What would be really is interesting is the same study but with the first group being told they're hard-working and the second group not being given any praise at all. That would help test how far the "praise/incentives diminish performance" theory really goes.
Just praise her for her non-physical qualities, so that that when the twisted high-school value system kicks in, she'll at least be aware of an alternative value system.
You conflate two separate things there – 'noticing' and 'deciding it was a nice opportunity'.
The article claimed that noticing opportunities was a characteristic of lucky people. It did not say that lucky people were any more likely to be more risk-taking or credulous than other people.
> The article claimed that noticing opportunities was a characteristic of lucky people. It did not say that lucky people were any more likely to be more risk-taking or credulous than other people.
No I did not conflate them. The author only presented "good" opportunities, so it is obvious that the people who noticed them would always benefit from being more observant of things they deem good.
In fact this attitude made them more expectant that good things happen to them, as evidenced by the lottery test where they expected to win twice as much as the people who were "unlucky".
If you naturally expect to benefit more from any such activity, isn't this naturally more risk-taking and credulous?
The article was saying that luck was down to mindset, not psychic ability!
Richard Wiseman's claims are in no way affected by the experiment you just mentioned, because games of pure chance are not affected by mindset. Most of life is affected by mindset.
Again you and the author are twisting the definition of luck.
I will use this example again. If I learn how to prospect for gold, does this count as increasing my luck since chances are higher that I will be able to find gold? The answer is a resounding no.
Getting a better life from a positive mindset cannot be attributed to luck anymore than learning any other skill (say a MD) is making me any luckier.
Twisting your definition of luck? Obviously the "lucky" people in the experiment considered themselves lucky based on a different metric than yours. The "unlucky" people seemed to be using a similar metric. This experiment addressed that metric. So what's the problem?
I will use this example again. If I learn how to prospect for gold, does this count as increasing my luck since chances are higher that I will be able to find gold?
How did you learn to prospect for gold? How did you decide where to prospect? If you're "lucky", you saw someone at the bar buy a round of shots because of a nice day prospecting, you struck up a conversation with him, became acquaintances, and joined him on his next prospecting trip. If you're "unlucky", you thought, Man, that guy's so lucky. Everyone's luckier than me, as you took the shot and ordered another beer.
The "unlucky" people seemed to be using a similar metric. This experiment addressed that metric. So what's the problem?
Like I said before, just because you think you are lucky does not mean you are lucky. Just as thinking that you are smart does not mean you are smart.
If you're "lucky", you saw someone at the bar buy a round of shots because of a nice day prospecting, you struck up a conversation with him, became acquaintances, and joined him on his next prospecting trip. If you're "unlucky", you thought, Man, that guy's so lucky. Everyone's luckier than me, as you took the shot and ordered another beer.
That isn't called luck. That is called being optimistic.
Consider this scenario: "Lucky" person A notices a Nigerian 411 scam, and decides to do it, not knowing it was a scam, while "unlucky" person B does not know that those are scams as well, but did not notice it anyway because "unlucky" people are less perceptive.
Who is truly the lucky one now? The "unlucky" person is, because not only did he not waste his time on that "opportunity", but the chance that he does not lose any money is much higher than the "lucky" chump who likes to believe that everything is a gift from the heavens just for him.
I would argue that Stephen King's 'It' should also have the status of a great novel.
One French critic wrote of 'It':
«Ça» fonctionne parce que «Ça» fait peur. Pendant plus de mille pages – Jean-Pierre Dufreigne, L'Express
Translation: 'It' works because "It" scares. Throughout over one thousand pages.
How wrong can a critic be?
Yes the horror element is great but it's not why 'It' works at all, not for me anyway. For me 'It' works because of its insights into human nature – it's use of fantasy to look unflinchingly at human nature at it's worst and it's most beautiful, to do justice to a world that is full of both evil and goodness, because every story overlaps with other stories overlapping with other stories, just like real life, because it's a morally uncompromising book which presents no hard and fast rules of morality, because it portrays children and childhood accurately, because it shows us a world where abuse, neglect and apathy are rife, come in many forms, and can be perpetrated by people for all kinds of reasons, sometimes wilfully, sometimes from neediness, sometimes from a self-deluded sense of righteousness, sometimes from lack of knowing anything better. Because it also writes about the power of love and the deep bonds people share without a shred of sentimentality. Because it's a fantasy, and yet it shows our world perhaps more accurately than any story I've ever read, watched or heard.
