Why don’t they get it?

I’ve often felt like this: Why don’t they get it? It’s so obvious; why are they being so dense?

It could be about somebody who’s making a decision that I consider clearly detrimental to that person; it could be about somebody not accepting what I consider a simple point of logic; it’s basically one or more people acting in a way that I believe defies motivation and justification.

Have you felt that way? I think a lot of people do feel that way. Things that seem obvious to me (or you) just don’t seem to make their impression on the other person.

What differs from person to person is how we take this Why don’t they understand? feeling further. I have seen that a number of my acquaintances come to conclusions like they’re idiots or they’re evil or they’re just being stubborn or they’re kids. In other words, it’s solution by contempt.

There are other people who throw up their hands and say: I don’t know, I’m not in a position to judge. Let me not bother. I often do this myself, particularly in situations where it’s not really in my interests to “show the light” to the other person. For instance, if somebody is spending money in a way that doesn’t make sense to me from the viewpoint of that person’s long term goals, but that person isn’t financially dependent on me, then I might ask a couple of polite questions or make some casual observations but beyond that I can just say to myself it’s their life; not my concern. So I can go on interacting normally with the other person while not comprehending, or trying to comprehend, this feature of their personality. It’s solution by avoidance.

These are the two standard sanity approaches but there’s a third approach I take, ever so occasionally, which is to actually try to understand. It’s an approach I take in situations where I feel that understanding the rationale behind that person’s behaviour may yield dividends to me in the future, in situations where I have to deal with similar people. If, for instance, I plan to enter into the mathematics profession, and I find that mathematics professors have a way of behaving and interacting that I don’t completely understand, then it’s worth my while to take the pains to understand, even if the particular mathematicians whose behaviour I don’t comprehend doesn’t affect my future.

But as I’m growing up and seeing things more and more, I’m coming to appreciate that the ways in which other people affect one’s life are too diverse to predict. The toddler whose behaviour I don’t understand, can provide me insight that can help me take care of my own kids (if and when I have them), it can help me better understand the concerns of parents, it can help if I’m creating goods and services that target little kids and their parents. But there are stranger connections. Understanding the way the toddler perceives mathematics can help me understand what things are more primitive, and it can closely relate with the way axioms are built. I’m not speaking in thin air here; experiences with some young kids has highlighted to me some aspects of mathematical cognition, and made me appreciate how a little intuition in mathematics can save a lot of tedious mental jugglery with simple counting.

In the increasingly connected world that we are entering, more and more people become important; people whom we neither had the chance to nor the need to communicate with. So the ability to figure out why people are behaving the way they are, is a crucial asset.

Now it’s important to realize that it’s often extremely hard, even impossible, to figure out why somebody else doesn’t get it. For one, even if you were so motivated to just ask the other person for their reasons, the other person may not be able to explain, or may feel offended, or may feel you’re trying to reform him or her, or may just think you’re being funny. After all, it may be very obvious to the other person why he/she is acting that way, or it may seem something that he/she doesn’t want to consider. So this approach of just asking may not work.

Questions of why people do things may not even be answerable by experts; these are subjects of big experiments in economics, sociology, psychology and what-not. But what matters is an honest attempt to ask this question, because it puts you in the role of observer and input-seeker rather than judge or dismisser. So, you collect more tidbits that explain the other person’s actions and put them in context, and this may help you predict better how similar people may behave at a later stage. Even if you don’t understand why, you may at the very least be able to establish better patterns of what else to avoid in the future.

Another interesting side-effect is that sometimes, trying to seek a genuine answer to the Why don’t they they it? question may lead you to the realization that one of your assumptions about human behaviour was wrong. This could be embarassing at first to realize (for instance, if you’ve always placed a great value to certain kinds of things, realizing that there are people for whom those things aren’t important may not be easy). A knee-jerk response to this would be to label the other person as an idiot or crazy or kiddish.

Now I do not mean that the other person is actually being very logical or rational or responsible. But a knee-jerk contempt of another person is very different from a realization that the other person is immature, or wrong, in certain respects, and appreciating that. The former might create a sense of contempt, and may even cause one to feel unhappy and frustrated (particularly if there are regular interactions with the other person). In the latter, when you actually accept that there is a fundamental weakness in the other person, that may engender some sadness but it means less resentment and frustration.

