We are all constantly throwing one giant marketing campaign for the most important product ever—ourselves.
Just like most companies, we are trying to build a “cool” brand amongst competitors with a very similar product. And just like these companies, we pull all these clever marketing techniques when the spotlight is on us.
These marketing techniques we use are called: status signals. Status signals are anything we do with the purpose of signaling to others that we are high status i.e. that we are “cool.” For instance, we might tell our friend that we never eat fast-food because we believe they value health-conscious or environmentally friendly people.
We all use status signals to our advantage and there is nothing wrong with that. However, there is a breed of status signals which cause a lot of problems—the cheap, unreliable signals. These signals are unreliable indicators of actual high status, but people use them anyway because they are cheap and still work.
For example, consider the Livestrong bands. For only a dollar, you could signal to everyone you meet that you’re a charitable and caring person. The band is simply not costly enough to be a reliable indicator of those desirable traits. On the other hand, consider the “I donated blood” t-shirt or sticker. This signals for similar traits as the Livestrong band, but is much more reliable. In most cases, people wearing the “I donated blood” shirt actually donated blood. Obviously, donating blood is more costly than spending a dollar and, therefore, the shirt is a more reliable status signal than the band.
People who aren’t truly high status resort to cheap signals. For example, someone who isn’t truly environmentally conscious can’t afford to go too much out of their way to signal for it. They would rather join the “Keep The Streets Clean” Facebook group than to actually go around picking up trash.
We have to be more aware of these cheap, unreliable signals so we don’t falsely attribute higher status to someone. For this reason, I have made a list of cheap, unreliable signals that my friends and I have recently observed. Next time you catch someone saying or doing these things, you’ll calibrate your perception of them appropriately. Once it is common knowledge that a signal is cheap and unreliable, the signal reaches expiration i.e. it becomes no longer effective. Hopefully, publicizing this list will bring these signals closer to their expiration date.
- This first signal is on the verge of expiration: making people know that you only like bands that nobody knows about. This signal is suppose to indicate your individuality; your taste in music isn’t influenced by group-think. Fortunately, most people are skeptical of those who make an extra effort to show-off their unique taste in music.
- Telling people you don’t watch reality shows and, instead, only watch the Discovery Channel. This one is suppose to signal that one is intelligent or sophisticated. The Discovery Channel does not require much intelligence to enjoy and plenty of smart people like reality shows.
- Saying, “Ah, I know, I am such a nerd.” Usually girls say this after saying something atypically abstract or educational. This line is just a clever way for girls to covertly signal for intelligence.
- Blasting Backstreet Boys, Nsync, Spice Girls or Britney Spears when people are around. This sounds like a good status signal because occasionally doing something un-cool is cool. However, people who do this aren’t courageous individuals who can determine what is cool again; they just saw some other people do it and successfully solicit the desired response.
- Telling people you haven’t eaten or barely ate all day. This signal is supposed to imply that you’re such a hard-working person that you haven’t had the time to even eat. In most cases, people who don’t eat all day were just too lazy to get food.
What cheap, unreliable status signals are you sick of hearing?
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Morality reexamined
Throughout my college career, I have been bombarded by activist groups begging for my support. Most of the time, it’s a perky girl holding a clipboard who runs up to me and explains how the horrors of the world need my minimal contribution.
I usually play along for a bit until I reject the plea—that’s when the guilt kicks in.
I think to myself, “Wow, children are being sold as sex slaves in Thailand? That’s pretty shitty, why didn’t I just give the perky girl five bucks?” In my optimistic opinion, we all wish to stop the child sex trade. For some reason, however, not everyone (including myself) puts effort towards fighting this injustice. This odd behavior appears to be a moral paradox: we want to make people happier yet we chose not to do anything about it.
If you look at my spending history, you would conclude I would rather give five bucks to a hungry friend than to a charity for starving orphans. I am not a bad person; I just haven’t had the emotional pull to go out of my way to donate.
The more I will be exposed to the woe of starving orphans, the more likely I am to donate. I am no exception to this rule; most activists have a strong emotional attachment to their cause. Famous people who catch some debilitating disease leverage their fame and money towards advocating for a treatment. People who lose a loved one realize they should get closer to their family. People who see Schindler’s List suddenly become more sympathetic towards Jews in the Holocaust.
I find it unsettling that our morality is so closely correlated to how emotional we feel about something. This perspective on morality makes it all sound less virtuous and even ignoble. On the other hand, it sheds light onto how we should start looking at morality.
Acting morally only when emotionally stimulated is not always in line with our moral preferences. Only caring about issues that tug at our hearts or acting in ways that make us merely feel righteous may distract us from doing the right thing.
Steven Pinker opened his article The Moral Instinct (for The New York Times) by asking: “Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa or Bill Gates?” Pinker then points out how most people would find Mother Teresa, who’s loved for her charitable work, more admirable than Gates, who’s infamous for the blue screen of death and the dancing paperclip. Gates, however, used his fortune to help a lot more people than Mother Teresa with her primitive medical care. Why does their moral reputation seem out of order?
