like Fear Factor, we can all watch others try to overcome these primal fears from the comfort of our homes.

However, there is reason to believe that these fears are not strictly rooted in genetics (nature), but are learned (nurture). Yet, a recent study does show the role that nature might play, particularly for females, in facilitating fearful associations for certain things such as spiders and snakes.

In Does women's greater fear of snakes and spiders originate in infancy? David Rakison extends results from previous studies (done on adults) on the rapid association between fear and snakes and spiders (as opposed to mushrooms and flowers) to infants only 11 months old. The results show that infant girls learn the association between fearful facial expressions and fearful stimuli (snake, spider) more quickly than do boys. There was no similar distinction between non-fearful stimuli (mushroom, flower). The resulting hypothesis, then, is that certain types of fears are the products of evolutionary psychology.

Meta
What steps have you taken to mitigate a fear you've had? Were you successful?

Punctuation Marks

Summary
Punctuation marks help us understand written text. Incorrectly used punctuation, however, can result in serious consequences or humor.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
I remember once getting a lesson on the importance of commas:

Russian Tsars would issue verdicts by placing a single comma in pre-written papers that said "Death forbidden pardon."

Guilty: "Death, forbidden pardon."
Not-guilty: "Death forbidden, pardon."

And so, I was told, a single comma could save your life. There has been a resurgence in the life-saving virtue of the comma. Jest aside, a few years ago Canada saw a $2 million dollar comma dispute.

Occasionally, someone tries to invent a new punctuation mark, but they are rarely successful. A notable exception was the invention of the emoticon that now pervade informal written communication (of the typed, but not handwritten, variety). Emoticons were first proposed by Scott Fahlman on September 19th, 1982. The number and types of emoticons has grown to the point where they may be considered a form of micro-ASCII art.

Recently, there was an attempt to re-purpose the interrobang to represent a unit of levels of abstraction based on the very large, but mostly irrelevant, Cuil search engine.

Fun fact: The Metaist logo uses the because and therefore punctuation symbols from logic and math.

Meta
When have punctuation marks helped or harmed you?

See Also

• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
• David Malki ! and his use of an exclamation point as an honorific.
• How to Use an Apostrophe for illustrated directions on the use of apostrophes.
• Wikipedia article on Punctuation Marks.
  (There are so many of which I've never heard!)

Steampunk

Definition
Steampunk is a genre of science fiction that imagines what the world would be like if Victorian steam-powered technology persisted into the modern era. It also refers to a visual style commonly associated with the late 18th to early 19th century as applied in a modern context.

"Will you give me a hint if I tell you the street I grew up on?"
(Image & Quote: Wondermark)

Commentary
While I've never read any of the zombie-enhanced literature, I do appreciate the resurgence of interest in 19th-century, albeit with a darker twist.

At its core, steampunk represents a culture of anachronism that is part of the cyberpunk speculative fiction genre. I should note that this is similar to, but distinct from, the activities endorsed by the Society for Creative Anachronism which targets pre-17th century Europe.

See Also

• Wondermark, an interesting comic that splices Victorian-era comics to discuss modern issues.
• Steampunk Falt-panel LCD for examples of the lengths to which people go to encase modern technology in brass.
• Information about the actual Victorian era (the one that really happened).

Gambling & Insurance Policies

Summary
Taking risks is part of everyday life. For the most part, people are good at dealing with risks with which they are familiar. Certain types of risks, however, when "intuitively" processed, lead to suboptimal behaviors.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
Schneier writes about risk a lot: our intuitions about, overreactions to, and essential need for risk. The most common failures of our risk intuition stem from cognitive biases related to rare, unknown, or voluntary risks.

In general, we tend to think that people are risk averse. But sometimes people seem to seek out risks-- such as playing the lottery. Why? A possible explanation is the framing effect. Consider the following case. You can have one of the following applied to your order:

• A $5 discount, or
• A $5 fee waived.

Which did you choose? The first sounds like you're getting a good deal; the second sounds meh. But they result in the same price!

