Seth's Blog

Long after the famous Kitty Genovese story — supposedly many people watched her being murdered without doing anything — doubt was cast on its accuracy. In the meantime, John Darley and  Bibb Latane, two professors of psychology, it as the starting point for a series of experiments on what they called the bystander effect — the more bystanders, the less likely that each one will help. They concluded there was “diffusion of responsibility” — the more people that witness something, the less each witness feels responsible for doing something.

In China the problem is much worse. A few years ago a woman was hit by a car. A second car stopped to help her. The woman told the police that the second driver had hit her. The second driver was furious, gave many interviews, and eventually a witness was found who said it was the driver, not the injured woman, who was telling the truth. Someone I spoke to attributed her behavior to the need to pay hospital bills. The driver who hit her would never be caught, she reasoned. Maybe the second driver could be forced to pay.

My Chinese tutor, who is Korean, told me a story that illustrates the depth of Chinese bystander inaction and suggests another reason for it. A friend of hers was visiting from Korea. When this friend was in Wangjing (in the Chaoyang district of Beijing), she saw a person lying on a busy street, bleeding but still alive. Apparently the bleeding person had been hit by a car. Three hours later, the friend returned — and the accident victim was still there! Now dead. So, with difficulty — she doesn’t speak Chinese — she called the police.

The police treated her as a suspect. She was forced to come to the police station five times, for hours each time.

What a deterrent to calling the police! I cannot believe the police were so stupid as to consider a Korean tourist on foot who calls the police a serious suspect in the death of someone lying in the middle of traffic. I believe that by causing her a lot of trouble, they wanted to send a message: Leave us alone. The fewer calls they get, the less work they have to do. No wonder everyone ignored the bleeding victim.

“I am afraid I am scaring you,” said my Chinese teacher. “You are,” I said.

I recently had lunch with Richard Sprague, an engineer at Microsoft Beijing. He raised the possibility of starting a Quantified Self Meetup group in Beijing. The meetings could be held in one of Microsoft’s two brand new buildings, which are in the exact center of Zhongguancun. If you might attend, please let me know (e.g., by commenting on this post).

It has gotten hot in Beijing. Two days ago it was 90 degrees. Yesterday it was 84. For my (2 or 3) Beijing readers: I discovered an incredibly easy way to cool off. Take a T-shirt, get it as wet as desired, put it on. Instant cool. No need for noisy fan or air conditioner. Surely this is widely known, but I didn’t know it.

I heard Gary Shteyngart (latest book Super Sad True Love Story) at the Beijing Bookworm. No better job of authorial self-promotion have I seen. He was born in Leningrad in 1972, he grew up hearing jokes from his parents. For example: The 1980 Summer Olympics were in Moscow. At the time, Brezhnev was in charge. He was going senile. At an Olympic ceremony,  he gave a speech. His hands shook holding the text of his talk.

“Ohhhhhh…..” he read.

He paused.

“Ohhhhh…….”

He paused.

“Ohhhhh……”

An apparatchik ran up to him. “Senior Comrade Brezhnev, those are the Olympic Rings!”

The moderator asked Shteyngart what he thought of Putin’s plan to require every Russian teenager to read a specified 100 great books by graduation. “These things never work,” said Shteyngart. “American cities have done this. Everyone’s supposed to read a certain book, usually To Kill a Mockingbird. Never tell someone what to read.” However, he said one of his favorite authors is Karen Russell. (For a New Yorker podcast, he read a story by Andrea Lee.)

I asked about his favorite TV shows. He mentioned The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad. “Who would have guessed that TV would become a great art form?” He is writing a show for HBO about Brooklyn immigrants.

I learned that he was interviewed by a magazine called Modern Drunkard. The interviewer — not Shteyngart — mentions an Russian saying: “The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far away, but I will walk carefully.” How true.

• One of my Tsinghua American colleagues writes an op-ed: “China wants you. Job prospects are abundant.”
• Robert Anton Wilson’s skepticism about skeptics. “Those people claim to be rationalists, but they’re governed by such a heavy body of taboos. They’re so fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and dogmatic. . . . None of them ever says anything skeptical about the AMA, or about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma.” I agree. They should be called one-way skeptics.
• Excellent Vanity Fair article about Occupy Wall Street. Better than The New Yorker‘s article covering similar stuff.
• The many side effects of statins. I am impressed by the new way of learning about drug side effects.

Thanks to Ryan Holiday and Gary Wolf.

The Willat Effect is the hedonic change produced by side-by-side comparisons of similar products — for example, two green teas. It happens in seconds: Suddenly the differences matter more. Some versions become more pleasant, other versions less pleasant.  I first noticed it with limoncello that my friend Carl Willat offered me. Here are some reactions to my recent post about it: (more…)

• Gary Taubes on bloggingheads. Mentions self-experimentation toward end.
• Beijing bans ancient history. “[China's] leaders are now delegitimizing themselves, one harsh act at a time.”

Thanks to David Gerard.

If you live in Beijing, it may interest you that on April 23 (Saturday) I will give a 30-minute talk at Tsinghua University (Weiqing Building, Room 507) titled “The Value of Personal Science”. The talk will start at 1:30 pm.

I am in Beijing. The smog is bad. It is more humid than usual and the air is dirtier than usual. At his blog, James Fallows, who is also in Beijing, has posted  pictures and pollution measurements. (Incidentally, Eamonn Fingleton, an excellent writer, will be guest-blogging there. In Praise of Hard Industries is one of the best business/economics books I’ve read.)

The effect of smog on health isn’t obvious. Maybe you know about hormesis — the finding that a small dose of a poison, such as radioactivity, is beneficial. It has been observed in hundreds of experiments. It makes sense: the poisons activate repair systems. Even if you know about hormesis, you probably don’t know that one of the first studies of smoking and cancer found that inhaling cigarette smoke appeared beneficial: inhalers had less cancer than non-inhalers. R. A. Fisher, the great statistician, emphasized this (pp. 160-161):

There were fewer inhalers among the cancer patients than among the non-cancer patients. That, I think, is an exceedingly important finding.

This difference (a negative correlation) appeared in spite of two positive correlations: Heavy smokers get more cancer than light smokers; and heavy smokers are more likely to inhale than light smokers. It is far from the only fact suggesting the connection between smoking and health isn’t simple.

So I am not worried about Beijing smog. The real danger, I think, is not eating fermented foods. Which, thankfully, is infinitely more under my control.

Sounds like we’re under attack. Bombs going off, gunfire. A few fireworks.

More At midnight I was awakened by the densest loudest fireworks I have ever seen. About two per second for ten minutes or even longer. One launch pad was on the street near my apartment; I could see two other sources further away — geysers of glittery light. This proves the Chinese invented fireworks, I kept thinking. They were so pretty and varied I didn’t mind being woken up. And it was so nice to be able to watch them from my warm apartment.