Pinker’s observation is an example of how people rank moral behaviors by how warm and fuzzy it makes them feel. As a society, I think we’d be better off if our moral acts are chosen by how many lives they save or how much suffering they alleviate, not by how they make us feel. Our emotions are not reliable measurements for how effective a moral act is. They could have been reliable back in the hunter-gatherer days, but modern society has a completely different environment.
Back in the day, 30-50 would be a typical size for a cohesive hunter-gatherer band. Our minds haven’t evolved a mechanism that intensifies our grief for deaths greater than the typical size of a hunter-gatherer band. We simply don’t have the neurotransmitters to multiply the grief felt for ten million deaths to two million deaths. When trying to decide which policies we need to administer in order to deter global warming or end poverty, these figures are significant. Bed nets and emission taxes may not make us feel warm and fuzzy, but they may be the right thing to do.
Morality based on emotions also blinds us from things we may care about, but don’t realize yet. One hundred and fifty years ago, we had to convince people that they cared about black slaves—we couldn’t just tell them it was wrong. In fact, there are many moral issues we care about now, but ignore because we aren’t emotionally motivated. Here are some issues I think we’ve been ignoring: future people having to deal with our problems, abuse of prisoners, and the morality of eating animals.
In summary, we should all be more moral, but let’s not be emo about it.
I usually play along for a bit until I reject the plea—that’s when the guilt kicks in.
I think to myself, “Wow, children are being sold as sex slaves in Thailand? That’s pretty shitty, why didn’t I just give the perky girl five bucks?” In my optimistic opinion, we all wish to stop the child sex trade. For some reason, however, not everyone (including myself) puts effort towards fighting this injustice. This odd behavior appears to be a moral paradox: we want to make people happier yet we chose not to do anything about it.
If you look at my spending history, you would conclude I would rather give five bucks to a hungry friend than to a charity for starving orphans. I am not a bad person; I just haven’t had the emotional pull to go out of my way to donate.
The more I will be exposed to the woe of starving orphans, the more likely I am to donate. I am no exception to this rule; most activists have a strong emotional attachment to their cause. Famous people who catch some debilitating disease leverage their fame and money towards advocating for a treatment. People who lose a loved one realize they should get closer to their family. People who see Schindler’s List suddenly become more sympathetic towards Jews in the Holocaust.
I find it unsettling that our morality is so closely correlated to how emotional we feel about something. This perspective on morality makes it all sound less virtuous and even ignoble. On the other hand, it sheds light onto how we should start looking at morality.
Acting morally only when emotionally stimulated is not always in line with our moral preferences. Only caring about issues that tug at our hearts or acting in ways that make us merely feel righteous may distract us from doing the right thing.
Steven Pinker opened his article The Moral Instinct (for The New York Times) by asking: “Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa or Bill Gates?” Pinker then points out how most people would find Mother Teresa, who’s loved for her charitable work, more admirable than Gates, who’s infamous for the blue screen of death and the dancing paperclip. Gates, however, used his fortune to help a lot more people than Mother Teresa with her primitive medical care. Why does their moral reputation seem out of order?
Pinker’s observation is an example of how people rank moral behaviors by how warm and fuzzy it makes them feel. As a society, I think we’d be better off if our moral acts are chosen by how many lives they save or how much suffering they alleviate, not by how they make us feel. Our emotions are not reliable measurements for how effective a moral act is. They could have been reliable back in the hunter-gatherer days, but modern society has a completely different environment.
Back in the day, 30-50 would be a typical size for a cohesive hunter-gatherer band. Our minds haven’t evolved a mechanism that intensifies our grief for deaths greater than the typical size of a hunter-gatherer band. We simply don’t have the neurotransmitters to multiply the grief felt for ten million deaths to two million deaths. When trying to decide which policies we need to administer in order to deter global warming or end poverty, these figures are significant. Bed nets and emission taxes may not make us feel warm and fuzzy, but they may be the right thing to do.
Morality based on emotions also blinds us from things we may care about, but don’t realize yet. One hundred and fifty years ago, we had to convince people that they cared about black slaves—we couldn’t just tell them it was wrong. In fact, there are many moral issues we care about now, but ignore because we aren’t emotionally motivated. Here are some issues I think we’ve been ignoring: future people having to deal with our problems, abuse of prisoners, and the morality of eating animals.
In summary, we should all be more moral, but let’s not be emo about it.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
We are obsessed with individualism
Apparently, being an intelligent species in a vast empty universe just doesn’t make people feel special anymore. On the other hand, nipple piercings and Bob Marley posters seem to do the trick. Marketers have been exploiting our desire to be “individuals” for decades. For all I know, the individualist movement, like Valentine’s Day, has been a marketing scheme for all these years. There is, however, a very good reason why everyone strives to be an individual, but many don’t realize the struggle requires more than a credit card.
