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Concept Frontier

Win or Lose? Why Competition Means You've Already Lost

22/2/2021

 
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This article makes the case that the concept of competition is an atrocious means of resource allocation, and that it's an all round bad thing to do. 

First, our definition:

Competition
1. The activity of striving to gain something by defeating others. 


And when does it occur? 

Competition arises whenever two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared. Competition is typified by one's gain being another's loss. 

Please feel free to comment with offer other definitions and your thoughts.

Incidentally, this is very close to the definition of war, which you already know to be wasteful: An armed conflict between different countries or groups within a country.

The futility in this is self-evident. After all, if you were in fact desperate enough to agree to compete for something you needed, and you subsequently lost... the agreement is over, but the competition itself is still in effect. You'd have no choice but to escalate the competition until you either die or obtain what you need. Sounds extreme, but it’s true.

This applies to everyone else who ever competed for something they needed, or believe they needed. 

Competition has no place in getting anyone what they need. It could be claimed that competition has a potential fringe-use for parties competing for finite resources that they merely want. But the frail logic of this collapses under a simple example of competition as a concept. 

If you compete for a thing you want, and lose... you still have the option to escalate the competition until you either die or obtain what you want. The want-driven competition loser always has this option. Therefore competition is constrained only by the will of the participants: if we compete in a game of table tennis for an item we both want, and I win, our agreement is I take the prize because I won the game. This is not the end. You still have the option of taking it off me. You could try to convince me to give you the prize anyway. You could use the same social mechanisms by which I agreed to the competition in the first place to pressure me into a rematch, perhaps upping the stakes to compel me to participate. You could accuse me of cheating and seek outside arbitration. You could outright steal it. You could use force. The "competition" at this point is no longer the arbitrary line defining the end of the agreed portion of the contest: it is the contest of wills itself.

Depending on what the loser is willing to do, this has direct implications on safety. Absurd? Most certainly. And also a commonplace occurrence. Most games end with a handshake and the loser accepting defeat and giving up on the tangible prize or status currency they may associate with winning. Some games end with harsh words. But some end (or are interrupted) in
violence among participants. The rates of violence among spectators is also astronomical. And most problematic of all, domestic violence rates spike after major sport events. 


In this very literal way, competition is a conflict-creation system. This system of conflict creation is mitigated only by human willingness to give-up and lose: an unrealistic solution to an unnecessary problem. 

Things become far more unpredictable when competitors pit their wants against others’ needs. 

Of course, YOU know where to draw the line on giving up... for the things you want. But for things you need, the things you would die without, the line is drawn for you: you must win at any cost, during or after the agreed part of the contest. 

There are social contracts and institutions in place that provide us guidance in this line-drawing, and of course individual's judgement does too. That's lovely, and powerful, but the fact remains, every competition creates conflict. Such a system goes far beyond mere inefficiency: it's fundamentally opposed to human prosperity.
​

Anecdote: Competition Guarantees Disappointment ​

The following segment is an anecdote from my life in which I first encountered competition. 

As a child I went to a high school that promoted competition. It was not what I would now consider a particularly good school but they did their best with what they had and one of their most effective methods of engaging the children in participating in any of their activities was to encourage us into competition. 

In the sports field this was used to great effect, the school had a high performing rugby team with students who loved the game and who loved to win games against other school's teams – the praise and recognition from the faculty for winning was both their reward and their motivation.

The competition aspect was also used to great effect in the classroom, ranking students into classes by their academic success, and reconfiguring those classes each year as students either achieved great grades, achieved poor grades but persisted, or gave up. 

I was no athlete and certainly no academic (belonging in the 'gave up' category), but whenever I put effort into either, I was encouraged by the school to compete. Not knowing any better, I did compete. 

About half the time I was on the losing group or team, and seldom in individual pursuits I wouldn't come in first place. Everything was pushed into being a competition for grades, results, always primarily measured against each other rather than against our own individual prior achievement level. 

Participation was expected, not rewarded, but losing was always a disappointment: when I did my best, I had nothing to show for it: the teachers were very encouraging before the activities in drumming up participation but totally disinterested in anyone but the winners of each activity. This, I could live with: I didn't want to be there, and if not for my legal obligation to attend high school, I wouldn't have. 
​

But my view of competition became more informed when I began to win things and see it from the other side. 

I was quite interested in drawing, writing, and designing and the written word was one of the few things I managed to convince myself to stick with throughout my feeble school career. In a few creative writing activities the teacher marked my entry with the highest score, and to my surprise I found the reward of being explicitly praised by my teacher in front of my peers was a far greater disappointment than all the times I had not been acknowledged at all. For that brief couple of weeks when I was ranked with the highest marks in my English class I realised that praise is something I could give myself, and far better than any teacher or anyone else ever could. The significance of my realisation that others' approval isn't something I want to compete for was compounded by seeing the disappointment amongst my peers. That my success relative to others didn't elevate me; it alienated me. Their mostly mild disappointment was the price they paid for my achievement, and my achievement gave me a reward I didn't want. What a futile activity! I realised I'd much prefer someone else in my class who actually wanted that recognition to gain the highest mark and be acknowledged by the teacher. And I understood it would have been better for me to accept the anonymity of failure so that at least someone could have the outcome they wanted. 

So I stopped participating in the writing competitions, moving my interest in drawing, writing, and designing out of school and into personal and ultimately professional pursuits. I learned to give myself praise whenever I wanted some. It felt good to no longer try my best at a school that didn't particularly care. And it felt right to allow the more competitive-minded students to try and get as much teacher-praise as they could without any further intrusion from me into their world. 

I had a similar experience in a high school athletics day which widened my disillusionment with competition as a concept (rather than my original distaste for it being associated only with the context of my school classes). One sunshiny summer day we all got the day off our classes to go to our sports field and partake in Olympic-style athletics events: sprints, endurance running races, long jump, high jump, discus, shot put, and javelin throwing. I had done no training of any kind and never played sports, so it was to my surprise that I ranked in some of the activities I participated in. The reason for that was obvious at the time: I'd had a convenient adolescent growth-spurt recently which gave me a considerable height advantage and therefore athletic advantage. At first I was delighted at seeing what my body could now do! I tried my best, and even came close to winning at the high jump, as could be expected from such an excited young giraffe. 

At the end of the day there was a small ceremony in which students who scored highly were acknowledged by the principal. My name was mentioned. The discomfort was immediate. It felt silly to be praised for "being athletic" when I, and everyone else, knew it was just because I was tall. 

Seeing the expression on the face of one a friend who happened to be considerably shorter than I was, who I knew had spent months seriously training for the activities I'd beaten him in. He'd trained for athletics day to make his dad proud. His dad was one of the teachers at our school. My friend received no recognition of any kind in that little ceremony where he should have been named sportsman of the year. Rather than what was right, the competition-system compelled the school to consider him an underachiever who wasn't worth mentioning.

(Thank goodness his grades were always phenomenal and he now has a very successful career early in which he worked in the military... I suspect with something he wanted to prove.) 


Competition, I concluded, was beyond a joke. It systematically insulted people I cared about, and carried no value of any kind that was detectable to me, a person interested in fairness, respect, and equity. 

Doing away with competition was a useful epiphany to have, and it's one that has been rewarded consistently throughout my life. Winning, to me, has always felt more disappointing than losing. And of course it does; If I happen to be the best at an activity, then what do I gain by showing off at beating others at things they're good at? Why would I want to be perceived as something I'm not: a person who compares himself to other people? The only comparison I acknowledge as valid is the person I am now against the more ignorant person I used to be. Winning, therefore, just seems like foulest manners. I'd be infinitely better off spending that time making myself available to others who may want to learn how I get the results I get. This is fundamentally selfish of me; I gain more when I sit down and collaborate with someone I share a mutual interest with in which we both benefit, rather than go head to head with them over ego and either defeat them or be defeated by them for no benefit. 

And what about losing? That carries no appeal to me either. I'd much rather use the time spent competing to simply practice the activity I want to be good at and let the results speak for themselves to anyone who might want to see them.

But enough about me. Let's get back to evaluating the concept of competition. ​

Competition as Resource Allocation is Just... Gambling

Unlike in my school career, not every competition is for unwanted rewards. Sometimes if you win you do get a prize you want.

Much of the time competition provides a "winner takes all" access to prizes. Prizes are resources. Some are infinitely renewable, some are finite, and only an infinitesimal few are one-of-a-kind. But whatever the prize, make no mistake: competition is no more than a form of gambling. It's gambling by its second definition: 

Gamble
1. To play games of chance for money
2. To take risky action in the hope of a desired outcome


And it's gambling even when dressed up with idiotic idioms like "a test of skill", or "may the best man win". The latter saying shares the same irrational basis as the shocker "the end justifies the means".* 

In reality, only design principles can justify a means. Ends must be sought not at any cost, but at reasonable cost. In this way, using competition as a resource distribution system is where the competition gets really out of control, because there is more than people's feelings are at stake. 

There are many arguments for competition, all of them fundamentally juvenile. 
And my personal favourite: "Competition keeps our economy free from monopoly."

But the opposite of competition is not monopoly (the opposite of which is monopsony -- where there are many providers and only one buyer. The fundamental problem in either scenario is obviously lack of diversity of actors). 

