Inglish_30/03/10

neck of the woods: 地带，地段附近的地区； A local neighbourhood or region
In my neck of the woods, by contrast, residents tend to come and go;

crop up: 突然出现，突然发生；
If something crops up, it appears or happens, usually unexpectedly.
Rational behavior is much more widespread than you would expect and crops up in the most unexpected place.

off-the-wall: 异乎寻常的；非凡的；
If you describe something as off-the-wall, you mean that it is unusual and rather strange but in an amusing or interesting way.
Readers have told me that they enjoy my off-the-wall book lists.

愚人的决策误区 —— 《别做正常的傻瓜》

传统经济学的理论大厦是建立在经济人是绝对理性自利的假设之上的，但生活中的很多现象却是它难以做出解释的。当心理学研究与经济学研究从平行到交叉，行为 经济学则为这些现象提供了令人信服的解释，经济学也因而纡尊降贵，从象牙塔尖走下来，走出来，走近我的身边，借我一双雾里可看花、水中能望月的慧眼，看懂 做为有限理性人曾经遭遇、正在遭遇、将会遭遇的很多决策误区以及背后的心理推手。

《别做正常的傻瓜》就是这一学科的流行读物之一，初时以 为是西文中译，几乎要弃之不读（这类书籍还是该读原汁原味的，否则翻译的谬误会带来理解的偏差），后来发现，著者奚恺元，原来是东人西渐，修学于常 青藤学府，又在著名的芝加哥经济学派的大本营安营扎寨，成就颇丰。既是原著，自然不愿擦肩。可惜它是我读过的类似书籍的后来者，少了初识时眼前一亮、茅塞 顿开的兴奋感，但也因此多了一点点感悟和体会，再结合不同学者的不同论述视角，看问题能更客观全面。

此书结构设计合理，每一章节开篇总是先扔出一些“考 题”，让你独立思考后，再详加解释正常人是怎么选的，以及为什么会这么选的理论依据和实验数据。当然，知道自己和正常人一样非理性，这样的 benchmark提供了一种情绪的缓冲罢，就象独乐乐不如众乐乐一样，独愚当然也不如众愚更有心理安慰。此外，它也为散落在我近期阅读的同类流行书籍中 的结论提供了一个阶段性总结，并且提供了中英术语的映射。

做愚人，很容易，而且不知不觉；承认自己是个愚人，并且明了自己愚在何处，则很 难。还好，认识到自己是愚蠢的，总算是迈向聪慧的第一步，又或者，经过自己的选择，择“愚”而固执，也未尝不可。

以下是笔记：

1. 心理帐户 （Psychological account)
心理帐户的存在，使人把实际上客观等价的支出或者收益在心理上划分到不同的帐户中 去。心理帐户分类很细，譬如，人们常根据收入的不同来源、不同时间、不同数量而分置于不同的心理帐户。
收入来源：人们将辛苦所得、意外之财归入不 同的心理帐户。如赌场赢利效应 (House Money Effect)，即对赌博或馈赠得来的钱往往敢于冒风险，消费起来也大手大脚。
收入数 量：对同一种来源的收入，人们对于一次性大笔收入更倾向于储蓄，对多次性的小笔收入则容易消费掉，即大钱小花，小钱大花。

2. 交易效用（transaction utility）：
所谓交易效用，是指商品的参考价格和实际价格之间差额的效用。
合算交易偏见：人们 在决定是否购买一样东西是，不仅仅衡量该产品的效用和价格，还受交易效用影响。
比例偏见：由价格差额与原售价的相对比例所引起的。比例偏见会引发 人们在小处斤斤计较，对大事却麻木不仁，更容易关注相对收益而忽视绝对收益。

