Seth's Blog

Recently a WSJ columnist told this story:

I was chatting with a friend who, over the years, has helped her kids slog through the obligatory science-fair projects.

“The experiments never turned out the way they were supposed to, and so we were always having to fudge the results so that the projects wouldn’t be screwy. I always felt guilty about that dishonesty,” she said, “but now I feel like we were doing real science.”

Yes, science with a human touch. The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford (sent to me by the publisher) is a great book because it tells a great story. That story has a hero (Stephen McIntryre) and a villain (Michael Mann) and illustrates a basic truth about the world: A consensus of the “best people” can be wrong. This point was first made, as far as I know, by The Emperor’s New Clothes. It was later made by the Asch experiment (about line-length judgments). It’s not obvious; Elizabeth Kolbert and her editors at The New Yorker, not to mention Bill McKibben, have yet to understand it. (“No one has ever offered a plausible account of why thousands of scientists at hundreds of universities in dozens of countries would bother to engineer a climate hoax,” Kolbert recently wrote, with the permission of her editors.)  It’s a sad comment on our education system that I first learned it via self-experimentation. My results showed that an acne medicine that my dermatologist prescribed didn’t work — a possibility for which my dermatologist (in consensus with other dermatologists) hadn’t allowed. As truths go, this one is scary: It means you have to think for yourself. But it is also the most liberating truth I know.

The Hockey Stick Illusion tells how McIntyre, skeptical of Mann’s hockey-stick result (a sharp increase in global temperature to unprecedented levels during the 20th century), tried to get the data and computer code that Mann used. Mann put him off. He still hasn’t released the computer code he used. Mann found a hockey stick where none existed because (a) he used principal-components analysis to summarize a lot of temperature series (bad idea), (b) he used that method in an unusual way, making a bad idea worse, and (c) one of his time series had a serious problem. After McIntyre noticed this problem and pointed it out, the story really begins: How did everyone react? Much as a reader of The Emperor’s New Clothes would expect. Nature denied it. The Washington Post denied it. Most climate scientists denied it (and continue to). Montford started writing the book before Climategate, whose overall message was the same — that climate scientists have been distorting the truth, that the case for man-made global warming is far weaker than they say, that a consensus of experts can be wrong. As Montford puts it,

None of the corruption and bias and flouting of rules we have seen in this story [and in the Climategate emails] would have been necessary if there is, as we are led to believe, a watertight case that mankind is having a potentially catastrophic effect on the climate.

Climategate and the story within The Hockey Stick Illusion are bad news for some very powerful people, such as Al Gore and those who gave him a Nobel Prize, but are helpful to the rest of us. When Big Shot X says “This is incredibly clear, everyone knows this” . . . maybe they’re wrong.

A New York Times article on the volcanic ash preventing air travel ended like this:

Leo Liao, a Hong Kong businessman who was stranded at the Frankfurt airport, was cheerful and philosophical. “It’s a natural issue,” he said. “Never complain. You can’t change this.”

Not cheerful enough. I once heard Edward Teller, the physicist, give a talk. In the middle, he said if we managed to control the weather we would take away the last topic of civilized conversation. Several years ago Berkeley had the rainiest winter in memory. It was never so easy to talk to strangers — you could commiserate about the rain. The stranded travelers have an unparalleled opportunity to meet people different from themselves, people they would ordinarily never be able to meet.

How to Talk to Strangers. Paris Syndrome.

• the I Practice My Own Methods Developed From Self-Experimentation group. Which, when this was written, had one member. She has Parkinson’s Disease and found that yoga helps. “I started watching yoga on tv because [my husband] had the tv on and he likes to watch attractive women expressing themselves physically.”
• umami basics. “Maturation increases the content of umami.”
• reasonable talk about addiction by Gabor Mate, a Vancouver doctor. “The first time I took heroin, it felt like a warm soft hug.” Mate says his addiction to classical CDs was like a heroin addiction. Sure, you laugh, he says, and goes on to say that one weekend he spent $8,000 on classical CDs, that his wife could tell when he’d been classical-CD shopping, and he once neglected a woman in labor (he was an obstetrician) because he was buying classical CDs. “In effect, our system punishes and prosecutes people for having been abused in the first place.”

Thanks to Bob Levinson.

In Jonah Lehrer’s article about the benefits of depression, nothing seemed solid until I came across this:

[Joe] Forgas [an Australian psychology professor] placed a variety of trinkets, like toy soldiers, plastic animals and miniature cars, near the checkout counter. As shoppers exited, Forgas tested their memory, asking them to list as many of the items as possible. To [vary] mood, Forgas conducted the survey on gray, rainy days — he accentuated the weather by playing Verdi’s “Requiem” — and on sunny days, using a soundtrack of Gilbert and Sullivan. The results were clear: shoppers in the “low mood” condition remembered nearly four times as many of the trinkets. The wet weather made them sad, and their sadness made them more aware and attentive.

