Liberals are the People of the Future

My understanding of liberals and conservatives goes like this: Liberals are optimistic about change. Whether it's religious freedom in Rhode Island hundreds of years ago or Civil Rights 50 years ago, it was liberals pushing for change they believed would improve the country. Conservatives on the hand are skeptical of change. Whether it's the fight over the National Bank in the 1800's or FDR's New Deal, it was conservative trying to stop the change they believe would harm country.

Liberals are looking forward to improve the world and conservatives are looking backward. That means, if life is changing then by default, liberals are the people of the future. What was reprehensible in the beginning of the 19th century was the norm by the end of the century (think the train, the lightning rod, and jazz).  What was reprehensible in the beginning of the 20th century was the norm by the end of the century (think the car, birth control, and rock and roll).

But that does not means liberals are always right. The future is not always better. Growing government, shrinking families, stagnant economies are just a few problems of modernity. However, this can help us predict what cultural shifts will become normal. For example, recently in Italy a woman convicted of murdering her sister had her prison sentence reduced based on her abnormal brain scan. Another example is the future option of choosing our children's genetic futures. These ideas make me very uncomfortable, but I'm not sure if they'll make my grandchildren uncomfortable.

My rule of thumb has been to ask myself if once the change is complete, is the world better off or worse off. Ignore the technological and political hurdles required. Ignore the cultural destruction it will cause. Ignore how it makes you feel and try to calculate how it could make you feel. Or, just see what your liberal friends think.

Europe/Africa Trip in Pictures

In late June my wife and I put all our belongings in storage and set off to visit family in Europe and North Africa. Like last year's trip to NYC, I'll just give the highlights:

The Transatlantic Flight

My new rule in flying is never assume anything. Since our first honeymoon flight together my wife and I have created a bad habit of running in airports. Apparently in Boston Logan, no gate number doesn't mean to wait, it means it's an international flight (which is on the other side of the airport).

Madrid-Barajas Airport

My favorite airport of the trip was easily Madrid. It was one of our longest layovers, which shouldn't be underestimated. One of the things I noticed on the flight over is that I had a very hard time telling who was an American and who was not. It seems the entire West looks American to me.

Granada, Spain

We came to this medium sized city in Southern Spain to visit Traci's brother, his wife, and their adorable son.

Better than any picture I took

 We saw the Granada Cathedral (above) and the once-Muslim-later-Catholic palace The Alhambra (below).

It's interesting to be in a city that was once devout Catholic, then taken over by the Moors (Muslims), then taken back over back Catholics, only to be ruled by the fascist dictator Francisco Franco during WWII. It's created a nation of people who seem to be done with religion and done with work. Though not entirely.

This was one of the most fascinating people we met. He's the owner of a small but successful olive oil shop. He reminded me how important personality is for entrepreneurship.

Every American city needs one of these!

Spain was a wealthy Western European nation that seemed in most ways similar to the US. The main difference seemed to be the difference between rural and city culture more than American and European culture. Unlike our next destination.

Tangier, Morocco

We came to this large Muslim city in North Africa to visit another of Traci's brother, his wife, and their two equally adorable children.

View from their porch

With a larger language, cultural, and fashion barrier than Spain, we spent more time indoors.

Playing cards.

Reading The Boxcar Children (did you know they get out of the Boxcar?).

And playing musical chairs.

I'm not afraid to win

Amsterdam, Netherlands

The last leg of our trip was spent to visit my sister and her new husband.

As you can see the weather in Amsterdam is quite colder, even in July. Every imaginable mode of transportation exists here. Cars, mopeds, trams, and...

Boats! And...

Bikes! 

Cologne, Germany and Bree, Belgium

While in the Netherlands we took a day trip to Cologne and Bree. Here's my favorite thing we saw all trip.

The Cologne Cathedral

Like something out of a fairy tale.

We walked all the way to the top!

Madrid, Spain

Twice on our 3 1/2 week trip we had an overnight connection in Madrid. What started as a costly annoyance turned out to be one of my favorite cities. Not only was Madrid clean and safe, it was extremely easy to get around. For 1 Euro you can get anywhere in the city on the subway.

Despite a 7 1/2 layover in Tangier and getting called an asshole by a old Dutch woman, the trip went off without a hitch. The whole experience helped me better understand European and Arab culture. How similar (cultural religion isn't just a thing of the American South) and how different (like how old women and children are on the streets in Spain at 2am) people can be. Thanks again to all the family and friends who showed us around!

