Air pollution how-to list

Air pollution is so harmful and unpleasant. 

Technology can fix most of it, if you put your heart into it.

1. Get yourself the smartphone app/widget which can automatically show the pollution levels on your screen continuously. 

2. You can get a pm2.5 meter for as cheap as $15. Get yourself one. Seeing the current values is helpful, and motivating. Also helpful when looking for shops with good air quality. 

3. Get yourself an air purifier. Lots on the market. Get the bigger ones. Especially if your area is seriously polluted. If the pollution is bad, you need a bigger machine or 2 3 machines. 

4. If you are sensitive to noise, your solution might be to get a bigger machine/s and put it on low intensity. Because the max power modes are usually quite noisy. 

5. You can also install a HEPA filter inside your air conditioner. Most modern air conditioners can have it installed.

This will work without any extra machine. But will not be enough when the pollution is high. 

Even so, the little help might reduce the time you put the machine on max power

6. Seal your home. 

Once you put on the air purifier. Your home keeps getting polluted from every tiny crack and space in your windows, around the door etc. 

How to seal:
Last year, I used tape over most of my windows, sealing all sides openings and corners. This fast trick reduced incoming dirty air massively, and reduced the need for using the purifiers. 

I gave up on some of my windows' ability to open for the pollution season. 

For doors, you can get a sealing tape, some forms of which will block much of the air entry around the door. But I think that getting a new door for this might be better. 

Amazon search example for door seal tape

Better still, you might want to renovate/change your windows and doors to get them to be hermetically sealed. You will need to make sure to get the proper windows maker. Not all of them will understand the concept perfectly, and not all are able to source the appropriate materials / execute it perfectly. Be mindful on this. 

7. Car HEPA filtering. 

Newer cars have hepa filtering, either by default, or can have it fitted inside their air-condition system quite easily. 

There are also small mobile air filters for cars which you can simply put in your car and connect to the car electricity.

8. use coffee shops and restaurants that have air purifiers. There are also workspaces that have air purifiers. 

Make sure to actually check that the air there is clean with the pollution meter. Many shops put some machines in, but the air stays polluter, too few/weak machines. Machines on low power, and so on. 

9. Face Masks. N95 masks protect you from most of the pollution if worn tightly and properly. its not too comfortable. But you can get used to it. And its worth the pain. 

try various types to find the best fit to your face and comfort. worth the effort

10. Xiaomi warning. And solution

Xiaomi air purifiers are a scam. The machines are good. But they are programmed to always work on low power. You cannot make it work on high power. It will automatically change to "automatic mode" which in fact means silent mode, unless you are in the middle of a forest fire. 

You need to hack the machines to get max power working. 

you install their "home" app on your phone, connect the purifier to the app, then create 48 automation macros in the app so that every 30 minutes on the clock it will force the evil machine to go to "favourite" power. 

Self employment's unique type of effort

 Let's say that a year of working as a cashier is easier than one day of being self-employed. 

Not the type of habituated self-employment. This is not always difficult. 

But in many cases, there is a special type of difficulty that is unique to being self-employed. And it is massive. 

Moving things is harder than working. 

A categorically different type of effort. 

Working as a cashier is enormously easy on the mental pushing side. 

You even do not need to decide to shave or put on makeup. This has already been decided for you in the company instructions. 

You do not need to decide on when to wake up. It is known and decided.

You need to robotically do it. Which might count as effort. But that's it.

when Self employed. you must push unknown things. You must initiate. You must research. You must solve problems. You must think even about where to search and how. 

Everything needs active initiative. 

You need to search for ideas. But you do not know about which side of your "plans". You do not know where and how to search. And when you start searching, you sometimes get confused and frustrated in clogged up alleys. 

This means you need lots of active pushing. Time and again. 

This is the main challenge of being self-employed.

Is being self-employed good?

A very complicated question. It depends on skills, opportunities, and personal tastes. 

But even if self-employment is vastly better. can you do it?

This effort that it takes is practically unrealistic for most of us. No matter how much better self-employment would have been. 

