Salvaged Pages

#note.//
I got a chance to visit the Museum of Tolerance with Pete and Lil (2017). I listened to one survivor tell her story-- so much shouting and yelling and barking dogs; infants thrown out the second floor to a waiting dump truck; surviving, meeting her husband, moving to Minnesota-- moving to Los Angeles.

Every week she goes to the museum and repeats her story, and it is still emotionally exhausting, but she goes so we won't forget.

I stood in a simulated gas chamber and watched videos of how our Community kills itself.

When I returned to Boston, I got a chance to see in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, “Memory Unearthed”. I saw rare photos of life inside the Lodz Ghetto during its existence from 1940 to 1944. The photographs had been taken by Polish Jewish photojournalist Henryk Ross (1910–1991).

Juxtaposed next door were other pieces that show across time and culture, how we've always pitted us vs them, you vs. me. Self vs non-self. I saw a ancient Chinese vase painted over with a New Order Red inscription.

After the exhibit, I bought Salvaged Pages

linked.data.essay.//<create> JB3.you and me, us vs. them

#author.//Young writer's late 1930s to early 1940s

#editor.collector.//Alexandra Zapruder

#note.//
Each chapter has an introductions to each person's diary entries

Klaus/Jacob's entries:
born.19240412.linked.data.//the 12th.my number also. He changed his name upon arrival in Palestine.

father:Erich
mother:Rose
grandmother:Mina

place:Wiesbaden.linked.data.//They moved here when he was three. I've been to Wiesbaden. It's next to Mainz, where Becky did her postdoc.

start:193703.//Klaus starts his diary in German shortly after his bar mitzvah.

start:201705.//I start reading parts of his entries 80 years later.

The included entries start in April 1938, around when he turned 14. I'm a man in my later forties.2017 reflecting on a boy.me before the violence.trauma.chaos.killing happens. I feel alternatively like both Hanna and Michael in Der Vorleser.

introduction:
They were an assimilated family. We know what's going to come and can't help shouting at them to MOVE! Yet, they are like us, rooted. It's so difficult to become refugees, and most countries didn't want to take any Jew refugees, even the USA. I can only sympathize with my parents, uncles, aunts, and all their extended network of family and friends who moved. The fear was.is real.

In the Hour of Chaos, the future is full of fear.

The Undoing Project

#author.Michael Lewis

#note.//Do I need to follow the stream of these two men more? Dan Ariely is downstream.


linked.data.//Other books I've read on this stream:
other Lewis books?
A Random Walk Down Walkstreet <create>
Yes, you can time the market <create>
Ariely books<create>

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

#note.//
Mentioned in The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. I'm pretty sure I've read it, but I've read several of the random is king book and they use many of the same examples so I can't remember if I've specifically read this book.

I guess I'll have to go reread it!

Other books I've probably  read!
A Random Walk Down Walkstreet <create>
Yes, you can time the market <create>

The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction

#author.Nate Silver
checkout local library thru Kindle.
FINISHED.20150715

#note.//Thanks Kindle!

We need to stop, and admit it: we have a prediction problem. We love to predict things—and we aren’t very good at it.
Read more at location 381
Note: 1297 highlights as of 20150625. It's not something I would quote.

...suppose instead that there is some common factor that ties the fate of these homeowners together. For instance: there is a massive housing bubble that has caused home prices to rise by 80 percent without any tangible improvement in the fundamentals. Now you’ve got trouble: if one borrower defaults, the rest might succumb to the same problems.
Read more at location 603
Note: the common factor is a global recession or depression  

passage attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Read more at location 1018    
Note: fox clan. 1285 highlights as of 2015.06.30  

Foxes, Tetlock found, are considerably better at forecasting than hedgehogs.
Read more at location 1026    
 
“They look at this probabilistic information and they’ve got to translate that into a decision. A go, no-go. A yes-or-no decision.
Read more at location 2418    
Note: But in an emergency, you need an alpha leader to make go, no-go decision for the group. It's a trade off. Leaders are usually hedgehog and make poor predictions but in a crisis they don't get confused analyzing. They make executive decisions. GO LEFT!