The opposite of competition is cooperation. (I typically call it collaboration, so I'll continue to do so throughout this article). 

This is in the same way that the opposite of exclusive benefit (I win, you lose) is mutual benefit (I win, you win). The beautiful thing about mutual benefit is that it can be scaled infinitely to intentionally include others: I win, you win, they win, and they win, they win too, hey they also won, he won, she won, even your mum won. 

Everyone wins in a business transaction, for example, in which one of the outcomes improves our environment, or reduces global waste. The provider closes the deal (win), the buyer receives their service (win), and water use in production of their product is reduced by x% (we all win). "Win-win-win", as they say in the USA.

For this reason, any interaction model that deviates from mutual benefit as a basis is not necessarily something we should recognise as valid. I am talking about viewing competition as a wasteful vanity that you should reject in favour of collaboration, perhaps in all cases. 

Why should we view collaboration as our default go-to option when designing interactions? 

Because mutual benefit collaboration is based on the fundamental expectation that in any scenario which is win/lose the remedy is not to participate in it, but to involve more actors. This means it is always applicable. 

Let's refer back to the definition of Competition and consider again when it occurs:  

Competition arises whenever two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared. 

There is a gross assumption in the above sentence which we would do well to stand up to and challenge. "A common goal which cannot be shared." 

Why can it not be shared? Says who? Says you? Why? Let's go a couple of levels into why, and examine the reasons for those reasons. Make no mistake, this tenuous activity requires courage, reason, and respect from all parties. We have all experienced those unconscionable situations where someone simply asking "why?" has gotten an outraged response, usually resulting from a person unwilling to contend with the reasons for their own desires, actions, and goals and finding conflict genuinely more appealling than introspection. To my profound and lasting shame, I have been that person more than once and very likely will again. It has never been worth it. Had I the courage to delve in and answer the question why, I could have avoided making conflicts with others. In those cases where I did take that plunge I managed, invariably, to explain the assumptions upon which my beliefs are based to allow them to be challenged and improved, benefitting me enormously (though at considerable effort). 

Just explain, in terms we can agree on, exactly why the common goal cannot be shared. Without getting angry about it. And you will thereby be on the path to simply designing a collaboration in which you'll see that the common goal can indeed be shared, and only at the expense of a few of the wrong assumptions we all carry around. 

I've talked that up quite big. So next, let's take a look at a simple exercise and see in simple charts all the ways it can play out in a competition-scenario (exclusive benefit scenario), and all the ways it can play out in a collaboration-based scenario (mutual benefit scenario).

A Charted Comparison of Competition vs Collaboration

Let's now take a look at the charts using a simple, scalable scenario involving fresh, juicy, delicious fruit. 

The scenario is: 

I have an orange, but I need a banana. 
You have a banana, but you need an apple. 

Each of us has one thing, each of us needs one thing, but there is an asymmetry to this scenario in which only one of us has what the other one wants. 

The competition model allows for a "winner takes what loser has" outcome. This has a 50% chance of me getting what I need, a 50% chance of you getting something you don't need, a 0% chance of you getting what you actually need, and a 0% chance of both of us getting what we need.

The entire outcome scope is described in this diagram:
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This, I'm sure you will agree, is an inefficient system for resource allocation. In none of the potential outcome columns is there an outcome scenario in which everyone gets what they need. Right away this shows that we have an inadequate system. But it’s even worse than not good enough. In either scenario, there is one participant who is worse off at the end than they were at the start. 

Observations: 
  • This competition has a 50% chance of 50% of participants getting what they need 
  • It has a 50% chance of 0% of participants getting what they need 

In a world like ours with more resources than humans could ever need? That’s bananas. 

The principle applies directly to the service-based economies that sustain our livelihoods. Replace "orange" with “indemnity insurance”, "apple" with “$400”, ", and "banana" with “new tyres”. Here, where it applies every day, the stakes are raised: livelihoods can depend on our interactions.

It also applies politically: I remember in the Netflix show Designated Survivor the United States president faces a scenario in which an American citizen falls into custody of the Russian government, and the US doesn’t have any Russian nationals in custody to trade for his release. The savvy president determines that by involving a third party government in the deal. That third party is a country to whom the US can release one of their spies in custody in exchange for that third party releasing to Russia one of theirs. It creates a scenario in which all three countries benefit by bringing home one of their people from detention by a foreign government. 

Its cleverness aside, it exemplifies the value of designing interactions that mutually benefit all parties involved. 

In foreign policy this principle offers a useful tool not just for trading prisoners (again, like pokémon) but also in brokering trade deals that benefit all nations involved and develop the bonds of mutual trust between them, in cases where all parties can bring themselves to do what is sensible.

Use of this mutual benefit tool in this context (or any context) of course depends on such points of leverage existing. But this doesn’t diminish its value to the aims of these participants.

In more complex scenarios, there are multitudes of potential includes, and therefore multitudes of solution options.  

So why shouldn't we collaborate? Why shouldn't we always seek options to include others, and create mutual value in every interaction? 

It's because it requires effort, trust, and vulnerability. These resources are unavailable to cowards; people who are more interested in how they might be perceived than they are in doing what is right for themselves and others. Violence may be the last refuge of the coward, but I am convinced that competition is among the first.

Let’s now take a view of the full outcome scope of our fruit scenario again, this time with a collaboration outcome made possible by someone having what you need and needing what I have:
Picture
In this scenario we see our original example of competition as before, but in the collaboration outcome (which mirrors the example from the Netflix show I mentioned earlier) we see perfect resource distribution. It’s entirely voluntary and also consistent: for all participants, giving what we don't need is rewarded by receiving what we do. 

Observations: 
  • 25% of competition outcomes are favourable 
  • One competition outcome variant (in yellow) involves wasteful gain: gaining something that isn’t needed 
  • 100% of collaboration outcomes are favourable 

In practice, surely this reinforces the value of the behaviour to all participants! And that's how it's done. Describe this principle with billions of actors, immeasurable resources, new inventions, and a growing total sum of our collective wealth, and you have our global economy. To be clear, our economy is a collaboration-based system. It is not a competition-based system -- even though it does still contain elements of competition, that does not form its basis. And even in the fringe cases where there are still monopolies and monopsonies, there can still be mutual-benefit collaboration. Collaboration is always an option; commercial inequality is a choice, not a foregone conclusion. 

To be fair and equitable in our evaluation of competition and collaboration with this scenario, let's explore what happens to competition when we add the same complexity (an additional participant) that I’m advocating for in collaboration. For consistency we’ll add the same third actor, Beth, to the competition scenario. 

In the competition chart above, what would the potential outcomes then look like if Beth participated in that winner-takes-all competition? Here’s the answer: 
Picture
This, as you can see, is even worse than the first one-on-one competition example! Because now as well as people losing and not gaining, we immediately see we have created an unfair resource distribution that now means that we guarantee that all parties (except for the winner) will now have more difficulty getting what they need than if they just worked together in collaboration to begin with – because they have nothing left to stake or trade. 

Observations: 
  • Notice the colour change? There is now a potential outcome where B can access a favourable outcome (that is, it’s now possible for you to gain what you need in the competition scenario rather than just gain a thing you don’t need) 
  • Competition now yields a 33% chance of 33% of participants receiving a favourable outcome
  • Collaboration still yields a 100% chance of 100% favourable outcomes 
​
If we consider this principle being applied directly to our economies and our politics, which affect our lives and livelihoods in numerous ways every day, the competition model disadvantages everyone except the wealthy few with the most resources (to whom it ultimately funnels remaining resources). 

Only the collaboration model can ever benefit everyone. 

So let’s use it. Please.

The Bottom Line

Mutually assured destruction of lives and livelihoods isn’t something we can accept. Such destruction arises from conflict. Therefore we should be wary of competition and the inefficient "win/lose" mentality baked into it. We should be wary of the false assumptions that compel us to think of common goals as mutually-exclusive and we should always ask how we can make common goals mutually-inclusive to benefit everyone. To assume competition is always the best option because it "worked before" is shortsighted and false. Why shouldn't everything we do benefit ourselves and others? It certainly can, sometimes even by accident, but we should simply plan it that way, and design interactions in which every party involved gets something of value out of it.

Instead of clawing madly for the opportunity to get our foot on someone else’s head for the psychopathic thrill of believing we’re better than other people, we should find ways to make sure we can be both selfish and generous at the same time. All this requires is that we dismiss the false idea that gain must always carry an equal or greater loss. That may be how it works for ions trading elections like pokémon, but it’s not how creating value works. 
​
Ultimately we should involve this mutual-benefit mentality in our lives and especially in our livelihoods. Mutually beneficial dealings make profitable, sustainable businesses. At a larger scale, mutual-benefit planning grows economies, protects communities, and contributes to the lives of abundance that more and more people are gaining access to every day.

What About Games? They’re Competitions

Sports and other games are great examples of a type of competition that isn't intrinsically problematic. Sure the NFL has its problems (OK, every sporting institution has some major problems) but I don’t necessarily believe these problems aren't fundamental to playing of the games they institutionalise. Sports are games, games are play, and play can of course harmlessly take the form of competition. Whether it's a boardgame, a Formula 1 event, or a ten pin bowling showdown, the playing of games is not something I oppose... 