Now imagine there's probability thrown in for good measure. Which of the following sounds like a better insurance sales pitch:

• There's a pretty good chance you won't loose anything.
• There's a small chance you'll loose a lot.

Now compare that with a lottery sales pitch:

• There's a pretty good chance you won't win anything.
• There's a small chance you'll win a lot.

In the first case (insurance), avoiding the loss sounds better. In the second case (lottery), the large gains seem attractive. In each case, the way the situation is framed changes which options seems better.

More on this later.

Rules, Discretion, Appeals & Audit

Summary
Many decisions in life require a delicate balance of trade-offs in order to get the best results. Recent examples highlight the need to restore such balance to everyday policies especially for so-called "Zero-Tolerance" policies.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
Schneier wrote a nice article on zero-tolerance policies which he refers to as "zero-discretion" policies. He brings up the recent story of the cub scout who brought a camping utensil to school as an example of an unbalanced policy gone awry.

Zero-discretion policies stem from the need to avoid inappropriate discrimination, that is to be "fair". To that end, no discrimination-- no matter how warranted-- must be allowed. You know you're dealing with a zero-discretion policy when the enforcer of the policy agrees with you, but "those are the rules, I can't do anything about it."

Schneier recommends a four-pronged solution:

1. Rules - Start with the rules & procedures.
2. Discretion - Throw in a dash of discretion to taste.
3. Appleals - Add plenty of opportunities for people to appeal.
4. Audit - Stir occasionally to ensure smooth consistency.

In short, provide some room for interpretation (discretion), and then make sure that that room doesn't get abused (appeals & audit).

Meta
What are some examples of situations where you've encountered "zero-tolerance" policies?

Boredom & Body Language

Summary
Figuring out if you're boring someone is a non-trivial task for some people. This is especially true for people who have a hard time reading social cues, such as people with autism.

(Image: Wikimedia)

Related

• PsychologyToday has a nice writeup about eight cues that indicate you're boring someone.
• Wired has an article about a robot that read body language.
• There's also The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara and Allen Pease which is more like a reference guide.
• Slashdot brings us news of a company that hires people with autism to test software. (I remember reading about a similar company, but cannot find the reference right now.) The claim is that they are good at predictable, repetitive tasks and are very attentive to details.

Meta
What do you do when you realize you're boring someone?

Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation

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Summary
Motivation is an important part of our lives. Managers seek motivated employees, teaches search for ways to motivate their students, and investigators try to piece together people's motives. Dan Pink discusses the "mismatch between what science knows and what business does."

(Video: TED)

Commentary
The important distinction in motivation is whether the motivator is intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic motivators are ones that you feel you can control, such as your level of effort, whereas extrinsic motivators are outside of your control: rewards, punishments, etc.

Pink quotes from a 2005 commissioned by the Federal Reserve of Boston called "Large Stakes and Big Mistakes". Some random excerpts (emphasis added):

• "With some important exceptions, we observed that high reward levels can have detrimental effects on performance" (abstract).
  
  
• "[O]ne mechanism via which increased motivation can backfire is when it leads to greater self-consciousness" (p. 3).
  
  
• "[T]he performance of participants was always lowest in the high-payment condition when compared with the low- and mid-payment conditions together..." (p. 13).
  
  
• "Many existing institutions provide very large incentives for exactly the types of tasks we used here – those that require creativity, problem solving, and concentration. Our results challenge the assumption that increases in motivation necessarily lead to improvements in performance" (p. 19).
  
  
• "[W]e were surprised by the robustness of the effect..." (p. 19).

Meta
How do you cater to people's intrinsic motivations?

See Also

• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• Psychological Barriers

Review: Economics in One Lesson

(Photo: Amazon)

Review
Economics in One Lesson (PDF version) is an excellent primer to economic thought. If I didn't know that it was published in 1940's, I could easily have assumed that it was a pamphlet discussing the modern financial, automotive, music, or newspaper industries.

