/ɪˈməʊʃ(ə)n/ - Tips for Humans

Emotions, man. It seems like my entire social circle is infested with a bunch of them recently. I predict things can only get worse as Valentine's Day comes around. The unfortunate things is that emotions don't actually have to be an annoyance.

Typical Male Response to Emotions (observed): I seem to feel sad (or happy, etc) about X, but this does not make sense based on my models. How frustrating, I want it to go away. I will attack this emotion with logic until I do not feel it anymore.


Typical Female Response to Emotions (observed): I have an emotion - it must mean something important!


*Requisite disclaimer: sample sizes in both cases are small and may not reflect the general population. I recognize that both (any) genders can fall into both traps.

Can't we take a more balanced approach? Emotions are really cool things if handled responsibly. Why can't we think of them as extra energy to be understood and directed. If we understand where an emotion comes from, we can either

1. Know how to change them by changing the causes/stimuli
2. Use them!
1. As that extra bit of activation energy needed to cause to act for the better. 
2. To sustain ourselves through tough situations.

There's nothing wrong with letting emotions help drive you, if you know where they're going and why. No need to be afraid to feel - just remember to challenge and understand!

Brenda and Eddie were still going steady...

This post inspired was inspired by Billy Joel's Ballad of Brenda and Eddie and my general series of realizations that life is more often gray than black or white.

Many relationships struggle when conditions change. Suddenly there's less money, more money, less time, more time, more to worry about, less to worry about ... if the relationship can't adapt to new circumstances, it's no fun for anyone involved.

For a relationship to be successful, does it need to be able to survive any circumstance?

The obvious answer (to me, at least) has always been yes - "In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health." I took this point of view so seriously at one point that I would actually create conditions in my relationships that would 'stress test' them. My thought was that if the relationship wouldn't last, I wanted to know as soon as possible.

But does that actually make sense? Or at the very least, can it be taken too far? For instance, if you are 99% confident of a steady income, do you need an s.o. who can live on a tight budget? If you both have jobs you love in the same city, does it matter if you can handle long distance? If you're ambivalent about having pets, does it matter if your s.o. hates cats?

Furthermore, you might sacrifice something by demanding that the relationship can span all conditions. Which is more valuable: a relationship that is great under all conditions or one that is AWESOME as long as you don't stress it in one particular way?

So, I think in the end my answer is no. Yes, there are requirements, yes you need to be reasonably sure that your relationship will weather the storms of life. But there's also room to think about what makes sense.

----

That is a really cool perspective. It fits in really well with the general life advice of paying attention to what is, not what could be. (see http://xkcd.com/974/)

Sampling Bias

I have been thinking a fair amount recently about ultimate goals in life, and how they effect people. A common misconception in the modern capitalistic society is that everyone's goal is to make money. This comes from the common knowledge that the definition of "business" is to make money, and everyone at some point in time needs to do "business" in order to survive. However, money itself is a really abstract concept. Even more common knowledge is that money itself has no intrinsic value. There is nothing special about the piece of paper or the digital bank counter that increases anybody's utility. Money is only valuable because it can be translated into things that people actually care about. So: what then is the meaning of life, if not money? I posit that there are three common pursuits.

1) Pleasure. Fun. Having pretty things. Going on awesome trips. Listening to funny people. Sitting in comfortable chairs. Eating good food. etc etc

2) Status. Being thought smart or beautiful. Being differed to in a conversation. Having the best things. Winning.

3) Power. Being able to change aspects of the world from what is to what should be (as determined by the individual). Having the ability to make the world react to one's own thoughts.

I listed the more cynical words to describe these life-pursuits, but give me a chance to defend them.

A common goal in academia is supposed to be the pursuit of knowledge, but I see this as a subset of pleasure. Mathematicians see math as pretty, and they give their lives in pursuit of that prettiness. French history majors think that the stories of the past are awesome, so they collect stories of the past. Status can also be a very important part of the academic world. People who spend their childhood competing for the top might see it as a natural progression to simply continue at the game they are winning at. Occasionally power-driven people are guided into academia as well, because they want the freedom to pursue their vision, but they are more rare. Acadamia does not have enough money for most power-driven people.

