he’s overhungry. Same debate every time. Rationally, I know we’re both oversimplifying. There are probably a dozen factors. But we humans like to tell a story. X happened because of Y. The end.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about this in his depressing but eye-opening book
The Black Swan.
When the newscasters report on the Dow dropping, they always have some explanation. Housing starts were slow, so the Dow dropped. IBM reported lower-than-expected profits, so the Dow dropped. Bernanke’s taking goiter medication, so the Dow dropped. Truth is, they have no clue. The actual causes are way too complex. A thousand factors played into the drop.
The same goes for the opposite direction. We like to take a simple incident and think we can predict its effect far into the future. We see a butterfly flap its wings in Jersey, and we think we can figure out whether it’s going to snow in Wyoming.
This I battle every day. Fatherhood has taken it to unhealthy extremes. As an overprotective dad, I analyze every little thing my kids do. I say to myself, “What will the consequence of that be in five minutes? In five years? In twenty years?”
Jasper got a DVD of the movie
Surf’s Up
for his fourth birthday. It’s about penguins who surf. My irrational thinking went like this:
Surfing is dangerous.
If he watches
Surf’s Up,
he might take up surfing later in life.
If he takes up surfing, he might suffer a serious injury.
So I hid the DVD. Julie foraged around for it for several days before I fessed up.
“I think it might be in the closet with the winter coats,” I said.
“Why might it be there?”
I knew the logic was flawed. My inner Tipper Gore had gone nuts. I was aware of that, and yet I still hid the DVD. I willfully ignored a hundred other variables: The joy Jasper might get from watching
Surf’s Up.
The millions of
Surf’s Up
viewers who won’t end up surfers. The millions of surfers who don’t end up in intensive care. I’m wasting a lot of mental energy.
Then again, believing you have control—even if that control is an illusion—does make people happier. One study found that oldsters in a retirement home were happier when they thought they were controlling the heat, even when they weren’t. So maybe you have to balance two things: the unpleasant feeling I get from worrying about future surfing accidents versus the good feeling I get from at least trying to influence my kid’s future.
And now I have just given myself a headache.
SPONTANEOUS TRAIT TRANSFERENCE
I’ve been struggling with a work dilemma. The problem is, I’ve become what is officially known as a “blurb whore.”
Since I’ve written two books about going on unlikely quests (one about reading the encyclopedia, the other about living by the Bible), I’m now linked to the genre. So I’m getting sent a lot of manuscripts with titles like “Top Brass: One Man’s Humble Quest to Master the Flügelhorn.”
Unless I really dislike the book, I try to say something nice about it, even if it’s to compliment the choice of typeface.
But now I’ve been asked to endorse a bunch of books that hitshelves at the exact same time as the paperback of my Bible book. And these books are about religion. Should I really be cannibalizing my own sales?
I think I’m going to have to be a jerk and say no. Which gives me a stomachache. Until I read about a cognitive bias called Spontaneous Trait Transference. This is a fascinating fallacy with huge implications.
Here’s how author Gretchen Rubin, of Happiness-project .com, describes it:
People will unintentionally associate what I say about the qualities of other people with my own qualities. So if I told Jean that Pat is arrogant, unconsciously Jean would associate that quality with me. On the other hand, if I said that Pat is brilliant or hilarious, I’d be linked to those qualities. What I say about other people sticks to me—even when I talk to someone who already knows me. So it behooves me
Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about this in his depressing but eye-opening book
The Black Swan.
When the newscasters report on the Dow dropping, they always have some explanation. Housing starts were slow, so the Dow dropped. IBM reported lower-than-expected profits, so the Dow dropped. Bernanke’s taking goiter medication, so the Dow dropped. Truth is, they have no clue. The actual causes are way too complex. A thousand factors played into the drop.
The same goes for the opposite direction. We like to take a simple incident and think we can predict its effect far into the future. We see a butterfly flap its wings in Jersey, and we think we can figure out whether it’s going to snow in Wyoming.
This I battle every day. Fatherhood has taken it to unhealthy extremes. As an overprotective dad, I analyze every little thing my kids do. I say to myself, “What will the consequence of that be in five minutes? In five years? In twenty years?”
Jasper got a DVD of the movie
Surf’s Up
for his fourth birthday. It’s about penguins who surf. My irrational thinking went like this:
Surfing is dangerous.
If he watches
Surf’s Up,
he might take up surfing later in life.
If he takes up surfing, he might suffer a serious injury.
So I hid the DVD. Julie foraged around for it for several days before I fessed up.
“I think it might be in the closet with the winter coats,” I said.
“Why might it be there?”
I knew the logic was flawed. My inner Tipper Gore had gone nuts. I was aware of that, and yet I still hid the DVD. I willfully ignored a hundred other variables: The joy Jasper might get from watching
Surf’s Up.
The millions of
Surf’s Up
viewers who won’t end up surfers. The millions of surfers who don’t end up in intensive care. I’m wasting a lot of mental energy.
Then again, believing you have control—even if that control is an illusion—does make people happier. One study found that oldsters in a retirement home were happier when they thought they were controlling the heat, even when they weren’t. So maybe you have to balance two things: the unpleasant feeling I get from worrying about future surfing accidents versus the good feeling I get from at least trying to influence my kid’s future.
And now I have just given myself a headache.
SPONTANEOUS TRAIT TRANSFERENCE
I’ve been struggling with a work dilemma. The problem is, I’ve become what is officially known as a “blurb whore.”
Since I’ve written two books about going on unlikely quests (one about reading the encyclopedia, the other about living by the Bible), I’m now linked to the genre. So I’m getting sent a lot of manuscripts with titles like “Top Brass: One Man’s Humble Quest to Master the Flügelhorn.”
Unless I really dislike the book, I try to say something nice about it, even if it’s to compliment the choice of typeface.
But now I’ve been asked to endorse a bunch of books that hitshelves at the exact same time as the paperback of my Bible book. And these books are about religion. Should I really be cannibalizing my own sales?
I think I’m going to have to be a jerk and say no. Which gives me a stomachache. Until I read about a cognitive bias called Spontaneous Trait Transference. This is a fascinating fallacy with huge implications.
Here’s how author Gretchen Rubin, of Happiness-project .com, describes it:
People will unintentionally associate what I say about the qualities of other people with my own qualities. So if I told Jean that Pat is arrogant, unconsciously Jean would associate that quality with me. On the other hand, if I said that Pat is brilliant or hilarious, I’d be linked to those qualities. What I say about other people sticks to me—even when I talk to someone who already knows me. So it behooves me
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