3. 沉没成本误区（sunk cost fallacy)
沉 没成本（时间、金钱、精力）会左右人们决定是否去做一件事。
造成人们陷入沉没成本误区的原因：

• 不愿认输，不愿承认自己犯 错
• 人们常常根据不同的结果为同样的东西打上不同的标签（譬如同样的投入，成功了称为投资，中途放弃了则视为浪费）

4. 适应性偏见
人对外界环境刺激的反应随时间推移逐渐减弱，但人常常高估这些刺激对我们心情的影响，也会低估自己适应不利环境的能力。不过，人也有 三种难以适应的：

• 极端的东西
• 人际比较
• 变化：与物质的相比，精神方面的常以变化的形式出现， 所以也比较不容易被消磨掉。

5. 前景理论(prospect theory)的四大规律：

• 面对收 益，人们倾向于风险规避。
• 面对损失，人们倾向于风险喜好。
• 损失和获得，是相对于参照点而言的。
• 损 失厌恶：损失带来的痛苦远大于等值的收益所带来的兴奋，因而人更倾向于规避损失。它会引发几种心理表现
• 得失不对称性 (gain/loss asymmetry)
  
• 赋予效应 (endowment effect)
  
• 安于 现状 (status quo bias)
  
• 语义效应 (framing effect)
  

6. 被忽视的概率：

• 基本的概率集合论：两个集的交集不可能大于其中任何一个集。（Again, Linda's problem)
• 先 验概率(base rate)：群体中某类人数的客观分布。
• 赌徒谬误：先前的事件结果不会影响后续事件出现的概率
• 中 值回归：极端的事物随着时间的推移都有往中值回归的趋势。这一个概念要比中值发散更具备实用价值，因为中值回归告诉人们回归的方向，帮组人们对事物进行更 准确的预测，而中值发散却不能告诉我们发散的方向。
• 可获得性谬误：越明显、突出、容易搜寻、容易想象的事件，发生概率的估计总是偏大。

7. 单独评估与联合评估：
单独评估时往往被容易评价但不是特别重要的特征所影响。
人比较容易受到极端个别案例的影响，而忽视基于大样本的更 科学可靠的统计数据。

• 敌强我弱 - 争取单独评估
• 敌弱我强 - 争取联合评估
• 敌强我强 - 争取单独评估
• 敌弱我弱 - 争取联合评估
• 在难以评价的特征上敌弱我强，在易评价的特征上敌强我弱 - 争取联合评估
• 在难以评价的特征上敌强我弱，在易评价的特征上敌弱我强 - 争取单独评估。

8. 结果偏见：
好的领导不应以成败论英雄，而应该利用机制去监督和控制过程，并具备看得懂过程的能力和耐性。
后视偏见的三个坏处：

• 使 人们难以从经验中学习
• 难以用公平的眼光评价他人
• 会更多的以结果论英雄。

New Land of Rationality —— 《Gut Feelings》

《Gut Feelings》provides a new angle towards 2 concepts proved by Nobel laureat Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman:

1. Human beings are fundamentally illogical;
2. Framing effect;

If you have ever read some popular psychological books, I'm quite sure you must have heard the famous Linda problem. From Amos and Daniel's perspective, it proves we human beings are easily committed logical fallacy, and in this case it is conjunction fallacy. However, Gerd Gigerenzer interprets it as intuitive understanding of language violating the conjunction rule. That is, People make intelligent unconscious inferences about what meanings of "probable" to make the description of Linda relevant, which indicate that natural language is more sophisticated than logic.

Further, Gerd gives some examples to show different meanings of "And" in different context:

• chronological relationship: Peggy and Paul married and Peggy became pregnant.
  
• casual relationship: Peggy became pregnant and Peggy and Paul married.
  
• logical "AND": Verona is in Italy and Valencia is in Spain.
  
• logical "OR": We invited friends and colleagues.
  

When I first encountered "Framing effect", I was amazed by human's irrationality, of course I was also convinced. It never occurs to me it can be challenged like that: "Framing can communicate information that is overlooked by mere logic. The framing of a request helps people extract surplus info concerning the dynamics or history of the situation and helps them to guess what it means. That doesn't necessarily mean that attending to framing is irrational."

Naturally, Gerd infers:"Logical norms are blind to content and culture, ignoring evolved capacities and environmental structure. Often what looks like a reasoning error from a purely logical perspective turns out to be a highly intelligence social judgment in the real world. Good intuitions go beyond the info given, and beyond logic." Agree or not, it's up to you, but you have to admit, such inferences are eye-opener.