What happens in systems with noisy data and underdeveloped theory—like earthquake prediction and parts of economics and political science—is a two-step process. First, people start to mistake the noise for a signal. Second, this noise pollutes journals, blogs, and news accounts with false alarms, undermining good science and setting back our ability to understand how the system really works.
Read more at location 2788
 
I give you three locks to practice on—a red one, a black one, and a blue one.
Read more at location 2795
Note: This is an example of Overfittng that I should remember. I wrote a poem about it.
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1266402/mangoman/


To borrow the title of another book, they play into our tendency to be fooled by randomness.
Read more at location 2846    
Note: I've read it. Is it on my stream?  

the theory suggests that very simple things can behave in strange and mysterious ways when they interact with one another.
Read more at location 2909    
Note: I'm fairly simple and so is JoJoBrand3! How we three simpleton interact might be very complex. Theory of complexity with Per Bak.  

Bak’s favorite example was that of a sandpile on a beach.
Read more at location 2910    
 
The more fundamental problem is that we have a demand for experts in our society but we don’t actually have that much of a demand for accurate forecasts.”
Read more at location 3371    
Note: Robin Hansen at George Mason Univ.  

crucial to develop a better understanding of ourselves, and the way we distort and interpret the signals we receive, if we want to make better predictions.
Read more at location 3866
 
Scottish philosopher David Hume, who argued that since we could not be certain that the sun would rise again, a prediction that it would was inherently no more rational than one that it wouldn’t.26 The Bayesian viewpoint, instead, regards rationality as a probabilistic matter.
Read more at location 4049    
 
Healthy skepticism needs to proceed from this basis. It needs to weigh the strength of new evidence against the overall strength of the theory, rather than rummaging through fact and theory alike for argumentative and ideological convenience,
Read more at location 6168    
 
Armstrong and Green critique of model complexity thus looks pretty good here. But the success of the more basic forecasting methods suggests that Armstrong’s critique may have won the battle but not the war.
Read more at location 6567
 
since the simple methods correctly predicted a temperature increase in line with the rise in CO2, they are also evidence in favor of the greenhouse-effect hypothesis.
Read more at location 6570
 
we’re wasting our time debating a proposition that is very much accepted within the scientific community, when we could be having a good-faith discussion about the uncertainties that do exist.”Read more at location 6667    
Note: Michael Mann at Penn State Univ.  

But at least this flawed type of thinking would have involved some thinking. If we had gone through the thought process, perhaps we could have recognized how loose our assumptions were.
Read more at location 6827
 
When a possibility is unfamiliar to us, we do not even think about it. Instead we develop a sort of mind-blindness to it. In medicine this is called anosognosia:
Read more at location 6829    
 
Aaron Clauset, a professor at the University of Colorado with a background in physics and computer science, has published papers on the mathematics of everything from the evolution of whales42 to the network dynamics of multiplayer role-playing games.
Read more at location 6948    
 
Clauset’s insight, however, is actually quite simple—or at least it seems that way with the benefit of hindsight. What his work found is that the mathematics of terrorism resemble those of another domain discussed in this book: earthquakes.
Read more at location 6955
 
Clauset’s method gives us reason to believe that attacks that might kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people are a possibility to contemplate as well. The mechanism for such an attack is unpleasant but easy enough to identify. It would most likely involve weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.
Read more at location 7019
 
world in which there are dangerous terrorist groups, vulnerable nuclear materials at many places around the world, and a lack of focus on the problem from U.S. policy makers.
Read more at location 7035
Note: Obama team again has correct policy, esp with recent diplomacy with Iran~20150714  

Allison’s concern stems primarily from two nuclear states: Russia and Pakistan.
Read more at location 7057    
 
We must always accept a certain amount of risk from terrorism when we want to live in a free society, whether or not we want to admit it.
Read more at location 7176    
 
In many walks of life, expressions of uncertainty are mistaken for admissions of weakness.
Read more at location 7277

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

#author.Timothy Geithner
checkout local library thru Kindle.
FINISHED.20150608


#note.//
I haven't been reading enough. This is my non-fiction read. I do love these market, policy, monetary, economic, business cycle books!

Let's see what an insider see's and the do's and don'ts.

Now I'm finished!

Fascinating insights into policy making.

Here are my notes from Kindle. Thanks Amazon for keeping them!

We weren’t rich by American standards, but we were very privileged.
Read more at location 383   •
Note: that's how i feel!