Another commonly cited goal is the love of family. However, that is a blend of power and status. Power, because concentrating your abilities on a smaller, tightly bonded subset of the population is often more effective than trying to change the whole world. Status, because the parent that most often expresses the priority of the family is one of the two most high ranking people in that family.

I can't think of any other commonly cited goals, or any underlying goals.

Anyway, this analysis leads to some interesting results when you think about the kinds of options that people have available to them. Specifically, I would like to argue that women who have a full time job are self-selecting for more power and status than pleasure driven goals. If you think about the kinds of options that most women have available to them, you will see that there is one job that is very difficult for men to break into: being a housewife. While the profession of stay-at-home dad is growing, it is not nearly as common as the stay-at-home mom, and women are much more likely to be childless support spouses than men. It turns out that this kind of a job provides a very high pleasure to work ratio, at least at the higher family income levels. You are expected to share the same living accommodations and budget as a person with very little accountability when it comes to the amount of societal good you are producing. Just don't get divorced. Or have a good lawyer if you do.

However, there are also plenty of women who want the status and power associated with high status, high-power occupations. However, these women, by self-selection, are disproportionately uninterested in salary. Consequentially, when they negotiate, they are going to concentrate more on elements that will lend them more status and power in the work place, not more take-home salary. The book "Women don't ask" has a lot of evidence that women don't negotiate as hard as they might for higher pay. It then concludes that this is because women have lower self-esteem and are less aggressive. While I have fewer data points, I suspect that an element contributing to these numbers is that the women who are in a position of negotiation are also disproportionately disinterested in money. We have more pressing things to worry about.

-------------------------------------------
Kim's Comments

Interesting! I am glad you posted.

Do you have an idea for how to test your theory at the end against the "Women don't ask" theory? Do you expect that the women are ensuring that they receive more status or power within the companies in some measurable way? Couldn't it also be (and I think this is the general theory) that women are generally not in as good of a position to negotiate in the first place, whether that be due to indicators (eg women generally aren't as good at X, you hiring you for X is riskier), training/social expectations, or natural inclinations?

One point I think is slightly unclear (though clearer to me, because we had a conversation about this aspect once) is the value you're claiming comes from being a family person or being a housewife. Near the beginning of your post, you mention status/power associated with promoting the family, but later you say that housewives disproportionately favor pleasure. It might be worth clarifying this.

Moral Codes and the Teeth of an Afterlife

Most religions emphasize an afterlife where the Good will be rewarded and the Wicked punished. Their practitioners worry that atheists have no incentive to be good. Atheists retort that they are worried about people who are only good due to a perceived threat from an omnipotent being. They claim that they can have a moral code outside of religion which serves them just as well.

It has always seemed to me that the atheists had the high ground on this argument - we shouldn't need external motivation to do the right thing. But a piece of me nagged that, as nice as that would be, I didn't see why people would want to be good by default if there was no motivator in the form of God. I figured this was due to some deficiency in my moral compass. It turns out, I was just being rational.

Moral codes, religious or non, guide our interaction with other humans and with the world.

The most basic is the Golden Rule Everything else builds up from there. Why?

Because life is a repeated game! The most basic motivator for people being nice to each other today is the prospect of retaliation tomorrow. At the root of our Golden Rule is "what goes around comes around." And, as un-noble as that motivator sounds, it makes sense.

The religious objection to the atheists' moral codes then, can be boiled down into this key difference:

A religious moral code guides humans through what is (perceived as) an Infinite Repeated Game.

A non-religious moral code guides humans through what is (perceived to be) a Finite Repeated Game.

This means that, technically speaking, a cooperative strategy should unravel for an atheist.

The key difference here is the belief in an afterlife. In cases where the God involved has the potential to become angry or retributive (Christianity versus Hinduism), I would expect the strength of the moral code to drive behavior to further increase.

Despite this, the Games could have similar results if
-The time-span is long enough, and the players' time horizons short enough
-There is some other motivator that lasts past death - e.g. concern for one's legacy
-There is another basic motivator involved - e.g. kinship
I don't know that these would apply universally. They seem to me to make a nonreligious moral code workable for some but not all of the population.