The mental allergy to mechanical views on psychology

 Ego depletion, moment-to-moment happiness, sleep food, and exercise to improve our mental states. 

The common theme for all those is a technical/mechanical feeling analysis.
This type of analysis does not sit well with many. 

Ego Depletion has been criticized from various fronts. Theoretical issues, argued inability to replicate, and so on. 

But I am asking. Is it all about rational critique? Or is there a deeper motif here. 

Allergy to a mechanical view I suspect is central to the venom hurled towards the theory. 

Regardless of the substance of the criticisms, this deeper dislike to the mechanical view looms large over many of the critiques. Sometimes, it is said explicitly, even. 


Moment to moment happiness. What Daniel Kahneman calls "objective happiness". This is the experience of now over time. count the experiences of every moment over one's day and here is your "experienced happiness". 

Again, people simply do not like the theory. Which is why you do not hear much about it. Even though happiness researchers agree that this is an important facet and perspective about happiness. 


Here is another example of a mechanical analysis. 
Should one "solve" his feelings about past events?
And why?

a mechanical view is "you will end up recalling those events, so rather have them solved"
Note that nothing here is about "having your story solved" and "getting over it"

Rather, a mechanical calculation that you will end up encountering those thoughts by the natural flow of events in the future. So you are better off having those solved, rather than unsolved, which will cause fresh agony every new time you happened to memorize the events. (Meanings of Life book by Roy Baumeister)

At times, mechanical perspectives are true, or useful, or both. 

But I think humans are naturally not inclined to see things with those glasses. Moreover, I think humans are actively reluctant to accept those explanations, even when they are true and do have good evidence. 

This tendency is also influencing academics. Even when the thought process is supposed to be objective and facts-based, the natural human weaknesses are too strong to counter

Language learning tools

Another post will explain why language is so difficult, and add some ideas to help with it. 

1. Glossika.com  
This website is the greatest learning tool I have seen so far. 
It gives you sentences in your mother tongue and in you learned language. Text, audio, and IPA text, which will show you the very precise pronunciation of your learned words in any language, which incorporates all nuances of any new language, without relying you you fully learning the peculiarities the language from the get go. 

The value is that you learn sentences rather than dry boring grammar / vocabulary. And this is more intuitive too, and easier to remember. 

Additionally, it uses spaced repetition, meaning it will schedule for you repetitions of the sentences you studied in an order to help recall without being too repetitive. 

Always go through all the review sentences, I advice. 

Also, I recommend using the "listening only" - bottom of the screen while studying. 

The options allow you to change the speed. In which I prefer to use 125% (fast) for my source language, and 75% for my new language. 


2. Anki 
The anki app helps remembering vocabulary. 
In the anki website they do have multiple "decks" (packages) for studying most languages. Go find your most appropriate one. 

The beauty of Anki is that after each word, you give feedback as to how well you feel familiar with it. So it will repeat those words that feel new, and ignore the "easy" marked words fast. 

Choose your decks wisely, and invest time in researching the decks. 

The options also allow you to change the number of new words per day. But too many might not be a good idea in my experience.

TIP: you'll eventually get tired of Anki. however, you can easily perserve what you've already learned via anki with 5% of the effort. really. you just set "new cards" to 0 in settings. 

within a week or two, you'll only have to review very few cards per day. to preserve those words you've already memorized. 

in principle, you can do the refreshing of many languages already studied very fast if you don't add new words. 

3. Clozemaster.com
This website gives you sentences to complete and their translation. 
Using sentences, it has the charm of Glossika. And it gives you audio to sharpen your listening. 
Its multiple options include the option to say the sentence and see if google can understand you. 
Can be used free. But paying $6 / month for the pro version is worth it if you wish to not be limited in the daily usage. 


4. languagelearningwithnetflix.com

NetFlix subtitles in two languages at once. 
This is a fun way to improve your language while watching movies. 
It will show the subtitles in both your languages at once on the screen. 
The "Auto-Pause" option will stop the movie on each line in the subtitles, so you can study the lines fully and move on with a click on the keyboard. 