The main purpose of the book is expose common economic fallacies that "are at last so prevalent that they have almost become a new orthodoxy" (Hazlitt vii). This is accomplished through two dozen "lessons" that derive from a single lesson summed up by Hazlitt as the essence of economics:

From this aspect, therefore, the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
(emphasis his; Hazlitt 5)

The Broken Window
The first of the "applied" lessons is based on the parable of the broken window as explained by Frédéric Bastiat.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

What follows is my brief paraphrase of the parable. Imagine a hoodlum throws a brick through a baker's window. The baker runs out of his shop and starts chasing after the rock-thrower, but is unsuccessful. As the baker walks back to his shop, a small crowd of people gather around the his window-less shop. After the customary outrage, someone points out a bright side: some glass-maker just got $200 worth of business. Moreover, the glass-maker can use those $200 to spend on other merchants who, in turn, can spend money on yet other merchants; the flow of money benefits all. The logical conclusion, then, is that the hoodlum should continue to break people's windows for the benefit of society.

If the conclusion sounds strange it is only because the crowd failed to consider the larger picture. While it is true that some glass-maker will receive $200 worth of business, it is also the case that the baker, who started the day with $200 and a window, is now left with only a window. That is, the net worth of society went down by the value of a window; that other windows can be manufactured is irrelevant because had the hooligan not broken the window, the baker would not need a new window.

While it may seem obvious that destruction leads to reduced net-worth, there are many ways of obscuring the destruction to make it more palatable to the masses, and Hazlitt covers many such fallacies in eminently accessibly prose.

The reader is urged to read at least the first two chapters of the book because many future posts will depend on understanding the "Fundamental Lesson of Economics" and it's applications.

Arrow's Impossibility Theorm

I seem to be posting a lot about paradoxes recently. I'll probably take a little break from paradoxes after this one.

Summary
In 1951, Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that it is not possible to have a "fair" voting system that satisfied the following three criteria (imagine the group is voting on which fruit to eat: apples or pears):

1. If every voter prefers apples to pears, then the group prefers apples to pears. (Sound familiar? It's called Pareto efficiency.)
2. If every voter prefers apples to pears, then even if bananas are added to the set of options, the group will still prefer apples to pears.
3. There is no dictator.

This is known as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
The actual details of the theorem are interesting, and I refer you to Wikipedia (for those who are interested). There are situations, however where item 2 (where we added bananas) doesn't hold: imagine the game rocks-paper-scissors. In such a case, adding an alternative transforms the straightforward choice into a cyclic choice. I sometimes see this scenario when people compare different aspects of multiple candidates' platforms (or when they're choosing which car / laptop / soap / pants to purchase).

Sometimes, the trade-offs are hard; but sometimes they're impossible.

[Resolved] Blogger Issue: Comments Form

This post describes an issue with Blogger software that has been resolved.

Several readers have identified issues with the comment form. In one case, arrow keys (or CTRL combinations), and in the other, the form was missing altogether. I have replicated the first error (in Firefox) and the second (in Chrome), but after restarting the browsers, both errors appear to have been fixed.

If you are having issues with commenting, please email metaist.blog@gmail.com with a brief description of the problem and how it can be reproduced.

Zeno's Paradox

Summary
Zeno's Paradox involves a race between a tortoise and Achilles that suggests that motion is an illusion.

This is not a picture of Zeno of Elea.
(Photo: Wikimedia)

Commentary
I remember when I was first introduced to this paradox in 8th grade; it was utterly puzzling (until I heard a solution). A simplified version goes something like this:

Achilles and the tortoise are having a 1000 paces race, but the tortoise has a head start of 800 paces (Achilles is much faster than the tortoise). As the tortoise inches forward, Achilles makes a plan.

First, he'll get to the halfway point (let's call it Bob) between himself and the tortoise. Of course, to get to Bob, Achilles realizes, he has to get to the halfway point between himself and Bob (let's call it Jane). And before he can consider anything else, he must first get to the halfway point between himself and Jane (called Sam). [...]

