How To Break Anything

Youth and social imitation: mimicry inspires mimicry

Kyle Studstill — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:21:05 +0000

I was watching this little dude perform earlier today in Washington Square Park. I don't know what track he was singing (it was something from the classic rock era) but I could tell he was capturing the original artist's emotion and passion with incredible accuracy. I'm quite sure it was something he grew up listening to, through his parents or otherwise. He reminded me that young kids with this kind of musical talent are perfect examples for how much we humans mimic each other. I'm very certain he will continue absorbing inspiration from all around him until his music soon becomes a unique expression of who he is, synthesizing all his experiences into one coherent work of art.

Later I went over to a rag-tag group of performers who had drawn a crowd with their old-timey jazz music. Seeing that a small pre-toddler girl had come up to them with interest, I got into an open area where some people had started swing dancing and started dancing myself. Sticking my tongue out playfully, I got her to start moving her arms and rotating her hips a bit. Although no picture, I was quite pleased with myself. Mimicry is one of my favorite behaviors to observe.

[btw I frequently stick my tongue out at little kids, generally just to watch them do it back. I'm very sure I picked it from watching someone.]

"Is this the future of tourism?" via here's the thing.

Kyle Studstill — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:48:20 +0000

via proseandconrad.com

Posted via web from 2K2yrsfromnow

The relationship between choice and rationality

Kyle Studstill — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:45:42 +0000

"The more choice we have the more difficult is to make the decision and the more irrational our choices become. Choice can paralyze us. The advantage companies can gain lies in delivering services that help people to handle the choices they are facing."

via socialhallucinations.com

All this thinking on rational vs irrational decision-making keeps getting me to return to this post: Why it's impossible to be rational about anything.

It's also brought Marvin Minsky's The Emotion Machine to the top of my Amazon wish list (as I understand he argues that emotion and rationality are not mutually exclusive).

Subway-style visualization of Myers-Briggs personality types

Kyle Studstill — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:32:12 +0000

via brainpickings.org

Posted via web from Kyle's posterous

It's quite irrational, how rational we think we are.

Kyle Studstill — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:59:29 +0000

Here's a thought:

We're highly irrational because the world is too complex to do anything but ignore most of the information that's actually relevant to a decision. See: "Why it's impossible to be rational about anything."

However, in the world of WebMD, Zagat revews and 'transparency' we leave the internet feeling like rational decision makers of the highest order. See: "The amateur scientist."

Just one more example of many in a long list of all the ways we tend to be completely wrong about everything.

Usman Haque (developer of Pachube) on the future of 'The Internet of Things'

Kyle Studstill — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:47:11 +0000

"One of the challenges we're facing is the question of what is private and what is public. How do you give people control over their privacy? Yes there's the technical question of getting your fridge to talk to the supermarket, but the more challenging question is: what is the interface for allowing people to determine what the fridge says?"

In addition to the dead simple Pachube platform that allows developers to connect sensors from things in real space to outputs in the digital world (and back to real space applications), Haque has been involved in a fascinating number of other projects that explore how we interact with our environment.

Of note is Natural Fuse, a collaboration with Nitpak Samsen (who, incidentally, I mentioned earlier for his conceptual control panels). This network of plants and power outlets limits the output of power by how much the plants can counter the resulting carbon footprint. Very game theory-esque.

If you're looking to be inspired by great thinking with respect to being aware of our impact on the envronment, I definitely recommend http://www.haque.co.uk and http://www.dotmancando.info.

Posted via email from Kyle's posterous

On the rise of autoposting to Twitter

Kyle Studstill — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:20:43 +0000

Increasingly more services are making it dead simple to autopost everything you're doing/watching/buying/consuming directly to Twitter, real-time and in the moment.

I can't help but feel that this predicts a ridiculous future for a platform built around 'conversation.'

This is mostly because I started to imagine what Twitter streams would look like if they were nothing but autoposts.

After thinking this out loud, Daria had a response to share:

I almost want to say "true, but I just don't think stuff like 'hey everyone I just beat the ice level [posted via Xbox Live]' counts as 'interesting enough'," but the tricky part about talking about how we all use Twitter or any network is that we all use them so differently. That is to say, I can imagine the scenario where someone sees that their friend is playing some game they've considered playing, and now considers playing it themselves knowing that their friend is on it too.