I particularly loved the theme of standing up to oppressors. Many stories have this element, but 'It' is so true to reality that the standing-up is more inspiring and powerful than in other works. Typically however, King has the wisdom to have a side-plot which shows how standing up to oppressors can go wrong, by way of brutal vigilantism and bloody revenge. It's this steadfast refusal to accept clichés and black-and-white worldviews of any kind which I particularly appreciate in King.
I don't know, maybe the best thing about it is that makes a giant telepathic space turtle seem like a perfectly plausible part of a novel characterized by gritty realism.
My second, not entirely unrelated, nomination is 'Psychology is About People' by HJ Eysenck. This is half a century old so I am sure there are now many better books saying much the same thing. But for me it was the culmination of a train of thought, which started when I came across the quote "wisest is she who knows she does not know" in Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World , which made me realize how little I know and how important it is to identify and question my own assumptions.
Psychology is About People is an attack on fuzzy thinking in the fields of public policy-making, social science and, above all, psychology (Eysenck was himself a psychologist). He demonstrates that pyschotherapy, at least in his time, was little more than storytelling which, when held up to the hard light of the experimental method, was almost always proven false. Likewise, he attacks governments for basing their social policies on similarly unexamined assumptions. These fields, especially psychology have all come a long way since Eysenck's time but it's still very easy to spot the kind of fuzzy thinking and refusal-to-question-assumptions everywhere you look.
I disagree with Eysenk in some of the conclusions he makes from his own research, but I think his general approach to knowledge and truth is fantastic. It certainly changed the way I think and has effected in me a permanent distaste for 'meta-narratives' of all kinds.
I'm glad to see the Economist raise this subject. I've known so many people who hate their jobs, it really does seem like it should be higher up on the political agenda than it is.
This article brings up two particularly interesting points for me.
Firstly, do performance measures increase productivity? Apparently, they actually decrease productivity, at least if productivity involves creative problem-solving: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
Secondly, can standard corporations genuinely recognize and implement the 'human side' of management, as the article says they should. I would argue not. The standard corporation is owned by a large number of shareholders with no personal connection to the corporation and no interest in anything other than profiting from their shares. Because of this arrangement, it is inevitable that profit is the only value that counts in corporate management. If management adopts a 'touchy-feely' approach it can only be justified if this is found to increase profits, and it would do nothing to prevent their being discarded as soon as it becomes profitable to do so. A genuine recognition of the 'human side' of management would be a recognition that humans are ends in themselves, not means to an end. But in a standard corporate structure, employees are inevitably just cogs in a profit-making machine.
Thanks for the TED link. I agree with the statement that Dan states in the video about results oriented work spaces. I would like (more) to work for a company that offers this as part of the corporate culture. I think it can only work in the context of managers that can actually set realistic goals though which seems to be tough in software development.
It perplexes me too, especially after Tony Blair committed political suicide by joining in with the invasion of Iraq.
Churchill established it as a lynchpin of British foreign policy, as absolute and unquestionably valid as the old "maintain a balance of power in Europe", and it just seems to have stuck ever since, regardless of the costs.
I mostly agree with you, but it's not hard to create a karma system that isn't just a reward for hyperactivity. For example, Hacker News could change its system so that nobody got a point simply for posting a comment.
But however fine-tuned the system, no point system is immune from gaming, and no-one can expect points to be any more than vague clue as to someone's true worth as a participant in the community.
Karma/Reputation systems on website are to reward a desired behavior. Part of HN's value is it's active useful conversation (vs /.,digg etc). So it makes sense to give the community the tools to reward what they want and create positive self feedback. (Also like the other reply, simply posting doesn't give you karma)
There are two problems with what you say. First, a large number of posts with a small number of upvotes is still valued more by HN than a small number of well-respected comments. Second, moderation systems tend to be inflationary, which means that the point value of a given comment has more to do with how many people read the thread than anything else.
Slashdot's point cap is the obvious solution, but even there comments tend to lean heavily towards +5 on well read threads.
Re: first problem: I think a large number of fairly good comments probably IS a more valuable contribution than a small number of very good comments.
The second problem is more, er, problematic, but you could argue that good comments are popular articles deserve more karma, since these are comments on topics which people are really interested in – i.e. valuable insights on hot topics benefit more people than valuable insights on obscure topics, and are therefore more valuable contributions.
I agree that voting systems on the web end up favoring the most persistent, rather than the most worthy or highest quality. This is something that I've seen on Wikipedia and Digg. And to an extent with the trolls on Kuro5hin.
I think moderation is important, but that it should not be the central aspect of user interaction.
I starting reading that with the usual sense of horror I get when reading about these kind of degenerative conditions and ended with a real sense of admiration and awe at the guy's attitude.