...except where the stakes for winning are an item of need. I believe competition, contest, and play are not legitimate ways to allocate resources of need. Engaging in play contests for ones livelihood is fraught with potentially unmitigatable risk, (which I do consider fundamentally problematic). Consider a player on a sports team who loses their livelihood at the whim of a manager, and is left with a decade of investment in developing non-transferrable skills that may now leave them unable to earn their living without that institution. Let's consider these things every time we invest in these institutions. Our societies aren’t perfect, but that doesn't mean we should ignore those imperfections without due consideration. I've made a starting point for myself in writing this article to continue my thinking from.

​I hope you will too.

Bonus Thoughts on Conflict

The views in this little bonus section aren't fully thought out so I'd appreciate your feedback

We sometimes hear the term "unnecessary conflict". That's a silly term. Like saying "soggy water" or "blowing wind". Wind by its nature blows, water is inherently wet, and all conflict is unnecessary. Yep, absolutely all of it. 


So why do we believe so strongly (especially when we have chosen to be IN conflict) that it's not only necessary, but that we have been forced into it? That we have no choice? That “it's the only option"? 

I can't answer that. I can acknowledge that when faced with an aggressor in a dangerous situation, conflict can seem viable. And as a response, of course an aggression response can be necessary. Even if I'm wrong and it's not strictly necessary, it can absolutely be a useful response option. I'll write more about aggression in a separate post. 

But the conflict doesn't begin at the point of response. The conflict begins at the point of initial aggression, at the time the aggressor makes the decision to use conflict as a means of trying to reach their intended outcome. 

So does it take two to conflict? Or does it only require one party to create it? 

I don't know the answer. I suspect both might be right. It's my opinion (and I'd love this to become more informed please) that the instigator of a conflict, if it done intentionally, is accountable for all the consequences of the conflict, regardless of the actions of responders. In any case, the initiation of conflict is what I have in mind when I say "conflict is always unnecessary". It doesn't seem fair or right to hold responders to it accountable, since they didn't create the conflict. 

Responding to conflict is just people doing their best when confronted with a lousy situation. 

Initiating conflict is humanity at its most vile. 

And those are not at all the same thing. 

Where conflict arises from a misunderstanding, I would say that's also absolutely unnecessary, and tragically so. Especially when harm is done based on that misunderstanding. 

Let's collaborate to make a world that benefits everyone.

Thanks for learning! 
Michael

The Most Valuable Information

19/7/2020

 
The topic of the most valuable information enchants me. This post takes a squizz at the nature of it and explores how accessible it really is to us. 

"What is the most valuable information?" That's a question I love.

Wouldn't it be easy if we could write down the most valuable information in a big list, with the most valuable at the top and conservative politics at the bottom, and all then each be able to gobble as much of it up as we like, learning the best facts in the cosmos with perfectly optimised efficiency.

Too bad it's not that easy.

And why not? Because value is subjective. Therefore it differs from person to person, and for each person it changes from moment to moment. This makes the most valuable information a slippery, wily, moving target.

And that is terrific news.

Because it means sometimes the most valuable information is information we already have. At those times, we use it, and make good things happen for ourselves and others.

And sometimes the most valuable information is information we do not have. This creates for us opportunities to learn stuff we want to know.

At those times, we may have knowledge that's close to the most valuable information. If we do, this easily prompts our curiosity.
If I know this, and I want to know that, and I know this is like that, then I can use the method I learned about this to learn about that. Bingo.

But we sometimes don't know anything even remotely close to the most valuable information, leaving us completely in the dark. That's not an ideal situation, but even this  scenario can prompt our curiosity. 
I don't know anything about that, but I think I should! Sorry Google, time for some embarrassing questions...

Acting on our curiosity acts like an antibody for our ignorance. Whenever we are compelled to learn something, we benefit, even if what we learn wasn't what we intended to.

But there are some obstacles to that curiosity pay-off which can thwart us in this process.
Diverse interests. Your definition of what is valuable. Whatever you want to achieve, there is information available that will be instrumental in achieving it. The more of it you acquire, the more becomes available to you. If you value many different things, you may encounter the obstacle of your curiosity changing lanes often, broadening your knowledge tremendously across multiple fields of enquiry, at the cost to you of limiting your depth of knowledge in any one particular area. Not being able to "pick a favourite" goal or topic which you give more learning time and effort to than your others can be a major obstacle. It can be done. It's just often difficult.

Distraction. How often do you start off highly motivated to do something, use your curiosity to investigate the required knowledge, and eventually find yourself having gone down an entirely irrelevant rabbit hole entirely? Yep, your curiosity stabbed you in the back with that one.  

Apathy. If we feel something is too hard to learn or too complex, we will stop trying. This is the reason experts exist: the people you call expert are simply people who are capable of learning what you yourself are capable of learning with the only difference being that they actually did. Thank goodness they're here! Experts can easily accelerate learning on a topic and many love to share their knowledge, so give them opportunities to do so and reap the rewards.

I'm sure there are other obstacles too. I invite you to let me know. 
Wouldn't it be useful to have an app that, at any given moment could serve you the most valuable information at any given moment.

We kind of have that in bits. When you're following directions and Google Maps interrupts your music to tell you to turn right at the street ahead, that's exactly what's happening. But Google Maps can't tell you that you'll be hungry in 25 minutes. No app can. And if it could, you'd be constantly configuring it to learn what is and isn't important to you in each given moment. Sometimes when you're about to be hungry that very likely would be the most valuable thing to know. And sometimes, when you're about to become hungry but are in the middle of a violin concerto or a board meeting, it doesn't even rate in the top 100 most valuable things to know.

Fortunately we have an even smarter system than any encoded in a mobile device. That system is called our attention. Attention, directed by our curiosity, and held in place by sustained interest is a powerful and valuable resource. Together, I would call them the three most valuable attributes of a mind: 

Attention (directs our curiosity)
Interest (holds our attention)
Curiosity (rewards giving attention)

Maybe an even better question than "What is the most valuable information?" is "What is the most valuable action my brain can perform?" 

And I think the answer to that question probably doesn't change continuously. I think the answer is simply: Learning.

When used together, these three tools create the phenomenon of learning which, let's face it, ranks highly on anyone's list of most valuable things to do. 

On that note, I still intend to write that ordered list of the generally most valuable information (and only by topic... not by datum!). I expect at the top will likely be things relating to that which can kill us quickest, like bleeding and the importance of breathing,. Then it should work through the other physical needs, our emotional & social needs, and the rest of the way through the Maslow hierarchy, to explore anything that improves human life quality like art & chemistry, and then more "value diverse" topics like money & religion. The end of the list will of course wind up in life's bargain bin of low-grade trivia, where it will list the imaginary arguments we sometimes have with ourselves and the utterances of reality television personalities at the very, veeeery end.

Thanks for learning! 
Michael 

30 FREE IDEAS 2018

30/12/2018

 
Picture
Ideas are fun, interesting, and can create valuable changes to the world. To end the year at Concept Frontier, here are 30 free ones to use however you like.
​ 
  1. Legislation requiring manufacturers to provide post-consumption collection and processing of all plastic packaging of their products post-consumption.

  2. An exercise machine involving resistance from a container slowly filling with water. Rather than adding plates to the bar, this increases muscle tension demand slowly.
    The purpose is to develop slow-twitch myofibril tissue, and the metric for gains are time under tension per rep, water weight reached per rep, and number of reps.

  3. A dipping sauce combining Chipotle sauce and Japanese mayonnaise.

  4. A website that publishes photos of people putting messages in glass bottles and lobbing them into the sea (with the website's URL written in the message or embossed on the bottle) for people who find the message to post on the same website and tell people where their message ended up.
    The bottle contains a positional tracking tab that charts ocean currents.
    The data is generated via this social game available to everyone to play.

  5. A test protocol in which participants are given the opportunity to buy one raffle ticket.
    Control groups:
    Group 1 is all participants who do not want to buy any tickets.
    Group 2 wants to buy a ticket but is told the tickets are sold out, and is therefore forced to keep their money.
    Group 3 buys a ticket but their money is handed back to them immediately after they purchase their ticket. They also get to keep the ticket.
    Group 4 is given their money back immediately after the raffle is called.
    Reactions of the group are measured by a mandatory questionnaire as to how pleased they are on a scale of 1-10 to have their money.
    The test is about how valuable the money they get back is at different stages: whether $10 is worth more earlier or later or at a particular point in the raffle process, to demonstrate the value of money relative to transaction events.

  6. A chemical that suppresses the swallow reflex! Allowing indulgence in delicious foods and chemicals (like Trans fats) without resulting blood-uptake after compulsive swallowing: Just chew, taste, and spit, like a monster.

  7. A household recycling processor that transforms waste plastics into standardised material used by any standardised 3D printer.

  8. Project marketplace.
    People are creative but lazy. There are billions of projects that people have started that never get finished. They take these things with them to the grave.
    Project Marketplace lets you sell partially developed ideas -- be it a book, and invention, an app, a tool, or a piece of art -- to any interested parties. They pay you what the IP is worth to them, and you sell either the full stake or a partial stake: the buyer acquires rights to theentire existing work as is, whatever form that's in. The buyer can develop it to completion or on-sell it as they please, without credit to the originator (or on-seller).
    This will provide a platform to sell your inventions, books, and illustrations that you’ve lost interest in.
    And to give fans a pathway to purchase rights to intellectual properties they love.

