Afraid of the Dark

Cool article in another NYTimes.com blog -- this time by Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert -- discussing the psychological connection between uncertainty and unhappiness. He says the hardest part of the current economic recession is not knowing what's going to happen. Counterintuitively, knowing things will be bad makes us happier than knowing there is a possibility they will be good. In his words:

Why would we prefer to know the worst than to suspect it? Because when we get bad news we weep for a while, and then get busy making the best of it. We change our behavior, we change our attitudes. We raise our consciousness and lower our standards. We find our bootstraps and tug. But we can’t come to terms with circumstances whose terms we don’t yet know. An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait.

This is closely related to something I heard (and believe), about the relationship between psychological stress and control over a situation. Things can be bad, but as long as feel we have control over the situation, we aren't too stressed. Conversely, it's when we feel things are out of our control that we experience stress. A useful application of this principal in my own life is to look at any situation, and try to understand what things you can control and what things you can't... then accept the things you can't control and only worry about the ones you can.

(image by Shoboshobo)

Fascinating: The Underlying Math of Cities

In a post on Olivia Judson's blog for the NYTimes, Leon Kreitzman discusses the hidden patterns mathematics has identified in the efficiency of cities.

He talks about Zipf's Law -- that city size in a nation is inversely proportional to rank (i.e. the biggest city is 2X as large as the 2nd-biggest, and 3X as large as the third biggest) -- and the way cities get more efficient as they get bigger. A topic also covered here, and a trait that is shared not just by cities, but also by mammals.

The similarities between cities and mammals are particularly interesting because they highlight the fact that cities and animals are in some ways both organisms. Mammals are collections of cells and organs organized through evolution to perpetuate life (ignoring for the moment, more lofty potential explanations). Cities are collections of individuals and infrastructure organized through society to enhance productivity and growth. Makes one wonder what the relevant organs correspond to in a city. I've always heard people say City Hall is full of assholes.

(Image above by Lee Jang Sub)

The Virtues of Ex-Patriotism

Article in The Economist: living abroad makes you more creative.

All tied up

Very detailed article in the NYTimes yesterday about Tim Geithner and the economic relationship between the U.S. and China. It's a bit on the long side, but worth a read if you're interested in the issue.

Some of the key points that jumped out at me:

• Obama officials believe China's recent job losses are more than the 20 million officially estimated. Not terribly surprising, but it suggests the Chinese economy may be weaker than generally recognized.
• Good insight about China's aggressive stance towards the U.S. being "more to soothe a domestic audience" than a sign of actual policy. In other words, the Chinese government is are more worried about social unrest than anything else, and if things get really bad for them domestically, they are prepared to blame their economic problems on the U.S.
  

The Story of Our Lives

An amazing story in The Atlantic about the Harvard Study of Adult Development (aka the Grant Study). In 1937, researchers identified 268 of the healthiest and most well-adjusted sophomore men at Harvard University (including the future President Kennedy), and they've followed their lives over the last 72 years.

The results breathtakingly illustrate just how complex our lives are. Highly recommend you take the time to read it. It's a pretty unique vantage point onto the human condition.

Changing the Rules of the Game

Good article from Gladwell in the New Yorker about how disadvantaged competitors win by changing the way the game is played. Takes examples from basketball (the full court press), military history and the biblical story of David & Goliath. The most interesting point isn't that obvious one, i.e. that weaker competitors can still win if they find new ways to compete, it's just how often they win when they adopt this strategy.

Looking at the military history of battles between seriously outmatched opponents, political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft found that when the underdogs adopted novel strategies, they increased their likelihood fo winning from 28.5 to 63.6 percent. Not bad considering he defined underdogs as groups whose opponents were at least ten times stronger in terms of armed might and population.