Overall, this book is talking about unconscious intelligence, in other words, gut feeling, hunch, intuition, you name it. Gerd believes we human beings know more than we can tell, the real question we should ask is not if but when we can trust our guts. In order to explain how intuition works, he uses a analogy-the adaptive toolbox- to describe the mind:

• evolved capacities
• building blocks that make use of capacities
• rules of thumbs: composed of building blocks

He also provides a scheme:

• Gut feelings are what we experience. They appear quickly in consciousness, we do not fully understand why we have them, but we are prepared to act on them.
  
• Rules of thumb are responsible for producing gut feelings.
• Evolved capacities are the construction material for rules of thumb, including language, recognition memory, object tracking, imitation and emotions etc.
• Environmental structures are the key to how well or poorly a rule of thumb works. A gut feeling is not good or bad, rational or irrational per se. Its value is dependent on the context in which the rule of thumb is used.
  

Another interesting point he makes is the beneficial degree of ignorance or forgetting: The more information you have, the more time you need to reflect and decide, the less correct decision you might make. To some extent, it explains the odd situation that "more (time, thought, attention) is better" normally apply to inexperienced people, but not to experts with mastered skills. Just as Malcolm Gladwell pointed in his book: for experts, they can make a snap decision in a blink. Rules of thumb will help.

Well, welcome to new land of rationality!

The Flip Side of Same Coin —— 《The Paradox of Choice》

I used to be an extremist, I used not to ruminate the options I passed up, I used to reject to imagine how the alternative would have turned out and regret what I chose. But, something happened, and I was changed, and a real world paled in comparison to an imaginary world.

Since then, I have been plagued by grief. Since then, I have had to live with the sting what I could have...if only.... Since then, I have been spinning far down a vicious spiral - negative emotions trigger regrets and countfactual thinking, regrets and countfactual thinking trigger more negative emotions. Sometimes I feel like being stuck in the deep state of misery which couldn't have been worse any more. It turns out even worse later on. Sometimes I feel paralysed by the acute pain and emptiness, not because of too much choices but because of the consequences of past choices. Sometimes I even wonder whether I am able to arrest the strong downward pull and make a amendment. Silver lining is such a mess-the total failure of my life-trigger my curiosity about the mechanism of human's decision-making.

I had listened Schwartz's engaging TED talk before, I had searched his book for quite some time, finally I got it. Reading this book is to provide me an insightful study of choice, how we make decisions, what the flip sides of the coin of choice are, what's the price we must pay for abundant choices and what the tricks play in our satisfactions with the outcome of choices we made. It is persuasive and well-reasoned, it is thought-provoking. Inside it, there are some theories and research findings which I have also bumped into here and there. It is interesting to see how popular they are cross disciplines, and how ecomomics, behaviorism, psychology and sociology interconnect to each other.

Beginning with his shopping experience, Schwartz raised one question: "Choice is essential to our autonomy, freedom and well-being, but, is it true that the more choices people have, the better off they are?" His answer is not necessarily. Throughout this book, He convincingly lays out the following arguments:

1. We would be better off if we embraced certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.
2. We would be better off seeking what was “good enough” instead of seeking the best.
3. We would be better off if we lowered our expectations about the results of decisions.
4. We would be better off if the decisions we made were nonreversible.
5. We would be better off if we paid less attention to what others around us were doing.

We may all know well about the value of choice:

• Instrumental value: It enables people to get what they need and want in life.
• Expressive value: It enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care about.(Choices have expressive functions only to the extent that we can make them freely.)
• Psychological value: It enables people to be actively and effectively engaged in the world

However, we might not be aware that we are tyrannized by the bountiful choices in mordern society, that is, we are paying for the growth of options and opportunities at cost of:

• Time
• Effort
• Psychological consequences

So he coins the term "The tyranny of Choice". To make it understandable, he explains:

• More choices means more trade-offs;
• More choices means making mistakes more likely;
• More choices make the psychological consequences of mistakes more severe;
• More choices can entail more complications than it's worth.
• More choices can occupy our attention and fuel our anxieties.
• More choices subtly shift the responsibility from choices provider to decision makers. (This point is very insightful and I can't agree any more.)
  