  9. An app called Apollo that listens to what you say and (every x minutes, you configure it, or continuously) it Googles topics you’ve expressed an interest in, a question you have asked, (based on an machine-learned ability to detect topics by keywords, also referencing your search and browsing history if you allow it) and at any stage you can say a voice command (like "What do you think, Apollo?" and your phone will read you something off Wikipedia (or a list of websites you like that you have preset) to contribute to any conversation.

  10. An easily-adjustable box that allows you to configure its three dimensions: it allows you to check the 3 dimensional space an object will use before you buy it, to see if it actually works as you imagine it would.
    Packs down flat to store out of the way.

  11. Income inequality app. Share a percentage of your income with a person in poverty to actually take direct corrective action against income inequality.
    Choose between one or more local recipients and global recipients.

  12. A platform that matches you with local people to meet and discuss a topic of your choice, for free or for a fee.

  13. Experiment: create a measure for imagination.
    Give participants a problem, and a set of constraints and ask them to write down as many distinct solutions as they are able to make.
    Score based on the number of solutions, circumvention of constraints, and outside contact points (e.g. if a tool, method, or other solution component isn't specified in the constraints, and the participant mentions it in a solution, this is counted toward their imagination score). Solution simplicity and complexity and pattern should also be included in the scoring mechanism.
    Note: imagination has no upper limit: each metric is simply a distinct count -- only in this way can responses be comparative: e.g. participant A produced 30 solutions and 3 extra-constraint components. Participant B produced 13 solutions, with 50 extra-constraint components.

  14. A free, open source, standardised rehabilitation programme for convicted criminals in prison that they can voluntarily opt into during their prison term. Participants complete course work and cognitive behavioural conditioning to transform problematic thought processes through use of cognitive training techniques for the formation of healthy and safe information-processing habits.

  15. An app that uses the accelerometer on your phone to determine how you're moving and outputs videogame sound effects based on certain actions. Maybe running makes an echoing step sound, walking makes a soft crunching, jumping has a springing sound. You can choose your own sounds from a menu, and toggle the whole thing on or off easily.
    The point is to make movement more fun.

  16. A web app that scans any article online and produces the 3 most valuable pieces of information based on sentence structure and verb analysis rules.

  17. Naptent: A car park service that rents out portable vehicle tents for drivers to cover their cars for privacy and sleep. Comes with an optional wakeup service and full car park security.
    This service commodity is intended for reducing road deaths and collisions, supporting the vision of the New Zealand Transport Authority

  18. App concept: That's Enough.
    An app that detects and forms a list of all the user's apps. The user configures by selecting those apps in their phone that they use to waste time (i.e. for low-cognitive-effort breaks, like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or Chrome).
    The app thereafter runs automatically, throwing a "That's enough!" message when you've been screwing around in one of those apps for too long.
    You tap to close the message (it won't kick you out of other apps) but it gives you an automated time management check point that's especially useful if you're supposed to be studying or working.

  19. App concept: Hour Yell. An app that shouts out the time every hour in my voice. "Two o'clock!"
    Users can record and upload their own voice files in the app for anyone to use.

  20. Legislation requiring all food products to contain (or to cite a web page containing) details of where every raw ingredient originated, location of every supplier and processor, transport distances, fuel types, and location of transport providers.
    No production costs or companies need to be named, preserving all appropriate trade secrets, while empowering consumers to make informed consumption choices.
    The point is for consumers to have some knowledge about what they're putting into their bodies.

  21. App concept: Otherside messaging service.
    Users who have lost a friend or family member can sign up and upload a bunch of idioms and sayings that their loved one used to say to them, including a list of nicknames they would use, and profile photos of the deceased.
    The service sends the recipient a message to their verified phone number, (to avoid abuse) one message per day, matching one item from the list of sayings (or a generic one like "I'm proud of what you're doing with your life"), one item from the nicknames list (including the recipient's own first name), and with a photo from the list.
    The effect is receiving a lifelike depiction of the loved one you miss to feel like they are still here and reachable.
    The service allows message back, so you can talk to your loved one and have a sense of dialogue even though they are gone.

  22. Shut App Your Face. You open it, and tap the screen. Your phone says "Shut up" from a randomly selected sound file, each in a different voice.
    Input: user taps screen.
    The sequential commands are:
    1. The screen highlights/fades to visually indicate the user has tapped it
    2. It "randomly" generates a number between 1 and N (N = the highest fileID number in the DB table
    3.  It sends an HTTP 'GET' request to the DB to retrieve the sound file corresponding to the fileID
    4. It plays the file through the device’s speaker
    5. It closes the app (this feature can be disabled in settings)

  23. Guitar seam leggings.
    A pair of leggings with five raised seams the diameter of guitar strings down the inside of the leg. Strum her leg like a guitar when she rests it on your lap.
    Matching guitar fret socks.

  24. App concept: Phoney
    The app that gets you out of anything.
    To use it you simply tap once to generate a fake call serving pre-recorded dialogue from a demanding relative or "your doctor" telling you that you need to be somewhere and do something right now, it's urgent and important it can't wait. It's loud enough for the content to be heard by those nearby, and is demanding and shouting and scripted so you can respond any way you like and the caller's belligerence will come through and make semantic sense no matter what you do.

  25. A bookmark sticker you just stick in the front cover. It's a circular card with a window and a rotatable wheel of card underneath. You turn it until it matches the page number you're on.
    Benefits:
    Twice as accurate as a normal bookmark which only marks a 2 page spread, not a single page.
    Adheres to the book: never misplace your bookmark.
    Mark important page numbers in the bookmark without dog-earing or writing on the book.

  26. A high-end cleaning service to forensically sterilise all surfaces in an environment. Optionally provides pre- and post-clean forensic reports for comparison, to enable you to see exactly how thorough the cleaners actually were...

  27. Science Snacks. A brand of snack food which has colourful and informative explanations with diagrams on all compounds in the food and how they interact with the body during chewing, absorption, and cellular action.

  28. A velcro wrist strap between pram and pram-pusher, like on a surfboard, so the pram can't roll away if you lose grip on it for a moment.

  29. A non-toxic foam football with instructions printed on it to take a selfie holding it, post on social media with a particular hashtag, and throw it onward into your North, West, East, or South neighbour's yard.
    Contains a geotagging internal chip for tracking purposes.

  30. Rapping paper: gift wrapping paper with lyrics from licensed rap songs on it.

Bonus idea!
The Fame-O-Meter 

A web crawler that analyses and scores an individual’s social media influence. It does this by identifying their social media accounts, total exposure across different social media platforms, their total follower counts, and any matching public profiles across the internet, and the exposure of those.
It display’s any individual’s fame level on a bell-curve chart drawn from all individuals for whom it has performed this analysis.

Thanks for learning!
​Michael

What happens when you pay employees more than minimum wage?

29/8/2018

 

A parable of two restaurants

In capitalism, the purpose of a business is to maximise profit. 

A business may have other purposes (e.g being indefinitely sustainable, having a positive effect on human life, improving soil fertility) but secondary purposes do not exist without the primary purpose of profit maximisation.

Despite the simplicity of the single dollar metric defining profit, there are multitudes of variables that affect it. The state of the economy, access to consumers, legislation, geography, advertising, business longevity, debt, credit, competition, innovation, access to technology, supply chain, rent, and expenses such as paying employees – all these factors, and many others, impact a business's profit. 

Because almost all businesses use humans acting as decision makers, often profit maximisation is far from optimal. Businesses that may not have access to large-scale data analysis must make decisions based on limited data. These decisions are vulnerable to human error. This can and does compromise profit.

A common and much discussed form of human error arises in cost minimisation. Specifically in the cost of employee wages, simplistic cost-minimisation logic may be used: 
  1. I want my profit maximised.
  2. I need to minimise costs. 
  3. I will pay employees minimum wage. 
  4. This will avoid money being wasted by paying employees more than the necessary amount to get them to work. 

The appeal of this logic is its simplicity. But by focussing on money paid to employees, it ignores other directly relevant variables such as the financial benefits of employee retention, recruitment costs, training costs, and the cornicopia of brand and indirect revenue benefits of having loyal, long-term, passionate, happy staff who want to work and who will go above and beyond their resposibilities to ensure the business succeeds. 

The parable below illustrates the variable of employee wages in a comparison between two small business owners; one who focusses on wage cost minimisation, and another who welcomes the complex value generated by well paid employees. 

Thanks for learning!
Michael 

The content below this line has been published with permission from contributing author Richard Neate 

Business 1
Business 2

Proprietor: Michael Manager

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Mike’s Place!

Proprietor: Lisa Leader

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Lisa’s Place
​Mike and Lisa are opening identical restaurants in Smalltown. They will have the only two restaurants in town.
 