5. Right-Click translate in chrome
This chrome extension lets you right click a word and get it translated in a new google translate window. 
There is an option to have each new word opened in a new tab, or overriding the earlier one. 
Using the new tab for each word option will let you have those multiple words still open, if you wish to review them later. 


6. Graded readers

Those text are similar to what young children use in earlier years in school. 
Those use simpler grammar, and intentionally simple vocabulary. 
Just google "graded readers" + language you learn, and dig into the various links and forums. 
Some of those text are absolutely great. 


7. Spotify lyrics

If you are ok in a language, listening to songs while reading the lyrics carefully can be a boon. 
I am going through the lyrics word by word and looking them up on the dictionary. 
If you go and sing some of those songs to natives, it can be quite hilarious. Great fun

PS. Three ways to find songs here are:
Top charts of the country (inside spotify: search -> charts -> country name+top 50 / viral 50)
country name + music (under search)
Use the Shazam when outside and hearing a song you like. It can also show synchronized lyrics, or open in spotify for you. 

8. On click one-word translator apps etc
Having at one click a translation without having to move apps and re-type the word, is a huge advantage for studying. 
Android:
Quick Dictionary. Some settings to get it going. and then right click, quick look. 
WordReference. I found it good for french. Has various languages / options. 

Google Chrome
Dictionary by Google
Right-click translate. Uses Google. settings allow having a new tab for each new word. and various languages. 
Google the word with "define" and you will get the dictionary definition. You can use this extension to have this option on the right click menu once a word is selected Context Menu Search

iOS (Ipad Iphone)
right click a word and click "define" / "Lookup" and it will show the dectionary entry of it. 
You can change the dictionary to get your desired language added

Kindle.

kindle reader has a build in dictionary feature.

you touch a word and wait, and the dictionary definition of it will pop up.

There are kindle dictionaries on amazon kindle store for most language. 

buy those, and add them as system dictionaries in the kindle settings 

See also next tip 9. 

9. Never ever translate sentences. 

You want to learn a language. Not to walk on google translate crutches. 

Using google translate for sentences, webpages etc gives you zero language learning. 

You want to look up single words, and slowly figuring out what is being said. This teaches you the language. 

As irritating this is. I strongly recommend avoiding full sentences translation.

AFTER you have gone word by word, and somewhat figured out a sentence, you might use the full sentence translation as a verification. But not before....

Never translate sentences. You want to learn the language, not have Google translate for you!


10. For English pronunciation/accent. 
Elsa Speak

I cannot stress enough how valuable it is to have a good English accent. Rather than a difficult-to-listen-to "non-native" pronunciation. 

You might be understood. But it takes more effort for the person you talk to. This extra brain work, be it 10% of 30% of his brain, harms the conversation. Not only does it take away from the mental space needed to talk with you. It also demotivates him. People will get tired of talking to you faster. And not because you are boring or anything. But because it is more difficult. And less information is transmitted. 

Elsa Speak is an amazing app
It listens to you speak English, learns all your pronunciation issues, and gives you very detailed exercises, and feedback on each word and sound. 

I am using it myself. Even though my current English pronunciation is decent. I want to get to 100% rather than the current quite good but not yet fully there.

 

11.  three pronunciation tricks.

11.1. separate theory and practice. 

IPA etc  remember

11.2. read aloud intentionally.

we might already know 75-90% of the correct pronunciation, but it's just not automatic and we lazy our way into very bad pronunciation.

taking a book and slowly reading aloud one page, while paying attention to each word correct pronunciation can sharpen and improve primordial massively. no teacher needed.

11.3. Google transcribing (talk to Google keyboard, or to the Google app), and see if he gets you correctly.

talk again and again until Google understand you. 

great truck to improve your pronunciation without a teacher.

PS. a memory maintenance tip

if you use spaced repetition tools (anki,glossika), you'll eventually get tired of learning new items, or your item list will end.

either way, you can maintain your memories over time by not leaving new items and just repeating the old ones this familiar with. 

This takes nearly no time. in Anki, you might have to spend 30 seconds/day to maintain a 3000 word list. this is super easy.

you can change the anki settings to not show new cards, and within 1-2 weeks your daily card number will be very low. 

