Sam On Software

What ? What does that mean ? how do you differentiate between the two ? Are any thoughts “internally produced”, don’t they all come from some external stimuli ?
How is that important ?

Exactly.

When you read something or someone says something or you see something someone else has prepared for you to see you automatically starts applying critical analysis.

The guardians of your attention in the entrance hall of your mind size up the new ideas to see how worthwhile they are, probably in order to decide where to store them.

Here is an example that is all over the internet, I am not sure of it’s original source.

It’s cute, but don’t move on from it just yet.

Imagine you’re the guy at the party. Imagine the first three scenarios. Imagine what the power dynamic is, imagine what you would estimate your changes of ’success’ are. Now imagine the last scenario.

It’s qualitatively different isn’t it ?

It’s different because the woman in question is acting on an idea that occurred to her “Hey, it’s that guy I heard about!”, she is acting on her own curiosity.

Most of the value Kentucky Fried Chicken (or KFC as they prefer to be known, as to avoid the fried food association) get from their adverts is not when someone sees a television commercial with it’s white and red images and happy customers and immediately says “I think I’ll go out and buy some chicken”.

Most of the value comes when later the person is walking down the street and they have the thought “hmm I’m a bit hungry, hmm I feel like some KFC”.

The person does not question their desire in the same way they would if I had walked up to them and said “You want to go to KFC”. They thought it, it came from them, it doesn’t need to be analysed too closely.

Actually of course it didn’t come from them, it came from an advert they saw many hours and possibly days ago. Without the advert the idea would not have appeared in their mind but due to the time and space separation between the suggestion and the idea the idea is treated as if it “just occurred”.

I just had a discussion with my girlfriend about the way women are portrayed on television and the values communicated in shows, especially those aimed at young women.

She had switched away from Drop Dead Diva after finding it’s pseudo morality tale distasteful.

I agree that many television shows bask in the superficial and nasty and present it in such a glamorous way that it will have an influence on younger viewers, who are already fascinated with their place in their hierarchy and social-structure.

I’m a little more dispassionate and utilitarian in my analysis.  More of the Geoffrey Miller School.

A lot of the frustrations at emotional manipulation are reduced when you see it as a deliberate attempt to achieve something rather than genuine world view.

“Oh look, a beautiful rich thin person acting selfish, they did that to try and elicit an emotional reaction and make me feel inferior.  Which will in turn make me watch more for the emotional candy and in turn buy things.”  It’s strictly business.

If you are frustrated with the values they see in movies and television here are two points I think you should keep in mind.

The sellers ain’t buying.

Most ministers of Education around the world send their children to private school.  Most left leaning politicians have their personal advisors on non-union easily terminated contracts.  Rupert Murdoch does not get his morning news feed from the Sun newspaper.  Financial advisors earn their money from commissions not the investment growth and dividends they are selling you.

In the moment it’s an easy mistake to assume that the people writing and producing television and films believe in the universality of the value system they are sending down the wire.  I’m sure they don’t.

Don’t look up and shake your fist, look down and dismiss.

If you do want to combat the ugly values you see in the media don’t become frustrated and angry.  If someone mentions a show you dislike and you immediately launch into

“That’s a terrible show, they are all so selfish and superficial. It’s really a bad message to send to young people,  I mean it’s just…”  

you come across and being below and looking up shaking your fist.  The fact it’s inspired such a strong reaction leads people to assume it’s based on insecurity.

Instead, simply dismiss it from above.  “Oh yes, that show.  They really went cheap on that one didn’t they, selfish rich women go shopping.  Yawn.”

The more emotion a thing or person can evoke in you the more power it has.

It’s a rhetorical trick you see often, don’t give up your status by being infuriated, instead step above and dismiss.

[Changed the title from Anthropomorphic to Anthropic]

The amount of play that this cutsey little piece of pith gets is amazing.   Even smart people like Christopher Hitchens have been seduced by it, god only knows how.

“But if the sun was a little bit closer, if the speed of light was a little faster, if the strong nuclear force was a slightly different, if the strength of gravity was a smidge stronger… then life as we know it would be impossible.  Isn’t it amazing that the mechanics of reality are so finely tuned to support life ?  (cue ere music)”

No, not at all, not in the slightest.
Let me tell you a story, it’s a good story.  I got it from reading physicist Paul Davies.

A man is walking on a beach, he picks up a pebble.  He measures the diameter and weight of the pebble to an extreme level of precision.   Whatever units he’s using he goes to thousands nay millions of decimal places.   He then thinks “Wow… the chances of me picking up a pebble at random that has this weight and this diameter are tiny.  I could pick up another 100 billion pebbles and likely not come across another with the same measurements.  It can’t be chance! Somone must have planted this pebble here for me to pick up!”