Both have 30 tables. Both need 12 staff. Both serve similar food, of similar quality for the same prices.  The only difference is:
Mike is an excellent manager. He understands that business success come from maximizing income and minimizing costs.
Lisa is a leader. She trusts that if she builds a good team and looks after them everything will turn out OK.
​Both restaurants are in the high street of Smalltown, and both are the same size. Therefore, their property costs are identical.  Ingredients and décor must match their place in the market, so their costs are identical, except for wages:
Michael knows there will be a steady stream of young people keen for work so he only pays the minimum wage.

Therefore, his weekly staffing costs are:
  • ​12people x 40hours x $16.50 = $7,920
Lisa likes to get the best people and look after them. She also has to be careful with money so pays the living wage at the start.
​
Therefore, her weekly staffing costs are:
  •  12people x 40hours x $20.55 = $9,840

SCORE

​+$1,920
+$0
​On average, 40 groups of people go out for dinner in Smalltown.  Therefore, during their first few weeks they both average 20 covers each. BUT.....
Mike’s staff aren’t as good as Lisa’s. Because Lisa is paying more, she gets the best. Mike’s staff don’t like Mike very much because they can see how much money he makes and yet he pays them as little as possible. What does this mean?
​Mike gets more breakages because his staff don’t really care, maybe ten plates, glasses, etc per week, say $100.
 
Mike’s staff also make more mistakes when taking orders and prepping so he wastes a couple of items a night. 2 items @ $10 x 7 nights = $140
Lisa sells more ‘extras', an extra drink, dessert or side, because her staff care and try and help the business.

​Maybe one item at $5 per table per night = $5 x 20 x 7 nights.

SCORE

-$240
​Mike’s staff take more sick leave because they aren’t committed.  1 day each per year.  Equivalent to 0.25 days per week, cost $16.5 x 8 x 0.25
+$700
Lisa’s staff are a good team and cover each other so they manage when one of them is away so they don’t pay a temp to cover. Say, 1 day per month, 0.25 days a week x 8 x $20.55

SCORE

-$33
Mike has to watch his staff like a hawk and has to do his paperwork when the restaurant is closed. 8 extra hours at $20
+$41
Lisa can trust her staff so can have the odd night off or do other tasks while at the restaurant.

SCORE

-$160
+ More free time
Mike’s staff retention isn’t great.  Average retention is 6 months.  Mike needs a replacement every 2 weeks.
  • Interviews: 2hrs @ $20 = $40 = $20/week
  • Job ad: $50 = $25/week
  • Training time 4hrs @ $16.70 = $66.8 = $33.4/week.
Lisa’s staff retention is 2 years.

She doesn’t need to advertise because everyone who works for Mike would rather work for her. So she gets to pick the best staff in Smalltown.

SCORE

-$78.4
+$0
​Both restaurants have been trading for 3 months now.  If we look at the scores, we see that Mike is winning at the moment – in monetary terms at least.  But Lisa is happier and works fewer hours.
 
But now the restaurants are starting to build their reputations.  Lisa’s staff are happier, they care more about the business, and this all means that they are better with the customers.

PROFIT TOTALS SO FAR

$1408.6
$741
Wind the clock forward…
​Mike’s staff costs stay the same:
 
12people x 40hours x $16.50 = $7,920
Lisa likes to get the best people and look after them so she starts to pay senior staff more.  Her average rate goes up.
 
Therefore, her weekly staffing costs are:
 
12 people x 40 hours x $25 = $12,000

SCORE

+$4,080
​+$0
Well done Mike! $4 grand a week!
​On average, 40 groups of people still go out for dinner in Smalltown.  But now Lisa is getting better reviews and building more customer loyalty:
​Mike’s averaging 18 tables a night at $400 per table=
 
7 x 18 x $400 = $50,400 a week
​Lisa is averaging 22 tables a night at $400 per table=
 
7 x 22 x $400 = $61,600 a week

SCORE

+$0
​Mike has to work really hard:
  • He’s there all the time because he can’t trust his staff.
  • He’s doing more recruiting
  • He’s really stressed
  • Envy of Lisa is burning him up.
+$11,200
Lisa is having fun!
  • She gets the odd night off
  • She has a deputy manager who shares the load
  • Her staff love her
  • So do her customers
And Lisa is making much, much more money every week.
The trend will continue. Lisa will get better reviews. She’ll get a better share of the 40 locals but also a few visitors and they’ll pick the place that looks to be humming and has the best reviews. She’ll probably continue to increase her staff wages which might costs a bit more but...
Wind the clock forward another year…
​Mike’s staff still costs stay the same:
 
12people x 40hours x $16.50 = $7,920
​Lisa is sharing the love around and is now paying an average of $30 an hour.
 
Therefore, her weekly staffing costs are:
 
12people x 40hours x $30 = $14,400

SCORE

+$6,480
Well done Mike! $6½ grand a week, but:
​On average, 40 groups of people still go out for dinner in Smalltown.  But now Lisa is getting better reviews even in National and international websites and has a big and loyal customer base because her staff do such a good job of looking after them:
​Mike’s now averaging 15 tables a night =
 
7 x 15 x $400 = $42,000 a week
​Lisa is averaging 25 from locals and 2 visitors = 27 tables a night =
 
7 x 27 x $400 = $75,600 a week

SCORE

+$33,600

FINAL PROFIT TOTALS

$42,000 a week
$75,600 a week
WINNER

​GAME OVER!
Lisa wins hands down.

Lisa is thinking of opening another restaurant…

The DORVA Scale: Measuring human emotion

3/11/2017

Comments

 
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The DORVA Scale of Emotional Response Scoring is a system for self-reported emotional response measurement that generates fast, reliable, and consistent quantitative data on your emotional responses to stimuli.

Let's start by taking a look at the scale itself. 
​
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Intention and usage of this tool 

  • The DORVA scale is intended to be a simple, fast, and affordable means of producing self-reported data to measure the positivity or negativity of a human subject's emotional experience in reaction to external stimuli. It's terrific for self-examination, but also suitable for documenting the emotional experiences of study participants (including your study of yourself, if you like spreadsheets!). 

  • While self-reported DORVA data has the benefit of being self-descriptive (i.e. a value of “repulsion” is as simple as recognising your own reflexive facial movements, unlike the results of repulsion as returned by brain scanning feedback imagery), DORVA isn't recommended as a substitute for other data production means like EEG feedback, fMRI scanning, and other emotion self-reporting models. ​Data should be obtained from all available sources. 

You'll notice the chart doesn't list the full spectrum of human emotions.

​That would be a big chart! Especially considering emotions can and routinely do occur in complex combinations; not just one at a time!

What the chart offers is a spectrum of emotional intensity to help record emotions based on their perceived severity in the moment in which they are experienced. For this reason, documenting emotions when they are felt is crucial: memory, even immediate-short-term memory, introduces too much of an error margin due to our propensity to compare how we felt about a topic to how we felt about another topic using pseudo-logic: "I was distraught when my puppy was killed yesterday, but I must have felt more distraught when my parent died years ago, so I will rank my emotions relative to each other." When in reality there is no reason that such grief for both events shouldn't have registered at a -5 (abominable) in emotional intensity for both events, for example. 

Data recorded using the DORVA model doesn't cater to memory-alterations made in this way. 

The name of the model, DORVA, is just an acronym for the 5 scores on the negative side of the scale. When self-evaluating, remembering the name can make recollection of the measurement chart a little easier when experiencing intense negative emotions. 

The emotions listed in the chart and their defining characteristics are a usage guide only. Grief, for example, could be felt at an intensity score of -4 (Vile) without any desire to punish or cause suffering. Sincere joy could be felt at an intensity score of 3 (Joyful) without any sensation of warmth. Individuals feel emotions differently, have different physiological predispositions to causative hormones like dopamine and cortisol, and are capable of complex emotion combinations. When recording DORVA data, getting each datum exactly "right" according to the description in the chart not as valuable as logging your data as close to the time it's experienced as possible with your honest evaluation of your emotion.

This is not a perfect tool for measuring emotions. But generating any data set of emotional experience, even with an unknown error margin, is going to provide more valuable insight than undocumented observational, memory-based reflection of emotional experiences. That's the whole point of the DORVA scale! To give you a readily accessible quantitative look without any more sophisticated equipment than notebook or spreadsheet.

Next, let's talk about how you can use it. 

How to create your emotion data

Draw a chart with these columns entitled: Date, Time, Location, Event description, and DORVA response. 
​
If you have a smartphone with Google Spreadsheets on it, you can use that. Otherwise a notebook you carry often would be suitable. Here's a template.
Record your data however you wish. Some recommended methods for producing data are below. 

Baseline data: Every day when you wake up (and/or before going to bed) record a DORVA entry. This will show your emotional baseline when you start the day. It can be useful to compare this to how you end the day! (See Using your data below)

Event data: Every time you feel a strong emotion, and successfully remember to record it, and make the choice to record it... make a DORVA entry. This is a powerful way to see the range of your emotional intensity. It can also indicate a possible positive or negative bias. 
​

Using your data

Each month or frequency of your choice, review your data representing key parts of your emotional experience. Below are some recommended considerations for analysing your data to produce useful and actionable insights. 

Produce an average on what your general baseline emotional state is. How do I feel about this? Do I want to improve it?