Student debt forgiveness. The interesting argument for why it "feels right"

Recently, many are talking about forgiving student debt. 

Countering are policy analysts and economists raising various policy and fairness arguments against it (see Justin Wolfers at Freakonomics, among many others). 

So, is the case for student debt forgiveness senseless?

I will argue that it has a deep logic to it. Even if one does not ultimately agree to the proposed policy. 

The education system, argues Bryan Caplan, is mostly about signaling. 

You prove to employers that you are smart, hard-working, and docile.

To get those papers, a student spends years and a fortune. And might leave with $100,000 in debt.

Going to the job market, one isn't intuitively seeing that his education has neither helped his current job - it mostly does not at all. Not is it visible how it improves one's job prospects. 

That CVs of those without a degree are not looked at is true and known. But this is not that visible to be felt and experienced as worthwhile enough. 


The full feeling of unfairness is a summary of the multiple factors:
1. The education itself is very wasteful. Not adding much value. 
2. The cost is extreme. And it is made expensive by various idiotic and irrational aspects of "the education system"
3. The effects on employment are random. Not all are benefitting. Especially the drop outs. 
4. Most effects are not visible enough to feel justified.  


Thus, the policy analysts might be right. But those two groups are talking at cross purposes. 

Students straddled with debt, feeling to have been dealt an utter injustice, have a point to feel that forgiving this debt is justice done

. 
The policy analysts are doing a completely different analysis. About fairness in total in society, and about the consequences of forgiveness, economically and for future students.

I hope I helped both camps understand each other slightly better.

The idea market deficiencies.

1. Mixing up certifications (degrees that people get to help getting a job) and research / education. One might even split research and education. But certification/signaling is the big problem for me. 

2. There is no market nor collaboration system for small ideas, or partial ideas. 

As an academic, you either publish a paper or not. So small but very good ideas of good value do not have a good vehicle. Both to get accumulated, found by others and recombined. And to get credit / value from (incentive)

3. No incentive and no funding for infrastructure / quality / connections of data. 

The lack of linking between papers to their refutations is partly because nobody has done it, because no institution invests in infrastructure. 

This complaint is also that showing that a paper is flawed isn't getting rewarded, or not even getting published!. (@jamesheathers

 and @sTeamTraen have elaborated on this a few times)

Skeptics finding faults in the literature should be richly rewarded. 

But no one pays for those things for whatever reason.... 

PS. Thought triggered by this MarginalRevolution post 

Why can't we optimize our life like iPhone is optimized?

The intuitive wonderment of "why can't we optimize life" can be demonstrated by comparing own life to an iPhone.

Look at the unbelievable optimization seen in your recent smartphone. It is optimization upon optimization. All laid to utter perception almost.

Your life? maybe you know whether 1 vs 2 spoons of sugar is best (fun fact. nobody does 1.3 spoons, even though this will be taste optimal for some certainly!)

The answers to this wonder are a good start for considering the difficulties of life optimization.

1) its machinery. Humans a complicated, unstable, and hard to pin down. There is no "0.46% of boron-oxide" type consistency and simplicity.

2) Economics of scale.
You can invest $10 billion in the machinery of producing CPUs. But this one system will produce millions of units.

In humans, each one might need its own system. No economics of scale.

3) The agency problem.

In order for someone to create an optimization for you, he needs to earn money from it.
In phones its simple. Apple creates them, and gets paid if they are good enough.

Is anyone going to get paid $10,000 to make you healthier?

Of course, one can make pennies by selling a book, or ads on her diet site.
But the money earned is minuscule in relation to to value created.

This means that nobody is going to invest $2,000 to reliably make you healthier.
Even if the value of making you healthier is $100,000, nobody is going to get paid serious money to make it happen.

Apple makes billions to make phones.
Get you to be healthy?

maybe one can get some google ads cents. 

Optimization and its dicontents

Optimization here means colloquially.

"I want to optimize my life" etc.