My mother is from a New England family dating back to the Mayflower,
Read more at location 396   •
Note: she is White brand.main

His father was a German immigrant who settled in north Philadelphia and ran a small business as a cabinetmaker. My father went to a public high school, mostly African American,
Read more at location 404   •
Note: he is White.brand.marginal

she sent him a Valentine from her dorm room. Nine months later, they were married. And they stayed married.
Read more at location 411   •
Note: father was marginal but still white brand so had access to main.brand unlike all the hard working black youth from the same Philie public school. Black.brand.main is changing.

Somehow, I got elected president of my junior and senior classes; my main memory of that initial experience in leadership was how much I loathed public speaking.
Read more at location 452   •
Note: he doesn't like public speaking, but he is definitely NOT introvert.

My father and several other relatives had gone to Dartmouth, and I initially resisted the idea of going there—partly because I wanted to carve out my own path, partly because I felt guilty about the advantages I had applying as a legacy. I decided those were weak reasons not to go to a good school.
Read more at location 473   •
Note: he had access to White.brand.marginal.right-tail, that part of the brand the actively reinforces the main.brand.

I would join three housemates, all of them women. One of them was Carole Sonnenfeld.
Read more at location 508   •
Note: tradition male.brand. integrating with proximal female.brand. How else to nucleate a long-term, stable relationship except by physical proximity. Is there now a NEW electronic proximity? What good is it without sex?

Carole was pregnant again.
Read more at location 690   •
Note: biology of female.brand but empathy and good listener are not restrict traits of fe.brand. Many ma.brand have this trait. Does nucleation require complementary brand (probably no)? Or is it just required for long-term stability (probably yes).

I put too much of a burden on Carole, and too much of their lives happened without me.
Read more at location 714   •
Note: once nucleated into family.brand fe.or.ma must make sacrifice.

September 2005. We invited their regulators, too, including British and German authorities. Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs dubbed the group “the Fourteen Families,”
Read more at location 1612   •
Note: who are the 14?

How could the Fed justify invoking emergency powers to help a nonbank that wouldn’t even help itself?
Read more at location 1963   •
Note: is it similar to Iraq? how can we send in US troops when the Iraq people don't want to fight

Citi didn't expect funding for these off-balance sheet vehicles to dry up, because of the same delusions that made risky securities seem safe to investors and rating agencies.
Read more at location 2121   •
Note: no capital example.citi group.

And Carole didn't just have reservations; she was opposed.
Read more at location 3798   •
Note: again. sacrifices by fe.brand

They didn’t have better solutions; they just didn't like ours. We were often vulnerable to that kind of attack, because we rarely had good options.
Read more at location 3844   •

AIG bonus scandal would take the media frenzy and the public anger to new levels, and I knew it would be another devastating blow to confidence in our crisis response. The next day, I called Ed Liddy, the new CEO of AIG, to say, essentially: What the fuck?
Read more at location 4904   •

I got into the habit of walking into crowded meetings in Larry’s office and joking: “Is this a real meeting or a fake meeting?” In other words, are we talking about a policy that requires a decision, or just talking?
Read more at location 5296   •
Note: aren't science meeting like this too? Or any open style meeting.

Eventually, Congress will have to make some tough choices about the mortgage market—not just how to reduce the government’s dominant role, but how to balance the trade-off between safety and accessibility.
Read more at location 6652   •

CEOs of the troubled institutions that required a majority government stake (Fannie, Freddie, AIG) or a merger with a stronger partner (Bear, WaMu, Countrywide, Merrill, Wachovia) all lost their jobs.
Read more at location 7681   •
Note: where are they.CEO now?

the central paradox of financial crises: What feels just and fair is often the opposite of what’s required for a just and fair outcome. It’s why policymakers generally tend to make crises worse, and why the politics of crisis management are always untenable.
Read more at location 7720   •
Note: Can brands nucleate crisis group who can manage policy.action? what are the movement.rituals to train in preperation? can the brand.tribe be laterall and not classically hierarchtical.

a sustained rise in private borrowing relative to GDP,
Read more at location 7775   •
Note: signs of a developing financial crisis

a sustained rise in uninsured short-term liabilities issued by the financial sector, the kind of money that can quickly run
Read more at location 7777   •
Note: signs of a developing financial crisis.

safeguards are the constraints on risk-taking that I’ve described as “shock absorbers,” starting with strict capital requirements that restrict leverage and ensure that institutions can absorb losses in a downturn. Other shock absorbers include liquidity requirements that limit financial institutions’ reliance on runnable short-term financing, deposit insurance and discount window access for depository institutions, margin requirements for derivatives and other financial instruments, and mortgage down-payment requirements that restrict leverage for ordinary borrowers.
Read more at location 7791   •
Note: measures to reduce risk.