I also got this thought from thepeopleseason:

Which reminds me of a conversation I was having yesterday with thegirlriot. Ultimately I believe that when it comes to things like Twitter, or marketing, or pretty much anything that involves being a person who interacts with other people, there's a right way to do things and there's a wrong way to do things. And I don't mean this in an objective, specific kind of way, I more mean it in a ''there are people doing it right, and then there are douchebags" kind of way.

Ultimately I think that you can have a worthwhile conversation over Twitter, but some people are definitely doing it wrong. Certainly not to the same extent that you can have a face-to-face conversation, but in terms of using the right different channels to express different ideas, there's definitely a way to do it right on Twitter.

I can't help but feel that if your entire stream is 'I'm doing X' 'I'm doing Y' 'I'm doing Z' and you're not even there....well what's the point? It's like seeing someone whose entire stream is a push from their blog (...why don't I just go to your blog?), except that where someone (might) want to know what you're thinking and sharing, no one cares about everything you're doing doing except you.

In the end, the whole douchebag/not a douchebag thing isn't too hard to figure out; the line exists somewhere in the realm of 'how much you're actively sharing with/helping other people vs how much you're just talking about yourself.'

(And all this doesn't even touch autoposting leading to convergence with respect to the idea using different platforms for different purposes, which is an entirely different conversation itself...)

"100 things You Should Know About People: #6 — You Reconstruct Your Memories"

Kyle Studstill — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:44:46 +0000

This has been an outstanding series, via whatmakesthemclick.net. I highly recommend following it.

Try this task — Think back to a particular event that happened at least 5 years ago. Maybe it was a wedding, or a family gathering, or a dinner you went to with friends, or a vacation. Pick one for our purposes here, and remember the event. Remember the people, and where you were and maybe you can remember the weather, or what you were wearing.

Memories as movies? — We tend to experience our memories of events like this as little movie clips that play back in our minds. And because we experience them this way we have a tendency to think that memories are stored in entirety and never change. But that’s not what happens.

Memories are reconstructed — Our memories are actually reconstructed every time we think of them. They aren’t movie clips that are stored in the brain in a certain location like files on a hard drive. They are nerve pathways that are firing anew each time we remember the event. This makes for some interesting effects. For example, the memory can change.

Subsequent events can affect the memory – Other events that occur after the original event can change the memory of the original event. At the original event, you and your cousin were close friends. But later on you have a argument and a falling-out that lasts for years. Your memory of the first event might include your cousin being aloof and cold, even if that is not true. The later experience has changed your memory.

Mixing events — It is easy to start mixing up memories. So that things that happened at two separate events become fused into one. Your cousin was pleasant at one event, and not pleasant at the other, but over time your memories about which is which can become confused.

Filling in of gaps – You will also start to fill in your memory gaps with “made up” sequences of events, but these will seem as real to you as the original event. You can’t remember who else was at the family dinner, but Aunt Jolene is usally present at these events, and so over time your memory of the event will include Aunt Jolene.

Eyewitness testimony – Elizabeth Loftus is one of the earliest psychology researchers to study reconstructive memory. She was studying eyewitness testimonies, and was especially interested in whether language can affect memory.

Bumped, hit, or smashed – In her research Loftus would show a video clip of an automobile accident. Then she would ask a series of questions about the accident. She would change the way she worded the questions, for example, sometimes she would phrase it as: “How fast would you estimate the car was going when it hit the other vehicle”, or “How fast would you estimate the car was going when it smashed the other vehicle.” And she would ask participants in the study if they remembered seeing broken glass.

You can guess — When she used the word smashed the estimated speed was higher than when she used the word hit. And more than twice as many people remembered seeing broken glass if the word smashed was used rather than the word hit.

So what’s the impact? — Since memories are reconstructed, here are some things to keep in mind:

The words you use are important. They can actually affect people’s memories.

You can’t rely on self-reports of past behavior. People will not remember accurately what they or others did or said.

Watch out for how and what you say if you are interviewing people, for example, interviewing users for a usability or user experience study. You can influence their responses with the words you use.