This has happened for me many times. There were situations where I thought another person was behaving stupidly, and I resented it, disliked it, avoided that person. Then, when I thought about it, in some cases I was able to understand a rationale, and in some cases I just realized that the person lacked an important ingredient or input that would prevent the “stupid” behaviour, and that it was not in my capacity to provide that input. But when I looked at it that way, I didn’t feel any resentment. I just felt that this person lacked something, may be like the house next door that lacks a glass pane for one of its windows. Something to be sad about, but not something to resent.

Of course, it’s possible that my understanding of the situation was wrong, or itself limited. It’s not absolutely essential to come to the right understanding, as long as one is open to, and actively seeking and integrating, new input. Mistakes can be readily corrected, if one isn’t resorting to contempt or dismissal or rudeness.

Choice: start at low cost

The line that we have a lot of choice in our life is commonly parroted, yet it’s not a line that many of us truly understand and appreciate. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that much of the current literature on the choice we exercise in our life is aimed at two kinds of audiences: people who’re trying to overcome certain kinds of problems, and people who’re keen on attaining goals. This severely limits the potential audience for the idea behind the theory of choice, because in the real world most people don’t have any compelling need to either solve problems or achieve goals (of course, everybody wants their problems solved and their goals achieved, but few have compelling need or desire for it).

This is unfortunate because there are many aspects for the choice model that are applicable to people who aren’t interested in rooting for sea change in their lives. In fact, most of the benefits of the choice model can be had with a lot of fun and very little effort, and I’m going to describe some of my experiences and experiments in this regard. What I’m really talking of is micro-choice; the choices we have in all the little things in life and how these choices govern to some extent the amount of excitement and liveliness we feel.

There are times when (like many others) I feel in a rut, a bit bored. Not deeply dissatisfied or unhappy, but just that things are too mundane. So on these occasions, I ask myself the question: what are the things I could do, with zero cost, time and effort, that’d make life more exciting? The zero cost, time, effort part may evoke skepticism because we’ve been all told that everything requires effort and hardwork. Yes, sea change requires hardwork, but there are usually a lot of little things that one could do for practically no effort.

Sometimes, it’s pretty silly stuff. For instance, sometimes, even when I’m not feeling bored, I just think, what are the tunes that I haven’t sung to myself, or played on the machine, for the last one month? And then some tune comes back to me that I used to enjoy singing long ago but have somehow just forgotten, and when I sing that, some part of myself that’s been dormant wakes up. Because somehow the tune is associated with certain past experiences and memories of places and people, and when I sing it, I can feel those memories come up. (The association’s usually based on the feeble premise that I used to sing the tune when I was there or around the time I met those people).

Tunes may not excite everybody, for some it could be the decor of the room. What triggers things isn’t the point. The point is the low-cost, low-time, low-effort aspect of it. Singing a tune costs me nothing, takes none of my time (proceeds subconsciously) and hardly requires effort. It doesn’t require ounces of determination or courage. It just requires me to say Hey, what’s been missing?

Food could have similar effect. I greatly enjoy the food I eat, and yet sometimes I feel that there’s some kind of food I used to have earlier that I’m not having now; so I just change the pattern that little bit to have that piece of food and life seems more exciting. What I’m saying is that that slight change with practically no cost, time and effort could have a quantum effect on one’s level of excitement in life.

Another area is staying in touch with friends. Sometimes, I feel that life’s getting into a rut, I don’t get much social or talking opportunities. Now, there are many parts of this I don’t want to or can’t immediately change. I’m not fond of going to late night shows, I don’t have enough time for a number of socializing opportunities, and I’m in a country and culture where I haven’t yet fully adjusted to the system of activities. But there are plenty of solutions that are zero on cost, time and effort. Like, I can just decide to chat with some person whom I haven’t chatted with for a long time. Or send an email. Or visit a discussion forum that I used to enjoy.

The notion of zero cost, time and effort is subjective. Spending a dollar or two may not be any cost worth considering for me, it may be a huge cost for somebody else. Also, the way one spends the money may matter. Similarly, five minutes spent in making a phone call may be significantly more time for a person than twenty minutes spent writing a letter. And the “effort” component also varies from person to person. A safe bet is that for something to be genuinely low on effort, it should just require a one-time action, without any followup, and should not draw upon any skills or resources that put a strain on the person.

In many cases, I come up with these ideas, and there’s really no reason for me not to implement them, I just go ahead and do it. On some occasions, solutions that seem to be zero on cost, time and effort, surprisingly don’t actually reach the stage of implementation, and at that stage it’s really a question of (a) whether the activity really is low on cost, time and effort; and (b) whether the reason I’m doing it for really does matter to me. If on balance I realize that the activity is worth more effort than the fun I’ll get out of it, then I don’t do it, and things are still going on.

