HOW WE DECIDE: mind-blowing neuroscience of decision-making - Boing Boing

Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide is the latest in a series of popular neuroscience books (Brain Rules, Stumbling on Happiness, Mind Wide Open, The Brain that Changes Itself) to (literally) blow my mind.

Lehrer, author of the celebrated Proust Was a Neuroscientist, lays out the current state of the neuroscientific research into decision-making with a series of gripping anaecdotes followed by reviews of the literature and interviews with the researchers responsible for it.

Lehrer is interested in the historic dichotomy between "emotional" decision-making and "rational" decision-making and what modern neuroscience can tell us about these two modes of thinking. One surprising and compelling conclusion is that people who experience damage to the parts of their brain responsible for emotional reactions are unable to decide, because their rational mind dithers endlessly over the possible rational reasons for each course of action. The Platonic ideal of a rational being making decisions without recourse to the wordless gut-instinct is revealed as a helpless schmuck who can't answer questions as basic as "White or brown toast?"

But overly emotional decisions are also likely to lead us into trouble. There is clearly a sweet-spot between white-hot emotional thinking and ice-cold reason, and Lehrer is trying to find it. By the end of the book, I'm nearly convinced he has.

My copy of How We Decide has literally dozens of dogeared pages that I've marked to return to in this reviews as examples of the kind of thing that made me go Wow! and sometimes even buttonhole nearby friends to read them passages. I'll run a few down for you here:

Lehrer's description of the amazing ability of dopamine to "predict" upcoming events is gripping all the way along, but I was delighted to learn that neuroscientists call signals for missed predictions (that is, the signal released when dopamine is released in anticipation of a reward that doesn't come), emanating from the anterior cingulate cortex the "Oh shit" circuit. The ACC is closely wired to the thalamus, so activation of the "Oh shit" circuit galvanizes the conscious mind, bringing the stimulus right to the front of our attention.

These mistakes are critical to good decision-making, as they are our best tutors. Lehrer describes a famous study from Stanford psych research Carol Dweck, who administered easy tests to 10-year-olds, who did well on it. The control group was praised for "being smart." The experimental group was praised for "trying hard." With only this difference, the two groups were then administered progressively harder tests. Dweck discovered that the "smart" kids did worse: they believed their initial good result was due to some innate virtue beyond their ken or control, and feared that a failure would show that they lacked this intangible. But the "hard-trying" group had been rewarded for taking intellectual risks, and so they continued. Afterwards, the "smart" kids rated the hardest tests as their least favorite; the "tryers" rated it as their most favorite.

via boingboing.net

A seemingly very interesting book. I think the ubiquitous use of functional psychological information is something this world is yet to experience. Positive psychology and other related things, like this book, seem to me to be working toward that end.

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The Leica X1 - Something retrofresh for the camera industry.

via dpreview.com

Leica releasing this little camera is doing something which I quite adore, they are creating, perhaps the first, actual high end digital portable. The interesting point here is that several years ago this camera category was quite popular, especially in japan, with products like the Minolta TC1 (probably my favorite camera of all time), the Nikon 28 and 35 Ti, and Leica CM and Minilux lines among several others form other brands. In any case, these were a great bread of camera and until recently nobody had invested in putting something like them together for digital. The X1 is not exactly suited for this product category but seems to have some nice compromises. In comparison to it's nearest competition, Canon S90, Richo RD1 and 2, Lumix and Sigma DP1, this product seems to be way more likely to be a real camera.

The one thing I think could do with some work is for them to have included a better lens. This one is not too bright with only F2.8 and perhaps a more Leica style fixed barrel lens would look and last better while giving them a platform to include better glass. If that was the case however, I think the X1 would be competing too strongly with the M8 for their liking.

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A strange ISP marketplace makes Australia a place not worth living in.

Caps on broadband use are holding us back.

ONE of the great anomalies of the Australian broadband industry is the existence of usage caps, which around the world are virtually non-existent.

In the US, some internet providers have talked of a 250 gigabytes-a-month limit. That has led to consumer outrage that forced those providers to desist lest they lose customers. This is despite the fact only 0.003 per cent of US broadband users exceed that level - just 0.21 per cent exceed 100GB.

