Trading Social Skills for Other Abilities

on Apr 8, 2010

We’ve all known those people: the very intelligent and creative but otherwise either not-very-social or socially awkward, sometimes understood as geeks. You might even be one of these people! I surmised that there was some sort of inverse correlation between the social skills and other technical abilities. After all, there’s a large amount of brain resources required by social tasks. Hence the potential tradeoff between social ability and other “thinking” ability.

At a recent TED talk (video above), Temple Grandin confirms this relationship by discussing the autism spectrum (which by her definition, and mine, extends beyond Asperger’s, to the not-so-social geeky types). A very striking note is that, for the most part, those on the spectrum don’t have a disorder, but rather a different way of understanding and interpreting the world. (However autistic spectrum individuals that do not speak or cannot function in our society do need treatment.)

This TED talk actually blew me away (and I’ve watched it several more times since). It really explains much of what we see in the world (or may experience ourselves) regarding the different ways people solve problems, and how they also handle themselves in social environments. In essence, there is a limited amount of brain processing power available. Humans, as social creatures, would be an advantage to have specialized social wiring. But at the same time, the complex human world requires solving some very involved problems. An individual with this ability would also be at an advantage. The limit of brain power presents a dilemma. So we see “all kinds of minds” where some individuals are very good at dealing with people while others are good at handling other sorts of complex tasks, and of course people falling along all levels of the scale. (It’s unclear whether individuals are more born this way or turn out this way.)

This has a lot to say about how people interpret the world and how they learn. It seems that the geeky types may be more visually oriented or perhaps more hands-on oriented. They’re the types that might be good at some kinds of math, or music, or recognizing patterns. Some can run virtual simulations in their heads. Many appear to be more bottom up learners, where they need to put together all the details before understanding the bigger picture. Temple has even said that some of the above belong in Silicon Valley, since they make great programmers.

There’s so much more to say on this entire subject. Temple’s talk has really opened up a new world to the way I look at people and their abilities. It all comes down to tradeoffs. Especially considering the great depth of the human world, different kinds of minds are needed to make the incredible human progress. Check out the talk and it’ll really get your mind thinking about this. You’ll surely see it all over the real world, and perhaps even in yourself.

Getting Down to Eating Well, Some Good Reads

on Mar 30, 2010

In an earlier post, I covered some all around good reads on eating well and food culture. In this post, we’ll focus more on actually practically eating better. Again, we have a book by Michael Pollan. Food Rules, an incredibly short read that you can finish in two hours, presents 64 simple rules to eating better. Most of them have a few paragraphs explaining the rule at hand. Anyone not exposed to Pollan’s mantra: “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much” will be blown away by his simplistic, yet wholesome, approach to eating well. And as Pollan states, having just a handful of these anecdotes in your head is plenty to get you eating better. I’ve carefully looked through all the 64 rules and can’t disagree with a single one.

Another interesting, and very unique, book is Food Matters by NYT food writer Mark Bittman. In the first half of this book, BittmanÂ shares his own story on how he began to eat better and the transformation it brought to his health. The story is very telling yet personal. The second half of his book is very special, because Bittman presents a detailed plan on achieving the goal of eating better. Literally. He includes four weeks of daily meal suggestions. Even more incredible: the following 150+ pages are filled with recipes of the very meals he suggests in the meal plans. You’d be hard pressed to find a better all-in-one guide that combines information about the food culture, a real story on the tremendous impact of eating better, and the tools to help you make the same transformation. If you like Bittman’s recipes, he’s got a ton more in his How to Cook Everything books.

Enjoy the reads, guys. They really get down and dirty with eating better. And if you have your own suggestions, surely let me know.

Why Texting and Talking on the Phone Remain Intrusive

on Mar 26, 2010

Texting and talking on the phone while driving / cycling / having dinner has become a nuisance to our safety and social manners. It’s clear to everyone by now how dangerous (and rude) this has become. But the problem is not going away and interestingly enough, pretty much everyone is guilty of it, regardless of their awareness. Which leads one to believe that there’s more behind this.

It comes down to the fact that we’re very social creatures and we seek connections with other people. Cells phones have enabled us remained connected to those we care for, thus giving us something so important from what is ingrained in us.

This strong force should be kept in mind when approaching policies to prevent texting or driving while talking. It is difficult to stop this behavior because of the incredible strong social force. Still, we can help people make better decisions when using this technology. Like to avoid talking on the phone when on local streets. Or to avoid getting into emotional conversations while on the go. Additionally, creative solutions are appearing for mobile devices to deal with texting and talking on the phone.

