sticks are stronger than carrots

[bubblingbeebles]

i have been reading this book on-and-off. it has an interesting point in its beginning:

humans are much more loss-averse than gain-seeking. this is because in evolutionary times, it is cool if we see something to eat, but if there is, say, a snake lying on the path, we'd damn well be afraid of it. avoiding danger has to be dealt with always; feeding

Comments

[professorsparks]

oddly enough, whenever I do my laundry in bare feet, I find myself running toe first. It just seems more natural when I don't have shoes in the way.

[bubblingbeebles]

when i run barefoot (in hallways at cmu) it has always been toe-first. but not because it feels natural (i am not used to it at all); rather it is totally painful to barefoot heel-first.

[bubblingbeebles]

it is a little amusing/curious that padded-heel shoes reduces the impact shock just enough below some threshold so that people will start running that way, in preference to keeping their lower legs strong enough for toe-first.

[criminalnerd]

I don't have a consistent way of walking but I usually lean towards walking and running toe-first. I play ITG toe-first too (Skiz tells me that I shouldn't do that). For walking, I feel that walking on my toes is very much easier for me, and when I run, it's mostly because I'm leaning forwards when I run. It's hard to run heel-first if your running speed depends on your hitting the ground and pushing off as often as possible

[bubblingbeebles]

inability to process numbers is also sort of a good point. i think that book mentions it but i can't remember. basically, once you get past about a thousand, you stop being able to process real magnitude. sure, you can imagine a million dollars, since you're used to dealing with ten-thousand-dollar chunks, but can you imagine a million apples?

[shaktool]

People who think in big numbers probably do it by truncating the least significant digits. We don't say 1,000,000, we say 1 million. Our comapny has 1 million users, and it is easy to imagine that when we have 2 million users, then we'll spend twice as much effort on customer support.

[bubblingbeebles]

i am told that the five-fingers are a lot like being barefoot but huaraches are somehow different. i am not yet sure how they are different.

[rickynumber24]

unrelenting dogma

I've only met a few people wearing 5fingers. All of them seem to have had lots of things to say about how running going around barefoot is so much better than going around in shoes, especially running shoes.

One particular case of someone I met while interviewing for Qualcomm (another interviewee) really stuck in my mind as having drunk a little too much cool-aid: He maintained that the reason runners switch to flimsy shoes when they compete (which is true) is because barefoot running is better.
As I observed to a Qualcomm engineer who was with us that day (it was social day) who also has run competitively, this is false: Competitive runners wear flimsy shoes because they're light. (Also, they're the ones you can screw spikes into, and you'd be surprised how much some metal-studded traction helps.)
After all, why else would they switch back to training shoes when they weren't competing? (Well, aside from the spikes tearing up tracks, but that can be solved by removing them...)

sticks and carrots

[wjl]

i'm definitely of the opposite opinion regarding sticks and carrots. yeah, sure, evolutionarily, we'd better be tuned to avoid extreme losses more than we are to seek small rewards, but that doesn't mean we become happy by doing so.

also, regarding your hypothetical lottery, David Sklansky (the Guy Who Writes Good Gambling Books) suggests that one should avoid a positive-expectancy bet if it has a very small chance of incurring catastrophic losses -- e.g., as a professional gambler, he would typically make any positive expectancy bet, but if the bet has even a small potential to break his bankroll and thus drop him into a lower tier of money-making for a while, it's probably better to pass it up. this is consistent with your avoidance of the likely-win-a-dollar-maybe-lose-everything lottery, but i don't recall if Sklansky ever speculated on the psychological underpinnings (like superlinear internal evaluation).

Re: sticks and carrots

[bubblingbeebles]

i'm definitely of the opposite opinion regarding sticks and carrots. yeah, sure, evolutionarily, we'd better be tuned to avoid extreme losses more than we are to seek small rewards, but that doesn't mean we become happy by doing so.

oh no that is exactly the point! evolution has us hardwired to prefer maximizing survival in preference to maximizing happiness, and that's basically the root cause of things that stand in the way of being happy. life is a challenge like that.

i meant to say "i meant to say [something], but didn't get around to it" just now, but forgot what that something was.