An individualist is someone who derives their lifestyle choices internally, not externally. In other words, they’re not influenced by society, religion, community or any other communal entity in the way they live their life. An individualist may share common goals as these entities e.g. helping people, achieving high social status, seek power, etc. The difference is that individualists find their own creative and often unique ways of reaching these goals. A successful individualist has a strong reality i.e. strong conviction in how he sees the world and his role in it. Having high self-esteem and self-confidence enables this person to be confident in their differing beliefs about how to live their life.
There is a special breed of individualists that people admire and hope to one day become. These are the people whose reality is so strong that others become infected by it and start believing it too. These are the trend setters – people who do things differently and confidently enough that it becomes “cool”. Other people begin to copy their lifestyle choices hoping to emit the same sort of value.
Here is the interesting part – the people who copy the trend setters think they are “self-expressing” or “being an individual”. What is actually happening is, ironically, the complete opposite.
These people don’t have the mental ability to be individualists. They lack the necessary self-esteem and self-confidence to develop a strong reality. They seek out lifestyle choices that are externally validating because they don’t have enough self-confidence to internally validate them. For example, consider the hordes of people, from all ethnicities, who dress like rap artists. Here is a lifestyle choice that is pre-selected to emit value. It is easy to see why these people depend on products or things other than themselves to give them their fix of self-confidence/esteem. Their satisfaction with their lifestyle choices begins to depend on what other people think – the exact opposite of an individualist.
The lesson here is this: people say they seek to be individuals, but their actions say they still need the support of a communal entity. This obsession with individualism has caused people to undermine the value of a shared community.
For those born in 1955 the likelihood of a major depression at some point in life is, in many countries, three times or more greater than for their grandparents according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence. He also states that the chances of having a major depression before age thirty-four is ten times greater for those born in 1954 than those born in 1914. Martin Seligman, psychologist at UPenn, proposed: “For the last thirty or forty years we’ve seen the ascendance of individualism and a waning of support from the community and extended family. That means a loss of resources that can buffer you against setbacks and failures.”
Mentally weak people aren’t always under the right circumstances to improve their self-esteem and confidence. Pretending to be individuals is an ineffective way of buffering oneself against setbacks and failures. Maybe we need to make community building cool again or downplay individualism.
An individualist is someone who derives their lifestyle choices internally, not externally. In other words, they’re not influenced by society, religion, community or any other communal entity in the way they live their life. An individualist may share common goals as these entities e.g. helping people, achieving high social status, seek power, etc. The difference is that individualists find their own creative and often unique ways of reaching these goals. A successful individualist has a strong reality i.e. strong conviction in how he sees the world and his role in it. Having high self-esteem and self-confidence enables this person to be confident in their differing beliefs about how to live their life.
There is a special breed of individualists that people admire and hope to one day become. These are the people whose reality is so strong that others become infected by it and start believing it too. These are the trend setters – people who do things differently and confidently enough that it becomes “cool”. Other people begin to copy their lifestyle choices hoping to emit the same sort of value.
Here is the interesting part – the people who copy the trend setters think they are “self-expressing” or “being an individual”. What is actually happening is, ironically, the complete opposite.
These people don’t have the mental ability to be individualists. They lack the necessary self-esteem and self-confidence to develop a strong reality. They seek out lifestyle choices that are externally validating because they don’t have enough self-confidence to internally validate them. For example, consider the hordes of people, from all ethnicities, who dress like rap artists. Here is a lifestyle choice that is pre-selected to emit value. It is easy to see why these people depend on products or things other than themselves to give them their fix of self-confidence/esteem. Their satisfaction with their lifestyle choices begins to depend on what other people think – the exact opposite of an individualist.
The lesson here is this: people say they seek to be individuals, but their actions say they still need the support of a communal entity. This obsession with individualism has caused people to undermine the value of a shared community.
For those born in 1955 the likelihood of a major depression at some point in life is, in many countries, three times or more greater than for their grandparents according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence. He also states that the chances of having a major depression before age thirty-four is ten times greater for those born in 1954 than those born in 1914. Martin Seligman, psychologist at UPenn, proposed: “For the last thirty or forty years we’ve seen the ascendance of individualism and a waning of support from the community and extended family. That means a loss of resources that can buffer you against setbacks and failures.”
Mentally weak people aren’t always under the right circumstances to improve their self-esteem and confidence. Pretending to be individuals is an ineffective way of buffering oneself against setbacks and failures. Maybe we need to make community building cool again or downplay individualism.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Grinds my Gears
Throughout my time in Davis I have encountered many things that grind my gears i.e. things that annoy me (for example: naggers). And hence, I decided to make a top ten list of things that grinded my gears throughout my stay here. I hope I don’t end up sounding like a grandpa complaining about his retirement center; I just want to share my gear-grinding list with people who may be able to relate.