I should also note that I am not claiming here that just because the religious moral code may drive more cooperative results it is therefore preferable. My intent is simply to point out that the consideration of heaven and hell is quite similar to extending a repeated game to infinity, fundamentally changing the game theory behind moral decisions. And it makes sense to at least question the enforceability of moral codes which are based on a Finite Repeated Game model of life.

Thoughts?

The Meaning of Life - Part 0 of a Series

I don't think there is one "Meaning of Life" or one "Right Way to Live Your Life".

But still... There is an order to life. It seems logical that there are a set of ways to live and choices to make that are more optimal than the rest. And for that, it's worth thinking about life and understanding the true import of your choices, their impact on your goals and happiness.

And so, I intend to figure out just what I think about life. I'm going to try to talk it out here.

I reserve the right to edit what I write if, as I go along, I realize that earlier bits don't make sense. Without further ado:

Scope: what will I explore?

1) What things do people commonly cite as sources of happiness and meaning? Why are they sources of happiness and meaning?
2) What are the underlying needs and desires people have?
3) The range of structures of life for people in the 21st century. Their benefits and drawbacks.
4) A review of several philosophers - comparison of their positions on leading a meaningful life. I am particularly interested in reading some Whitehead.
5) A comparison of different combinations of conditions - what will make me happy, what has meaning for me. What are a few feasible trajectories to aim for?

---------

I am extremely interested in reading this series of posts, and I think that your five questions are an extremely good approximation to the ultimate question, and it is certainly more useful than "what is the answer".

As far as the whole happiness thing is concerned, I think that a major element is just having a goal- any goal. Even if the real point is the path to that goal, a path with no point is nothing more than a labyrinth. But knowing that is not enough, because making up a false goal for yourself does not really work when you are the person that you are trying to fool. I think that the best way to go is to identify a goal- anything- that is worth pursuing, even if it seems hopeless. I kind of feel that way about the start-up that I have pitched to you and your "other". I feel kind of hopeless at this point about actually being able to accomplish it, but I am thoroughly convinced that it is worth accomplishing. It is that fact, that belief and conviction, that is making me a lot happier.

Anyway, this series looks totally fascinating, and I look forward to reading it.

"How to brainwash people into liking you and doing what you want"

So, I was talking to roommate #2 about books that we read for not-english-class. That is to say, books that are classics, that people keep referencing, but that we never read for school. However, in order to feel a part of the culture that surrounds us every day, we finally submitted to peer pressure and read the stupid books. Well, most of them are not stupid, which is why they are consistently referenced in popular culture. Among them: Catch-22, Catcher in the Rye, Crime and Punishment, Of Mice and Men, A Handmaid's Tale, How to make friends and influence people. It is the last one that is really catching my attention. You see, I had always associated that particular book with slimy marketers and wanna-be executives. However, it's predominance in society, and the fact that its declared topic IS, in fact, applicable to essentially every aspect of life, make me give it a shot. Well, a shot that I was originally not going to let anyone else know about for pure shame of actually exposing my brain to such filth, but a shot none-the-less. Speaking of which, I seem to remember someone promising me a reading list...

I have now read the first chapter, and I am convinced that this book is completely awesome, and that every college freshman should read it. Now, how to get them to do so? I suspect that a good number of them would have a similar aversion to what sounds like another useless self-help book telling people how to fix their lives in thirty seconds. Well, it was the original self-help book, and there is a reason the trend took off successfully. Anyway, that does not change the fact that I strongly suspect this book is not widely enough read. I therefore propose the following course of action. I will translate the book into something more entertaining to read the the flowery language it was originally written in. Correction: I will make a satirical companion (just in case I get in trouble for copyright later). I will call it "How to brainwash people into liking you and doing what you want". I will proceed to email this out to the freshmen in my dorm. I am not yet sure if I will email the everyone-else (including friends and alumni) list with it as well, or if I will try to get the school newspaper to syndicate it so that it goes beyond the dorm as well. I kind of like the idea of forcing people to get into contact with a frosh in order to get their hands on it. I also kind of like the idea of trying to get these emails to be a tradition, part of the yearly indoctrination of new frosh, which is unlikely to happen if it spreads too widely on its maiden voyage.