Why is it so difficult? (either to optimize life or any other real life targets)

First, lets note the implied definition of this elusive yet tempting optimization

Its is always beyond the obvious. Nobody goes "I have not slept, let me optimize my sleep and go to bed". This is technically an optimization. But it is too obvious, and a given to be included.

We will normally optimize our lives, cooking, etc without resorting to explicit optimization talk.

Optimization talks about the less obvious, usually ignored, yet still plausibly achievable plans.

Thus, optimization will normally be somewhat marginal. Not marginal really, but veering towards the margin in terms of added value.


Difficulty and not being obvious is another feature of so-called optimization. The reason is as above. Adding more salt to a dish might be marginal in value, but is so easy to do that it sin;t included.


Those definitions in themselves explain some mysteries about optimization. Why it is not always done. They also lay the ground to deeper study optimization, how it might work, and why so often it either is not initiated, and why it sometimes actually fail. 

Stanford prison study - how moralizing destroys science

A recent inquiry argues that the famous Stanford prison study was faulty and scientifically invalid.

It in an example of how missing moralizing in science destroys scientific inquiry.

The prison study is unique. It created a huge backlash on ethics etc.

The unintended consequence of the ethics distraction was two fold:
1) deter from any kind of replication
2) create the impression that the science is solid, if not for the annoying / out of context ethics "issues"
3) there was an implied "mission" to reform prisons. Which - again - messed up proper scientific inquiry.

Great example on how moralizing leads to bad scientific progress.

PS.  I'm not in position to decide if the study was indeed faulty. I honestly don't know. I would need very serious study of the details and the various parties version of events to have a proper opinion!

#MeToo: the skewed distribution of repeated offenders.

An old Jewish tale.

Two merchants have a dispute.
They go the the rabbi to arbitrate.
Come merchant 1 and details his side of events, the rabbi listens and nods: "You are right"
His opposite side come in with his perspective, and the rabbi goes "you are right"

The rabbi's wife is sitting there listening to the whole thing and she can't stand it:
What idiocy is this? he is right, and he is right too! this makes no sense.

The rabbi - calmly - "You are absolutely right"

This joke is quite descriptive of the #MeToo controversy.

Can both be right?
The women listing their various grievances and experiences AND the men saying that this is wierd extremism?

Yes, both are right.

How could that be?

We have many women that report on copious amounts of harassments / rape etc.
We have numerous men that listen to it dubiously. "This can't be true" they say with utter conviction.

The solution is statistical and very simple.

Repeated offenders.

Let's assume that we have 10 out of 100 men that are prolific sexual offenders.
He will harass a lot, rape if an opportunity arises, and generally engage in various unsavory behaviors towards women.

The other 90, are the average Joe. They might wink at a woman at the coffee shop, or even try to talk to her if they think she is looking back. They sometimes go to dates, and occasionally things aren't super clear. So they might on rate occasion displease a woman, but usually without malice of ill intent.


The women will suffer a lot. Few harassers are enough to terrorise many women.
A noxious men can inconvenience 20 women a day.
Average Joe will start talking to a woman once in awhile, but not in industrial numbers.
The average Joe looking at a woman to see if she is looking back, might not even be noticed by her. And if he is polite enough, she might not feel discomfort.
But the calouss one will be well remembered.

The number of times a woman is inappropriately approached might be very high. Even if most men will not harass.


Why would the average men believe the #MeToo stories? If he and his close friends never behave this way, how could he believe the stories?

Here comes the mix up of harassment and awkward encounters.

The average Joe has had his numbers of misunderstandings with women. Not malicious. usually not damaging either. But discomfiting nevertheless.

Average Joe will assume that #MeToo is about those subtle misunderstanding. And gesture wrongly comprehended. The mutually drunk encounter. The bad date. You name it.

Extreme feminists will help in this error.
They will drag real women suffering into the gray dating mishaps. They will say
     "YES! you see this traumatised woman? She suffered from people like you that have not filled in the 200 page consent form before touching the lady finger"
     "It is all insensitive gross misogynists like you all. Yes all men and you are not exempt"

Causing derision and disbelief. Making rape victims harder to believe. And putting off men from listening.