​Review baseline data
Recording your baseline is a key way to see how your emotions have changed over time. If you make an entry every day for years, you may notice a difference or no change at all. But even over a period of a few weeks you can spot differences. What has changed in your life that could explain these? What other changes could you make that could get you waking up happy every day? 

If you record your waking and bedtime emotional state most days, you will be able to compare these trends. Is either or both changing, or are they static over time? Are they the same emotional state?

​Do you generally end the day on a more positive or negative emotional point than you began it? Why might this be the case? Is there a standout recurring difference on a particular day of the week, or between work days and days off? 

What days have you had the happiest wake-up and bedtime? What days were the worst? What can you do differently to wake up and go to sleep feeling consistently contented and happy? 

Review event data

Do you have records of major emotional events multiple times a day? Do you have them only some days or seldom? Are they in some places or anywhere? 

Do you consider yourself an optimist, a pessimist, neither, or both? Which would you rather be?

Does the data show you have more strong negative emotional reactions than positive ones throughout a typical day? 

Think about changes you might like to make to your outlook, if any. How will you achieve those? 

Do you consider yourself a particularly emotional person? Does the frequency or intensity of emotionally significant events meet your expectations or surprise you? In what ways? 

What significant positive events happen regularly in your life. Who are they with? Where do they happen? How might you create more of this positivity?

Do any significant negative events happen regularly in your life? What can I do to change the cause? Do you also want to change your emotional response to that cause? How will you do that?
As you can see from this exercise, these questions are very inward focussed. They are excellent questions to reflect on your life and choices at any time. The advantage of involving DORVA in the mix is that you no longer need to rely on a vague amalgamated feeling built up over time, or specific memories (reconstructions) of individual events and how you think you felt at the time. You can rely on the data which is a reflection of the actual intensity that you honestly felt at that time, and make a more informed evaluation of your emotional experience that will better inform any changes to your life that you want to make. 

And you can completely trust the data source, because it is an honest reflection of your emotional journey and forms part of the record of your life. Now that's something to feel good about. :)

Thanks for learning! 
Michael 
Comments

Concept Giveaway: 30 Free Ideas 2017

4/6/2017

 
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Here are 30 ideas, for free, fun, or profit. Basically for you to use however you want.

  1. An events website (Meetup, Facebook, EventFinda, and every other event content aggregator should steal this) whereby once users sign up, looks at their device's location data (if the user gives the application permission, and location services are active) and calculates when to send the person a reminder based on how long it will take them to get to the venue from where they are using public transport (via a Google or Waze API for the journey planner feature).

    This software just brings existing data together in a way that's helpful to users with more interesting things to think about than when to do stuff.

  2. Snack Roulette: an app that orders food from a randomised local vendor. Delivery, pick up, and eat out options are available. The user simply authenticates their credit card details, sets their maximum budget for the meal and number of eaters, is informed how many options there are, hits confirm, and then receives the result which is automatically billed. The delivery option comes with the surprise of seeing who comes to the door and with what.

  3. Weight guesser: an app that estimates a person's bodyweight when you point your phone's camera at your reflection. Users train (or try and screw with) the app's machine learning by entering the correct value, if known. 

  4. Memory fibres in a necktie, that remembers it's folds once you train it.

  5. A collapsible drinking cup.
     
  6. Moisture wicking shoelaces, to dry your shoes while you wear them.

  7. A lexicon of new words to accurately describe flavour and flavour combinations.

  8. Modular language components for easy general production of new words that are self-describing.

  9. A shirt with an invisible wax coating on some of the fibres so that when you sweat, the darkening of the unwaxed fibres shows an image.

  10. Psychometric testing data analysis to correlate project success rates and ROI with certain personality traits, to quantitatively measure company values.

  11. An app that uses the camera and optical character recognition to parse and save the information on a business card into your address book so you only have to photograph the card, not type anything.

  12. An attachment for table legs that doubles as a decorative floor protector and a precision height adjuster. Your antique wooden table never need wobble, no matter how warped the wood gets over time.

  13. An app that displays a cell network coverage heat map: you can see how many bars you'll have at any place before you go there.

  14. An API for the cellphone coverage heatmap app above which serves data to your route-finder app (like Waze) and warns you before your journey that there will be lost or diminished coverage where you're going.

  15. Measure the minimum distance at which people can sit beside each other facing the same way without being able to legibly see each others mobile device screen, and mark that distance as "privacy distance" at train stations and other public places so it's easy for people to be systematically courteous of each other. 

  16. Two positional sensors attached (or inbuilt) to a monitor that enable monitors to triangulate their positions in relation to each other and automatically configure seamless mouse cursor movement between screens that aligns with the monitors' actual positions in space.

  17. An app that let's you and another user have on your screen a frame showing what's on the other person's screen (minus the frame!).

    Ideal for showing loved ones (or researchers) your screen and content habits.

  18. A background app that lets you record all activity on your phone into a compressed video file that you can refer to later or access remotely, to provide an evidence-based way to know if your phone has been messed with.

  19. A background app that lets you record from both cameras into a compressed video file. An ideal way to document the life of your double-chin.

  20. Public dashcam app that lets you put a live feed of what your car's dashboard mounted camera sees onto the Internet. With an app that lets people view it.

  21. An app like Flightradar24 but which shows all planes, trains, buses, ferries, and other publicly transmitting vehicles, anywhere in real time.

    An additional feature that lets you tap any vehicle and see a dashcam/cockpit live video feed, if available. 

  22. A company with total transparency, automatically Tweeting or publishing business insights as they’re derived from data.

  23. A machine-learning behaviour analysis app that learns via the accelerometer, tilt, and cameras the minutiae of the user’s phone position when in use or in your pocket or bag, and automates features like locking, launching apps, and turning apps on and off according to your usual behaviour.  

  24. GPS for buses - takes users’ positional data and use of journey-planning software and gives bus drivers a dynamic mini-map of nearby bus users who may be likely to board the bus. This feature reduces missed bus trips for users by enabling more informed driver discretion on whether or not they can and should wait for close-running passengers to board before leaving each stop. 

  25. A cochlear insert that voices positive thoughts to the user. Can be set off, to a frequency, or reactive contextual mode using software that determines – via Bluetooth to the mobile device – location, time of day, and inferred activity.

  26. Shirt and trouser pockets tailored to the exact measurements of your device and wallet and keys.

  27. A mass producable, wearable electrocardiogram hardware plugin for smartphones.

  28. Mechanically compactable public trash cans that let a helpful populace fit more trash in.

  29. Data driven ubran planning in industrial parks to plan food vendor availability and revenue by evaluating the number of personnel per area, food suprlus margins, and anonymised individual user habits to feed everyone, minimise waste, and maximise consumer satisfaction.

  30. GPS that factors in the weather by correlating past weather conditions with past traffic patterns, and outputs driving advice per driver factoring in advice it gives to all drivers, to mastermind the traffic network and avoid replacing organic traffic congestion with app-coordinated traffic congestion. 

  31. GPS that that lets you mark and record intersections, roads, and suburbs that you wish to avoid so you never get routed through a place you don’t want to go. ​

Acrocentricity: Why You Think “Higher” Equals Better

3/5/2017

 
Acrocentric
ADJECTIVE;  equating elevation with worth
‘an acrocentric description of the surgeon's skill is that she is at the top of her profession'

This article is about our linguistic trait, in English, of arbitrarily viewing the concept of elevation to be inherently synonymous with positivity (including the opposite, where descent is made synonymous with negativity).
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We speak as though 'Up' equals 'Good'...

“To be thought of highly.” “High quality.” "Elevated status." "Higher public profile." "High prices." “Highly recommended.” "Above and beyond the line of duty." "Having one over on the other guy." "Top scientists." "Highest honour." “To be at the pinnacle of ones career.” “To heighten the risk.” “Heightened senses.” “Upwardly mobile.” “High salary.” "The top of her field." “The top of his game.” "Highest ranked." "Upper management." "Top of the line." “The upper end of the quality spectrum.” "High socioeconomic status." "Get over it." "Highly recommended." “To climb the ladder of success.” "Up and coming." "The highest honour I can bestow." “To take the high ground on a matter.” "High marks." "A higher life." “To have peaked in life.” “To be held in uppermost esteem.” “Lofty ambition.” “Uplifting news.” “A high-end establishment.” “To lift someone up.” “Head of department.” “Elevated status.” “To climb the ladder of success.” “High on life.” “Top professionals.” “The upper class.” “Reaching the upper limit.” “Lofty ambition.” Even "Top of the food chain" and "Apex predator" use height to describe the success of an entire species!

The concept is implicit in popular inspirational quotes: "Your
attitude determines your altitude."

The are countless depictions of Heaven or Paradise as on a plane, physical or spiritual or both located above the plane of the Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere: “The Lord above.” “The man upstairs.” “Heavens above.”

We also see very recent idioms adopting the old concept of acrocentricity into new concepts. Like the idea of “trolling at a high level.”

Despite their different subjects, all these examples share the attribute of using language that equates elevation with worth. (There are loads more, and I’d love to see examples you’ve used or encountered. Tag @autonomike on Twitter and use #acrocentricity and I'll add them to this article.)