Emptying the Bottle: Mid-June '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile sites I've Bookmarked recently:

• Digital factories behind real prison bars (earlier).
• The Post Office is going bankrupt and here's a great solution.
• Judges are more likely to grant parole after lunch.
• Many reasons why I can't wait for driverless cars (earlier).
• Try and spot the fake smile [videos].
• Economics of Fashion Property rights [video] (hat tip to Justin Scott).
• Why you shouldn't talk about movies on the first date (and maybe ever).
• Justin Wehr on why trying to impress others isn't so bad (part II).
• Really good put downs shouldn't feel really good [chart].
• A funny reimagining of what happened to George Lucas.
• The best advice is advice not seen as advice [video] (earlier).
• Why the South still celebrates the Civil War.

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

How Advertisers "Trick" Consumers

I've been skeptical about the benefits of advertising, but I've never bought the idea of how they fool us. Yet our memory can fool our brains. I never could articulate the connection, until now:

One way advertisers convince us to buy something is to remind us that we’ve enjoyed their product before. Unfortunately, we can have fond memories of a product that we’ve never even had. Or that doesn’t even exist.

A hundred volunteers looked at print ads for Orville Redenbacher's "Gourmet Fresh" popcorn—a variety that researchers made up. Some subjects saw an ad with a vivid description of the brand's “big white fluffy kernels." Others saw a less evocative ad.

A week later, subjects who saw the vivid ad were twice as likely to believe they'd tried this fictional product as were subjects who saw the plain ad. In fact, the believers were as confident that they had tried the popcorn as were people who actually ate popcorn after seeing the fake ads.

Add this to my battle against self-verification.

Economics of Skirts

Good times equal small skirts:

Urban legend has it that the hemline is correlated with the economy. In times of decline, the hemline moves towards the floor (decreases), and when the economy is booming, skirts get shorter and the hemline increases. We collected monthly data on the hemline, for 1921-2009, and evaluate these against the NBER chronology of the economic cycle. The main finding is that the urban legend holds true but with a time lag of about three years. Hence, the current economic crisis predicts ankle length shirts around 2011 and 2012.

Via Barking up the wrong tree.

A Simple Morality Test

If we are more likely to choose the moral choice if the framework is simple, then here's the best tool I've ever heard. From economist and author Steve Levitt: "How would I feel if my daughter were engaged in that activity?" I don't have a daughter, but I bet little sister is a comparable substitute. I can honestly say I wouldn't mind my sisters working at Walmart, playing online poker, marrying interracially, not voting, buying from China, refusing panhandlers, speculating on oil, or smoking legalized pot.

Benign Violation Theory of Humor

Similar to my earlier reality and absurdity post on comedy, professor of psychology Peter McGraw has his own theory:

Their paper, “Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny,” cited scores of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists (as well as Mel Brooks and Carol Burnett). The theory they lay out: “Laughter and amusement result from violations that are simultaneously seen as benign.” That is, they perceive a violation—”of personal dignity (e.g., slapstick, physical deformities), linguistic norms (e.g., unusual accents, malapropisms), social norms (e.g., eating from a sterile bedpan, strange behaviors), and even moral norms (e.g., bestiality, disrespectful behaviors)”—while simultaneously recognizing that the violation doesn’t pose a threat to them or their worldview. The theory is ludicrously, vaporously simple. But extensive field tests revealed nuances, variables that determined exactly how funny a joke was perceived to be.

Here it is in diagram form:

Here's the social explanation:

The ultimate takeaway of McGraw’s paper was that the evolutionary purpose of laughter and amusement is to “signal to the world that a violation is indeed OK.” Building on the work of behavioral neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, McGraw believes that laughter developed as an instinctual way to signal that a threat is actually a false alarm—say, that a rustle in the bushes is the wind, not a saber-toothed tiger. “Organisms that could separate benign violations from real threats benefited greatly,” McGraw says.

Here's how you make a moral violation benign:

Dirty jokes violate social norms in a benign way because the traveling salesmen and farmers’ daughters that populate them are not real. Punch lines make people laugh because they gently violate the expectations that the jokes set up. The BVT also explains Sarah Silverman, McGraw says; the appalling things that come out of her mouth register as benign because she seems so oblivious to their offensiveness, and “because she’s so darn cute.” Even tickling, long a stumbling block for humor theorists, appears to fit. Tickling yourself can’t be a violation, because you can’t take yourself by surprise. Being tickled by a stranger in a trench coat isn’t benign; it’s creepy. Only tickling by someone you know and trust can be a benign violation.