But the suffering is common and real. It just comes from a noxious minority.

PS. The implications for policy and public discourse are many. The reader is invited to think it out.


Reference:
   "Mate" by Geoffrey Miller and Tucker Max discusses the asymmetry of sexual misconduct. Where a minority of repeated offenders cause innumerable numbers of offences.

Criticism threshold: Middling criticism masquerading as devastating takedown

Levels of arguments have their own meaning and implications.

Saying "argument 7b in this book is doubtful" differs from "this guy is a murderer"

But those get mixed up.

Jordan Peterson awakens this point yet again.

The thrust of anti Peterson views is prohibitive for those hating him..
his derision of Social Justice Warriors. His refusal to kowtow the PC rules and many other sins.

But those arguments fail for people outside those ideological lines.
And attempts to find more serious sins in his texts and videos seems to have failed.

Now we got a new genre of anti Peterson articles.
The middling critics.

Here is something he said that is wrong.
This aspect of his personality is - ehh - not to my taste.
His moods do not look good to me.

Which are all find and dandy points to make in reviewing public personas.

But, deception.

Those middling points are masquerading as being devastating arguments.
because someone does not like various things peterson is dangerous.

It is a subtle form of deception. But deceptive nonetheless. 

Activists have a massive agency problem

Agency problem is not about crooked cheats stealing your money.

Agency = the interests of the agent differ from your interests.

Why and how they differ is not that important. What counts is having someone deciding for you, with a different set of incentives.

Activists have two forms of corrupting incentives

Material Interests

First are the known ones, which are not much talked about.
Being an activist is a career. Full of incentives. Some of which aren't compatible with being honest.

Say you fight against poverty. You want to say that there is a lot of poverty around. Truth be damned.

Every activists' incentive is to inflate the size of the problem.
Anti vaccine activists will want there to be huge numbers of vaccine side effects.
Climate fighting activists want there to be huge future damage awaiting us if we do not act. It might be true, of course. But note that like any paid operator - the activists will fare better if reality goes a certain way. They have an interest, in other words.


There are careers, salaries, prestige etc. depending on how things are marketed. Some people are honest, but the situation of activism isn't naturally pure. There is a lot to be gained, regardless of what is society's good.

Moral interests

The moral feelings can be as problematic as the material corruption.

Once you have moral feelings about a subject you lose objectivity. 

You lose rationality.
You might lose your honesty.

A couple of years ago, I walked around with a lady I met. 

While sitting near the road talking, we see a motorbike flying in the air with the student riding it bleeding.
It was hit by a car while exiting from a U-Turn.

In no way could we know who was to blame. Was the bike exiting irresponsibly into the highway? Was the car driving carelessly?

We absolutely did not know.

Yet, my lady friend told me that she want the car driver to be punished and would testify against her.

This was because of her moral outrage at the situation that got the biking student injured.

Moral outrage is a huge power. It throw our senses out the window.

Moral outrage can be as corrupting and distorting as material corruption.

The intent will not be as corrupt. But the result is the same

failure can be a good selection process

Dating failure can be a blessing in disguise.
When things do not work with someone, it can feel that "had I done X, i might have worked"

But the failure helps you to avoid getting in love with this person which you are likely incompatible with. Sometimes, obviously it will be an accidental problem in the date. But many times, the failed date is a good selection system to avoid exactly those people that are not that compatible.


A study shows that many students become less interested in academic careers throughout their PhD years.

It sounds depressing "this arduous system is de-motivating students from becoming academics".

Reading the study above, however, it becomes clear that students' preferences get crystalized over the arduous process.

Maybe academia is better off when it only keeps the people really in love with reading papers and publishing them. Assuming those are somewhat good proxies for useful scholars.....

Why does this surprise us?

Our intuition isn't as above. Why?

1) We consider - justly - pain and failure as bad. 

But bad locally doesn't always mean overall bad. 

Of course rejection is painful. But getting rejected by  an incompatible person is generally good (ignoring the fateful night spent). 

2) The other issue is strategic / society wide vs. personal. 

Society benefits when incompatible students drop of the scholarship world. 