As Achilles continues to think through his plan, he realizes he can never even catch up to the tortoise, let alone win the race.

When viewed abstractly, the problem seems to show that nothing can ever pass anything else-- that is the motion is an illusion. Until the early 20th century, there wasn't really a way to handle this paradox appropriately. However, with the advent of infinite series, we can say that the reason Achilles does pass the tortoise is because if you add up all the little pieces (1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 ...) you get 1 (which represents the total distance between Achilles and the tortoise).

Fun fact: Zeno's paradoxes are considered some of the earliest examples of reductio ad absurdum, also known as proof by contradiction.

Reader Question: What is Google Wave?

This post is a response to a reader question. Please email your questions to metaist.blog@gmail.com. Not all questions will be answered.

Question
An anonymous reader asks: What is Google Wave and why would I want to use it?

Not this kind of wave, but close.
(Photo: Wikimedia)

Summary
Google Wave is a new technology that is supposed to combine three existing technologies:

1. Email
2. Instant Messaging (IM), and
3. Wikis.

Email
Most of us are familiar with email. Briefly, it's static distributed content. In other words, one person can send out some information to a bunch of other people.

Instant Messaging
Instant messaging, however, is dynamic-- you interact with another person (or multiple people) at once.

Wikis
Wikis are collaboratively editable documents. The most famous example is Wikipedia, but there are others (including private wikis such as those found within corporations). Wikis are basically "dynamic content". So now, the content itself can change over time, but everyone can see previous version of the content if they choose.

Wave
Google's conception of a Wave, therefore, is a wiki where you see the changes in real-time (sort of like Google Documents). Here's how it works:

1. You create a new wave and add some collaborators.
2. The new wave appears in the collaborators "inbox".
3. Any collaborator (including you, the creator) can start to edit the wave.
4. Anyone looking at the wave (i.e. one of the collaborators) can see who's editing (and where on the page they're editing) in real time.
5. The wave can have robot collaborators who perform menial tasks (like "replace all the YouTube links with YouTube videos").
6. The wave can also have "gadgets" that collaborators interact with (such as a "survey gadget" that surveys people).
7. At any time, you can scroll back to see previous states of the wave all the way back to its creation.

Uses
So where would you use a wave? The answer largely depends on how you handle collaboration. Nature has a write-up about how scientists could use waves to collaborate and use robot collaborators to comb through papers and cross-reference, for example, gene names in databases. More mundane uses might include organizing a camping trip, but you're really only limited by your imagination.

Meta
Have you used Google Wave? Did you find it useful? What did you like / dislike?

Feedback Friday: December 2009

Summary
The Metaist has been around for almost a month now and, contrary to my welcome notice, posting has been somewhat regular (except this past week; sorry about that).

This past month I was pleasantly surprised to find that about twelve of you read this blog somewhat regularly. I've gotten a bunch of feedback that this blog is "very intense" and doesn't cover subjects such as what I "ate for breakfast this morning". Such reactions are understandable since I typically don't discuss what I had for breakfast on this blog.

I typically don't discuss what I had for breakfast.
(Photo: Wikimedia)

Feedback
Yet, I would like to make The Metaist interesting to a (somewhat) wide audience. Technical subjects don't usually lend themselves to wider audiences, but I'd like to try and present interesting explanations of those subjects. To that end, I'd like to know what sorts of things you folks find interesting.

By participating now, you have a chance to help shape the direction of this quirky little blog. While I don't expect it to ever become extremely popular (but I don't rule it out either), the ideas you share here will get exposure to a small, but dedicated, audience-- something that we should leverage. Would anyone like to guest post? About what would you write? What do you get from reading this blog?

Please submit your ideas in the comments below.
Thanks.

Dan Bull Sings Open Letters

Summary
Dan Bull, a musician, has written an interesting open letter to Lord Mandelson on the subject of disconnecting people from the Internet on the basis of alleged copyright violations. Below that, I include his previous open letter to Lilly Allen on a similar subject.
Enjoy.

(Video: YouTube)

(Video: YouTube)