10. Wellman Hall
People give the Social Science building (the death star) a bad rep for being hard to navigate, but little do they realize Wellman is no different. There is no logical connection between the room numbers and their relative location to other rooms. Ninety five percent of my classes were at Wellman and I still find my classes by method of “guess and check.”
9. Students who ask what will be on the test
Students rarely ask questions in class in fear of sounding stupid, but ironically, this question still gets asked. I am not referring to questions like, “Will chapter 9 be on the final?” Or, “Is the final comprehensive?” I am talking about these: “For the final, will you give us, like, a formula and then, like, tell us what to plug in it?” Or, “What part of the study guide should we study?” College isn’t supposed to be easy – deal with it.
8. Teachers who don’t go over the green sheet
Green sheet day exists to give students an easy transition from vacationing to learning. It pisses me off when teachers don’t waste the first day of classes going over the green sheet and letting the class out early.
7. Frat party bathrooms
During a frat party, guys and girls are forced to share a bathroom together. What bothers me most about this ordeal is that group of girls who think every guy in there is a sexual predator wanting to catch a glimpse of them pissing. They take turns body guarding the stall door as they gaze at me with their evil eye. I end up feeling like a guy walking around Chuck E. Cheese with a big sign that reads, “Hi, I am a pedophile.”
6. People who bring food to class
Soda and chips are fine; I am talking about the heavy stuff. For some reason the smell of food doesn’t sit well in a classroom. People bring in their shitty meat balls from home and hot box the class with a rancid meaty aroma. If you’re going to be eating in class, you better be eating Febreeze.
5. The obsessive compulsive note takers
If I shot them with a horse tranquilizer they might just function like a normal human being. Every utterance and every chalk scratch is meticulously documented by these busy beavers. I get stressed out just by watching them.
4. Co-ho burritos
These burritos are a product of immoral behavior; their creator has broken the golden rule of burrito making: thou shall make a burrito the way thyself would want a burrito. Clearly, no one would construct a burrito this sloppy for oneself. The burrito’s innards are always segmented into their own section, as opposed to being evenly distributed amongst the other ingredients. If I threw this burrito in the air like a baton, its mid-air spin would resemble that of a half-empty water bottle – that’s unacceptable. This one bugs me the most because I always go back naively thinking, “this time it’s going to be different,” but it never is.
3. Racism
Racism just grinds my gears like no other.
2. People who call themselves pre-med
UC Davis doesn’t have a pre-med major; therefore, calling yourself pre-med is pointless. To me, it means you’re thinking of applying to med school and that you’re a pretentious ass who probably wants to be a doctor for the social capital.
1. The Dining Commons (DC)
Eating at the DC is a lose-lose situation. Instead of going to an all-you-can eat sushi buffet, for the same price, you can go to the DC! The problem is: sushi tastes much better than DC food. In order for me to feel like I am getting my money’s worth at the DC, I need to eat way more than a sane doctor would recommend. In the end, I am left with a kicking food baby and a skinnier wallet. No wonder they force freshmens to pay for this.
10. Wellman Hall
People give the Social Science building (the death star) a bad rep for being hard to navigate, but little do they realize Wellman is no different. There is no logical connection between the room numbers and their relative location to other rooms. Ninety five percent of my classes were at Wellman and I still find my classes by method of “guess and check.”
9. Students who ask what will be on the test
Students rarely ask questions in class in fear of sounding stupid, but ironically, this question still gets asked. I am not referring to questions like, “Will chapter 9 be on the final?” Or, “Is the final comprehensive?” I am talking about these: “For the final, will you give us, like, a formula and then, like, tell us what to plug in it?” Or, “What part of the study guide should we study?” College isn’t supposed to be easy – deal with it.
8. Teachers who don’t go over the green sheet
Green sheet day exists to give students an easy transition from vacationing to learning. It pisses me off when teachers don’t waste the first day of classes going over the green sheet and letting the class out early.
7. Frat party bathrooms
During a frat party, guys and girls are forced to share a bathroom together. What bothers me most about this ordeal is that group of girls who think every guy in there is a sexual predator wanting to catch a glimpse of them pissing. They take turns body guarding the stall door as they gaze at me with their evil eye. I end up feeling like a guy walking around Chuck E. Cheese with a big sign that reads, “Hi, I am a pedophile.”
6. People who bring food to class
Soda and chips are fine; I am talking about the heavy stuff. For some reason the smell of food doesn’t sit well in a classroom. People bring in their shitty meat balls from home and hot box the class with a rancid meaty aroma. If you’re going to be eating in class, you better be eating Febreeze.
5. The obsessive compulsive note takers
If I shot them with a horse tranquilizer they might just function like a normal human being. Every utterance and every chalk scratch is meticulously documented by these busy beavers. I get stressed out just by watching them.