To an outsider, the Australian system seems very strange. Telstra boasts a basic package on its BigPond Cable Extreme network that, for $39.95 a month, gives 200 megabytes in usage. At Telstra's boasted 30MB a second speeds, that amounts to a minute of high-quality video downloads. After that you pay 15¢ a megabyte. It is hard to imagine that being an option for consumers.

But even its Liberty plan, which costs $69.95 and offers 12GB a month - after which the extreme speed is slowed to the speeds of last century - only allows you 20 hours of video watching a month, provided you do nothing else. That's about 45 minutes a night.

No wonder so many people do their YouTube watching at work.

Had the US and rest of the world had similar practices, requiring users to carefully watch their megabytes, YouTube and similar services would never had been conceived, let alone put into practice. Perhaps the carriers would have hosted content, under the cap, but then we would be in a world where they decided what we saw rather than the demonstrably better one where that choice is truly free.

There are costs to bandwidth. But rather than being 15¢ a megabyte, they are in the order of 15¢ a gigabyte - or 1000 times less. So if you are using 500GB a month, you are costing your carrier $75 a month. It seems reasonable that you pay for it. But, in Australia, if you want to use 50GB a month, you'll pay $2.60 a gigabyte to Telstra. Paying for bandwidth is fine. Getting gouged for it is another matter.

It is not just Telstra, although it has a special role. No internet provider in Australia offers a plan like they do in the US. The best ones are cheaper than Telstra but offer more by dividing between peak and off-peak use.

They have not tried to grab market share by going for it and freeing people from dreaded usage monitoring.

Why isn't competition working here? It is difficult to say but consider what would happen if a smaller provider lifted its cap to 250GB and charged 15¢ beyond that. It would attract a disproportionate share of those who would use that much. That may represent a small part of the market but a large part of its customers. Add to that the potential congestion caused by such usage - if concentrated in the evenings - on the equipment installed in Telstra exchanges, and that 15¢ a gigabyte may be something much larger.

This is a problem that Telstra likely does not face. But it does face conflicts that might give it pause when lifting caps.

For instance, a higher cap moves video watching online and out of the living room where Foxtel boxes reside. That is a cost it faces that others do not. But it is a cost borne of choice, the choice to be integrated with Foxtel.

We are told that the new management of Telstra is more open and ready to meet the challenges brought about by the national broadband network. The NBN will have the capacity to break through usage caps. But why wait eight years?

There is an opportunity for Telstra to demonstrate its new responsiveness and get rid of this anachronism. It could lift its Liberty plan to 100GB and likely face few additional costs if it charged 15¢ a gigabyte. It would send a strong signal to markets.

For others, there is a similar route. Smaller providers need not offer high-cap plans widely, but, for example, as an employee deal with businesses they also serve.

Think about it. Employees would be offered plans that gave them incentives to watch YouTube at home rather than at work. Employers would be happy and there would be only a marginal increase in traffic for the service provider as usage moved from work to home.

There is a way out of tight usage caps that stifle appropriate internet use. These will not be costly given international experience, but will open up more services to broadband usage. The NBN will provide this, but Australians shouldn't have to wait that long.

Joshua Gans is an economics professor at Melbourne Business School. He writes on these issues at economics.com.au

via theage.com.au

I think internet quality is a significant determining factor in my decision of where to live. Now of course living in Korea I have very fast unlimited internet. In China however the network is rather slow for external sites which is one of the reasons I am not now living there. Similarly in Australia the situation is so ridiculous that in many towns working is almost impossible for me.

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Healthy in Korea

via koreabeat.com

Having lived in Korea for 8 months now I think I am in many ways healthier than I have been for a while and I get sick much less frequently. I thank Kimchi.

I should add, now when I eat almost any western food I can feel unhealthy elements and want to eat it much less. I no longer dream about eating cheese, chocolate and al dente tortellini.

Posted via web from Mark Whiting's posterous

Dark Roasted Blend

Image: from, via. 

I think Dark Roasted blend is one of my favorite.

