Seth's Blog

MLODINOW As I start talking about events in the world around us and looking at the psychological components–and I dealt with that, I greatly expanded that part–they were fascinating studies and I was just so interested I just kept putting more and more into the book.

ROBERTS Yes, that’s when you decided to ask me for help. “Oh, I wasn’t planning on this.” How did you learn about the lottery winner who won twice–the Canadian?

MLODINOW It was in a book somewhere, an academic book. A lot of those interesting stories came from academic papers or books.

ROBERTS That’s interesting.

MLODINOW Sometimes I’ll find something in the newspaper that was really interesting and I would track it down but a lot of it was in academic research. I don’t know why they found it.

ROBERTS Yes, who knows where they got it, but that’s where you got it. How did you learn about the Girl Named Florida stuff? Some professor told you?

MLODINOW My friend Mark Hillery that I mentioned from Berkeley.

ROBERTS A physics professor.

MLODINOW He heard it somewhere… It wasn’t quite this problem but then I kind of tweaked it and made it the Girl Named Florida Problem. That’s a great problem for the book.

ROBERTS Yes, I loved that. So he got it from some physicist . . .

MLODINOW I’m not sure; probably. I took a few days to figure out how to make it into this problem; I don’t remember exactly the problem he told me but I tweaked it into this problem. Just to show you how much work goes into the book, I even spent a whole afternoon deciding on the name Florida. I went back into the records–I needed a rare name–and I looked up different names and tried to find one that would be colorful, interesting, but that was rarely used, and I wanted to know the percentage that it was used; I dug up percentages of names. Everything in the book . . . if you read it, it might just sound like, ‘Oh, you know’ . . .

Not a thing is just tossed out there. Or very little; there’s an amazing amount of thought and work that goes behind every little detail.

ROBERTS That’s a very memorable detail I must say. I like it better than the Monty Hall Problem.

MLODINOW I do, too. I think it’s interesting; I found in the reactions to the book that the Monty Hall Problem has gotten more press and in some ways more reactions, which I found interesting given that it has been talked about before and this problem was completely new. I think this problem is in some ways even more striking than the Monty Hall Problem, more counterintuitive and more difficult to believe and certainly closer to something you might actually encounter. And yet I’ve gotten a lot more response based on the Monty Hall Problem and a few places have said that I gave the best explanation they’ve seen. I think the New York Times review said that, too. The New York Times did mention the Girl Named Florida Problem and said that they still find it hard to believe even though they followed the explanation.

ROBERTS I thought your explanation of the Girl Named Florida problem was very clear.

Interview directory.

In case you are not a long-time reader, I will repeat my advice as to how to enjoy the thrill of the lottery without the fool’s bet. Choose your numbers, but don’t buy a ticket. You’ll win almost every week – the fear that your number might actually come up is an adrenaline rush to beat them all.

From his Undercover Economist advice column. Another example of the same thing: If (first) I buy and use Product A and then (second) see a commercial for Product A it makes me happy. Whereas the conventional order — (first) see a commercial for Product A) and then (second) buy and use Product A — is generally disappointing, just like the lottery.

Both Hartford’s example and mine are cases where what we are told (implicitly) is exactly wrong. Does buying a lottery ticket make you happy? No, not buying one will make you happy.

In Hartford’s example and mine it is the average consumer who is gullible and makes the whole thing work — without people who play the lottery, you couldn’t take Hartford’s advice.  Scientists are no less gullible. Self-experimentation, like Hartford’s advice, takes advantage of that gullibility. Because scientists essentially play the lottery in their research — devote considerable resources (their careers) to looking for discoveries in one specific way (scientists are hemmed in by many rules, which also slow them down) — this leaves a great deal to be discovered by research that doesn’t cost a lot and can be done quickly. All of my interesting self-experimental discoveries have involved treatments that conventional scientists couldn’t study because their research has to be expensive. Could a conventional scientist study the effect of seeing faces in the morning? No, because you couldn’t get funding. And all research must require funding. (Research without funding is low status.) In practice, this means you can’t take risks and you can’t do very much. Like the lottery, this is a poor bet.

All yogurt recipes I’ve seen say you should preheat the milk before adding starter (= yogurt with live culture). Reasons vary. Some say it denatures the milk protein; others say it kills bacteria that might compete with the starter bacteria.

It was easy to measure the effect of preheating. I make yogurt using about a gallon of milk at a time, divided into four trays. I preheated two trays for 20 minutes and did not preheat the other two, leaving them at room temperature. After that I treated all four trays the same.

The photo above shows the results after incubation for 36 hours. The clumpy yogurt was preheated, the smooth yogurt was not. There was not a vast difference in taste. For most purposes clumpy is better so I will preheat in the future.

I was impressed that the experiment was fast, easy, safe, cheap, and conclusive, showing a large and lasting effect of a 20-minute treatment that had no visible effect. After the heated milk cooled, it looked the same as the unheated milk.

The value of homemade yogurt.

From the I Hate My Message Board forums:

I honestly couldn’t care less if it makes sense or not. The book is a good read [thanks!] and the science behind it seems sound. But, honestly, none of that matters to me. Whatever the reason, this plan works. Period. If it turned out that extra-light olive oil was made out of ground up kitty cats, I’d still follow the plan. If I wasn’t losing weight, I’d STILL do it, just because of the enormous positive impact it’s had on my life. I was addicted to food. Now I’m not. It’s extraordinary.

I loved Waltz With Bashir, Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and was surprised to realize that Ari Folman, its director . . . I had met. In San Francisco, about four years ago, there was a conference for documentary filmmakers trying to get distribution of their film. I went with a friend of mine. I happened to meet Sarah Kapoor there; we both watched an hour of a five-hour series about love (The Material that Love is Made Of). I was blown away. A brilliant hour of TV. The particular hour we saw was about a 10-year-old boy in love with a girl. Each hour was about a different situation. Afterwards I met the filmmaker (Folman). Brilliant, I said. He said it got really dark. Later he was giving away DVDs of the series but somehow I missed getting one. I tried to contact him by email but his in-box was full.

I hope that the success of Waltz will renew interest in that old series. I would love to see the rest of it.