I went to a camping shop yesterday with Tim and one of the things we both needed to purchase was stove equipment. CCC have pretty much every make and model of camping stove available and every make and model of cooking equipment available. With every possible option available to us, it should have been fairly straightforward for two intelligent men to make a decision about the best purchase and buy accordingly.
We both left empty handed.
I raise this because the decision making process is the subject of a book I'm currently reading by
Malcolm Gladwell called
Blink. To try and break down the essence of the book, it is basically saying that out most valuable decision making process happens deep in our subconcious without us even being aware of it or what is driving it.
A good example of this was a fireman who was leading a team of firefighters tackling a blaze in a kitchen. They weren't making much progress and so had retreated to the lounge. The fireman suddenly turned and ordered his men out of the building as fast as possible. Seconds later the floor in the lounge that they had been standing on collapsed. The thing is, the fireman had absolutely no idea why he had ordered the men out and later attributed it to ESP. What had actually happened was that the subconcious decision making part of the brain been quietly analysing the entire situation. It was asking questions such as
Why does the fire seem quieter than usual? Why is the heat in the next door room so much greater than you'd expect? Why are they struggling so hard to put out a kitchen fire? The answer to these questions was that because the fire was not in the kitchen, it was in the basement below. Had the firemen stood there and worked through these questions in a rational fashion they would be dead, but the lead firefighter's subconsious raised a red flag that saved their lives.
This rapid subconcious cognition is easily corrupted by both pumping the brain with too much information or by only listening to the decisions you want to hear. You may remember a few years back the highly publicised case of the vastly expensive war game staged by the US military to prototype a "new type of war". It was the Pentagon's belief that they had the technology to lift the fog of war, to see every facet of the battlefield and as such be an undefeatable military force. It was their belief that if you have access to every piece of information, you can't possibly lose. Except within a couple of days, their virtual forces had been defeated; countless virtual war ships had been sunk, tens of thousands of men had been killed, and all this was inflicted by an enemy equiped with small boats and men sending messages about on motorbikes. The decision making process of the Pentagon had become so bogged down and corrupted by irrelevant information that they were simply unable to respond to the chaotic and unexpected tactics of the general that had been tasked with role-playing the enemy.
After a few days of head scratching, the virtual ships were refloated and the commander of the enemy forces was told that he wasn't allowed to sink any ships or prevent any soldiers landing or basically do anything that might, you know, enable him to win, and only then were the US military able to achieve victory. The war game was deamed a great success and a great leap forward in modern warfare. A year later, they invaded Iraq. Mission Accomplished.
What the war game actually showed was that if you provide too much information, the part of the brain that is capable of remarkable feats of rapid cognition simply becomes paralised. It is the same paralysis experienced by me and Tim in the camping shop. There's actually been tests done. Psychologist Sheena Iyengar set up an experiment in a grocery store in California. Two stalls were set up to sell jam. One stall had 6 types of jam, the other had 24. The store with fewer varieties of jam sold to 30% of customers. The store with the most sold to just 3% of customers. Customers were simply overwhelmed with choice and walked away.
So my advise, if you want cheap and cheerful camping equipment go to Decathlon. If you want pricier but better quality equipment go to Blacks. You'll have much less choice available, but at least you'll be able to make a decision.
Monday, May 29, 2006 10:28 AM
I spend most lunchtimes on the library these days. I think that if I didn't I would go bat shit crazy, as I need somewhere to be alone in a quiet atmostphere for just a short period every day to clear my head. I generally just sit and read the papers or a magazine, or occasionaly if my head is not to worn out from work I'll read a book; currently ploughing through a book on Jung who's thoughts on "Actualization" are intreguing to me and certainly make turning 30 more of a celebration than something to rue. Not that I've actually got round to organising any kind of celebration for my birthday yet. Shit. Really should sort that, only a few days to go. Maybe I should have done that rather than this blog post, but I've started so I'll finish.
Anyway, point is my visits to the library are slowly turning into a kind of anthropological study and I am slowly breaking people into various groups. Here are the groups I have uncovered so far:
1) The homeless. The homeless use the library for a bit of kip. Generally the staff don't bother them if they are not getting in the way. I was sat next to one today who had arrange himself on the chair to make it look like he was studying the paper, but he was actually getting some kip. He'd occasionally wake up in a start and drop the paper.
2) Crazy People. The other day, a mobile phone went off. There was a guy sat near me reading a newspaper and he scanned the room for the culprit. His eyes rested on a student and he shouted "Tosser" at him. Then he glared at him for approximatley 30 minutes with his mad crazy eyes. Some times the crazy people just make weird noises. Like "Yiggiggiggwahhhhhh" or something.
3) Students. Some people are clearly there to study, it is a place of learning after all. Presumably not university students but rather "life long learners" or something. Or maybe they are not students and are like me, they have an interest in something and want to explore it further (hence the book on Jung).