But those students might actually lose somewhat.

3)  We assume a rational just world. 

It feels as if students going to study have to succeed. 

It does not "make sense" such obscene irrationality is so pervasive. 

But.. lots of irrationality and stupidity do exist. We need to accept that many pain s are worthwhile if they fix stupidity. Because letting stupidity go on can be more painful than cutting it short with a jolt

Morality vs agency

Agency is the engine behind most actions and systems.

Morality is weak. You cannot rely on morality alone to preserve and manage systems.

Every country uses punishment and various incentives to make humans and companies behave.

Thus, expecting countries to "behave" due to moral arguments is naive and doesn't work.

People thought that moral arguments will win the day for migration / international peace / democracy. It doesn't and won't work.

Incentives work. But you need nifty incentive structures to:
1) make it work
2) make people adopt it.

Challenging.

Regarding incentives to adopt (2 above):
You might design the system with stages, so that the initial stages will not have disincentives to current stakeholders, but the long term design will be optimal. Yeah, it feels imoral, dishonest and corrupt. But this is the way you can get it done best.

Lee Kuan Yew, the legendary Singapore leader argued that we should give immunity to dictators that step down peacefully. Of course it is "imoral", but we would have saved many lives this way, and many more countries would have gone democratic, had his idea been implemented

The friction theory of life management

On paper, we all can have a much better life. Just mange your money better. Sleep more, and so on. Endless ways to have a better life are at our fingertips.

In fact, we mostly ignore our huge ability to have a better life.

WHY?

Friction is my answer.

Anything that differs from the automatic flow of being means employing an extra "process" to get it done. This process is not costless. It is actually disruptive of much of our being. Our thoughts. Our physiology even.


Friction in the economy usually means when things cost to move A to B even when A and B are theoretically the same.


Suppose you want to take a nap. Sounds simple. But in fact you need to stop everything you are doing, and force your self to relax and so no. All this is not going to happen automatically. I call this barrier "friction"

Or you are resting and you try to relax. You recall instructions from some book how to relax and sleep better. Those things work for you. you tried once and it did wonders. but you are not feeling like keeping to go with it.

why? Friction. You would need some kind of extra action to do it.

In the relaxation case there is even a more interesting aspect of friction.
Trying forcefully to relax might be counterproductive. You might get stressed by trying forcefully to make yourself do the relaxation. (if it happened to feel like doing it, it will work, but once you enter this forcing yourself to do relaxation state of mind, it might backfire).


In this case we found that friction not only makes it harder to do something. But in fact it actively precludes it from happening. Once forcing myslef to relax blocks relaxation, there is nothing I can do to do it.


My theory is that much of what we can theoretically do but do not, is because of those forms of friction.



PS. John Stuart Mill noted that trying to be happy cancels your happiness. It is commonly viewed as either some happiness paradox, or as "ironic process" (Daniel Wegner "do not think on a white bear" theory). In my view above "try to be happy" is in itself disruptive, thereby blocking possible happiness.

PS1. Ego depletion might be related to this.

WOW books

Books that put me at awe. That made me feel "Wow"

will be updated. work in progress

Fooled By randomness, Nassim Taleb
The 20/80 principle, Richard Koch
Private Truths, Public lies, Timur Kuran

Tradeoffs in negotiations don't work. "Loss aversion" doubles the costs

In a perfect world, tradeoffs are straightforward.
I give up on X, you give up on return on some Y valued similarly. Simple. Rational. Easy.

Loss aversion destroys this logic.

Loss aversion - Kahneman and Tversky 197x - shows that people value losses vastly more than their natural value.

I'll do vastly more try preserve my existing girlfriend, than to chase her has she been single. I'll ask vastly more for what I have than how much I would've paid to buy it.

Back to negotiations.
Suppose the UK asks the EU to give up on X (day freedom of movement), in return for whatever. Let's assume that the deal makes rational sense. (We ignore the strategic issues, have theoretic math etc)

For the EU, giving up on something is a loss. Losses are valued? Double their nominal value.
Hence, EU will ask the UK double the value in return.