4. Co-ho burritos
These burritos are a product of immoral behavior; their creator has broken the golden rule of burrito making: thou shall make a burrito the way thyself would want a burrito. Clearly, no one would construct a burrito this sloppy for oneself. The burrito’s innards are always segmented into their own section, as opposed to being evenly distributed amongst the other ingredients. If I threw this burrito in the air like a baton, its mid-air spin would resemble that of a half-empty water bottle – that’s unacceptable. This one bugs me the most because I always go back naively thinking, “this time it’s going to be different,” but it never is.
3. Racism
Racism just grinds my gears like no other.
2. People who call themselves pre-med
UC Davis doesn’t have a pre-med major; therefore, calling yourself pre-med is pointless. To me, it means you’re thinking of applying to med school and that you’re a pretentious ass who probably wants to be a doctor for the social capital.
1. The Dining Commons (DC)
Eating at the DC is a lose-lose situation. Instead of going to an all-you-can eat sushi buffet, for the same price, you can go to the DC! The problem is: sushi tastes much better than DC food. In order for me to feel like I am getting my money’s worth at the DC, I need to eat way more than a sane doctor would recommend. In the end, I am left with a kicking food baby and a skinnier wallet. No wonder they force freshmens to pay for this.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Rationality and Drug Taking
As most of you are college students, by now, you’ve probably all had the “drug conversation” with your friends. This stimulating discussion usually starts off when one of your friends just tried shrooms and won’t shut up about it. After he pontificates about how his whimsical journey with the drug made him a better person, the discussion digresses towards drugs-taking in general. Some conclude that they must try a hard drug at one point in their lives – others vow never to do so. Eventually, an interesting point is brought up: is it bad to receive happiness solely from a drug?
In my opinion, this question isn’t only fun to ponder – it might determine the future of humanity! I realize I am taking a several inferential steps in making this point so hear me out. First off, consider the following hypothetical: some hippie scientist invents a drug that would, indefinitely, put you into a vegetative state, but the tradeoff is an infinite supply of happiness and pleasure. If people decide they would be better off on this drug, chaos will ensue.
I might be getting carried away; surely there will be people who would refuse the drug. People aren’t selfish; they wouldn’t want to hurt their loved ones by turning into a smiling vegetable. Let’s make things more interesting then. Imagine the drug only changed your preferences around making you receive great amounts of happiness for easily attainable goals. For example, baking a cake now gives you an orgasmic feeling and taking a shower feels like winning the lottery. This drug would be changing your utility function.
For those of you who haven’t heard of this gem of a concept, it means this: a function that inputs world events and outputs “utils” or i.e. a unit of satisfaction/happiness. There are certain world events that correspond to a quantity of personal happiness; a utility function models this relationship. For example, eating an apple corresponds to some measure of utility (read: happiness). This drug would mess with your utility function in a way that would make it a lot easier for you to optimize your utility. No longer will you care about getting married and having a family, that’s too hard. Instead you’ll be baking cakes and taking showers for the rest of your life (voluntarily of course). Would you take the drug? Would a utilitarian be morally obligated to force everyone to take the drug?
We are utility maximizers; we want to attain as much happiness as we can. One subtle detail about our utility function is that we receive negative utility for knowingly deciding to change our utility function to a new one that conflicts with the old one. Our utility function can and does change overtime; however, we won’t want to choose to change it. Imagine I gave you a pill that would make you want to hate your family. An additional stipulation: hating your family will give you a lot more utility than the utility you currently get from loving your family. The intuitive utility maximizing decision would be to take the pill. On the other hand, since taking the pill would leave you with a utility function that’s incongruent with your current one, you will not take the pill. Same reason you won’t take a drug that will make you bake cakes and take showers all the time. It might distract you from your current goals and aspirations (you’d make baking cakes a higher priority than having friends). In other words, even if the new preferences will give you overall more happiness, you'll still prefer your old preferences.
You might be thinking, “Who cares? This drug doesn’t exist yet.” Well, it does; this dilemma exists for people who haven’t tried shrooms yet. According to discovery.com, “61 percent reported at least a moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.” Assuming you won’t get a bad trip, is it rational to take the drug? Depends on whether the drug changes your utility function and whether it conflicts with the older version. I doubt a psychedelic experience can help me optimize my current utility function better than my sober self. Therefore, I conclude that it must, in fact, change my preference ordering. I would rather keep my preferences the way they are now, of course.
In my opinion, this question isn’t only fun to ponder – it might determine the future of humanity! I realize I am taking a several inferential steps in making this point so hear me out. First off, consider the following hypothetical: some hippie scientist invents a drug that would, indefinitely, put you into a vegetative state, but the tradeoff is an infinite supply of happiness and pleasure. If people decide they would be better off on this drug, chaos will ensue.
I might be getting carried away; surely there will be people who would refuse the drug. People aren’t selfish; they wouldn’t want to hurt their loved ones by turning into a smiling vegetable. Let’s make things more interesting then. Imagine the drug only changed your preferences around making you receive great amounts of happiness for easily attainable goals. For example, baking a cake now gives you an orgasmic feeling and taking a shower feels like winning the lottery. This drug would be changing your utility function.