If you want to hear more from Mr. McGraw's own words, here's his TED Talk:

Gross Downtime Product

In my two posts on Tyler Cowen's new ebook, The Great Stagnation, I described a concern (but not crisis) about the possibility of future economic growth. But perhaps even if we don't don't get more productive at work, we are getting more productive at play:

recent advances in technology are actually increasing per-hour productivity by much more than we realize. But then workers are absorbing those gains by goofing off more at their desks, spending their time on Facebook and surfing the web, and completing their tasks only marginally faster than they used to despite much greater productivity. Admit it: the typical white collar office worker under 35 is spending at least a quarter of his or her day on social networking, reading blogs and chatting with friends. Hours worked are shrinking much faster than hours “worked,” and we’re enjoying a lot more leisure time than is reflected in the data.

Maybe this is the solution to our money > time problem.

Why Men's Acheivements are More Public

An article I shared a while back discussed reasons why women are less likely to blog (mostly that women need/want less outside praise for their achievements). I wonder, does this apply to other parts of their life? This study suggests yes:

Two ecologically valid studies involving anticipated public performance offer insight into women's tendencies to avoid placing their abilities under a spotlight. First, in an experimental study, women felt less comfortable than did men and experienced more personal risk when they anticipated that their test scores would be public. Second, in a naturalistic observational setting, students taking an experiential forensic psychology course were required to perform intellectually challenging activities in public. Women displayed more concern about the course requirements than did men, and subsequently dropped the course in disproportionate numbers.

Could this also be why women are less likely to do speak up in my class, pursue leadership positions or do improv?

Worthwhile Sentences on Misconceptions

From Anthony Randazzo: "It means you're not going to buy a home, until you can afford to buy a home. During the housing bubble we didn't see home ownership rates rise. We just saw really cheap quasi-rental...they didn't really ever own that home."

From Larry Summers: "I was struck by the extent to which the U.S. bonds were a flight-to-quality asset even in a global financial crisis in which the United States was at the epicenter."

From Jimmy Kimmel: "I realize that I am ignorant when it comes to this sort of thing, but isn't conducting an orchestra basically air guitar for rich people?"

From Ross Douthat: "The problem is that this isn’t how the President has sold the board to the public: Instead, he’s promised that it will only reduce “unnecessary spending,” which is basically the equivalent of a Republican promising to keep the entitlement system solvent by reducing Medicare fraud."

From Sheldon Richman: "Schools, by their structure, are preparing kids for some sort of authoritarian lifestyle"

From Ladies' Home Journal in 1918: "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl."

Only You Can Improve Your Relationships

We all have relationship problems. I've talked about a lack of dedication, giving too much (or too little),  focusing too much on the short-run, sharing too much (or too little), or fostering anger instead of resolving conflict. The pattern in all of those previous posts is what I can do, not what the other person can do. Here's why:

This research examined the consequences of targeting the self versus the partner when trying to improve intimate relationships. As predicted, when participants (N = 160) focused their relationship improvement attempts on changing the partner, individuals reported more negative improvement strategies, lower improvement success, and, in turn, more negative relationship evaluations. Self-focused improvement attempts and participants’ own self-regulation efforts, however, were not associated with more positive relationship evaluations or improvement. Instead, individuals reported more improvement and greater relationship quality when partners were perceived to be engaging in successful self-regulation efforts. The results suggest that targeting the partner may do more harm than good despite that relationship evaluations pivot on whether the partner produces change.

To clarify, trying to change your partner only makes it worse. Trying to change yourself doesn't improve it for you, but it does for your partner. So we should always focus on self improvement and find others who do the same. If you can understand each other, you can love each other.

Pick Your Bias(es)

Great list from the Spousonomics blog:

1. Confirmation bias. Everything you see only confirms what you already believe to be true–whether or not it really is. Jenny recently decided that her family was perfect because a new study confirmed that families with two girls are happiest–and she has two girls!

2. Optimism bias. You view and interpret facts in a self-serving way. Like believing you do more than 50% of the housework, while your spouse believes same about herself.

3. Hindsight bias. Also known as the I-knew-it-all-along effect. Things that happened in the past were so predictable. You KNEW you shouldn’t have hung up on your mother-in-law, but now it’s too late and she’s not speaking to you.

4. Correspondence bias. The tendency to make trait inferences about someone based on their behavior. Your wife steals the sheets. She must not care if you’re cold.

5. Actor-Observer bias: Similar to above. You believe others do things because of their personality, but you do things because of the situation, i.e. your husband didn’t pick up the milk because he only thinks of himself, but you didn’t pick up the milk because you’re busy doing a million things.

6. Self-serving bias. You choose the explanation that makes you look best. If your kid gets a bad grade on his English test, it’s because the teacher is bad. If he gets an A, it’s because he’s a genius (thanks to your good genes).