Let's assume the required thing is money - for simplicity.

Say the EU says. Ok. No freedom of movement, but give £10bn yearly to the EU budget.

Now, for the UK this extra £10bn is perceived as a loss. Valued at double at £20bn

This explains why negotiating tradeoffs is so tough and usually just doesn't happen.

References.
I am told that this idea has already been developed in a chapter by Kahneman and Tversky about conflict resolution, but I can't find the reference right now

Two routes to rationality

Rationality can be arrived into by rationality. This is right, and this is why I'm doing it.

Some people reach the jacket of rationality for completely different reasons:

1) bad intuition / irrational nature.
Most people don't practice strict rationality. But there end up pretty much rational in multiple ways. Social learning / imitation. Or listening to some teachers. Or using life experience and emotional reaction to teach pretty much rational directions.

If someone is failing in some of the above, he might have to use aggressive "rational" rationality to get his life in order.

2) a tendency to be rational. Sometimes an obsession, sometimes loving it, etc.

NOTE route / outcome confusion.

I've noted elsewhere that we intuitively mix-up the way how people get somewhere, with its desirability.

This is a huge mistake.

However one ended up with the rationality habit, it's outcome is what matters, not why and how he got there.

(Outcome, of course includes experienced effects age utilitarian results!!)

Agency 1 - Stupidity alone is not the problem

My thesis is that the only reason stupidity can destroy the world is it being coupled with the agnecy problem.

Agency problem: when others have an interest different from us, and they decide for us.

We hear all the time about stupidity. And stupidity is rampant. But stupidity cannot explain all dumbness of the world.

Do stupid people not go to certified heart Doctors? they do.

Do stupid people buy smart phones that do not work? (or Windows phones that have no apps on offer?) of course not.

Society and markets have ways of filtering information.

The various phone sellers in order to keep their reputation, are not going to cheat too deeply on customers. The cellular companies know they will not get away with selling snake oil phones (they can come close).

Sometimes, the self interests of the agents is aligned with ours.
A captain on a ship will drown with the ship. A politician starting an atomic war might get obliterated in it.

But a money manager can reap his fee while the customer loses.
A politician elected in the primary method can appeal to extremists to become the party chief. Even if this will mean to destroy the party (It happens on the right and on the left).

Agency *is* the illness. Not stupidity alone.

IF the agency problem is solved, stupidity alone cannot kill us.


---- IMPLICATIONS ------

Too many. Those will be a subject of later blog posts. Many of them. You were warned

Is caring causing people to avoid efficient solutions?

People are packages of attitudes and opinions. And some are related. even if logically they are not.

Take caring about human pain and suffering vs. rational logical solutions (e.g. utility maximization, caring about side effects of solutions, unintended consequences, costs for others etc. )

Many people opposing parts of welfare things have as good a heart as those supporting them. Many times there are legitimate issues with the "just help the poor" attitude. 

Sadly, this all gets bundled up.

Is this an accident? or there is something inherent in caring that conflicts with rational utilitarian solutions?

I think there is an inherent bundling here. Not intentional. Many even deny it on both sides of the argument. But in fact, this bundling is central.

Bundling is when people hold bundles of opinions and attitudes, rather than discrete and seperate many opinions.


It will mean that a caring person will care rather than summarize things.
Then when someone offers - for example - to cut benefits for the slightly disabled to allow a decent living for paraplegics, the caring folks will always object. They are caring people, not utility calculating machines.

Moreover, when economists and policy people will point out the obvious calculation (the severely disabled are the main sufferers, etc.) they will be dismissed as cynics.

While irrational, they caring folks have a truth in their dismissal. An irrelevant truth, but true nevertheless.

You must be detached slightly to notice the calculation. The same way that an emotionally involved surgeon should not be allowed to operate. Being involved emotionally means it is hard to do the math. or stay cool while cutting someone brain.


This bundling of opinions, helps explain other wonders. Why are so many environmentalists opposed to nuclear power - arguably the most realistic way to stop CO2 emissions? Simple. If you care about the environment you hate  pollution and nuclear power is a pollutant. Calculations are irrelevant.