Muttroxia

This post isn’t ready, but a friend was asking me, so… Here is a list of books that are vaguely about how we think and act. I covered a few of these back in 2009.

• Thinking Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman basically invented behavioral economics. A bit long, but will consistently blow your mind. Many other books steal all these ideas, you might as well get it from the source.
• Nudge:A classic by Cass Sunstein, who served in the Obama administration and still runs an excellent blog. The topic is about how to use simple aspects of human psychology to “nudge” people into better actions. For example, changing the default status on 401(k) contributions from opt-out to opt-in.
• Blink: It’s Malcolm Gladwell. What else do you need to know.
• Predictably Irrational: By Dan Aierly. Continuing the theme from Kahneman, some of the many ways in which we are not perfectly rational. We are irrational, but irrational in very predictable ways.
• Rational Optimist, How Prosperity Evolves: by Matt Ridley. This may not belong on this list. This is essentially a history of our species seen through the lens of trade and reciprocity, and how things keep getting better and will continue to do so.
• The Angels of Our Better Nature: by Steven Pinker. It is big and thick, but it will change the way you look at our species. The core thesis is very simple, that we are becoming a better more moral species/society/culture. It’s the strength of the argument that will convince you.
• How we Decide, Jonah Lehrer
• Influence and Pre-suasion, by Robert Cialdini. A bit like Malcolm Gladwell, with less anecdotes and more hard data.

Oh, I almost forgot. I published this early because a friend asked me about game theory books. Many of these books touch on game theory, particularly Kahneman, but I haven’t read many that are specifically devoted to game theory. The ones I have read are mostly mathematical, sort of the opposite of a Malcolm Gladwell book. A good one is The Strategy of Conflict by Thomas Schelling, which helped inform mutually assured destruction. Any others out there folks like?

1. How much do you mean now?
2. Where do I get my kisses from?
3. What do I want to do when I wake up?
4. Why are people trying to put us down?
5. Who Started the Fire?
6. How does “Make Love, not War” sound to me?
7. What is all we have to do now?
8. You walk over to her door, you start pounding on your door, you say ‘open up the door’ — who are you?

I hate going to the doctor. But not because of the medical stuff. It’s the administrative part. The processes and systems are terrible. So much arrogance, so much stupidity. Let’s skip the endless forms, that’ll be a post for some other day. (Sample stupidity to whet your appetite: Enter both your birthdate and your age. Let that sink in.) We’ll just go through the visit itself.

I sat in the waiting room for thirty minutes past my appointment time. At no time was there any indication that there was a problem, this was considered normal. Anytime they could announce, “our apologies we’re running a bit behind”. Since they already had my contact information, they could have texted me that before I left the house. Delta texts me when they are running late, Home Depot delivery texts me, my son’s tennis team texts me… this is easy proven technology.

As it so happens, I had to miss my daughter’s talent show performance to make this appointment. As it so happens, I could have made it since this office was running thirty minutes behind. As is so happens, since there was no communication, I missed it.

The weigh-in. I had been weighed in six days prior at my primary’s office, and I have agreed to share all my information with this office. I weigh myself every morning. Nope, they have to weigh you personally. Shoes on or off – they don’t care, so it is obviously so imprecise to be pointless.

On to the standard examination room. There is no second chair, so I have to perch on that padded examination table even to have a simple conversation. And even though everyone here will end up half-naked at some point, there is no place to put your clothes. It wouldn’t be hard to throw in a plastic bin, but nope. Throw your clothes in the corner. How hygenic.

Now more questions. The assistant goes through a checklist. The questions are literally the same questions on the forms I just filled out. They are also the same questions my primary care physician has asked many times over (which they have permission to access). When I ask the assistant why I just filled out the forms to have the same questions asked, she looks confused and starts flipping through her papers. We move on to a blood pressure check, even though this is also on my record.

It has now been almost an hour. There is no added value yet. Literally nothing has happened that has improved anyone’s understanding of my medical condition. This is a waste of my time, their time, and our taxpayer money.

Now another nurse assistant of some variety tags in and asks me the same questions that I had filled out all the forms. Why? “To verify what your primary care physician sent over.” The sheer stupidity of this statement likely doubled my blood pressure.

Now the doctor finally arrives. The next ten minutes are sensible. He is focused, professional, knowledgeable.

On my way out, it is fifteen minutes more to find and get handed some forms that could have been assembled before I ever came in.

Doctors have a captive audience – every visit may be a variant of this experience, but no one will switch doctors because of it. This is what happens in a system riddled with perverse hidden incentives. In total – just under two hours at the office. Useful time? Five minutes for another EKG, and ten minutes with the doctor. And a very disappointed daughter.

What moron puts the final game of your sport on at 9:20 PM on a Monday? The NCAA basketball tournament, that’s who. Ridiculous.

