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  Latest Responses

  • Jen: I like the Han Solo quote. Stole it for my Facebook page. :)...
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There’s a school of thought that the more you pay for something, the more you will think of it, even if it is the exact same item that you could have purchased more economically. This human trait is probably the underpinning of high fashion, art, music, food, and numerous other ‘branded’ goods. It’s irrational, but almost all of us are susceptible to this effect, at least in some realm of our lives.

Here’s a link to an article on Science Blogs where wine experts gave different opinions when served the same wines dressed up in different ways.

Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was “agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded,” while the vin du table was “weak, short, light, flat and faulty”. Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

What do you have an irrational preference for?

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Economists and stock analysts are always trying to place monetary values on abstract behaviours and ideals but here’s a great commentary about what you pay for when you go to Starbucks, or to one of its hipster overwhelmed competitors.

…you are paying a vast premium for the heating of your milk — but not the milk itself. The main ingredient is a double shot of espresso, and that costs $1.85. My Starbucks doesn’t charge for a single pump of vanilla, so that’s free. And at the sugar-and-napkins counter, you can pour all the milk into your cup that you like. So that’s free, too.

The $1.37 premium is therefore just for the labor of steaming the milk, which takes about 20 seconds.

He makes the point that we do it for the shared experience, the imaginary sense of community. We’re all still savages around the campfire, trying to reinforce the survival bonds to our tribe. Here’s the link so you can read it in the author’s own words.

MSN Money - Starbucks’ genius blends community, caffeine

I raise my paper cup to you!

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Wired has an interview with Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain about the experiences of different people in response to music. He has some amazing stories.

Let me play something for you. This is Woody Geist, who I describe in my new book. He’s had Alzheimer’s for 40 years, and is profoundly disabled in almost every way, but is a member of an a cappella group called the Grunyons. After I’d written about him, he sang professionally again, and it was beautiful, though people were afraid he’d be lost before the performance. Ten seconds afterwards, he had no memory of it.

He’s a bit of an advocate for music and art, for the flowering of creativity that seems to get lost in a consumerist, corporate world. Here’s his take on smelling the roses:

All of us are apt to get a little desiccated if we don’t make a point of holding on to the delights of art and music and landscape. It’s very easy to become preoccupied with theorizing and the activities of daily living and stop noticing the beauties of the world.

What’s locked deep in your brain beyond your conscious control?

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My friend Kelly  sends a link to an article making the claim that the better your life is, the more upset you get when something goes wrong.

Put another way, a hidden price of being happier on average is that you put your short-term contentment at risk, because being happy raises your expectations about being happy. When good things happen, they don’t count for much because they are what you expect. When bad things happen, you temporarily feel terrible, because you’ve gotten used to being happy.

We’re all familiar with the idea of the spoiled little rich kid. We’re more resistant to the idea that there is a ungrateful brat inside all of us. Maybe we should schedule a good spanking when things go our way, just to keep things in perspective. Of course, for some of you, that would make you even happier!

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I’m an engineering type, and I used to work in a corporation. In the spirit of tearing us away from our computers and making us think about people instead of inanimate materials we once attended a training session on shipping, filled with terms like free-on-board, freight-forwarding, and other fascinating jargon from another walk of life.

At one point we were told about an employee who stacked pallets with various boxes. Being engineers, we suggested that a computer program might be able to derive the optimal stacking patterns on any given day. The presenter said that they’d tried that, but that the machine didn’t really do so much better to make things worthwhile. With hindsight, someone would have had to measure the boxes and put all the dimensions into the computer.

Just walking and breathing and picking our noses, we make incredibly complex calculations without conscious effort. We have a computer in our skulls that is much more effective than we often realize.

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Ever made a spur of the moment that you later regretted? Wonder why the people around you do such boneheaded things? If you’ve ever been in love, or scared, or hungry, you’ll recognize youself in the informatively headlined Hot and Cold Emotions Make Us Poor Judges by Shankar Vedantam in The Washington Post.

People find it very difficult to imagine how they themselves would behave when strong emotions are involved.

Studies have found that, for some reason, an enormous mental gulf separates “cold” emotional states from “hot” emotional states. When we are not hungry or thirsty or sexually aroused, we find it difficult to understand what effects those factors can have on our behavior. Similarly, when we are excited or angry, it is difficult to think about the consequences of our behavior — outcomes that are glaringly obvious when we are in a cold emotional state.

This sound like a big clue to the origins of our stupid ideas. Time to take up yoga, or meditation, or anger management.

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This morning on TV, some news anchor lizard was moaning about the “growing problem” of hazing in schools. And it very well might be a growing problem, but you wouldn’t know it if you analyzed the reports. Here’s the pattern:

1. Complain about the growing problem
2. Cite one or two isolated, but egregious, examples
3. Quote a talking head
4. Demand that something be done about the “epidemic”.
5. Rinse and repeat with another random scare when everyone gets bored

Well I’d like to demand that something be done about pompous, parasitic media lizards bombarding the impressionable with balderdash. In fact, I think those baboons should be HAZED!

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As a child I’d hear the expression ‘Far East’. To me that was just over a mile away, over the horizon where the sun rose. It was definitely east, and far away from me. That’s at least as logical as many of the things we believe as adults.

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Ever since Oprah recommended The Secret, I’ve been reading complaints. I have no intention of reading the book. Ever since an afternoon in Idaho, watching the remarkable Ms Winfrey urge me to “Get in touch with my spirit”, I’ve been leery of her ability to manipulate her target audience. Instead, I’ll point you at a review by someone with the fortitude to read the book.

The Secret is a motivational book. It can inspire you to set goals, and to visualize the life you’d like to lead. A lot of its techniques are time-tested psychological tricks to help keep you motivated. I like this.

The book loses me, though, when it claims that the Law of Attraction is a “universal law” such as the law of gravity. The Secret attempts to combine Christianity (Jesus followed the Law of Attraction, don’t you know?), quantum physics, and more in an effort to convince readers that our minds are some sort of universal force governed by frequencies and wavelengths and so on. This is bullshit of the highest order, and it makes me angry. To quote Han Solo, “There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.”

Despite the harsh words, positive thinking isn’t dissed. My take is that if you believe in your goals, then you’ll be more open to the opportunities for success.

Think stupid thoughts: entertain the world.

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We’re not the only ones obsessed with stupid ideas. If you’re interested in thinking for yourself try reading 5 Ways to Develop Independent Thought, a guest post by Tom O’Leary at Pick The Brain.

Logically, when we think like everyone else is thinking, the best we can expect is to achieve what they’re already achieving. If our aim is to over-achieve, we need to avoid the same banal influences and think impossibly. We need to become independent from conventional wisdom.

More often than not, conventional wisdom is right, or at least a good idea. Millennia of philosophy and religion has generated some great insight into life. But often is not the same as always, and the more conformist the society in which you live, the more difference a good idea can make. And unfortunately, you can’t always tell the difference between a good idea and a stinker. Take a chance!

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