4) Office workers. I couldn't think what else to call this group, but this is the group I mostly fall into; people that have a job and are just using the library as a quiet place to read the paper or something at lunchtime, free of the demands of their job.
5) The retired. People that have lots of time on their hands so go to the library. This group will often be found sort of arguing over the papers. They'll finish their paper and then discover that someone is reading the one that they want to move on to. In this sitation I'd just wait until it became available, but this group go over and say "I want that one next" to the person reading it which puts pressure on them to hurry up. I don't like this group very much.
6) Foreigners. These people usually sit at the computer terminals, no doubt firing off emails to their compatriots or something, or maybe they'll be reading one of the foreign language papers. Mostly harmless.
That is all so far. I am sure that as time wares on I'll be able to carry out further classification.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 6:22 PM
What? £630,000??? Fat talentless hack Chris Moyles is paid £630,000 a year for his crappy "Was good in the nineties but now that he is just repeating the same crap over and over and over and over a-fucking-gain it's really irritating and makes me want to kill" breakfat show? What the cock has the world come to?
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 4:36 PM
We talking at work today about how Noel Edmonds probably has a notepad where he makes a note of people that he wants dead. Then Phil remembered that Bruce Forsyth used to do that as a joke, and then I reminded me that I used to do that too. I had a look through my nostalgia draw at work and found it. Here is an extract:
| NAME | TIME | DATE | REASON |
| Dave K | 17:00 | 13-Dec-2000 | Being a hippy |
| Bill | 17:15 | 13-Dec-2000 | General Abuse |
| Bill | 17:26 | 13-Dec-2000 | Looking at me in a funny way |
| Bill | 17:54 | 13-Dec-2000 | Being a fuck |
| Bill | 11:47 | 14-Dec-2000 | Playing with his nuts |
| Vitaly | 15:18 | 14-Dec-2000 | Stupid Bugs |
| Bill | 15:19 | 14-Dec-2000 | Comparing me with "Rain Man" |
Aaah, happy memories there. There's lots of them in my nostalgia draw, I have to say. Very very scary that this was all 5 and a half years ago. I am of course much more mature these days now that I'm nearly 30.
Thursday, May 04, 2006 6:00 PM
Phil at work (Phil N, not Phil K) is leaving next week and has been keeping himself appropriatley busy. Last Friday he grafted my face onto the body of Noel Edmonds. Nobody knows why except Phil. So, if Noel has cosmically ordered a new face (and he probably has done because he is a mental) then this is what he he might look like.
12:46 PM
So there's a local election tomorrow apparantly. I'll probably vote Green again. Whilst a Green led council would not be a good thing, I'm casting my vote as a kind of
redress the balance type vote. My true politics are left leaning and liberal, as opposed to the left-authoritatian policies of the Greens, and probably more closely matched to Labour, but the thought of my vote in any way endoursing Blair makes me feel a bit queezy. I could vote Lib Dem I suppose, but that would be like voting for a bucket of sick; completely pointless.
Talking of politics, I wish that bloody Charles Clarke would resign. Not for the whole releasing rapists and murderers on to the streets thing (although that wouldn't be a bad reason to resign), but just because I'm sick of hearing about it on the news. Enough! The guy is a buffoon. I KNOW. He's only fixing the mistakes
now to save his skin. I KNOW. He's got a beard. I KNOW, I just want him off my telly, OK?
Oh, and completely not related to politics, I am now a little bit uneasy about the fact that the 10th result on Google for the search term
Noel Edmonds takes you to a page where I SATIRICALLY accuse him of murder and attempted murder. I'm not really one for changing past posts. Reading back at some of the shit I've typed here over the years, I often find it uncomfortable and wish I hadn't said certain stuff. But I think to delete the stuff that makes me slightly ashamed of myself is a bit false and would be just pathetically narcisstic. That said, I have changed the title of that Noel Edmunds post to something a little less in your face.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006 10:17 PM
So, what did you do with your bank holiday? Oh really? That's interesting. Me? I got together with Tim and Phil and set about constructing the
WORLD'S LARGEST ICED GEM! I love bank holidays.
Monday, May 01, 2006 10:28 PM
Hah! Yesterday I made a short blog post about something I noticed on the news - the White House Correspondents Dinner where there was a short celebration of how incompetent Geroge W Bush is. What I didn't realise then, but do oh so gleefully realise now, is that they had another speaker: Stephen Colbert.
Colbert hosts a show on Comedy Central in the US which follows on from the Daily Show (he used to be a reporter on that show too). It is a spoof of right wing shows in the US on channels like Fox News. It's a spoof. When he applauds the president for not listening to fact and logic and going with what is in his gut, he is mocking Bush and the press that support him. It's a spoof. I wonder what part of
it's a spoof the organisers of the dinner not understand.
Colbert went for the jugular and lines like
"I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq." were met with gloriously embarrased silence and occasional forced laughter. It was a joy to behold.
The video is
here and
here and
here.
If you can't be arsed to watch it, there's a report
here.
11:20 AM