playbook for monetary and fiscal policy is fairly simple.
Read more at location 7920   •

After a major shock that depresses demand and creates a risk of deflation, central bankers should ease monetary policy, aggressively lowering interest rates. Once the overnight rate approaches zero, they should find new ways to stay on the accelerator,
Read more at location 7921   •

fiscal side, the government should do as much as it can to reduce taxes and increase spending in order to offset the loss of wealth, the tightening of credit, and the collapse in private demand.
Read more at location 7927   •

The composition of fiscal stimulus is important, too, and should ideally combine speed and power. Tax cuts tend to be fast but weak; infrastructure investments tend to be powerful but slow; aid to low-income families is fast as well as powerful.
Read more at location 7930   •

financial rescue protocol is more complex. You want to conduct a form of triage that distinguishes between the insolvent and the merely illiquid, between firms that will never be viable and firms that just need protection from being caught in the stampede.
Read more at location 7933   •

U2 - The Definitive Biography

#author.John Jobling

#notes.//
The story starts with Larry, who was looking to start a band. Then Adam came, but I got confused when they started talking about David and Paul. I was trying to read kinda fast and lots of people were being introduced. Eventually, I figured out that David played the part of the Edge and Paul played the part of Bono.

What immediate hit was how they are like every other Act that made it big. Luck. Randomness. Hard-work. Determination.

They were not really that good. Then some random event made them popular locally and they had gigs, the 10000 hours of practice that they needed, more random luck, lots of people who believed in them and worked hard to make them bigger.


#link.//10,000-Hour Rule
Outlier - The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

Outlier - The Story of Success

#author.Malcolm Gladwell

#PUBLISHED.20081118

#note.//
20141210.
The Koreans again!

The NPR story makes a connection to this book. Hierarchical traditions like Korea's, can be deadly when apply to aviation. Luckily, it just cause some minor inconvenience here.

>push.news.NPR.//
Nut Rumpus Prompts Korean Airline Exec To Apologize And Resign


#link.//10,000-Hour Rule.examples
U2 - The Definative Biography.book

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror

#author.Richard A. Clarke
#FINISHED.20140715

#note.//
Richard has moved on to cybersecurity.
Bill Clinton likes this book. No wonder, it shows in a very favorable light.

Portable Atheist

#author.Christopher Hitchens
 #note.Kindle

 >interlace.Why the cage bird sings.

#quote.//poem.Rubaiyat.author.Omar Khayyam.translate.Richard Le Gallienne.

The bird of life is singing on the bough
His two eternal notes of "I and Thou"

...

Short is his song, nor only just begun, --
A call, a trill, a rapture, then-- so soon!--
A silence, and the song is done -- is done.

>interlace.news.Maya died yesterday.20140528

#query.//Are birds of life always caged?

Malcom X - Autobiography

#author.Malcom X.Alex Haley
FINISHED.

#notes.20140401
Malcom X was not born by the River, but instead moved from home to burning home.
Parent fought, father was killed (possible and probable)
Insurance company balked at paying the life insurance during the Depression era.
His family lived in poverty, and his mother went crazy.

"Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely. It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck."

"All I had done was improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life-- that anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business-- you know they're doing something that you aren't."

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: how we lie to everyone---especially ourselves

#author.Dan Ariely
#FINISHED.20140328

#notes.20140402
Decisions are NOT based on cost-benefit analysis. We take little cheats.

if ..."we would run a cost-benefit analysis on all of our decisions and do what seems to be the most rational thing... we wouldn't make decisions based on emotions or trust...

Social norm:

#Example of leaving 6-pack of Coke or plate with $1 bills. Dorm students would steal all the Cokes by 48hr but the plate of bills remain.

The thoughtStream follows like this://
Small bands of proto-humans were wandering scavengers. There was no way to store excess food, and all food stuff found by the group was essential. Survival of the band was dependent upon cooperativity; more eyes looking out for predators and for food. Social behaviors evolved to balance the survival instinct of the individual (consume all resource for self) and the survival of the group (sharing resource within group).