For those of you who haven’t heard of this gem of a concept, it means this: a function that inputs world events and outputs “utils” or i.e. a unit of satisfaction/happiness. There are certain world events that correspond to a quantity of personal happiness; a utility function models this relationship. For example, eating an apple corresponds to some measure of utility (read: happiness). This drug would mess with your utility function in a way that would make it a lot easier for you to optimize your utility. No longer will you care about getting married and having a family, that’s too hard. Instead you’ll be baking cakes and taking showers for the rest of your life (voluntarily of course). Would you take the drug? Would a utilitarian be morally obligated to force everyone to take the drug?
We are utility maximizers; we want to attain as much happiness as we can. One subtle detail about our utility function is that we receive negative utility for knowingly deciding to change our utility function to a new one that conflicts with the old one. Our utility function can and does change overtime; however, we won’t want to choose to change it. Imagine I gave you a pill that would make you want to hate your family. An additional stipulation: hating your family will give you a lot more utility than the utility you currently get from loving your family. The intuitive utility maximizing decision would be to take the pill. On the other hand, since taking the pill would leave you with a utility function that’s incongruent with your current one, you will not take the pill. Same reason you won’t take a drug that will make you bake cakes and take showers all the time. It might distract you from your current goals and aspirations (you’d make baking cakes a higher priority than having friends). In other words, even if the new preferences will give you overall more happiness, you'll still prefer your old preferences.
You might be thinking, “Who cares? This drug doesn’t exist yet.” Well, it does; this dilemma exists for people who haven’t tried shrooms yet. According to discovery.com, “61 percent reported at least a moderate behavior change in what they considered positive ways.” Assuming you won’t get a bad trip, is it rational to take the drug? Depends on whether the drug changes your utility function and whether it conflicts with the older version. I doubt a psychedelic experience can help me optimize my current utility function better than my sober self. Therefore, I conclude that it must, in fact, change my preference ordering. I would rather keep my preferences the way they are now, of course.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Lack of Empathy
Soldiers of war are not psychopath killers – they are victims of robbery, the robbery of a human quality called empathy. With certain external forces, we have the ability to lose this basic emotion. Analyzing the Israel and Gaza conflict, I have discovered that the loss of empathy is the underlying cause of the controversy. My objective in this column is not to prove which side is the victim or aggressor, but to share some of my thoughts on why I think there is a controversy in the first place.
I believe the Israel and Gaza debate is being approached incorrectly. Supporters on each side of the argument try throwing at each other facts, as if facts alone will make apparent which side is right. The controversy, however, is fundamentally a case of moral ambiguity. This is why I think a more philosophical approach is appropriate.
But first, I must delineate several assumptions that, in my opinion, aren’t far-fetched to make: 1) Hamas is a terrorist organization in that they intentionally target civilians. 2) Israel has a right to defend its citizens. 3) There are innocent civilians in Gaza.
Now that the assumptions are out of the way, let’s scrutinize the situation further. Hamas would not stop firing rockets towards Israel even after Israel’s threat of an attack. Since Israel has the right to defend itself, Israel is allowed to take some measure to deter the rockets. Israel chose to target Hamas and its resources with an airstrike. These targets were close to innocent civilians, partly because Hamas made that so and partly because Gaza is a densely populated area. The outcome of Israel’s airstrikes has led to upwards of 850 Palestinians dead with around 25 percent civilians. The airstrike has not deterred Palestinian fighters from shooting more rockets toward Israel, so far killing 13 soldiers and 3 civilians (these numbers may be higher after I write this).
The majority of Israeli citizens support the attacks made on Gaza. On the other hand, most of the rest of the world believes the attacks were disproportionate. Specifically, the Arab population has been most outspoken about their disagreement. This made me think about how so many different populations can be exposed to the same information yet arrive at the opposite conclusions. The reason this happens is because a mixture of nationalism, dogmatism, ideologies and propaganda disconnects each side from empathizing with one another.
The clearest example of lack of empathy is Hamas and their terrorist tactics. They put innocent Israeli lives on the line and treat their civilians like hostages in order to accomplish their objective. If they cared about people more than they do their unattainable goal, we would be one step closer to ending the conflict. Israel also commits a lack of empathy, but in my opinion, in a more subtle manner.
Unlike Hamas, Israel does not specifically target civilians with the intention of killing civilians. However, they do accept that civilian casualties are collateral damage, another cost of war, a suitable means towards defending their citizens. Collateral damage is an ambiguous moral concept, but throughout the past and present it seems like some dose of collateral damage is accepted. For example, imagine a group of a thousand gunmans shooting aimlessly inside a populated city. Say you have a button that you can press that will instantly kill all of them, but one innocent person will die. If this was the only option, I think it is safe to say that most people would press the button; that one person is a suitable cost of war.