It’s on some very rare situations that I realize that although the reason is good and the effort is very low, I’m still for some reason unwilling to do the activity, which indicates to me that there are some hidden reasons which aren’t surfacing. Now, I have the choice of whether to put in the effort to figure out what’s going on, or to say Okay, let’s find something else which doesn’t invoke any hidden resistance. The first approach is good and worthy but I don’t often feel up to it, so I just switch out and look for another solution. The cool thing about life is that there are always so many choices of ways to do things that are low on cost, time and effort, that one thing being blocked doesn’t mean I am forced to resolve it
there and then.

This may seem a somewhat cowardly approach to life, because great things come through cost, time and effort, as we all know. And people who are willing to put in their time, their money and their effort towards stuff are certainly of great value to themselves and society, and they often spearhead change and innovation. But the “find a low-cost, low-time, low-effort” solution isn’t being offered as an alternative in situations where people are already willing to invest and commit. It’s an alternative to doing nothing, to falling in a rut, and it’s a way of making the little things in life shine more.

Moreover, even people who are willing to invest and commit heavily in some areas may not have the same willingness in others; so it’s appropriate to look for the low-cost solutions in other areas rather than just do nothing in those. I may be willing to invest a lot into learning mathematics but not that much into improving my general knowledge, so while for the former I may buy books, spend hours studying and discuss and seek advice, for the latter I might do occasional websurfing and read Wikipedia articles. That’s not because websurfing and reading Wikipedia articles is the best way to improve general knowledge, it’s because it’s low on cost, time and effort for me and I can fill it in the itnerstices.

Another interesting aspect of this is the free demo aspect. By first attempting low-cost and low-effort activities, we can gauge the potential of something better, and for those things that yield more returns, we can then choose to invest more heavily. A number of the low-cost activities may be duds; okay, I sang the new tune and felt better, but it’s not really something that important to me. But I might find that eating a certain kind of food makes me really happy, and then I can invest on a more regular basis on stocking and eating the food.

Wisdom of crowds

I recently read James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds. The book provides fascinating insights into the way crowds generally tend to be smarter than the individuals who constitute it. It begins by exploring the potential of crowds for cognitive tasks, tasks which involve understanding, measuring and estimating. The examples described in the book are interested because most of them do not involve any kind of cumulation of knowledge but rather an operation like taking an arithmetic mean, median or mode. For instance, one of the experiments has people estimating the number of peas in a jar; each person makes separate estimates and the estimates are then totalled up.

I didn’t need to read Surowiecki’s book to know that crowds can be wise; I’ve seen enough demonstrations of this in real life, and that’s because I’m a first-year student at the University of Chicago. The situations where I’ve seen crowds behave wisely involve more cumulation, though; individuals put in their bits and pieces to construct a solution. I’m talking about the approach that the first-year office in Chicago usually takes to solving problems in the three-times-a-week assignments we get as part of our compulsory coursework. The problems seem almost too hard, impossible, to solve on one’s own, but the crowd’s never failed. Somebody or the other (sometimes, multiple people in unison) always manages to come up with a solution of sorts, and the solutions are scribbled all over the chalkboards in the first-year office with DNEs.

What Surowiecki (and perhaps those designing the first-year coursework) don’t address explicitly is the question of where the wisdom of crowds takes the individuals who are in the crowds. Surowiecki in fact makes the point that being in a crowd could make us individually stupider and yet collectively wiser, but he doesn’t address in detail the question of how the individual can harness the crowd to become individually wiser. Arguably, the goal of a course is to make those studying the course individually wiser, so that when they work as individuals in other collectives or groups, they can take that added wisdom to the new group.

This constitutes a different view to the goal of problem-solving, and a different focus on the way the crowd and the individuals constituting it need to behave optimally. If current performance is the goal, the strategies to be adopted are focussed on and measured only by current performance, which, in the case of assignment problem-solving is the rate at which one solves assignments. So it’s common to hear questions like Where are you placed currently? being interpreted as Are you working on algebra, analysis or topology assignment? At the collective level, it further means that where the first-year currently is, is directly correlated with the sum total of problems solved as yet by first-year students, which means that if a problem is already solved by one individual, another individual can then skip thinking too much about that and work on a different problem.

