Category Archives: Pop Culture

When in doubt

Posted on by

Think about something else.

In a series of studies with shoppers and students, researchers found that people who face a decision with many considerations, such as what house to buy, often do not choose wisely if they spend a lot of time consciously weighing the pros and cons. Instead, the scientists conclude, the best strategy is to gather all of the relevant information — such as the price, the number of bathrooms, the age of the roof — and then put the decision out of mind for a while.

Then, when the time comes to decide, go with what feels right. ”It is much better to follow your gut,” said Ap Dijksterhuis, a professor of psychology at the University of Amsterdam, who led the research.

Lots more in the article, written by Gareth Cook for the Boston Globe, by following the link.

On your mark, get set: FLIP

Posted on by

Be prepared, o denizens of the Internet!

National Pancake Day is nearly upon us! Next Tuesday, February 28!

And to help you get into the spirit, here are some oddball facts you ought to know about pancakes. Well, actually, that’s not true . . . you technically don’t need to know any oddball facts about pancakes. In fact, learning oddball facts about pancakes is probably a colossal waste of time. But! There are a couple of recipes at that link. And nobody can have too many pancake recipes . . . oh, okay, I admit it. That’s not true, either.

In fact, one of the quickest ways to cut down on the hassle of making pancakes is to do away with the whole look-up-a-recipe step. Throw a good bit of flour in a bowl, pinch of salt, thumbnail of baking powder, bit of sugar to help them brown up, beat an egg into a chunk of melted butter (not too hot on the butter, this is pancakes, not Hollandaise), stir that into the flour, then add enough milk so it will spread out on the griddle. Or not, if you like your pancakes as high as they are wide.

Works for me. But I make a lot of pancakes. My daughter favors them for her breakfasts :-)

(Oh, one other thing. That last step — the adding milk part. That’s the only tricky one, because if you over-mix you’ll make the final product rubbery. So take a deep breath and imagine that you are a Bold Chef of Minimalist Action. Confident to complete the final mixing with a few decisive flicks of a fork. Leave the lumps. They’ll sort themselves out, they always do.)

It’s not who you know, but how little

Posted on by

The problem is, we may not know how little we know.

So claims Yale University psychology professor Frank Keil in this article. Keil has conducted research on the disconnect between what people think they know compared to what they actually do know.

We are good at estimating how well we know simple facts (such as the capitals of countries), procedures (such as how to make an international phone call), and narratives (such as the plots of well-known movies). But we seem to have a specific “illusion of explanatory depth” — the belief that we possess a more profound causal [emphasis mine] understanding than we really do. We can be appropriately modest about our knowledge of other things, but not so about our ability to explain the workings of the world.

This is particularly pronounced, Keil says, when the object of our faux understanding is a relatively complex object or system. Because complex systems are “richly hierarchical,” he explains, “they can be understood at several levels of analysis.” Unfortunately, we tend to confound a high-level understanding with a comprehensive understanding.

One can understand how a computer “works”  in terms of the high-level functions of the mouse, the hard drive, and the display while not having any understanding of the mechanisms that enable a cursor to move when a mouse is moved, or allow information to be stored and erased, or control pixels on a screen.

Yet once we’re able to explain how to save a file, or log onto the Internet, or defrag a harddrive, we slip into the illusion of believing we understand our computers.

We’re also vulnerable to this illusion, Keil continues, when the parts of the system are visible. “The more parts you can see, the more you think you know how those parts actually work.”

Keil’s piece confines itself to a discussion of physical phenomena, but it strikes me that the same can be said of our understanding of events–historical and current. Surf the ‘net tonight, for instance, and you’ll find as many theories about what’s going on in Iraq right now as you have time to read. People are writing about who was behind the bombing of the Golden Mosque, what their motivations were, and whether this represents civil war or not. Many of these explanations are delivered with supreme confidence.

But in every case, we have individuals who are working with the highly visible parts of a very complex phenomenon.

So, if Keil is right, the aforementioned confidence is actually supreme overconfidence. It’s not understanding; it’s the illusion of understanding.

Almost no one really understands what’s happening–the exception being the people who actually masterminded the bombing.

The same goes for every major event, from Bush’s deal to hand over commercial port operations to Dubai to — well, fill in the blank: _________________________.

We deceive ourselves when we assume that knowing what the pieces are, and how they fit together, is enough to proclaim causality.

And by the way, maybe the political divide in this country wouldn’t be so harsh if we all acknowledged this, eh?

You knew there had to be a catch

Posted on by

From news.com.au:

A WAVE of international victories for Dutch darts players has prompted an increase in the number of injuries as people take up the game at home, according to the Dutch consumer safety association.

Fortunately, few eye injuries have been reported, proving that the worst fears of Dutch mothers weren’t well-founded after all.

A treasure trove of chewy information

Posted on by

Okay, now this just has to be useful. The Social Issues Research Centre has published a timeline of dietary advice.

Where else can you read that in 1861, the cookbook Christianity in the Kitchen warned that pie crust made with butter or lard was both indigestible and un-Christian?

Or that it was once considered wise to fear fruit?

(“What’s that? OMG an apricot! And I think it’s begun to roll this way. Run! Run!”)

(Dontcha just miss the 19th Century?)

Speaking of hits . . .

Posted on by

Blogs are hitting their stride in the media game. Pop music has been around longer. So we should have a pretty good handle on what would make a song a winner, right?

Nope. This short New Scientist piece describes the difficulty of predicting what songs will become hits.

To some degree, the popularity of a song is influenced by the, um, popularity of the song. Participants of one study, for example,

tended to give higher ratings to songs that had been downloaded often, and were more likely to download those songs themselves. That created a snowball effect, catapulting a few songs to the top of the charts and leaving others languishing.

But what researchers can’t figure out is what gets a trend going in the first place. Sociologist Matthew Salganik, Columbia University, is given the last word in the piece:

“Even if you haven’t made it yet, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s low quality music; you could just be unlucky. But it also suggests that even if it’s high quality music, you might not become successful.”

So that’s it. It’s luck. lol