He reasons that choices are govern by memories and expectations, unfortunately, people is lacking of self-knowledge, neither our predictions about how we feel after an experience nor our memories of how we did feel during the experience are very accurate reflections of how we actually do feel while the experience is occurring. This is affected by:

• Peak-End rule: what we remember about our past experiences is almost entirely determineded by two factors:
• how the experiences felt when they were at their peak (best or worst)
• how they felt when they ended.
• e.x. intense pain + mild pain <>
• Availability heuristic: assume that the more available some piece of imformation is to memory, the more frequently we must have encountered it in the past.The factors affect availability to memory:
• frequency
• salience/vividness

• Adaptation: we get used to things, and then we start to take them for granted.
• perceptual adaptation: decreased responsiveness to sights, sounds, odors, any given environmental event as the event persists.
• hedonic adaptation: decreased “hedonic” or pleasure extent to an experience as it is experienced more and more

Besides, people's decision-making is also influenced by:

• The effect of framing(Prospect theory):
• We prefer a small, sure gain to a larger uncertain one.
• We will risk a large loss to avoid a smaller one. (Loss aversion)
• Endowment Effect: Once something becomes part of your endowment, even after a very few minutes, giving it up will entail a loss.

Then Schwartz talks about why and how we suffered from the problem of regret:

• Two types of regret:
1. Anticipated regret will make decisions harder to make
2. postdecision regret will make them harder to enjoy
• Factors affect the regret:
• omission bias: a bias to downplay omissions (failures to act) when we evaluate the consequences of our decisions.
• in short run: we regret actions that don’t turn out well more than we regret failures to take actions that would have turned out well.
• in long run: The omission bias undergoes a reversal with respect to decisions made in the more distant past. That is, as time passes, what we’ve failed to do looms larger and larger than what we did.
• “Nearness” effect: How close we come to achieving our desired result.
• Responsibility: bad results make people regretful only if they bear responsibility.
• Counterfactual thinking: thinking about the world as it isn’t, but might be or might have been, which will provide a never ending supply of raw material for experiencing regret. It establishs a contrast between a person’s actual experience and an imagined alternative.
  
• Upward counterfactuals:
  
• imagined states that are better than what actually happened
• it may inspire us to do better next time, but the flipside of it will diminish a sense of achievement.
• people easily produce upward counterfactuals when negative emotions triggered.
  
• Downward counterfactuals:
  
• imagined states that are worse.
• will engender not only a sense of satisfaction, but a sense of gratitude that things didn’t turn out worse.
• people rarely produce downward counterfactuals unless asked specifically to do so.
  

He also identifies several other psychological processes that explain why added options do not make people better off: adaptation, missed opportunities, raised expectations, and comparison with others. In the end, he gives some recommendations, which I think a bit repetitive, but it can be viewed as a summary of his points.

Among all his arguments, what I mostly agree with him is: The choice of when to be a chooser may be the most important choice we have to make.

Inglish_28/02/10

gung ho : 卖力地，起劲地
If you say that someone is gung ho, you mean that they are very enthusiastic or eager to do something, for example to fight in a battle.
General George S. Patton was so concerned about his men being gung ho on the front lines that he admonished them that no soldier ever won a war by dying for his country;

do a double take: to look at someone or something and then look again because you suddenly recognize them or notice that something unusual is happening;
Seeing me, she did a double take, and I realized her eyes were focused on my clerical collar.

rabble rouser: 煽动暴民者，蛊惑人心的政客; A rabble-rouser is a clever speaker who can persuade a group of people to behave violently or aggressively, often for the speaker's own political advantage.
That is why I'm in the office of a rabble-rouser like you.

jilted lover: a jilted person has been suddenly left by someone they were having a romantic relationship with; 被人抛弃的情人In the 1990s, the hit series The Nanny, starring Fran Drescher as the jilted lover/cosmetic saleswoman who ends up caring for the children of a wealthy British Broadway producer, was wildly successful, ultimately playing on four continents.

well-heeled: rich
there is an intense desire on the part of well-heeled parents for nannies with a college degree.