I found the scientific article that reports this experiment, in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Memory for the trinkets was measured two ways — recall and recognition — and both ways the “sad” shoppers did much better. I didn’t know about this; the size of the effect suggests it’s important. Calling it variation in “memory” is odd, since the remembered event was only a minute ago. Variation in attentiveness is a better summary.

Whatever you call it, I like the general point made in the scientific article. When you are in a good mood, you pay less attention to your surroundings than when you are in a bad mood. When you’re in a good mood, the model of the world in your head is working well. No need to change it. When you’re in a bad mood, the model of the world in your head isn’t working well. Time to gather more data and revise it.

My colleagues and I have studied a different effect along these lines (in rats): When things aren’t going well, you vary your actions more. You try new things more. That’s another way to update your model of the world.

Fact 1: For the last few weeks, I’ve been studying Chinese using a flashcard program called Anki. It’s an excellent program but boring. I’ve never liked studying — maybe no one does. Fact 2: I’ve had a treadmill for a very long time. Walking on a treadmill is boring so I always combine it with something pleasant — like watching American Idol. That makes it bearable. I don’t think listening to music would be enough.

Two days ago I discovered something that stunned me: Using Anki WHILE walking on my treadmill was enjoyable. I easily did it for an hour and the next day (yesterday) did it for an hour again. The time goes by quickly. Two boring activities, done together, became pleasant. Anki alone I can do maybe ten minutes. Treadmill alone I can do only a few minutes before I want to stop. In both cases I’d have to be pushed to do it at all. Yet the combination I want to do; 60 minutes feels like a good length of time.

I’ve noticed several related things: 1. I could easily study flashcards while walking. This was less mysterious because I coded walking as pleasant. 2. I can’ t bear to watch TV sitting down. Walking on a treadmill makes it bearable. This didn’t puzzle me because I coded TV watching as pleasant and sitting as unpleasant (although I sit by choice while doing many other things). 3. I have Pimsler Chinese lessons (audio). I can painlessly listen to them while walking. While stationary (sitting or standing), it’s hard to listen to them. 4. When writing (during which I sit), it’s very effective to work for 40 minutes and then walk on my treadmill watching something enjoyable for 20 minutes. I can repeat that cycle many times. 5. Allen Neuringer found he was better at memorization while moving than while stationary. 6. There’s some sort of movement/thinking connection — we move our arms when we talk, we may like to walk while we talk, maybe walking makes it easier to think, and so on.

You could say that walking causes a “thirst” for learning or learning causes a “thirst” for walking. Except that the “thirst” is so hidden I discovered it only by accident. Whereas actual thirst is obvious. The usual idea is that what’s pleasant shows what’s good for us — e.g., water is pleasant when we are thirsty. Yet if walking is good for us — a common idea — why isn’t it pleasant all by itself? And if Anki is good for us, why isn’t it pleasant all by itself? The Anki/treadmill symmetry is odd because lots of people think we need exercise to be healthy but I’ve never heard someone say we need to study to be healthy.

The evolutionary reason for this might be to push people to walk in new places (which provide something to learn) rather than old places (which don’t). To push them to explore. David Owen noticed it was much more fun  for both him and his small daughter to walk in the city than in the country. He was surprised. When I drive somewhere, and am not listening to a book or something, I prefer a new route over a familiar one. If I am listening to a book I prefer the familiar route because it makes it easier to understand the book.

Maybe the practical lesson is that we enjoy learning dry stuff when walking but not when stationary. Pity the 99.9% of students who study stationary. Ideally you’d listen to a lecture while walking somewhere, perhaps around a track. Now and then I’ve interviewed people while walking; it worked much better than the usual interview format (seated). The old reason was I disliked sitting. Now I have a better reason.

I’m fond of arguing that the Ten Commandments was a very political document. Notice it’s aimed at men? Notice that women aren’t protected, much less children? That’s because men had all the power. No one has said they already knew this or that I was wrong.

I thought of the Ten Commandments when a friend from Amsterdam wrote me about a recent experience of hers:

A very old man asked me to come to his apartment, and he would donate a bike to the project.  I went over to get it, and it was half a bike, and it was locked to a pole…had obviously been there for years.  The temperature was well below zero.  It became clear that he was in fact super-lonely, and torn between usual Dutch suspicion of strangers… and desperation for human contact.  He finally pleaded with me to come up to his apartment (where he obviously lived alone) but not before we spent 15 minutes trying to saw that rusty old bike loose, with his World War II-vintage hacksaw with missing teeth.