I am dominant in the “shuffling like an old man and puttering around for an hour before anyone else is awake” event.

The Muttroxia household has had a Brita water pitcher for years. It’s easy to use, the water seems to taste better, it fits in the fridge nicely. And at 12 cups, it has generous capacity.

What is the downside? The downside is that our pitcher was bought somewhere around 2002. It just seems gross. Nothing you can point to, but after 15 years, it was time to replace it.

But I couldn’t. Because they don’t make our model anymore. The new standard ones are only 10 cups. With five family members, that’s not enough. There is a bigger model, but it’s more of a fishtank, takes up far too much room. I literally spent months trying to find a 12-cup model. I even called Brita headquarters (they were very understanding and polite). Finally I folded and bought their newer standard version.

I’m glad I did. It’s wonderful. Here’s a product that gets it right.

• It pours smoothly, and is easy to aim.
• It holds just as much. I don’t understand how this can be. It is clearly 10 cups compared to 12 cups we used to have, but somehow it has just as much. I believe this is because the ‘lower’ section of filtered water is bigger. The 2 cup difference was mostly in the top half, unfiltered water.
• It refills incredibly smoothly. In previous versions, you removed the entire cover or pulled up a flap to reveal an opening. No more. Now you simply pour directly onto the top. The water pressure pushes that hinged area down so the water goes into the pitcher. Better yet, as the jug fills the buoyancy of the water gradually closes the flap (similar to a toilet floater). It’s an incredibly elegant solution. The user never needs to touch anything but the water handle. Whoever designed this should be richly compensated.

Three cheers for the new Brita water pitcher!

Update:
As requested, here is an explanatory video.

Linkedin has large elements of a social media platform. I was advised that liking and commenting on others folks posts would elevate my own profile, and I should also write papers and contribute original content.

They were right. Consider this graph. A few weeks ago, I started actively liking and commenting. Last week, I posted about Tom Brady and analytics.

Those searches include recruiters who are suddenly picking up the phone and calling. This is a real world outcome. You would think a recruiter would just want to see the most qualified candidate, but the platform biases them towards candidates who do stuff on Linkedin. Weird!

Many of the readers of this blog (okay, just about all the readers) are personally known to me. Since we all know one another, here are a few other blogs run by ‘us’. The only thing we all have in common is low readership and infrequent posting, so get in there and inspire the authors to write more often.

• Sidney VanNess: Sid was kind enough to host Muttroxia for its first ten years or so. He has just started his own blog (inspired by Muttroxia?). It’s too early to say what it’s about yet, but it is bound to be insightful and entertaining, like Sid himself.
• Montyland (Steve Montagna): Steve is an old school mate, much like Muttroxia he writes about whatever he feels like with no particular center. Somewhat of an outrage valve, so a fair amount on gun violence and the GOP.
• Attention Deficit Delirium (Bryan Reesman): Almost forgot him…. unlike these other blogs, Bryan has actually made a successful career out of the content, reviewing and writing about music. His site hasn’t been updated for a while, he’s probably too busy with actual paying gigs.
• Pete Tao: Another old school chum, Pete puts out smart postings on the business of real estate, centered in San Francisco area. I’m waiting for his musings on the Celtics, The Cars, and Fantasy Football.
• You may also like… (Steve Robinson): Steve and I worked together in many roles over the years. This blog is for his thoughts on Decision Support. As a leader in technology, analytics, business intelligence, data science, and many other related buzzword disciplines, each post will leave you smarter.

To end 2017, I predicted the results of Mueller investigation. Four months later, new angles and findings are coming out every week. Overall, I think those predictions are holding up well. People in Trumps close orbit were guilty as sin. They worked with the Russians and betrayed America. Trump himself is a dupe and a moron, but unlikely to have colluded. If he had underhanded relations with the Russians, it was about his business interests.

I stand by the outcome predictions as well. No matter what Mueller finds, there will be no serious impeachment hearings. I believe Lindsey Graham is the sole GOP Congressman not retiring/dying to state any kind of limits on Trump.

We haven’t done of one of these for a long time, this list has been percolating in the background for years while Muttroxia was on the shelf. There are so many good ones missing… I’m bad at book reviews, so just plug in “It was awesome!” for all of these.

Science-Fiction (or Fantasy)

• • Story of your life (and others), by Ted Chaing: For years, I’ve been told to read Ted Chiang. I finally did. These stories are wonderful at taking hard science ideas and applying them in unusual ways.
  • The three body problem trilogy, by Cixin Liu: This is by a Chinese-Chinese (not Chinese-American) author, it has been translated to English. Big ideas done well, this trilogy won pretty much every award they got. The first volume will particularly blow your mind.

• • Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke: I can’t wait until I have forgotten most of this book, so I can reread it. There is swords and sorcery, and then there are books like this. Placed in the very realistic world of Victorian England, what if faerie is real, what if magic is real (but very rare), how does that play out? Delightfully literate and mind-bending.
  • The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern: Much like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in tone, but with a more surreal atmosphere, and shorter. I read this while on a Disney World trip and spent more time with my nose in the book than anything else that weeek.

• SevenEves, by Neal Stephenson: Neal Stephenson is a category unto himself. All his books are great, some of them are truly remarkable, this is one of the remarkable ones. Recommended by Bill Gates and all thinking humans, go get a copy and dig in. After that read The Crytponomican and the Baroque Cycle.

Fiction

• 
  • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain: Cited by many, this follows American soliders on break from Iraq, as they are brought out to be honored during a Dallas Cowboys game. Alternately funny and serious, it mostly feels real even as it clearly isn’t. This was made into a movie sometime in the last few years.
  • Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter
  • The Fault in our Stars, by Josh Green: Have you seen the movie already? I don’t care if it’s kids fiction or teen angst fiction or whatever they call it. It’s a great story, great characters, well told.
  • Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: It will stay with you for a long time after you read it.
  • All the Light we Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr: I resisted reading this because the description seemed so dumb. In the WWII era, it follows a young German as he becomes a SS officer, and a young blind girl, and how their stories gradually overlap. Whoopee. But the book is wonderful, gorgeous language, wonderful imagery and a plot that’s well grounded in reality.
  • A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles: Our book group was unanimously in love with this book. Any description won’t do it justice. Go read it. Marvelous!

  

Non-Fiction

• • Pre-suasion, Robert Cianaldi:

  Best know for his classic book Influence, Cianaldi returns with this very readable overview of how we are convinced. As clear as a Malcolm Gladwell book but with more science.

  • The Second Machine Age (by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee):

  They are not the only ones to draw the analogy between the inventions of fire, bronze, etc. to how the Industrial age changed the world, to the age we are in now. What is unusual is how cutting edge the information is, how broad the scope, and how well they walk through some of the economic implications. If you as a parent have ever wondered what education is most likely to ‘hold up’ in the information age, this is mandatory reading.

• Sapiens (A Brief History of Humankind), by Yuval Noah Harari: You want big scope, you got it. Just about every page in the first few section will take your understanding of the world and rearrange it before blowing it up. Another favorite from Bill Gates, it gets weaker as it moves toward the current day and beyond, but much like Gun Germs and Steel, he is such a master at putting together eclectic disciplines to support his argument it’s hard to know exactly how to object. A tour de force.
• What it Takes by Ben Richard Cramer: It’s an old book. Cramer follows several candidates for the 1988 Presidential Election. Following them all the way from their life story to their decision to run to their eventual defeat (except Bush of course). What separates it is two things. One, the incredible portrait drawn for each candidate. Two, the feeling of being there in a campaign. What does it take to be president – what sort of person, what sort of strategy, what sort of everything. You’ll never look at another campaign the same way.

Previous book recommendations:

• 2007: Here and here for finance.
• 2008:Here and here.
• 2009
• 2012 (un-recommendations)

Consider the following menu (from our default Chinese dining choice). Consider the incentives on that recurring question, “Should we pick-up or get it delivered?”.

The puzzle is this. Getting the food delivered is higher cost to the restaurant. They have to hire a driver to support delivery. There is no additional revenue, nothing but more cost. And yet, they reward that behavior with additional free food. Why? All it does is make me want to have them do more work for more cost to them. They won’t budge on this policy. I pointed out these perverse incentives to them and got nowhere, all the time feeling like I was Larry David getting angrier and angrier at the stupidity of the world.

Why do they have this system? After years of intermittent noodling on this, I believe I understand. Do you have an answer? Mine is below.

What a wonderful song this is, eh? I’m not the only one who thinks so. Much like Yesterday or Hallelujah, everyone wants to take a crack at covering it. Here are three of my favorite versions.

Mike Masse and Jeff Hall: This duo has several great covers, getting a lot out of two instruments and beautiful vocal harmonies. As a sidenote, how impressive is Google? I found this quickly by searching on “africa cover those two old guys at a bar”.

Andy McKee: I have several of his tracks. It is important to note, this does not have any overdubs. He does it all with two-handed tapping, harmonics, and all around skill.

Angel City Chorale: If you watch only one of these videos, make it this one. I have no idea what the Angel City Chorale is, but I love ‘em. Inventive, joyous, filled with power, it just nails it. Try playing this for someone without telling them what song it is first. I guarantee you’ll get a big smile out of them when the vocals hit and they’ll stay until the end.

Readers, do you have any others?