In this context, a little cheat was probably not "over looked" within the group because the food was essential. Each small band lived in almost complete social isolation. The social norm for small bands of wandering scavengers was to distrust all outside group --extreme xenophobia.

Early human hunter-gatherer groups started to develop ways to store excess stuff. The excess stuff would be "marginal" food/commodity. The excess stuff was not immediately eaten or used but would have a time decay. This might lead small bands to seek opportunities to trade with outside groups if a shared brand of social protocols could be formed. This higher-ordered layer of cooperativity between small bands would allow more efficient exploitation available resources.

Social norms developed in reaction to marginal food/commodity/stuff and dictated how cheating would be perceived. An individuals could probably steal a little bit of the marginal food from his own band, but not the essential.

With agriculture and domestication of animals, the level of "marginal" food increased. A barter system was created to exchange the marginal food and other commodities between small groups.  

Currency/money was introduce to increase the rate of exchange, thereby increasing the efficiency of the super-group's exploitation of resources.

Credit was introduce to increase the rate of money exchange, thereby increasing the efficiency of the mega-group's exploitation of resources.

#query.Why is it easier to steal the Coke than $1 cash. Why is it easier to spend $1 credit than spending $1 cash for a Coke? Is Coke like credit?
//

#example of 10 commandments decreasing the little cheats. Suggested have MIT honor code, but you need to do it right before the honesty challenge.

We also tend to perceive others as being more dishonest than ourselves.

#example of dentist and CAD/CAM systems. They would do more of these because they already paid for the equipment! Also Dan's experience with Dr. that wanted to tattoo his face! Dr. needed one more patient in study to publish.

Conflict of interest occurs throughout medical & pharmaceutical space.

Social norms makes us feel indebted to others for favors.
#example of logo on art and MRI scans.

".. the effects of reciprocity run deep, the brain scans showed the same effect; the presence of the sponsor's logo increased the activity in the parts of the participants' brain that are related to pleasure particularly the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is responsible for higher-order thinking, including associations and meaning)."

Pharmaceutical company reps give stuff (with logos) and service to Dr. to make Dr. feel indebted to the company. The Dr.s end up prescribing the drugs more.

high freq quote:

"Psychological studies show that we quickly and easily start believing whatever comes out of our own mouths, even when the original reason for expressing the opinion is no longer relevant... This is cognitive dissonance at play; doctors reason that if they are telling others about a drug, it must be good-- and so their own beliefs change to correspond to their speech, and they start prescribing accordingly."

Disclosure does not always solve conflict of interest.

Brand wrappers emotions and trust around products to make our decisions "easier".

Roy Baumeister (a professor at Florida State University) coined the "ego depletion".

The #example is trying to lose a few extra pounds. When we resist temptation, we use up some "ego", and our decision reverts to small-hunter gather responses? There must be actual, physical brain changes.

#example.Judges give out less paroles later in the day, when they are more tired. 
Experiment.
Control mental task = easy.
Depletion task = hard.
People given harder task subsequently took more little cheats.

Experiment.
Stroop task: saying the color of the written word and not its actual color.
For --RED-- you should respond by choosing blue and not red.
For --GREEN-- you should respond by choosing red and not green.
Control word would be BLUE.

People given harder task cheated almost twice as much. Depletion is bad.

Sometimes depletion is good. When you've honestly resisted, there comes a time to live in God's hand and your decision be closest to God's random finger. 

Wearing fake Prada makes you cheat more, and maybe be more creative?

Creative people can stretch the Fudge Factor more! We take more little cheats because we can be more creative in the self-rationalization and justification.

"... we should keep hiring creative people... we should still aspire to be creative ourselves, and we should continue to encourage creativity in others. But we also need to understand the links between creativity and dishonesty and try to restrict the cases in which creative people might be tempted to use their skills to find new ways to misbehave."

"Despite the general inclination to cheat that we observe over and over, and despite the increase in the propensity to cheat when others can benefit from such actions, being closely supervised eliminated cheating altogether."

But let them socialize first and get to know each other, and everyone reverts to little cheats again!

#example of revenge cheating. In no annoyance, 55% still cheated the pollster! If the pollster took a 12 second phone call during the test, the annoyed patrons would almost all cheat! 96% would take the $9 instead for honestly taking only the $5.

"We might even take this rationalization a step further and tell ourselves that we are simply restoring karma and balance to the world."

Interesting that even though there is a perception that there is different levels of cheating in different countries, when individuals from each country were tested in a neutral, culturally-independent test, people cheated to the same levels.