Most Israelis believe that the airstrikes had the appropriate amount of damage or i.e. the appropriate amount of collateral damage. There does become a point, however, when the collateral damage is too high and is not justified by the outcome. Most of the rest of the world, specifically the Arab population, believes the attacks were disproportionate. To me, this means that Israelis care less about Palestinian civilians than the rest of the world does. I could say the reverse too – the rest of the world doesn’t care enough about Israelis! I believe that both cases are true. Nationalism, dogmatism, ideologies and propaganda keep removing empathy from the human relationship. We need to overcome our biases and truly understand one another, only then will the controversy fall apart.
I believe the Israel and Gaza debate is being approached incorrectly. Supporters on each side of the argument try throwing at each other facts, as if facts alone will make apparent which side is right. The controversy, however, is fundamentally a case of moral ambiguity. This is why I think a more philosophical approach is appropriate.
But first, I must delineate several assumptions that, in my opinion, aren’t far-fetched to make: 1) Hamas is a terrorist organization in that they intentionally target civilians. 2) Israel has a right to defend its citizens. 3) There are innocent civilians in Gaza.
Now that the assumptions are out of the way, let’s scrutinize the situation further. Hamas would not stop firing rockets towards Israel even after Israel’s threat of an attack. Since Israel has the right to defend itself, Israel is allowed to take some measure to deter the rockets. Israel chose to target Hamas and its resources with an airstrike. These targets were close to innocent civilians, partly because Hamas made that so and partly because Gaza is a densely populated area. The outcome of Israel’s airstrikes has led to upwards of 850 Palestinians dead with around 25 percent civilians. The airstrike has not deterred Palestinian fighters from shooting more rockets toward Israel, so far killing 13 soldiers and 3 civilians (these numbers may be higher after I write this).
The majority of Israeli citizens support the attacks made on Gaza. On the other hand, most of the rest of the world believes the attacks were disproportionate. Specifically, the Arab population has been most outspoken about their disagreement. This made me think about how so many different populations can be exposed to the same information yet arrive at the opposite conclusions. The reason this happens is because a mixture of nationalism, dogmatism, ideologies and propaganda disconnects each side from empathizing with one another.
The clearest example of lack of empathy is Hamas and their terrorist tactics. They put innocent Israeli lives on the line and treat their civilians like hostages in order to accomplish their objective. If they cared about people more than they do their unattainable goal, we would be one step closer to ending the conflict. Israel also commits a lack of empathy, but in my opinion, in a more subtle manner.
Unlike Hamas, Israel does not specifically target civilians with the intention of killing civilians. However, they do accept that civilian casualties are collateral damage, another cost of war, a suitable means towards defending their citizens. Collateral damage is an ambiguous moral concept, but throughout the past and present it seems like some dose of collateral damage is accepted. For example, imagine a group of a thousand gunmans shooting aimlessly inside a populated city. Say you have a button that you can press that will instantly kill all of them, but one innocent person will die. If this was the only option, I think it is safe to say that most people would press the button; that one person is a suitable cost of war.
Most Israelis believe that the airstrikes had the appropriate amount of damage or i.e. the appropriate amount of collateral damage. There does become a point, however, when the collateral damage is too high and is not justified by the outcome. Most of the rest of the world, specifically the Arab population, believes the attacks were disproportionate. To me, this means that Israelis care less about Palestinian civilians than the rest of the world does. I could say the reverse too – the rest of the world doesn’t care enough about Israelis! I believe that both cases are true. Nationalism, dogmatism, ideologies and propaganda keep removing empathy from the human relationship. We need to overcome our biases and truly understand one another, only then will the controversy fall apart.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Sneaky Advertisements
Every product on the market has either functional or emotional value. Take for example an Apple laptop computer: you may value its usefulness around $1000, but you’re willing to pay $1,500 for it; this means your emotional value for it is $500. Apple has successfully made you pay $500 more for value that only exists in your mind. Advertisers know that in order to make big profit margins they need to instill lots of emotional value into their ubiquitous product. As frugal shoppers, we can’t afford emotional value. Before we go mindlessly shopping again, we need to realize how advertisers are trying to mark up prices in exchange for some unnecessary emotional value. Below, I have a list of common products we buy and the overlooked emotional value advertisers have implanted in them.
Outdoor Clothing
The outdoorsy industry has the sneakiest marketing schemes. Presumably, these outdoor stores are your only provider of equipment you need when you drive too far from civilization. They say they are selling functionality, but what they’re really selling is an image. The average hiker doesn’t need a jacket with interior mesh pockets, polyester chin guard, and light-weight recyclable nylon shells. Only hard-core hikers benefit from all this junk, the rest of us buy it because we get to pretend we are hard-core too. And why the hell is everything pea green and cement gray?
