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{{a|book review|}} | {{a|book review|}}{{c|Psychology}} | ||
{{author|Rory Sutherland}}’s ten rules, and how these translate into the [[JC]]’s messed up, post-structuralist view. | {{author|Rory Sutherland}}’s ten rules, and how these translate into the [[JC]]’s messed up, post-structuralist view. | ||
“'''Signalling'''” — attending to a communication that is proportional to the cost of generating or transmitting it. The sunk cost of expensive behaviour signals your commitment. This is somewhat redolent of {{Author|Robert Cialdini}}’s [[reciprocity]]. | |||
“'''Subconscious-hacking'''” — framing circumstances to provoke a different outcome. Rebrand “graduate tax” as “deferred university tuition fees”. | |||
“'''Satisficing'''”— understanding that in times of uncertainty, people care more about ''variance'' between best and worst outcomes, and not just reaching the outcome. This is power of brands. | |||
“'''Psycho-physics'''” — the difference between perception and reality. How what we see, hear, taste and feel differs from ‘objective’ reality. | |||
===The opposite of one good idea can be ''another'' good idea=== | ===The opposite of one good idea can be ''another'' good idea=== | ||
The idea that there even ''is'' a single right answer, let alone that you ''know it'', hails from a profoundly deterministic, reductionist world view. If you subscribe to this view, and you believe you have the right answer, then ''any other answer is necessarily sub-optimal, therefore wrong, and therefore you are objectively justified in suppressing it''. The benign view (which Sutherland takes) is the “[[no-one got fired for hiring IBM]]” approach: I took the correct, rational path, I was objective, so ''[[I | The idea that there even ''is'' a single right answer, let alone that you ''know it'', hails from a profoundly [[deterministic]], [[reductionist]] world view. If you subscribe to this view, and you believe you have the right answer, then ''any other answer is necessarily sub-optimal, therefore wrong, and therefore you are objectively justified in suppressing it''. The benign view (which Sutherland takes) is the “[[no-one got fired for hiring IBM]]” approach: I took the correct, rational path, I was objective, so ''[[I can’t be blamed should things go wrong]]''. | ||
But isn’t that a depressing, negative, glass-almost-empty disposition to take to your work? “We are but actors, all the world’s a stage, we are but frozen in the starlight and determined by events; we cannot influence outcomes, so our dearest aspiration is ''not to be blamed''”? | |||
Especially since, if you adopt this view, ''no-one can be blamed for ''anything'', anyway, since on a [[deterministic]] reading the outcome of the universe in every particular was set in stone from the original [[singularity]]''? | |||
As Sutherland says, “that’s wonderful if you want to keep your job; if you want to have an original idea it’s potentially disastrous.” | |||
Is it not more rewarding to think that not only ''can'' you influence outcomes, but that ''this is your sacred quest''? [[Chatbot]]s cannot do this, folks. This is your [[spidey-sense]]. | Is it not more rewarding to think that not only ''can'' you influence outcomes, but that ''this is your sacred quest''? [[Chatbot]]s cannot do this, folks. This is your [[spidey-sense]]. | ||
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Secondly, the proxy for the average, the median, is the ''[[Mediocre you|mediocre]]''. | Secondly, the proxy for the average, the median, is the ''[[Mediocre you|mediocre]]''. | ||
Thirdly, on the presumption, right or wrong, that the average is where you find the most people, the average is the point every other bastard is targeting too. As {{author|Cixin Liu}} put it, “In the cosmos, no matter how fast you are, someone will be faster; no matter how slow you are, someone will be slower.”<ref>{{br|Death’s End}}, Part V.</ref> For our purposes, the average is the cosmos. | Thirdly, on the presumption, right or wrong, that the average is where you find the most people, the average is the point every other bastard is targeting too. As {{author|Cixin Liu}} put it, “In the cosmos, no matter how fast you are, someone will be faster; no matter how slow you are, someone will be slower.”<ref>{{br|Death’s End}}, Part V.</ref> For our purposes, the average is the cosmos. Per {{author|Anita Elberse}} there is a contraflow in the market system that militates against the long tail: the [[Blockbusters: Why Big Hits - and Big Risks - Are the Future of the Entertainment Business - Book Review|blockbuster effect]]: everyone is aiming at the volume end of their realistic segment of the market. (Elberse’s prescription is to go with it; Sutherland’s is to ''defy'' it.) | ||
===Don’t be logical when everyone else is being logical=== | |||
This is a corollary of designing for the average. To be logical is to be predictable. To prioritise data-derived logic over imagination is to converge on the same spot as your competitors, leaving the rest of design-space to the unconventional thinkers. | |||
While you and your fellow bald men race to the bottom in a fight over the same comb, someone else is eating all the pudding you didn’t have the imagination to see. It is to see the world as [[mediocristan]], obeying a [[normal distribution]], and able to be navigated by probabilities, which are better calculated by machine than human. | |||
===Our expectation affects our experience=== | ===Our expectation affects our experience=== | ||
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===A good guess which stands up to empirical observation is still science=== | ===A good guess which stands up to empirical observation is still science=== | ||
See also {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}’s remarks about “lecturing birds to fly”. Random accidents can generate progress. On which Sutherland invokes the impish figure of {{author|Paul Feyerabend}} who, with | See also {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}’s remarks about “lecturing birds to fly”. Random accidents can — and usually do — generate progress. On which Sutherland invokes the impish figure of {{author|Paul Feyerabend}} who, with {{author|Thomas Kuhn}}, is one of the JC’s favourite contrarians in the philosophy of science. | ||
===Test counterintuitive things because no-one else will=== | ===Test counterintuitive things because no-one else will=== | ||
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{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Behavioural economics]] | *[[Behavioural economics]] | ||
{{ref}} |