You may know that Dutch people are the tallest in the world, reflecting a very high standard of living. But — if this old man is not unusual — alleviating the loneliness of old people isn’t part of the Dutch social contract, admirable as it may be.

I recently watched the Frontline program Sick Around the World. It suggested that that old man isn’t unusual. In England, where doctor visits are free, a doctor said he has several patients who come weekly, purely because they’re lonely. In Japan, some patients have their blood pressure measured very often — presumably for the same reason. In Taiwan, if you see a doctor 20 times in one month someone from the government will come to talk to you. Not about loneliness — about overuse of medical care. The Frontline program made nothing of any of these facts, which were included to show that access was easy. That’s not all they show. What if the British doctor had said that several patients visit him often because they need water? Then we’d be shocked. Yet the idea that everyone needs human contact isn’t mysterious or controversial.

My explanation is there’s a double whammy: Not only do lonely old people have little power, it’s also clear that their problem (loneliness) isn’t caused by a “chemical imbalance”. So no drugs can be sold to treat it. And there’s no diagnostic category. It’s another example of gatekeeper syndrome. When these lonely old people exert what little power they have by visiting their doctor, the doctor — I’m assuming — doesn’t do anything to get rid of the loneliness. Even if you visit 20 times in a month.

In an excellent talk last week about North Korea — linked to his book The Cleanest Race — Brian Myers, a professor in South Korea, said that people don’t fear dying, they fear dying without significance. Without their life having meant something. Life in North Korea is far more attractive than Americans realize, he said. The border between North Korea and China is easy to cross, and about half of the North Koreans who go to China later return, in spite of North Korea’s poverty. How does the North Korean government do such a good job under such difficult circumstances? Partly by playing up external threats (U.S. troops in South Korea), the obvious way politicians win support, but also by telling the North Korean people they are special. Maybe it plays this card because it has to — they can’t afford a police state — but there is no denying how well it works. In contrast, Myers said, the South Korean government offers its citizens no more than consumerism. That doesn’t work well, and South Korea, in spite of high per capita income, has high rates of depression and suicide.

I think the attractiveness of North Korean life has a lot to do with why Penn State students like Penn State so much. This American Life did a show about Penn State a few months ago. Life at the nation’s top party school said the description. Sounds boring, I thought, so I waited to listen to it until I’d run out of stuff to listen to. It turned out to be one of their best shows ever. Mostly it’s about the large amount of drinking — this is why they did the show — but at the very end is a short segment about how much Penn State students love their school. Not much detail but I was convinced. The attractive school cheer (“We Are Penn State”) comes up in conversation! A few people reading this won’t know that Penn State has an extremely successful football team. A large fraction of the students attend its games. After graduation, a lot of them continue to attend the games.

Here is a powerful and neglected force in human life. The bland technical term is group identity.  As the South Korea comparison indicates, governments don’t routinely use it to govern. As Penn State exceptionalism indicates, colleges don’t routinely use it either. Faculty routinely disparage football. Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Has Crippled Undergraduate Education was written by a professor — of course. The Penn State chancellor seemed mystified that his students were so proud and supportive of their school. (They’re just that way, he seemed to say.) A lot of my self-experimentation has been about discovering what we need to be healthy, such as morning faces. I can’t self-experiment about this but I would if I could. It’s yet another thing that people must have routinely gotten in Stone-Age life but don’t get any more — unless you happen to be a rabid sports fan or an alumnus of a college with a sufficiently successful football team. Or live in North Korea.

Alexandra Carmichael is one of the founders of CureTogether.com, whom I met at a Quantified Self meeting last year. A few days ago, she left an interesting comment on one of my posts:

I practice random acts of kindness, with a goal of helping at least 10 people a day (and at least 1 person I don’t know). I find this helps my mood toward the end of the day, when it is most likely to fall – no matter what else has happened that day, at least I’ve helped 10 people.

I asked her about it:

SETH Where did the idea come from?

ALEXANDRA It goes all the way back to my grandparents being Scout leaders – I was never in the Scouts myself but I observed how helpful and supportive they always were. Then during my university years when I was forming my life philosophy, I got to attend an incredible lecture by Jane Goodall. Her organization Roots & Shoots inspires people around the world to give back to the earth, animals, and people around them, with her amazing presence and the quote “Every individual can make a difference.” Service learning is also one of the things we thread into homeschooling our two daughters, along with design, simple living, and non-violent communication.