Workout Supplements
I never thought I would be intimidated by a bottle of nutrients until I came across a bucket of Magnesium Super Charge Xtreme! I once passed by one and I swear I heard it call me a little bitch when it saw me carrying a box of cookies. Companies create these ridiculous packages because the consumer decides which supplement to buy based on whichever label conveys the baddest attitude. They have no idea what 1500mg of Tribulus Terrestris does, but the label has a guy benching a million pounds so it must be good! These nutrients are cheap to make and are present in most foods; these supplements will only sell for $30 with about $25 worth of emotional value.
XXL Condoms
Men are so obsessed with their size that they are willing to spend money pretending to have a foot-long. 90% of men measure between 5 to 7 inches; anything beyond or below that is exceptionally rare. Why do they market Magnum XXL condoms so heavily when a normal one can cover a grapefruit? Why don’t they advertise Pee-wee XXS condoms for the unfortunate bottom tenth percent of men? Condom companies don’t want you to associate their brand with tiny dicks, that’s not going to sell. They know they can mark up their prices a few bucks with a product that associates the buyer with a big one.
Alcohol
Alcohol companies have many advertising tricks up their sleeve, most of which we, smart shoppers, are aware of. There is one trick they have that I think a lot of people don’t notice. Their commercials are starting to emphasis the fact that we should drink responsibly and not drink and drive. They go as far as taking 25% of the commercial time to tell us this. By telling us this, they make us feel better for buying their brand; a socially conscious brand that cares about the lives it kills. It makes us feel better about drinking in general; it reminds us that drinking in moderation is fine and that we shouldn’t feel guilty about it.
Products with breast cancer ribbons on the box
Companies know that buyers like to help a cause as long as they don’t have to go out of their way too much to do it. In theory, putting a bunch of pink ribbons on the corner of a Cheerios box should help with sales. But why are so many food products obsessed with breast cancer all of a sudden? You may find the following saying a little disturbing in this context, but here it is anyway – sex sells. Companies donate to breast cancer research because it is marketable. You don’t want to be thinking of prostate cancer when you're scarfing down cereal. Companies have finally found a disease that isn’t disgusting enough to put on food labels, that’s it. Most companies already give to charity; breast cancer is just a cause they can gloat about. You aren’t buying from an especially virtuous company, just a clever one.
Outdoor Clothing
The outdoorsy industry has the sneakiest marketing schemes. Presumably, these outdoor stores are your only provider of equipment you need when you drive too far from civilization. They say they are selling functionality, but what they’re really selling is an image. The average hiker doesn’t need a jacket with interior mesh pockets, polyester chin guard, and light-weight recyclable nylon shells. Only hard-core hikers benefit from all this junk, the rest of us buy it because we get to pretend we are hard-core too. And why the hell is everything pea green and cement gray?
Workout Supplements
I never thought I would be intimidated by a bottle of nutrients until I came across a bucket of Magnesium Super Charge Xtreme! I once passed by one and I swear I heard it call me a little bitch when it saw me carrying a box of cookies. Companies create these ridiculous packages because the consumer decides which supplement to buy based on whichever label conveys the baddest attitude. They have no idea what 1500mg of Tribulus Terrestris does, but the label has a guy benching a million pounds so it must be good! These nutrients are cheap to make and are present in most foods; these supplements will only sell for $30 with about $25 worth of emotional value.XXL Condoms
Men are so obsessed with their size that they are willing to spend money pretending to have a foot-long. 90% of men measure between 5 to 7 inches; anything beyond or below that is exceptionally rare. Why do they market Magnum XXL condoms so heavily when a normal one can cover a grapefruit? Why don’t they advertise Pee-wee XXS condoms for the unfortunate bottom tenth percent of men? Condom companies don’t want you to associate their brand with tiny dicks, that’s not going to sell. They know they can mark up their prices a few bucks with a product that associates the buyer with a big one.Alcohol
Alcohol companies have many advertising tricks up their sleeve, most of which we, smart shoppers, are aware of. There is one trick they have that I think a lot of people don’t notice. Their commercials are starting to emphasis the fact that we should drink responsibly and not drink and drive. They go as far as taking 25% of the commercial time to tell us this. By telling us this, they make us feel better for buying their brand; a socially conscious brand that cares about the lives it kills. It makes us feel better about drinking in general; it reminds us that drinking in moderation is fine and that we shouldn’t feel guilty about it.Products with breast cancer ribbons on the box
Companies know that buyers like to help a cause as long as they don’t have to go out of their way too much to do it. In theory, putting a bunch of pink ribbons on the corner of a Cheerios box should help with sales. But why are so many food products obsessed with breast cancer all of a sudden? You may find the following saying a little disturbing in this context, but here it is anyway – sex sells. Companies donate to breast cancer research because it is marketable. You don’t want to be thinking of prostate cancer when you're scarfing down cereal. Companies have finally found a disease that isn’t disgusting enough to put on food labels, that’s it. Most companies already give to charity; breast cancer is just a cause they can gloat about. You aren’t buying from an especially virtuous company, just a clever one.
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