Similarly, take what users say later, when they are remembering using an interface, with a grain of salt. It’s being reconstructed

And if you’d like to read some of Elizabeth Loftus’ seminal work in the area:

Elizabeth F. Loftus and John C. Palmer, Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction:
An Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 585-589 (1974).

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Tags: eye witness testimony, memory, psychology

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 10:33 pm and is filed under memory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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A quick thought on using Google Wave, related to the idea of an augmented reality "ghost game"

Kyle Studstill — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:34:01 +0000

As Google Wave evolves, there are sure to be a number of incredibly innovative uses that emerge. So far, I've jumped onto a small handful of brainstorming discussions.

In a recent interview with PSFK, Kevin Slavin (co-founder of the cross-media game-development group Area/Code) was talking about how they started to dive into augmented reality games back in 2005 when the technology first emerged. They started to develop a game where players would interact with ghosts rendered via augmented reality; this seemed like an excellent expression of what AR could do. What happened that some 20 or so of these same kind of 'ghost games' also popped up. As Slavin put it, "it's the fundamental expression of AR. It's as if that's all mobile AR wants to do: produce a game about ghosts."

Fast forward a few years and we're still trying to figure out what AR can do that will actually be tangibly useful (Slavin points to research demonstrating that the most consistent issue people have when using maps is the problem of how to initially orient yourself; he thinks this may be where AR may ultimately find a use).

Not that I think it'll take something like Wave as long to find any use; clearly Wave has already inspired a lot of ways to communicate and organize thoughts. My thought is just that perhaps the 'brainstorming/ideation board' seems like the 'ghost game' of Wave-powered thinking. Rudimentary and basic. Very interested to see what else evolves. What other interesting uses have you found for Wave thus far??

(come to think of it, I've found it very good for personal notes to self, also as a platform for half-baked ideas and relevant link inspiration. This used to happen through unshared Delicious links but Wave is a much smoother way to do this. I think Wave even suggests collaborators based on the content you post.)

EDIT 11.15.09: Mashable recently listed five excellent case usages here. Of note: customer service platform, alternative to hastags for live documenting/contributing to events, platform for organizing and playing online RPGs.

How the specious randomness of coin-flipping reflects our irrational decision-making

Kyle Studstill — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:45:06 +0000

CoinFlipper by Nitpak Samsen

Nitpak 'dot' Samsen studies interaction design, with a number of his recent projects being featured in Japan's recent DesignTide 2009. These are worth viewing briefly in the video below; most of his experiments involve simple control mechanisms aimed at addressing issues of limited resources.

The Buttons from nitipak samsen on Vimeo.

One of Samsen's most involving projects has had him exploring the nature of randomness, meticulously recording the effects of different conditions on on a flipped coin in an attempt to build the perfect coin-flipping device.

Coin Flipper exp from nitipak samsen on Vimeo.

Samsen has compiled the below list of factors that affect that specious randomness we associate with coin-flipping, concluding that we can in fact control the result of something we tend to think of as random:

This is, of course, an incredibly complex and (at this point) completely inimitable system of factors. This points to the fact that while Samsen is correct about our potential for control, I wrote something quite related recently on our similar capacity to make decisions rationally (read: similarly impossible).

The short of it is that in a complex world full of systems ridiculously more complicated than flipping a coin, we develop heuristics, make assumptions, call determinable things random, and behave all-around irrationally.

(Incidentally, I do think that history illustrates our increasing capacity to work within increasingly complex systems. We're in the middle of a fortuitously ideal example of this, considering that our headlong dive into overwhelming amounts of information has resulted in all the beautifully evolving systems and visualizations attempting to organize it (see: Infosthetics, Flowing Data, plenty others). So when I say "we are [at this point] completely incapable of processing such intricate systems," I'm conceding that Samsen's assertion may simply be an optimistic look at what we're capable of, with which I am in agreeance.)

Furniture design aimed at reflecting our nostalgic youth

Kyle Studstill — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:10:10 +0000

From 83Design, a Japanese design group featured this year in DesignTide Tokyo 2009.

"Our design is not only stimulating, but somewhat nostalgic and heart warming."