What do you think of this evil plan?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think it sounds like a great idea. I was told about that book just before some important interviews last year, and it was quite helpful. Hard to recommend to people though (at least around here) because of the aversion to self-help books, so a translation would be a really good idea.

Pieces of Home

Home is a comfortable place to be. I am feeling rather lazy right now, due to a weekend full of familiar streets, bright sunshine, and good friends.

I am planning to watch the final game of the World Cup tomorrow with more friends. I haven't watched any games yet (though I watched a play-by-play live-blog once) and am rather glad. On the outside, I can remain unattached and unmoved by the game, but if I started watching and rooting for a team, I would probably feel drawn to watch them for the rest of the tournament. I can say "it's just a game" and "why should your country's team win" on the outside, but trying to watch just one game of a tournament is probably similar to trying to watch just one episode of Lost. It's not that I don't have the time this summer, but I want to continue to have the option to spend it any way at all, untied to watching one team or one show. That said, I am looking forward to tomorrow. Chips, homemade salsa, beer, friends, entertainment. What else does one need?

Fitness, Michelle Obama would say. Which brings me to a related conversation I had with friends yesterday. Does the World Cup do anything to combat obesity and general lack-of-fitness in America? How can we leverage a love for inter-group (whether it be country, state, or other) competition into better health?

Some ideas:

Have country-wide games. Here's how it would work: in every country, every person has the opportunity to sign up for a chance to play on a national team. Countries get points for what percentage of their population signs up. Then, teams are randomly chosen. Given all the entrants of a certain age and gender, a team is picked for that contest (say 20-25 year old female soccer). Then, the countries' teams play and there are points for performance in the competition. This would encourage a constant state-of-readiness to play within the country.

Have several Junior Olympics. One for up to age 9, one for 9-12, one for older than that. This would give kids more role models and a more immediate goal to work toward if they thought it would be neat to be an Olympic athlete.

Make fun destinations (theme parks, movie theaters, etc.) which are only accessible via canoe (or other form of exercise). (It might be necessary to have alternate transportation available for those with verifiable physical disabilities). Make these into The Cool Place to hang out. No parents allowed in the movie theater, cheap, etc.

Make the ability to buy tickets to watch athletic contests dependent on scoring a certain number of points in community-level sporting competitions. Points awarded based on participation as well as skill so that you can work up to the necessary level even without natural aptitude or if you don't start out being very fit.

Your ideas?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


So, I have watched two world cup games. The US vrs Algeria (in which a very dramatic goal was scored very closely to the end) and the final. I won't comment so much on the final, because my emotional reaction to that was much more typical of my normal reaction to sports. That is to say there wasn't one. I tend to not-watch spectator sports in large part because I find them fantastically boring. I usually don't find any reason for sports to exist if not to play them. Watching a bunch of strangers play has never really struck a chord. However, I have come to some kind of understanding after watching the US v Algeria game and talking to one of the people in my apartment building whom I shall refer to as "sports guy".

I was persuaded out of my normal routine of ignoring everything to do with sports in order to watch US v Algeria by a guy from work who was trying to be social by inviting a couple of interns out to lunch, during which we would catch the last half of the game. He might have been motivated by the almost-legitimate method of watching a soccer game during the work day than by actually socializing with interns, but it still got me into the sports bar. We talked, we ate, we watched. I found myself genuinely wanting the United States to win. It would mean advancing, playing another game, having our guys be closer to the best in the world. When the Algerians came close to scoring a goal, I was genuinely scared. When we made a shot, I was genuinely excited. Throughout the game, there had been so many attempts that I had gotten used to essentially every shot being blocked by the goalie that when Landon Donovan kicked the ball in the direction of the goal, and it went in that direction, and continued going in that direction, and then went into the goal, I didn't realize the implications for a split second. It did not follow the pattern of the rest of the game, in which no goals were scored. But when it hit home, that the US had essentially won the game, I was thrilled. Take that Alergia! U. S. A! U. S. A! Yes, I used the pronoun "we" in that last sentence, even though I have essentially nothing to do with the success or failure of the US national soccer team. Still, I somehow felt a part of it. When someone tells you that your national pride is riding on something, and there is an entire bar that believes it, it is kind of hard not to get caught up in the moment.