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Soccer Strategy and the Zen of Things

Last night I watched the Korea - Australia soccer game in a bar here in Korea (Korea was victorious 3 - 1). As I watched it I began to think about the strategy problem facing each coach and each player on the field. My immediate reaction was firstly, that the strategies they seemed to be implementing were pretty unsophisticated, relatively in the box, and not all that good. As I considered ways to find better strategy for this context I also began to consider what would make a good team, how their quality could be developed and how they could interact with other teams to ensure more interesting football games. Of course this is a complex problem and there are many factors about which I have no idea, however, I think it is safe to say, that an external, and non physical, review of many sport's strategies could have a significant influence. 

The next logical thing to consider was the business of providing strategic consultation for such highly vested teams. I wonder for instance, if IDEO has ever been approached to help a sports team design a better view of their game, and if there is such a thing as design trained consultants in the sports industry, offering suggestions on better team structure etc. 

The last thought this situation led to was that of the Zen of complex systems, like the game of football. Several weeks ago I was considering the fact that most systems seem to have a Zen of sorts; an essential idea that holds them together and can be described as the ideal which makes all the other elements relevant. I considered that although most systems have a Zen, it is possible and likely that a system does not need to have such a formal notion, however, the thought occurred that what makes something a system is the presence of an underlying Zen. In any case, yesternight I wondered what the Zen of football would be like, and how different it is from the game that we watch and appreciate. 

A conversation on this would be interesting.

Photo: Reuters

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More Zippers, Different Context

An image of a project I am working on. 

Any guesses about what you are looking at?

Please ignore the obvious inaccuracies. 

Playing For Change

Last night at TED Global there were a number of good talks but one thing I particularly liked was a video by Mark Johnson. Watch Below.

Markets and Hobbies

In Korea there is a very strong culture of early adoption and hobbyists for a number of market types. One in particular is that of photography and in certain areas of Seoul you can't go a few minutes without seeing a top end fully professional DSLR. In this market however there is also a lot of diversity and products like Lomo are quite well established. Similarly film photography is still strong.

It looks like I may do some work looking at this trend a bit later.

In Sinsa the other day, a father with a big camera and a daughter.

Living in Context

Recently while shopping at the local KAIST convenience store I noticed the clerk was getting exercise by power walking around the small store.

The KAIST Convenient Store with woman running too fast to be photographed

I think the prospect of making our living spaces and working spaces share strange unexpected values is pretty interesting. I should also add that recently in my Ubiquitous Hacking summer class we did a little thinking about combined multimode spaces for living and working. My prototype was based on the prospect of incorporating emptiness to reduce functional specificity. A little like the discussion of bathrooms I noted last time I was travelling in Korea, this concept is also highly motivated by the seeming emptiness and functional agnosticism of many traditional Korean destinations.

A simple room for work and living biased on the lack of objects to create flexibility

Cheese and Asia

A Korean made Brie. I had no knife so I used Chopsticks

Since I first started coming to Asia years ago I have always found that cheese is dealt with interestingly here. As many people know China and Mongolia have had fermented milk from early on. Nowadays  milk and yogurts are consumed on mass, however the cheese market is still small and almost exclusively premium. However, most people in Asia I meet seem to really enjoy cheese and this is no secret, as far as I can tell, to the local food industry. One Chinese friend to whom I introduced Goat cheese to in Australia commented that he wished to eat nothing else for the rest of his existence.

Packaging from one of the most common milk suppliers here. I think it is rather nice and that the name Maeil almost communicates Milk. Maeil or 매일 actually means everyday in Korean

In Asia one can buy foreign cheeses at a relatively high price but they are almost never used in foods in restaurants. Various dishes in China and Korea are starting to have cheese options but the cheese used is almost exclusively low fidelity cheddar which I think is made of plastic.

This is an amazing dish which I will comment more on later. What is important at this point is that those rice cakes are full of the previously mentioned cheddar.

A few years ago I thought it would be interesting to start an Asian cheese company which could provide for the local need and introduce more variety. Here in Korea there is a company (Sangha, a brand of Maeil) doing this and selling reasonable Camembert and Brie, still overpriced, but much less than the imported options. I tend to still buy French or Australian products as the flavour is superior but it is interesting to see the effort. This company has also released a Camembert spread which comes in a bottle, sadly it is slightly aerated.

Camembert in a Bottle. I think we should explore the possibility of making this really nice, it seems like a good idea.

In any case, I have a few contacts in this area but should get more investment before tackling Asian cheese. Any ideas?