...and as though 'Down' equals 'Bad'

We say things like this too:

"Bottom feeder." “That’s low.” “Downtrodden.” “You have to learn to crawl before you walk.” and even the term “To put someone down.” “To fall from grace.” “To be taken down a peg.” “To be laid low.” “Scraping the bottom of the barrel.” “To be “tread on” or “stepped over”. And of course depictions abound of Hell as subterranean, “down there”, below our feet, ever presently waiting for us to fail and fall. “It’s all downhill from here,” indicates a “descent” into an inferior circumstance, even despite the considerable biophysical realities of moving downhill consuming less energy than moving uphill.

There are many situations where elevation is not good – or downright dangerous. The fear of heights is one common example. The actual danger of heights is another. Yet humans can also have a rush of adrenaline and dopamine in response to such danger – a physical acrocentric response!

Contradictive idioms

As much as the English speaking language adheres to acrocentric concepts, we also say things that seem to contradict the established equation of height with worth. We say "he is scum" – scum being the uppermost layer on a body of liquid. Or “she has her head in the clouds” which is sometimes used to criticise a person for ambitious ideals. In contrast "down to Earth" is considered a virtue, to be grounded, realistic, and dependable. To be “deep” is to be profound, but in any physical sense the only things characterised by their depth are deep in a downward or laterally downward direction: an ocean, a cave, a mine shaft, a crevice, a tunnel, a chest freezer.

The non-universality of acrocentricity and upness

In our cosmos of space, there’s no universal “up”. There is a global “up” on a celestial body of any size, that simply means “outward, away from the centre,” but even that is self-contradictory; a person standing in Stockholm, and one in Auckland have completely opposite definitions as to what direction "up" actually is, since they each would be pointing out from different sides of the planet.  The global definition of "up" is really just a local definition that indicates a direction outward from a sphere such a sea or ground level. But in a universal sense that considers all of space, “up” is no more than a subjective perceptual concept developed by terrestrial beings with their eyes on the stars. Outward from the centre of the universe isn’t “up”; that would be “outward from the centre of the universe.” The conclusion here is that “up” only exists in the context of orb-dwelling life such as ours.

How can we explain our innate trait to equate 'Up' with 'Good'?

One way to justify the logic of the acrocentricity phenomenon is by considering a bar graph, such as one used to visualise stock price, where our y axis is monetary value, and x is time. If a stock is rising, it is becoming more valuable – if we own that stock then its elevation on the graph is subjectively positive to us since it is a profitable situation for us the owner of the stock. Easy? But if the stock is not owned, then elevation is negative because it denotes a profit opportunity on which one is missing out.
Regardless of whose viewpoint is used, an increasing stock price raises the point of value on the graph to correspond with a greater number in terms of its financial value. That word choice may be relevant to explaining acrocentricity: "greatness" is inherently associated with both size and positivity in the English-speaking parts of the world. The association of these two definitions for the word "great", although illogical in its lack of absoluteness (consider: you probably wouldn't describe a tumour as "becoming greater" as it grew bigger), nevertheless provides a simple etymological possibility for explaining our now deeply entrenched sense of acrocentricity:

"Good means great" > "Great" means "big" > "big" means "tall" > "tall" means "high" > so "high" therefore means "good".


In numerical terms it’s a bit clearer. A graph, be it of share prices or percentages or other values, depicts height (or 'upness') as being further along the y axis from zero, with zero marking the bisection with the x axis and the integer marking the y axis’s end at its furthest point from the bisection. To our human eyes, the y axis goes up and down. So we describe it that way: 6 is a “higher” number than 5 on that vertical axis. In fact 6 is a “greater” number than 5, which means bigger, which means taller, which means higher. Isn’t it interesting how we don’t call 6 a taller number than 5, but we would call it bigger, higher, or greater?

The arbitrariness of up

Set aside humans' arbitrary use of the arbitrary concept of elevation to denote worth, height is actually an arbitrary concept itself. It is purely contextual, and relies on having a very specific shape of a very large size to mean anything at all: specifically a spheroid of such a size that it can be considered a celestial body. "Up" only makes sense, as a direction, when it means "outward from the centre of an environmental spheroid." "Height" only makes sense as a position in context of the same: "Further outward than the subject from the centre of an environmental spheroid." So on a planet, the tape measure of a vertically standing pole is called its “height”. The same dimensional measure of the same object floating in space would be called its “length”.

'Up' as we know it only exists on spherical bodies; not cubes, cones, or hexagonal prisms. Since there's no height without an up against which to measure it, height too is a property of spherical bodies.


Since "up" means "out," and "higher" means "further out," what does this logical definition do to acrocentricity? Does “out” mean good? Does distance from a centre denote worth? Are nuclei bad, and the worth of orbits measured by their distance from them? Not generally. Outness, despite sharing its exact meaning with upness, doesn’t stretch to include worth. (Unless maybe you consider the phrase “that’s far out, man,” to be high praise.)

Talking acrocentrically

We say these things every day. But why do we say them? Why do we instinctively know what it means when we they say "high" and we hear "good"?

The concept of good being up and bad being down indicates that it’s a struggle, and a risk to advance compared to regress. Regression is often as easy as inaction or action: doing the wrong thing, or not doing anything when something needs to be done. This relates to the perpetual embrace of gravity, whereby for many of us our entire lives teach us that moving upward is a matter of concerted and coordinated physical effort which must be conducted just right, whereas moving downward can be as simple as letting go – and perhaps even fatal, if we were to fall too far.

PhD candidate and ecologist Joshua Thoresen considered the matter of acrocentricity during development of this article, and quoted to me Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind:  

"Why do people feel the need to climb things? Mountains, rocks, cliffs?

This is the best answer I've seen to this question so often asked:

"The urge to explore space - to go higher - is innate to the human mind... The equation of height with goodness is embedded in our language and consequently the way we think. Our verb 'to excel' comes from the Latin excelsus, meaning elevated or high. Our noun 'superiority' in from the Latin comparative superior, meaning higher in situation... Conversely a clutch of pejorative words are associated with depth: 'lowliness', 'inferiority', 'base', dozens more. We construct our models of progress on a gradient. We move on up, or we sink back down. It is harder to do the former than the latter, but that makes it only more admirable. One does not, under any linguistic circumstances, progress down."
- Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind

It seems we should be asking not ‘why do you climb?’ But, ‘why don't you?’"

The anthropomorphic view

Homo-sapiens as a species is highly vision-reliant. Vision, for those of us fortunate to have it, is our primary sense, our primary means of obtaining information about the world: more so even than television, Google, any book, any map, any diagram. Indeed vision is what enables information to be obtained from these and many other sources. Including our environment.

Never mind internet searches, what about before all this visual technology and all these screens? What about back when homo-sapiens was a canny forebrained ape making its first ventures into the realm of technological advancement with a flat rock and pointed stick? Vision was all important then. Our eyes, at the front of our ape skulls just like our cousin species, are well adapted for hunting. Our night vision is excellent. Our prehistoric communities stood safe thanks to the watchful eyes of sentries who could spot any major threat and raise the alarm. Those sentries would have found that an elevated position -- atop a boulder, a hill, up a tree – afforded a superior view and the ability to see further than the mere ground allowed.

Specifically, spatial elevation affords humans increased visual information.

The further we are upward from the plane supporting us, the further around that plane we can see. The distance it affords allows for there to be more molecules for photons to bounce off and slam directly into the photoreceptor cells of our retinas at the back of our eyes. The more height we gain, the more photons go into the eye, and the more information there is for the brain to make sense and use of. Information is inherently valuable to humans. (I don’t need to tell you that! Look at your greedy eye-brain right now guzzling up all this delicious information.) Through our vision, a little height translates to greater volumes of visual information. Go high enough and you’ll see fully half of the planet!

In practical terms for the development of a species, the principle of ‘elevation = information’ has proven its value over millennia. Be it a forager surveying for a prime picking spot, a hunter searching for prey, a hiker trying to gain their bearings, a lookout in a crow’s nest scanning the horizon, a fort outpost overlooking hostile territory, a firewatch tower placed to monitor bush fire activity, no matter the application the equation remains: ‘Elevation = information’.

If you need to see stuff, higher is most definitely better.

The principle holds equally true today. You can test it right now by looking up from the device near your face to survey your environ. Behold, a slightly broader view of your environment; a larger span of visually-acquired information gained through the simple act of raising your eyes or your head or both at once.

Could this universal principle be the basis for acrocentrcity? I’m not claiming it is, because that would at least require a venture into other languages, which is the topic of a future article. But it does seem likely.

We should note here that in English, acrocentricity is independent of the visual aspect this explanation relies on. We don’t say “at the highest visual vantage point of ones career.” We say “at the height of ones career.” Perhaps vision is implicit. Or perhaps the principle of ‘elevation = information’ is a separate one to the linguistic phenomenon of acrocentricity. Make up your own mind.

Is acrocentricity healthy? Is it safe?

As a communication form, acrocentricity is an efficient language tool. Think how much easier it is to rely on “high” to convey a sense of worthiness, instead of actually describing how worthy you think the subject is and opening yourself up to semantic discussions where you’re asked to substantiate that evaluation of worth.
“The University has the highest reputation in its category.”

“The University has been rated as Reputable by 6 out of 10 survey respondents, compared to 5 and 1 for the other universities in its category.”