Alright, we will now put that little experience in a little box and move onto another anecdote before I comment on your ideas for translating spectators into players. This anecdote is a case study in a genuine sports fanatic. He lives in the apartment next to my own and was outgoing in an effort to have a less lonely time in a new city in which he did not have any friends, a common situation for the interns living in this building. Anyway, in trying to direct conversation in a direction that would entertain us both, I found the prospect incredibly challenging. He seemed to be interested in nothing but spectator sports, notably the world cup, a topic which I have mentioned before I usually find fantastically boring. I found it next to impossible to direct him to a topic that was at all actually interesting. Instead, he tried to explain to me why anybody would ever enjoy sports. I understood the normal "camaraderie" and "national pride" arguments that have always seemed like extremely artificial arguments to me. You can find camaraderie and national pride in anything that a large group of people decide that they will find camaraderie and national pride in. But there is something about sports that seems to attract this attention, and therefore something about sports specifically that is particularly special. He revealed to me what this special attribute was: skill. He explained that he would never be as good at anything as these national soccer players are at soccer, and by watching his team play, he is a part of something excellent, something beautiful. Being a spectator is of course not as good as being a player, but then again, being "me" is not as good as being "Landon Donovan".

Now that we have these two insights, that it is in fact possible to feel a part of something that you have no right to feel a part of, and that it is particularly attractive to feel a part of something that is patently full of skill and beauty, I will comment on your plans to get spectators more active.

1) Country wide games with random selection. This will reduce the feeling of being a part of something world class. People will notice that the players are less good, and therefore be less interested.

2) Junior Olympics as an intermediate goal. I am not sure that having a Junior Olympics would really provide that much of an intermediate goal that is not already present in after-school sports. I think that a more realistic interpretation for this option would be to present role models for young people that feel alienated from the world of adults.

3) Fun Destinations only accessible through active methods. Sounds extremely awesome. Also extremely expensive. I am not really sure how to comment on this because it just seems really.... unrealistic. If they existed, I would definitely take advantage of them, though.

4) The cost of tickets including some exercise points. I think this is starting to get at the real goal. We want to include physical activity in whatever process that sports spectators participate in. I do think that it is a little formal, that for-profit sports leagues would never require this rule, and that if they did, they would lose a lot of spectators. I therefore propose the following:

A PR campaign. Are you familiar with the many many PR campaigns in which professional athletes go out and tell their fans that they are nothing without their support? That fans are an essential part of a team's success? While it might genuinely help with the psychological aspect of a player's performance, that campaign is really about making spectators feel like a part of the team that they are rooting for, and increasing revenue for the team and league. These PR campaigns consistently work, in large part because you are giving people the chance to eat good food, get drunk, have friends.... and win.... all at the same time and with very little work.

Now, they will probobly be less receptive to a course of action that involves sweat. However, if you are able to get some airtime during one of these commercial breaks during which you can somehow convey that by picking up a soccer ball and kicking it around with some friends, you are helping your team win, or increasing national pride, or SOMETHING Let them be proud of the fact that they are active. Note the requirements: it must be something that you succeed at by virtue of trying, and it must make them feel like they are actually helping their team.

What about a kickathon for soccer, in which a team asks its fans to kick as many balls-on-strings a possible in preparation for a particularly important game? It is a highly repetitive, easily quantifiable way of showing their support and increasing the mental strength of the players that will actually be in the game. Its quantifiability will also provide the statistics that sports fans seem to be so fond of. As long as the formerly couch-only spectators are able to make contact with the ball, they will be helping their team by contributing to that statistic. They will feel more like they have more in common with the world-class-ness of the people they are rooting for. AND they will be more active. If we could get programs like that to take off, if it were possible to watch a sport "well" by participating in a more easy aspect of playing it, then we might be able to motivate spectators to be more active.

-Lyla