7. Ingroup bias. Other couples suck compared to you guys.

Benefits of Simplified Morality

I spend a lot of time trying to simplify complicated topics. Everything from immigration, to voting, to WikiLeaks. Like the title of this blog suggests, I'm trying to filter a lot of information into understandable bits. At the same time, I've longed to show just how un-simple many topics are. Everything from charity, to foreign policy, to human/animal relations. This comes from one of my dislikes of oversimplifying issues that are not black and white. But yet we simplify things all the time. We simplify stories to make them convincing. I simplify US History to make it digestible. We all simplify ourselves into clear likable labels. This might be why:

We propose that the rule that is cognitively most accessible during the decision making process (e.g., “Save lives” or “Do not kill”) will influence how people solve these moral dilemmas. Three studies are reported that indeed demonstrate that the most accessible rule influences willingness to intervene within footbridge dilemmas. This effect is found even when the accessibility of the rule is induced subliminally.

By creating a helpful set of personal rules we increase the likelihood we will follow them. We can improve our moral math by simplifying the equations. This is why when the normal rules of society break down, so do our personal moral standards. So have a set of moral rules to live by, but be sure not to overestimate their scope.

The Black Plague and Nazi Holocaust

When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews. Cities all over Germany witnessed mass killings of their Jewish population. At the same time, numerous Jewish communities were spared these horrors. We use plague pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. Pogroms during the Black Death are a strong and robust predictor of violence against Jews in the 1920s, and of votes for the Nazi Party. In addition, cities that saw medieval anti-Semitic violence also had higher deportation rates for Jews after 1933, were more likely to see synagogues damaged or destroyed in the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, and their inhabitants wrote more anti-Jewish letters to the editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

Via The Browser.

A Reason to Volunteer Abroad

Last year I described why I think many overseas missions do more harm than good. The first comment was from Lindsey Jones, who recently posted her own experience volunteering abroad:

We called the trip to Haiti a "reverse mission trip," which is meant to imply that WE, the travelers, are the ones receiving rather than providing. We affirm the Haitian culture instead of fostering dependency, and we attempt to empower those in Haiti to do the work for their own nation since they are far more equipped to do it than we ever will be. We go to learn and benefit from what Haitians can teach us, and we have no intentions of teaching or telling them anything.

This is a great argument for volunteering abroad, but with diminishing effects.

Benefits of Rationality

I talked a lot about rationality. Here's why I care:

There is considerable heterogeneity in subjects' consistency scores: high-income and high-education subjects display greater levels of consistency than low-income and low-education subjects, men are more consistent than women, and young subjects are more consistent than older subjects.

And here's why you should care:

We also find that consistency with utility maximization is strongly related to wealth: a standard deviation increase in the consistency score is associated with 15-19 percent more wealth.

The Problem with Being Rich

Since one of my most popular posts (and several since), I've tried to convince my readers that we are rich. My goal is not to show that wealth leads to happiness, but to put financial stress in perspective. If we worry less about money, perhaps we can worry more about what really matters. I recently came across this sermon from a pastor in California. In it he does two things I think should be done more in American churches. He reminds them their rich and then he warns them about it. The Bible is clear that in God's economy, wealth can be a hindrance. I'm usually pretty weary talking about controversial religious topics here (not here), not because it's not important, but because I fear trivializing such vulnerable issues. I don't necessarily endorse everything he says, and it pretty long, but I highly recommended this sermon.

Music in the Classroom

While my students work on their individual work (usually previewing the content I am about to lecture), I play music. Mostly from my own personal collection, which means there's a lot of rock and roll. Here's a justification for it:

Results indicated that state positive affect and quality-of-work were lowest with no music, while time-on-task was longest when music was removed. Narrative responses revealed the value of music listening for positive mood change and enhanced perception on design while working.

For my US History classes I have an end goal of having a collection of music throughout history so they can listen to the music of the time period they are studying. For one, it will give them a richer understanding of history. I also think it will help me convince them that life (and also music) has only been getting better.

Unsure If You'll Regret It, Do It

Whether in life or in an improv scene, we are often faced with two options, to do or not to do. Research says you should you do:

Using a random-digit telephone survey, respondents reported a salient regret, then answered questions about that regret. Results showed inaction regrets lasted longer than action regrets, and that greater loss severity corresponded to more inaction regrets.

So use your judgement, if you're not sure, go for it. If you're wrong, then it will just be a sunk cost.

The World's Typical Person

He's right handed, 28 years old, makes less than $12,000 a year, with a cell phone, but no bank account, and Chinese. Here's the site and the video explaining it.

Related: Here's a video interview with the average "happiest person in America". He's a "tall, Asian-American, observant Jew who is at least 65 and married, has children, lives in Hawaii, runs his own business and has a household income of more than $120,000 a year."