Bit of a difference. “Highest” conveys “Let’s not get into exactly how much better it is, OK?” It conveys less denotative information and a great deal more connotation. The second explanation is more useful for analysis. But the acrocentric explanation is more useful for conveying our feelings of the subject as if they are more than just our feelings.

In this way, it would be fair to call acrocentric language a form of Weasel Words.
Arbitrariness and resultant objective silliness aside, acrocentricity is a part of our language that there seems little point in wilfully trying to change. In my observation, we haven’t taken it to a harmful extreme: we don’t assume taller people have more worthy brains than shorter people, even though the brains and eyes of tall people are indeed “higher” than the rest of us. Most English speakers instinctively know the exceptions to acrocentricity, and when to apply them to what we say and the interpretation of what we hear.

Acrocentricity is here to stay. I haven’t finished plumbing ancient texts for instances of it, but at this stage the hypothesis is that the phenomenon is very old.

You might enjoy making a game of spotting acrocentricity when you come across it, or even pointing it out when you hear others discuss their "high" salary or their "elevated" social status. You might even challenge them to say more explicitly what they mean using language that doesn’t connotatively try to convey a sense of worth when all the speaker is really saying is how they personally feel about the subject. Insisting that ones organisation is of higher repute than ones competitors just means that the person thinks it has a better reputation than their competitors: acrocentric boasting offers no objective metric whatsoever. If you do point it out or challenge it when encountered, you might see people struggle to use denotative language, and resent you for putting them to cognitive effort they had tried to dodge by using such easy language. It is, after all, a phenomenon we English-speakers learn from the very outset.

Perhaps that’s the value of acrocentricity: an easy linguistic aid to sell our views on matters we don’t know how to describe in denotative terms.

It can be useful and interesting to be aware of, but there's really no need to get high and mighty about it.

Thanks for learning!
Michael

The limits of objectivity

26/10/2016

 
How do we seek to know the objective truth about a subject? Why, we seek evidence! We crave sources of information we can trust and therefore accept as the basis of the formation of new knowledge, opinions, beliefs, and convictions.

We want that evidence to be empirical! So we form protocols and controls and experiment to produce empirical evidence. Or we have others do it, and we learn from their work because we trust that they did it well and can check that to our satisfaction in their published literature, our peer review processes, and the credibility of the journals that take them, and the others that replicate their results.

Sometimes the empiricality of evidence gets questioned, by ourselves or by others.
"The researchers could have done this extra thing,” or “They should have controlled for this variable of interest to me."

The criticism centres on a lack of specificity in the evidence manufacturing process. Fair enough! Shouldn’t we be completely specific when manufacturing new evidence?
Specificity, after all, is the very basis of empiricality.

But the fact is (or is it a fact? It's observable and testable, but is it pure objective truth?) that no matter how exhaustively specific you are, you can always be more specific.

Test my claim if you like: Find or write any definition that you feel is an example of ultimate specificity, show it to me, and then concede the point when you see me make it more specific.

Even when you produce a definition that is as specific as you know how to be, that doesn't mean it is the most specific it's possible to be. Just because you’ve produced a definition that’s more specific than any other definition ever to exist, also doesn’t mean it is the most specific it’s possible to be – it’s merely the most specific definition that has ever existed so far.

Yet you have to use something for your evidence production. You can’t plumb the infinity of specificity for the rest of time to reach a theoretical endpoint before you begin your process of producing evidence. You simply reach a point of specificity that is adequate for you (or your stakeholders) and you move the work ahead, produce the evidence, and share the knowledge.

That’s an arbitrary point to reach. And it's determined purely by how satisfied we feel about the level of specificity we decide to use. 

Because of our inability to achieve ultimate specificity, evidence therefore can never be truly, objectively, empirical. It can only ever be empirical enough for an individual to accept and choose to consume.

The point is there's no bedrock of specificity; and therefore there is no ultimate form of empiricality.

Evidence is not either "empirical" or "nonempirical". It's only, ever, "less empirical" or "more empirical" in relation to other evidence.

All evidence we produce and consume and base our opinions and beliefs and convictions on is done by drawing our own arbitrary line in the infinite shifting sands of empiricality.

We each make the choice to accept evidence and to form opinions, beliefs, and convictions based on our own completely arbitrary threshold of acceptable empiricality.

Sometimes we sneer at others for having a threshold lower than ours, and polluting their beliefs with low quality information, or scoff at those with higher thresholds at how they damage their living experience with their closed mindedness.

That's embarrassing, because all our thresholds are equally arbitrary (and they change all the time, depending on how we feel and how badly we want to accept a piece of evidence).
Next time you learn something, take a look at how empirical your source was. If it was less empirical than other sources you learned from, ask yourself why.

What you learn about yourself in the process may not be empirical, but it might be useful to you.

And what better purpose could knowledge ever serve than that?

Thanks for learning!
Michael

7 steps to use the scientific method in lawmaking

22/10/2016

 
1. A bill is written and a case is made defining the expected benefits to society of the proposed law change, including specific metrics for measuring efficacy. Current data defining the problem the bill intends to fix is also provided. This is put before the law approvers to implement or reject.
2. The bill is passed and becomes law for a provisional period determined by the approvers.
3. The law change is communicated to the populace.
4. Data is accumulated using the stated metrics for the provisional period.
5. At the end of the provisional period the law is evaluated by the approvers. Did it measurably improve society in the manner expected, or did it make it worse?
6. The law is moved from provisional to permanent status, or is removed.
7. The result and the data on which it is based are communicated to the populace.

Concept Giveaway: 30 More FREE Ideas

1/10/2016

 
Picture
This post is to thank Concept Frontier readers for coming to my website and learning what I have to offer. Here are 30 new ideas for you to do whatever you want with.

  1. A phone-compatible pressure sensor that reads blood circulation to your legs and tells you when you've been sitting still for too long.

  2. Memory-fibre shoelaces that always sit perfectly once tied.

  3. A smoke detector synced with a thermal camera to record data in an emergency.

  4. A company that pays all employees the same salary of $75,000 per year; reflecting the Princeton study that revealed happiness correlates with income only up to that amount.

  5. A notepad app that let's you find a citation on Google Scholar in-app and formats it automatically.

  6. A chat app widget that provides communication data for the people you chat with, that clearly shows you the times and days of the week they're most responsive.

  7. A workout record that examines your gains over time and projects future curves and recommended routines and timings.

  8. An analogue-dial belt buckle that you can adjust by the millimeter. Keeps your belly comfortable no matter how big your lunch was.

  9. A city initiative with kiosks allowing the public to trade illegal narcotics in their possession for the same weight in noopept, racetams, or other over-the-counter smart drugs, no questions asked.

  10. An auto-retracting headphone cable. Like a tape measure.

  11. Vending machine on a bus.

  12. A sturdier office chair with an incline sit-ups mode.

  13. Electronic pen attachment that gives you data about how you write: pressure, legibility, letter consistency, writing speed, and amount written per session.

  14. Modular cologne set enabling users to easily customise themselves a complex, unique library of scents.

  15. An electronic fabric tape measure that sends your measurements to an app. The app matches your measurements to sizes of clothes you browse online, and tells you what sizes and items will fit, without you ever having to think about it.
     
    Also! a carpenter's tape measure that sends measurements to an app that records the dimensions of materials in your project. The app uses that data to create a model of the project to more reliably confirm your timber lengths before you cut.

  16. A medical history app allowing you to easily share relevant parts of your medical history with other users. Makes hooking up safer.

  17. Subscription service weekly pizza deliveries, am I right?

  18. One tap camera and video apps: you point your phone, tap the app icon, and boom you're recording.

  19. An EMF reading device that detects and notifies you when cameras and microphones are active in the vicinity. (So you can stand up straight and look good even in paparazzi pictures!)

  20. Sensors on door and window thresholds that log data on bugs entering in and out.

  21. A heart rate app that measures your heart rate fluctuations during your date to let you know exactly how hard you fell.

  22. Legislation allowing complex placebos to be sold as supplements, offering claims of non-medical health benefits.

  23. An app with optical recognition that can isolate a person's outfit into garments from a photo, recognises patterns and colours, and offers style suggestions based on pre-programmed style rules.
     
    Bonus feature: the user can configure their own style rules, and specify colours, tones, and patterns they like.

  24. A drone-mounted water blaster for cleaning your roof without falling off the ladder.

  25. A study exploring the correlative and causative effect of housing density on urban sprawl, traffic congestion, and pollution per capita.
    (I'm going to do this one, so let me know if you start and I'll help your project instead of duplicating it - Michael)

  26. Long-range metal detector, capable of identifying concealed items from a distance.

  27. An English lexicon of new terms specifically for describing scents.

  28. An experiment showing the neurological effects of changing language to take responsibility for ones own state. Instead of "you made me feel," replaced with "the way I feel about that is."

  29. A thought-prompt generator app and website. Hit a button, get something to think about. If it's not interesting, hit it again.

  30. A browser plug-in that displays a side window containing a list of all information of being transmitted to and from the website when you're on it.

Thanks for learning!
Michael
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    Concept Frontier's mission is to optimise the three ways humanity uses information:
    Production:  Scale up new knowledge exponentially.
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