I do have one such idea: Consider anÂ app phone combined with Google Voice (which can act as a digital personal secretary). Imagine setting your device to “car mode” (or have it automatically do this via a car dock Â or by detecting speed via GPS) or “dinner with family mode”. The mode would trigger Google Voice to intercept your calls with a message to inform your caller that this is a bad time before patching her through. It could send automatic responses to text messages. It could set away messages to your IM services and even shut off notifications. The technology is at hand and there’s quite a lot of potential in it. I expect we’ll see this sort of stuff within a couple of years, if not sooner.

Over time, social etiquette with texting will improve as it has for phone calls. Still, we mustn’t forget that the reason these tools have become such a dominant part of our lives is that it enhances the very human act of being social.

Communication and Manipulation

on Mar 22, 2010

Have you noticed how deceptive advertising is? Breakfast cereal companies make health claims on their products – very misleading. Website ads purport weight-loss miracles – complete scams. Trickery appears to be all over our communication mediums. It’s so commonplace that we might accept it as a normal part of society. We seem to tune it out often enough. But there’s just so much manipulation, bringing us closer to non-human animals and turning back the the clock on our evolutionary progress.

Think, in all of the animal kingdom, humans are the only species to have an incredibly extensive communication system. Language (a technology built into us that we often takeÂ for granted)Â in humans greatly surpasses that of any other creature. There’s a simple answer as to why no other creature engages in this: manipulation. If any information can be spread, then false information can be spread. In non-human animals, spreading false information is a good strategy as there is always competition with others. This is why non-human animals don’t evolve strong communication (except in the case of closely related individuals where we do see some level of communication). Humans are unique in their ability to suppress these conflicts of interest and because of this, theyÂ assured that information communicated wasn’t malicious information, at the time elite communication evolved. (For a full detailing our our language history, see Chapter 9,Â Voices from the past: The evolution of ‘language’, in Death from a Distance)

Back to contemporary society, we see that manipulation is everywhere. The ancient condition that allowed elite communication to sprout is terribly disrespected. Today, we’re constantly exposed to deceptive information. A big problem is that much our mental mechanisms are too trusting and leave us open to manipulation. Another is that companies can get away with misleading people, and they’ll do it because it’sÂ in their interest to do so.Â In the ancient condition, there were enforcement mechanisms to prevent the dissemination of bad information. We don’t have a very good system in place for that now. We need better enforcement on misleading advertising. We, as a whole, would be living much better lives with the absence of manipulative information.

We’re blessed with the incredible technology of elite communication. If it isn’t used mindfully, it will go to waste. It will be ignored. It has already happened to some degree. And where it hasn’t, often lie the victims of manipulation.

The Misleading Meaning of ‘Enriched’ Flour

on Mar 20, 2010

In many food products you’ll see the term enriched flour. This applies to grains such as wheat, corn, and rice. You’ll also seeÂ the addition of reduced iron,Â niacin, and other B vitamins.Â This is all very misleading but, ironically,Â a good indication that the food has been processed.

When a grain is processed, it loses quite a lot of its nutritional value. When food companies first did this with grains, people became very sick and developed diseases. It was quickly noticed that processed grain was nutritionally deficient. The government stepped in and stated that food companies were to add back the missing nutrients. Hence they were enriched. While the quick-to-occur diseases were halted, there was no determination on the long term effects of processed grains. Decades later, we have a society afflicted with widespread obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

The fact remains that in processing grains, the food is broken. Even returning specific nutrients to the food can’t account for all that was lost. The mechanics of food and health is a complicated thing on the level of nutrients. So next time you’re shopping for grains, avoid the enriched stuff. Go for the whole grain. It’ll make a mountain of difference in your health and wellbeing. If you don’t find whole grains palatable, slowly introduce it into your diet and you will adjust to it and even come to enjoy it.

Live “Longer” Through Time Dilation

on Mar 16, 2010

An article regarding time dilation states that the phenomenon is actually an illusion of memory. That moments seems longer based on the number of things we remember from it. While the article discusses experiences of fear, I’ll often experience time dilation when I have a lot of different things going on throughout the week, as well as a lot of different things going in in my head. By the time the next week rolls around, the previous week seems like it was ages ago and that I’d grown so much since then. Those weeks certainly feel very productive and satisfying. And yet it all happened in a mere seven days.Â Could this be a way to enhance our lives? To make life more rich and full? To get the most out of our time alive? Wouldn’t life be better?