Pathological liars have less grey matter and more white matter in prefrontal cortex. 

People with more white matter.connectivity can infect us with dishonesty and creativity.

Classic #example of little cheats and social norms/brand psychology.

When possible we cheat, by a little.

If someone in our group blatantly cheats by a lot, we cheat a little bit more.

If someone in our group only blatantly cheats but explicitly states the cheating, we cheat as if we didn't observe the blatant cheating, and cheat just a little ourselves.

If someone outside our group blatantly cheats, we become almost completely honest.

Social norms dictates level of the little cheats.

We tend to trust professional that we've had long term relationship with.

#example of dentist proscribing crowns.

Roman general and "Memento mori".

Slave would whisper this into the ear of the victorious returning General.

"Remember your mortality"

Predictably Irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions

#author.Dan Ariely
#FINISHED.20130312

#comment
I finished back in March, but was lazy about comments. I will try now to review the ebook before returning it to the library.

#notes.ch1.Relativity.decoy
1. We choose things in relative terms by comparing.
Example of subscription to the Economist.
- Printed (P) subscription price $125; the decoy.
- Web-only (W) subscription price $59,
- P+W subscription was same as P at $125.
Removing the decoy shifted choice to the cheaper Web subscription.

And we tend to compare easy things and not difficult to compare things. heuristic.rule of thumb.

#Example of distorted picture.
George Clooney, distorted George Clooney (decoy), and Brad Pitt. Addition of decoy shifts choice to the more "familiar" Clooney picture.

Translate into advice for dating... bring a wing man (decoy); he should be like you but defective in a small way (physically or mental).

#notes.ch2.Anchoring.herding
If prices can be arbitrary, then arbitrary coherence can occur.
Example of students anchoring arbitrary prices by writing the last two digits of their SSN as  price $ on the sheet of auctioned items (SSN became price anchor). When it was time for the auction, students with higher last two digits on their SSN numbers bidded, on average, higher amounts!

Self-herding with Starbucks. I've bought coffee here already, let's just keep buying here.
But to change anchor from Dunkin Donuts to Starbucks, we have to create an entirely different experience so that coffee is not priced with coffee anymore. It is gourmet coffee.

#Example of taking an ambiguous experience, (poetry reading by Ariely) and anchoring with pay or demand payment. Therefore, our decisions not shaped by just likes and dislikes but by lots of arbitrary coherence, anchoring.herding, like the goslings who imprint on the first moving animal, we keep following that initial arbitrary decision.

This affects real market prices because it changes demand. Our memory of past price makes us sensitive to price changes. Ariely thinks without price memory, we would be less resistant to price changes.

>interlace.Inflation Expectations.anchoring.
If Feds foster inflation rate to anchor a 2%, then economy will be resistant to inflation changes.

Or the anchoring might be bad.

"For example, because of some unfortunate initial anchors we might mistakenly trade something that truly give us a lot of pleasure but regrettable had a low initial anchor) for something that gives us less pleasure (but owing to some random circumstance had a high initial anchor)" 

#notes.ch3.Cost of Free stuff
Free is not free. Time cost too. Waiting in line for free Ben & Jerry ice cream cost my time! (which is about $100/hr currently)

#Example of Lindt chocolate vs. Hershey's kisses. 14 cent vs 1 cent got people to pay 73 to 27 ratio, but if kisses were free, then suddenly just 1 cent change causes ration to shift to 21 to 69 of Lindt:kisses!

The cost change from 2 cent to 1 cent is NOT the same as 1 cent to FREE in our minds.

"imagine going to a sports store to buy a pair of white socks, ... later you're leaving the store, not with the socks you came in for, but with a cheaper pair that you don't like at all (...) but that came in a package with a FREE! second pair."

The decoy is very strong! Compared to the relative price of FREE, the cheap socks you don't really like are a bargain that can't be refused.

#Example of Amazon FREE shipping! In France, they were NOT buying the second book because the second book did not offer FREE shipping as a bonus. It offered 20 cents shipping (normal shipping cost being about $3.95). 20 cent close to FREE but not even close!

Social policy
If you want people to drive electric cars, offer FREE registration and inspection fees!