The specific goal of helping 10 people a day started last summer during a goal-setting weekend. I was curious to see if formalizing and quantifying something I had been doing in a fuzzier way would make a difference in my life, if measuring acts of kindness would result in an increased number of acts, or more friends, or help me with my chronic depression – plus I love quantifying things! I don’t find it necessary to actually record how many people I help in a day, but I keep a rough running tally in my head as I go through the day to make sure it’s at least 10 – my kids like to help with this count too.

SETH What are some examples of these acts?

ALEXANDRA I do a lot of different things. If I get extra free tickets to events or conferences, I will pass them along to people who I think would love to go; I will offer to take a picture of a tourist family where one person inevitably gets left out behind the camera; I will connect people who I think would benefit from knowing each other; I will take two hours to listen and hug and support a child who is having a hard time learning a new skill; I will answer a newbie entrepreneur’s questions about how to get started in business or help them spread their message; I will help coordinate gatherings that I believe in (such as Quantified Self); I will hold the door for someone. It can be anything really, no matter how small.

SETH How have people reacted when you tell them about this?

ALEXANDRA The most frequent reaction is “That sounds too challenging to do every day – 10 people? Why not 1 or 2?” The second most frequent reaction is “You are inspiring me to make positive changes in my own life.” My answer to both is “I love helping people!”

SETH What have you learned?

ALEXANDRA if you help people, without wanting anything in return, you get help when you need it – often surprising help, and often more than you gave. I learned that helping people seems to make them like you more, so my number of online friends has skyrocketed (1500 on Twitter, 800 on Facebook, 500 on LinkedIn) – but close “in person” friends I choose to limit to a handful because of my tendency to get overwhelmed by frequent or shallow social situations. I learned that helping people does help with depression, because (a) you have something else to focus on outside of yourself and (b) you go through the day with an expectant air of wonder at who will be the next person you can help. I also learned that helping 10 people a day is really not a lot, and I often wind up helping 20 or more people in a day. Of course, this is only from my perspective – I can’t guarantee that all of these people actually feel helped, I just know that I tried to help.

SETH When you say “if you help people, without wanting anything in return, you get help when you need it – often surprising help, and often more than you gave” I’m not sure I understand. Can you give some examples?

ALEXANDRA It’s not so much that the people I help help me in return, but more that by spreading goodwill and being tuned in to what others need, I also became more aware of my own needs and started to feel a greater sense of self-worth, like I deserved to have my needs met. This is not something I was taught growing up, and I went through two bouts of major postpartum depression without asking for or getting the support I needed. I feel much more open about my needs now, which perhaps makes it easier for others to help me. So the change was more in me than in others.

In terms of specific examples, when I learned that I have a Tourette’s spectrum disorder, and tweeted that, I made an incredible new friend who has been through similar neurological issues, and who in our conversations of support and empathy has helped me more than I can ever thank him for. Also, when I decided to find some consulting work to support my family while we build CureTogether, a very welcoming door opened (soon to be made public), and offered me basically a dream position. I guess I needed to learn to ask for and accept help as well as to give it.

SETH Thanks, Alexandra. It’s especially interesting that helping others raised your feeling of self-worth. I wouldn’t have guessed it would have that effect.

Kathleen Hillers posted this on a website called The Intention Experiment:

I just read a book called 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life by Cami Walker. The author of the book has ms and was seeking natural healing. She was told by a “wise woman” from South Africa that if she gave a gift everyday for the next 29 days that it would have a healing effect in more ways than one. It’s a great book, but if you don’t want to read it, start giving a gift everyday and make a journal of every gift you give and the circumstances involved. If you miss a day, you have to start over because you have to keep the flow of giving constant. The gifts do not have to be materialistic. You can give some one a phone call, a ride, encouragement, whatever. I just started doing this on Feb 1st and my life is already getting better. The day before I started, I was in a panic. I couldn’t sleep, and I was completely broke . The day I started, i actually started feeling much better, and things are already looking up.

Regression to the mean, maybe. But maybe not. The idea has some plausibility: The Chinese character that means “happy” is a combination of a character that means “owe” and a character that means “again”.

John Mackey is the founder of Whole Foods, a business I greatly respect. But he’s not always right.

“You only love animal fat because you’re used to it,” he said. “You’re addicted.”

(From a profile of Mackey in The New Yorker.) I discovered that animal fat improved my sleep when I overcame my (learned) repulsion and ate a lot more than usual.I think it’s obvious that fat tastes good for unlearned reasons. For reasons not based on experience. (Babies like fat. Animals similar to us, who have never eaten fast food, like fat.) Mackey’s comment is an example of a larger disregard of this. Professional nutritionists, including nutrition professors, have ignored the general point that our food preferences must somehow be good for us. I’m not saying all fat must be good for us — just the fat we ate when our liking of fat evolved. The idea that evolution would shape us to like and eat a food component that’s bad for us makes no sense.