Conflicts of Interest Explain the Mess of the Healthcare Industry

on Mar 14, 2010

The American healthcare system is messy, inefficient, and expensive. The problem lies Â in the lack of the unified goal of providing good patient care. Rather, every party involved in our healthcare industry must act to allow themselves to survive, often to the detriment of this goal. This is apparent when we consider the interests of each party and compare them to that of the other parties:

Patients – want to maintain their health and make it affordable

they are marketed to constantly by other players in the healthcare system
they often want quick fixes and to want to minimize effort (making them reluctant to adopt lifestyle changes)
their insurance policies put little importance on promoting healthy lifestyle
they must deal with the difficulty in getting insurance and have treatments covered

Doctors and other Medical Personal – want to deliver the best care and be properly reimbursed for their work

they had to work very hard for many years and pay a lot of money to get to where they are
they have to overtreat to avoid lawsuits
they have to use expensive Â medical equipment more often to cover those costs (more overtreatment)
they have to see more patients to cover their costs
they need to maintain good reputations (which means catering to reward systems that raise the cost of medicine yet don’t do the patient good; one example is not admitting mistakes; another is prescribing more drugs or procedures instead of suggesting lifestyle changes)

Insurance Companies – want to offer the best coverage and minimize their costs

they must avoid risky high-cost clients and maintain many low-cost clients, or business will be infeasible
they need to cover what their clients want to maintain their clientele

they need to deal with the high prices set my the medical industry in order to stay in business

Drug Companies and Medical Equipment Makers – want to offer the best medical advancements and minimize their costs

they must compete in a very aggressive industries
they have very high research costs
they must continually create new products
they must advertise heavily to remain in business
they lobby to create favorable government policy
by nature, they encourage overtreatment

Hospitals – want to offer the best care and cover their costs

they lose a lot of money when providing care in emergency departments (especially with patients without insurance)
they must cover this discrepancy by building and advertising high-yielding departments (such as cancer treatment and heart treatment)
they must heavily use expensive medical equipment to cover those costs
they must maintain good reputation

Government / Politicians / Policy Makers – want to create policies that better the health of people and they want to maintain their political power

they must please the patients and cater to what patients think is best for health (even if it isn’t)
they must deal with lobbying and funding from other players in the health care industry (critical to getting elected)

As you can see, every player involved in our healthcare system has well intentioned and even commendable goals (as indicated in italic). But at the same time, they’re working in a system that requires them to fulfill the second goal (survival) at the expense of the first goal (genuine health care). If we are to improve our healthcare system, and our lives, we must address the conflicting interests between these parties. We must align their interests and incentives with the greater unified goal of providing the good medical care. And this includes [potential] patients acting in kind.

Transparency, Morality, and Why We’re Better Off Without Privacy

on Mar 12, 2010

An article on CNET today discusses how concerns for privacy are diminishing, especially in ourÂ ever-growingÂ information age. In the work I do on human uniqueness, I’ve explored the evolutionary relationship of morality and transparency. It appears that this growing transparency (and thus decline of privacy) is a very good thing for our populations as a whole. A look at the human ethical sense shows why.

Shaped by natural selection, the human ethical sense is finely tuned to work in our especially social environment. Generally, the best self-serving strategy (and one that is indirect) is to contribute to your social coalition; directly selfish behavior is usually a bad strategy because of the strong coercive threat imposed by the rest of the group. The exception is when directly self-serving actions can go by unnoticed (privately). This would net a benefit for you but it wouldn’t be good for the others. Simply put, the greater the transparency (and the less the privacy), the better off a group is as a whole because this causes each individual to avoid the then inferior directly self-interested strategy.

A quote by federal judge Richard Posner in the CNET article illustrates this entire concept really well: “As a social good, I think privacy is greatly overrated because privacy basically means concealment. People conceal things in order to fool other people about them. They want to appear healthier than they are, smarter, more honest and so forth.”Â Issues regarding privacy are very evocative because of this; they involve an individual’s direct self-interest.

Our technology allows us to change the social norms of privacy. Individually it appears we’re getting comfortable with the decline of privacy. Between generations, there is no uncertainty since newer generations are better at adopting technology. There has certainly been friction (we’ve all heard of people getting busted by posting stuff to Facebook) but people will adapt to the growing transparency of their lives. The big question that remains: how so? Will our norms change to deem currently inappropriate behavior appropriate? Or will people commit less such inappropriate behavior? My best guess is that it’ll lean towards the former when there’s no social harm and towards the latter when it’s our collective interest that people change.

In the meantime, enjoy the ride. With the emergence of computers and internet in our pockets along with facial recognition technology, we’ll soon be able to learn all about a person by just looking at him. MIT is already on this. Perhaps we all better clean up our acts sooner rather than later. Â And who knows, the world may very well quickly become a much better place.

Arnav Shah's Blog

transparency to life