In a social group, one person should pay the entire bill. Everyone else gets their meal for FREE. (Until of course next time, and then someone must keep count, and there's always personality differences that results in different Fudge factor for each person. Small cheaters always want a free meal. Is it worth it to reduce my pain of paying? Trade-off between trust within group and individual pain of paying.

#comment.ch4.The Cost of Social Norms.
Market norm vs. Social norms.
Men don't pay for sex, but men will pay for dinner.

#Example of computer task done for money (Market norm) or as a social request (Social norm).
$5 got 159 task items done.
50 cent got 101 items done.
FREE (social request) got 168 done.

#Example of lawyers not willing to offer services to needy retirees for $30, but agreed when the services to needy retirees was for FREE.

"The sensei was not charging the group for the training. The students, feeling that this was unfair, approached sensei one day and suggested that they pay him for his time and effort. Setting down his shinai, the sensei calmly replied that if he charged them, they would not be able to afford him."

Gifts fall under Social norms. Explicitly priced gifts are not gifts.

>interlace.Giving gifts to politician falls under Social norms. Maybe we should let corporation pay Politicians for favors completely under Market norms. Think of the amount of money companies would pay?! Instead of cheap free meal and plane tickets, they would have to pay millions! The extra money would go back to making the system more transparent. How much did Google pay to get that piece of legislation?

"thinking about money makes us behave as most economists believe we behave and less like the social animals we are in our daily live"

#Example of day-care center imposing a fine for parents who came late to pick up their kids. It backfired. The more parents decide to come late anyways and just pay the fine! Even when the fine system was removed, parent's behavior stayed worse, ie they kept coming late to pickup their kids.

>interlace.Do companies want ANY social contracts with customers? Probably not. Do companies participate in social contracts with their communities? Probably.
Do companies want social contracts with employees? Probably. More hard working.
Should companies give gifts (Hawaii vacation) reward instead of  cash bonus rewards?

A police officer operates in both Market norm (he gets a salary), and in Social norm (he is risking his life for honor of the position).

Burning Man economy is base on barter, ie gift-exchange with social pricing, bartering of service?

#notes.ch5.free in social norm

Examples of cookies for free (social norm) and cookies for 5 cent (market norm)
If you can pay, then take all the cookies!
Free candy or 1 cent candy: 207 students took free candy; 58 students paid for candy.
However, average number candy per person was 1.1 for free and 3.5 for paid.
Fails 2nd Law of Demand.
Therefore, 228 free candy was consumed, while only 203 paid candy was consumed.

When everything is FREE do we start viewing the world as a communal place?

30 truffles per person for 1 cent, or 1.5 truffle per person for free or 8.6 truffles in payment for effort.

#notes.ch6 Arousal influences our decision.

It is better to completely avoid situation where you have to make a critical decision under Arousal.

#Example where 5 guys said they would slip a woman a drug to increase the chance that she would have sex with them increase to 26 (420% increase) when answering the question in a state of arousal.

#notes.ch7.Procrastination and Self-Control

#Example of giving deadlines, letting students make deadlines, and providing students with tools to manage and define deadlines for assignments. It is best to be dictatorial teacher!
Procrastination in health care might be true. Therefore, give us healthcare decision tools! Another tool? More information?

"America's top killer isn't cancer or heart disease, nor is it smoking or obesity. It;s our inability to make smart choices and overcome our own self-destructive behaviors. "

To motivate, use a variable schedule of reinforcement! Or be like Ariely, schedule movie time before the pain. Transient pleasures can be used to motivate us to the doorstep of purgatory.

#notes.ch8.ownership jakes up the price! We invest emotional content into the object, and project a future pleasure revenue stream. The example was Duke basketball tickets. The example was Ariely's remodeled "open-space" house. When they changed it back into a normal "closed-space" house, it sold!

In traditional marriage, you own the other person. That makes you value them as priceless. Today, you don't own the other person, so the relationship doesn't have as much psychological value.

#notes.ch9. keeping our options open, modern gigolos.

#Example of keeping our children in every activity just in case it might spark their interest and passion or habit and obsessive-compulsive behavior. At least they'd get good at something!

Dating door games! Keeping old lovers around, just in case. Social norms says this is bad form.

"The truth is that they could have made more money by picking a room--any room--and merely staying there for the whole experiment."

Loss aversion, even if they are worthless options.

"In our modern society...we are continually reminded that we can do anything and be anything we want to be. The problem is in living up to this dream."