Project: Nostalgia - what are some things you miss or remember? I'm collecting pieces of nostalgia here, anonymously. Would love to have a bit of yours.

"Ketchup was sold as medicine in the 1830's."

Kyle Studstill — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:07:48 +0000

It's terribly easy to call something snake oil years after the fact, when all the perceptions have changed.

Or to call the denial of basic rights an embarrasing social injustice years after the fact, when all the perceptions have changed.

Or to realize that all those people saying hard work is the only thing that pays off were right, years after the fact, when all the perceptions have changed.

Or that things like smoking, living wastefully, not recycling, etc. are all ridiculous notions, years after the fact, when all the perceptions have changed.

Or....?

What everyday attitude/perception/belief are you holding right now that is going to be radically different much sooner than you think?

[img via LEARN SOMETHING EVERY DAY]

Why it's impossible to be rational about anything: measuring decision-making factors' potential for rational analysis

Kyle Studstill — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:55:59 +0000

One of the problems with making decisions rationally is that it's conceptually impossible. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely highlights this by examining the decision-making process of someone faced with two coffee shops across the street from each other, one featuring handcrafted roasts and the other a standard chain where the coffee is $1.75 cheaper:

What you should do (if you wanted to be rational about it) is consider all of the things that you could buy with that $1.75, now as well as in the future, and decide to buy the expensive coffee only if the difference between the two coffees is more valuable than all of those other possibilities. But of course this computation would take hours, it is incredibly complex, and who even knows all the possible options to consider? [The Psychology of Money and Habits]

If you spend some time thinking on the factors that influence the direction of any decision, what you find is that every factor somewhere on a scale from high potential for rational analysis to low potential for rational analysis. Consider, for example, that a puppy's markings have a very low potential for rational analysis when deciding between one of two puppies to take home.

The problem is that even factors like price that fall relatively high compared to puppy spots are still far from being accurate tools for rational decision making. In this case it's because we can't help but make decisions based on context, relying on a memory that's spotty at best to judge the relative value of any monetary amount at any given time (see: How relativity affects every decision we make: an experiment in making $20K worth more than $20K). This is just one rule of human decision-making among a host of others.

Even if one were to accurately measure the various potentials for rational analysis of every factor at hand (impossible), one would then have to accurately compare factors within the overwhelming matrix of results (also impossible).

Our entire complex of heuristics and cognitive shortcuts exists entirely because being rational is simply far too difficult (see: this list of all the ways you could be completely wrong about everything).

"The most effective product you can sell a parent is guilt."

Kyle Studstill — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:54:53 +0000

I'm told that this cover of the New Yorker is inspiring parents to leave their phones home tonight. As Bud Caddell puts it, the most effective product you can sell a parent is guilt.

While it's not something I've had to experience yet, all conversation would indicate that the main draw to having kids seems to be the chance to recreate the 'magic of childhood.'

Of course it's quite like us to look back and romanticize the years of being 'carefree, innocent and full of wonder.' My experience has been that not everyone thinks back on growing up with longing eyes, but for the most part nostalgia is a big part of how we operate.

Project: Nostalgia

Perhaps this is yet another appropriate time for some reflection on Phillip Zimbardo's idea of time-orientation? My experience has certainly been that those who are a little less moved by the magic of childhood are a little more moved by the magic of delayed gratification.

At any rate I feel that thinking of this cover in terms of guilt is spot on. It's a guilt driven by our deeper need to fill our own children with 'perfect' memories of their own. Those of you who are parents: is your phone coming out with you tonight?

We're all natural born liars. It's absolutely what we "want."

Kyle Studstill — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:38:35 +0000

I'm quite convinced that the efforts we subconsciously put into fooling ourselves account for a great number of our conscious decisions.

One of my favorite iterations of this plays an active role in those activities that we begin with full gusto and all good intentions, only to find ourselves later struggling to follow through with a project that once seemed so inspiring (read: almost every single idea we have).

We've become so very proficient at telling ourselves that there's something else more exciting, more inspirational, more capable of being what we really want.

So of course the real question to figure out is: "is 'want' really the best way to describe the things that make us truly happy?"