On the other hand, in situations where it’s not just current performance but the regular gains that the individual takes back that counts, the strategy gets modified somewhat. The first question is: what are the gains over and above getting a sufficient understanding of the solution to write it down? This could be a hard question, often in situations where the assignment problems themselves seem unmotivated and directionless (which does happen every now and then). In cases where there is a mid-term or final examination, one goal could be to develop the ability to solve similar problems when confronted with them in an examination-like situation. In other cases, there isn’t any clearly defined uniform goal for all individuals. If there isn’t a uniform goal for all individuals, the crowd cannot adopt a strategy on a uniform consensual basis. Thus, the individuals who are there in the crowd, even if they have specific things they want to gain, feel it’s better to flow along with the crowd and focus on the common and uniformly accepted goal: understand the solution enough to write it.

This is interesting because somehow the whole idea hasn’t taken off with me. It’s not that I consider it morally inappropriate to just focus on solving assignments; it’s more that I consider it highly boring to feel like part of a herd that’s hopping from board to board scribbling solutions that’ll be copied religiously and may never be seen again. That’s not exciting, and surprisingly, it may not be saving that much time for its individuals. Though the crowd often solves all problems early on, the time it takes for the solutions to dissipate to everybody is often long, and the general air of lethargy just drags on.

On the other hand, I remember one situation where the crowd experience was fun, because it was more structured and individuals saw more to gain by paying attention. For the Algebraic Topology course last quarter, Professor Madhav Nori set us an Assignment 7 which we didn’t have to submit but which would be used heavily in the construction of the final examination paper, so it was up to all of us to solve it. We decided that everybody would try to solve the problems, and then, the day before the final examination, we all got together in one classroom, and all the solutions would be presented by individuals who had solved the problems. The explanations would be problem by problem, and the other students would pose questions and get things straight. Mike Miller and Emily Riehl independently volunteered to take notes during the proceedings and they sent PDFs of the solutions to all of us, so the others could focus on listening and absorbing.

There were a lot of differences with the usual first-year assignment-solving experience. Firstly, everybody was present, together, at one time (it was remarked that this was the first time in more than a month that all first-years were in one room). Secondly, everybody had a goal, which involved more than just writing down the solution now; it involved understanding the solution well enough to reproduce it in an examination situation. Thirdly, everybody had tried independently (or by discussions in smaller groups) to solve the problem and even those who had failed to solve some problem, or not tried hard enough, at least had a background with which to listen. Fourthly, there was an organizational effort, and a better, more conducive environment for learning (the explanations were all done in lecture halls, which have sliding chalkboards and a better ambience for listening).

These differences all highlight that the way in which crowds get together, and what each individual brings in and hopes to take from, the crowd, determine how the crowd behaves and what the individual gets out of it. It also highlights the importance of having people at the head, and people who decide to choose appropriate settings and background for optimal operation. In other words, it requires individuals to figure out how to optimize harnessing the crowd’s potential.

The key point is that individuals can better the crowd by harnessing it, and we can thus get wiser individuals and hence a wiser crowd tomorrow. But the crowd doesn’t tell individuals how to harness it. Let me illustrate this point by looking at yet another example of the wisdom of crowds: the World Wide Web. Google knows what the wisdom of crowds is; that’s what it harness to get good search results. Wikipedia harnesses the wisdom of crowds to build an encyclopaedia with virtually complete outsourcing, and with a few people at the helm adjusting the strings every now and then.

But the individual who now has access to these resources can better them. As an individual who can use Google search, I can harness the power of it for my individual goals, and an as individual who can read Wikipedia articles, I can harness their content to meet my needs. But I can do more; I can layer my intelligence over these and construct resources for myself that depend on, but outshine, the resources that are obtained through the collation of the wisdom of crowds. If I do so, and if enough other people do so, then we reach the next layer of individual and collective wisdom, because our current individual efforts become part of the crowd that tomorrow’s individuals can tap on.

Most people don’t see it that way, they see the wisdom of crowds as something the individual must passively accept and make good use of; which is possibly one reason why individuals aren’t getting wiser just as fast as they could. But it’ll soon catch on; this is the first time that individual creativity can really take on, not from individual knowledge and potential, but from collective potential, so that today’s individuals are as wise as yesterday’s crowds.

I think Surowiecki’s book views individuals as independent agents who may collaborate in specific ways, but are acting in self-interest, and whose actions together constitute the crowd. What we can really do is to see that the individuals can access the total harnessed wisdom of the crowd and grow upon that, which means a paradigm of faster growth. This is very different from individuals trying to tap on the crowd’s collective wisdom while part of the crowd, it’s about moving one paradigm up from the crowd.