Just pick one side of the coin and go do it. Be a Head or Tail, it doesn't really matter.

#notes.ch10.Expectations.
Expecting your Team to win blinds you to the fouls they commit during the game.

#Example was MIT beer, budweiser+balsamic. When told the ingredients, they expected bud+balsamic to taste "bad" and so it was. But when not told the ingredients, they liked the bud+balsamic better. Informed before tasting might "prime" their sensory perceptions?

Starbuck effect. When the containers for the "extras" were fancy, they enjoyed the coffee more.

Coke vs. Pepsi, blind and non-blind in fNMR showed brain difference.

#Example of famous violin player in NY subway. Expectation does change our appreciation of whatever it is we are experiencing.

#notes.ch11.the placebo effect is strong!
The examples were fake heart surgery, threshold for pain, cheap cold-remedies.

#notes.ch12.mounting Distrust!
marketing companies know anchoring, social norms and the power of FREE in market and social norms.

#Example of offering free money at a both to measure peoples level of distrust.
$1 = 1% people who stopped.
$5 = more
$50 = 19% stopped. This was interpreted as a low level of trust, but this is correct. There should be a low level when the offer is free money! It severely violates market norms. If an expensive gift (worth ~$50) then I think the trust level would be higher.

I wonder at what implicit price of a gift would give the same 19% of the explicit cash price of $50?
Probably it would be higher!

In the context of shared resources, can low level of trust can lead to Tragedy of the Commons (TotC)?

#Example of a group pot of money. Everyone puts in an equal amount, the total is doubled and the new amount is equally redistributed. From Ariely's other book, we know that there is always a small level of cheating, therefore the return on this experiment will always be less than optimal because one player will always cheat and put in a little less than the agreed upon amount.

What is the correlation between the Fudge Factor and the level of Trust?  If we can reduce the Fudge Factor will this increase the overall level of Trust in a community? Or is it the other way around? Must we increase community Trust to decrease aggregate individual Fudge Factors?

As the Market exploits our trust, the level of distrust increases and spills over into decisions about shared resources (which in the end are what supports the Market) and lead to TotC.

Can we begin to attenuate the rapid decline of our natural resources by first being truthful on our resume, and our online dating profiles?

Who has more influence in determining the Social norm of our communities: Individuals, .com, .org, .net, .gov? Some Market norms are now being set by computer algorithms. That's probably a good thing in the long run. AI as a supplement to HI.

#notes.ch13.ch14.expanded in The Honest Truth About Dishonesty.link
little cheats.linkedData
Fudge Factor.

I know why the caged bird sings

#author.Maya Angelou

#comment.27022014
Marguerite and Baily leave the Long Beach for Arkansa.

"If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

Is is an unnecessary insult."

>interlace.cotton picker:Solomon Northrup.thoughtStream

"The champion picker of the day before was the hero of the dawn. If he prophesied that the cotton in today's field was going to be sparse and stick to the bolls like glue, every listener would grunt a hearty agreement."

 Marguerite's carried the pineapple slice,

 "around for hours, shredding off the fruit until nothing was left expect the perfume"

on her fingers, like Charlie and his chocolate bar, Children of poorBrand waiting for random helicopter drops of cash to stimulate a next Economy.

>quote.26032014
"I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

>interlace.conman: Chuck.thougthStream.

"Daddy Clidell explained to me that they were the most successful con men in the world, and they were going to tell  me about some games so that I would never be 'anybody's mark'."

Isn't this what Sarah's father tries to teach her? 

Twelve Years a Slave

#author.Solomon Northup

#comment.20140225
Eliza is separated from her children.
  >interlace.Blackfish.movie.
//showing calf separated from mother.Blackorca.

It seems so unreal, like a fictional story; the scene added to create dynamic tension.
It was real. It was America.

How We Decide

#author.Jonah Lehrer

#comment. more neuroscience showing the complexity of making decision.

memorable examples: Korean pilots shift to copilot flying plane and pilot to manage crisis.
culture where participant must "guess" others true wants has it's place.

Blackfish

Seaworld's rebuttal:
http://seaworldparks.com/en/seaworld-sandiego/sitecore/content/corporatesites/truth/home/truth-about-blackfish/

Conclusion:
shut park.
shut zoos.
stop keeping pets
save habitat

short-term:
continue to eat animals
continue to experiment on animals

long-term:
continue to eat plants
continue to eat microorganism.