Of course his argument is bogus, why ? because it applies to any pebble he picks up.   Finding a pebble of some very precise measure is only impressive if you declare the measure before you pick up the pebble.

The same applies to the ‘isn’t it amazing the universe is exactly…’ argument.    “Isn’t it amazing the universe is configured in  precisely the right way to support…… what the universe supports..  isn’t it amazing that the universe is prefectly suited to…. what it suits…”

No,  A greater trick would be if the universe was completely mis-configured for what exists within it.  Now that I would take out to dinner and get drunk with.  “Hey, how come there are all these plants and people when the universe is a huge molten fire ball, how come ?”  Now THAT would be a worth pondering.

Take a look at A and B.  Two different styles of getting the user to agree they have seen your terms and conditions.

In A there is a scrollable text area displaying the boiler plate that no one is going to read.  In B there is a link to the boiler plate that no one is going to read.

A

B

There is an argument that B is the more honest approach.

“We know you aren’t going to read this, you know we know you aren’t going to read this, lets keep the lawyers happy but not waste any screen space, here, have a link you wont click on”.

A in reality is like a private joke.  “Hey, you aren’t going to read this, we know you aren’t.  But maybe if we sort of kind of put it where you maybe should have read it maybe later we can say we reasonably expected you to read it.  But we never read it, what does it say ?”

A is still however more reassuring, It gives the impression that the authors would like you to read the Terms and Conditions, that they are trying to make it easy for you to read them.

Sure normal people like us don’t bother with reading that sort of junk, but they have their house in order, they care about the details, they actually crafted their Terms and Conditions by hand, with a fountain pen, on an oak desk.  You can trust these guys.

It’s ironic, the least honest approach is the most reassuring.

Of course displaying text or small print that no one reads is insane and a symptom of a problem with our legal system.  The real solution is to have agreements that people are willing to read, but when faced with a choice between reforming the legal system and agreeing to play pretend…. lets just continue pretending.

1 - Does my dog know my other dog’s name ?

I am pretty sure my dog knows her name. When I call her name she looks, when she is being naughty and I call her she looks away.

It could be that she doesn’t actually know her name but rather the tone or inflection I use when calling her. I am reasonably confident she
knows her name.

But does she know my other dog’s name ? When she hears his name t I haven’t noticed her turning to him.

Experiment
Put both dogs in a pen such that they can see each other and directly ahead. Have a stranger stand in front of them at some distance
and ready out a list of words and phrases. Included in the list would be the two dogs names as well as a bunch of ‘control’ names. Record the movement of
the two dogs head when each item is read out. Repeat with a number of different strangers.

Are there any noticeable signs of recognition when the two genuine names are called, does the dog who is not being called turn to the one who is ?

The problem might be if each dog knows their own name they will move when their name is called bringing the attention of the other dog. hmmm

2. Does taking a break speed up learning ?

In my own experience I learn things more quickly when I split my practice sessions up. The classic example for me if the guitar. If I am trying to learn a piece of tab guitar I always notice the biggest improvements on my first play-through after returning from a break. Practice practice practice frustration -15 minute break- return play ‘Wow! I didn’t know I could play it that well!”

Experiment

Two with no previous experience are to practice learning a simple tab finger picking guitar song.

They will each practice for fifteen minutes a day for 7 days.  Person A will have a be allowed to practice in any manner they like.

Person B will be required to take a 2 minute break after each rendition of the song, or in the initial stages, every 5 minutes.

Who is person A and who is person B is decided by flipping a coin.

At the end of the week a guitarist will score each players rendition out of 10.   Does interjecting breaks make for faster learning ?

That’s terrible! It proves nothing! What if one happens to be more talented than the other, what if one actually practices harder ?

Well yes, obviously we would need to repeat the experiment,  if we could have 500 people duplicate the experiment and post their conclusions on youtube we

might have something worthwhile though.

Leave a comment if you have a better idea for testing this.

More ideas coming…

Joel Spolsky invited people to provide a count down app to help with breaks during the StackOverflow dev days conference.

I decided to take a break from working on my startup product QueryCell and try and put something together using all the great tms software components that I have purchased.

The windows installer is available for download.  It can be uninstalled via control panel, the app is called “SOCountDown”.

Note : I put this together in a rush so please be careful if you do install it,  i can’t see it causing a problem for your computer but be sure to have backups of important files and that sort of thing.

Also Delphi Source Code is available, you aren’t going to be able to compile without access to the tms software components.

Previously I have seen some problems using some of the components due to DirectX incompatibilities. If you download, install and run the program please let me know in the comments whether you were able to run it successfully or not.

Thanks.

Here is a video demonstrating what it looks like. (due to the frame rate of the screen capture software this video doesn’t really do the program justice)