Jacob Robinson's Blog, page 16

People as Means

We tend to see treating people as a “means to an end” as a bad thing… but what if it’s the only way we treat others?

[Note: This is meant to be the release for 7/4, but since I’ll be traveling during that time (and the WordPress schedule feature has often failed me) I’m releasing it on 7/2 instead.]

Hearing someone treat someone else as a means to an end automatically draws up Machiavellian imagery to our minds, and so it can be hard to see this as a universal constant. With that in mind, let’s try applying this in a different way. As we learned from Social Game Theory, the main reasons people socialize with one another are to 1) feel respected, and 2) feel good. Well, wouldn’t this mean – in all our social interactions – we are using people as a means to these two ends? Even in conversations with parents and loved ones, our goals aren’t always so altruistic. We talk with these people because we expect them to uplift our spirits – if we don’t think they’ll do that, we aren’t interested in talking to them.

Before you begin to have an existential moral panic about how you’ve been using people all this time, don’t worry – it’s not as bad as it seems. After all, this means everyone has been using you instead! But no, really, this transactional measure of conversation is what makes our social situation morally justifiable. Just as you use others as a means of feeling better, others expect you to make them feel better as well. As long as both of you hold up your ends of the bargain, everyone leaves happy. Communication is not a zero-sum game – in fact, to play the game optimally is to make everyone win!

The moral of the story: Understand how the game is played, but don’t let the game worry you too much. Just make sure the person on the other side of the table is getting a piece of the pie as well.

Biased Science

I’ve touched briefly on the psychology of research development in the past, but one question remains of interest to me: do we only publish and cite research that we want to believe is true, whether we know it or not?

Talking about biased science is by no means new. The topic of “Null” has been debated heavily in academia outside of myself, and it’s a well-known problem. Publishing is inherently an economic game, and therefore you can only really be successful by publishing work that is deemed “effective”.

But this creates a new problem entirely: how do we define effective? Researchers usually pride themselves on their open minds, and I don’t disagree that they have them. But when almost every single major scientific advance was ignored for some years/decades before it was accepted into the canon, it makes you wonder whether there is a dissonance at play. We seem to have an inherent bias that the already established research is correct, and new research that contradicts it is wrong. Similarly, we tend to believe research in new fields that is derivative of other content which we assume is “right”. It is nice to take explosive-sounding ideas with a grain of salt, but this works (ironically) better in theory than in practice. Once again, when much of the ground-breaking research gets ignored for years, this seems to hint more at a determined conservatism rather than critical thinking. In a critical thinking world, these papers would have been accepted as soon as their rigor was proven. What gives?

Human bias, of course. We stay stuck in our ways – we appreciate the status quo because its familiar to us, and too much change (the more groundbreaking, the worse it is) causes us to get stressed. I don’t think this problem could ever be solved since it is so ingrained into the human psyche, but I also don’t think it will hurt us too bad as long as there are a few critical thinkers out there in the world who know the good stuff when they see it.

Mental Illness is Not a Permanent State

The past few weeks on this blog I’ve discussed the similarities and differences between physical illness and mental illness quite a lot. In this post I wanted to deep dive on this topic, and also explain how just like physical illness, mental illness is not a permanent state.

That last sentence (and, consequently, the title of this blog) might seem a little strange. Don’t worry, I’m not claiming that mental health problems magically go away. Think about things this way: when we have a physical illness, we default assume that the illness is a problem that can be solved. And it’s a correct assumption! We’ve found cures and adequate treatments for many diseases that way, and the ones we haven’t found cures for we still see clear paths towards solutions. So, this seems to be the right way to approach things.

The problem therein lies that mental illness is treated differently. It’s opaque, unclear, magical. Because of that, we don’t default assume it’s a solvable problem. We think you can treat depression, but not cure it. Same with most other mental illnesses. 

But the truth is that mental illness certain can be described this way. For example, certain anxiety disorders have been proven to be cured with exposure therapy, and other mental diseases have been treated significantly with therapies, medicines, or both. It is true that we are very early on in terms of finding the solutions to these problems, but they are out there. Just like physical illness, mental illness is not a permanent state.

Convenience and Pareto Optimality

In economics, Pareto optimality is when no individual can be better off without making someone else worse off. Here’s how you can apply it to sustainable product innovation.

Let’s say we have a product on the market, a face cleanser for instance. At some point, an innovation occurs on the market – face cleaners made using alcohol (the medical kind, not the drink kind). Well, let’s say alcoholic face cleansers are x% better than those currently on the market. In other words, it’s an innovation! People get a cleanser that’s better than the old, and everything is good. That is, for a while.

Some time passes, and we find out these alcoholic cleansers are actually bad for the environment. Like, very bad. Whoops! Well, what do we do now?

Initially, some short-term answers appear. Companies attempt to differentiate themselves by making organic, environmentally friendly cleansers (aka just the cleansers of before, rebranded). This is all well and good, but with one major problem: the cleansers aren’t as good! Instead of stepping forward, we’re just taking a step backward and treating it as a sacrifice for Mother Earth. Consumers aren’t buying it, and most stay with the alcoholic cleansers.

But here’s where things get interesting.

Eventually, a new innovation comes out on the market. Let’s call it something very creative, like “alcoholic sustainable cleansers”. ASCs for short. Well, these ASCs are in an interesting alignment: they retain the properties of the alcoholic cleanser, while still being environmentally friendly. ASCs keep the convenience factor of before, while still being good for the environment. In this case, everyone wins. 

This product is Pareto optimal.

In our example, we have two axes: sustainability and convenience. In the case of alcoholic cleansers, we made convenience better off while making sustainability worse off. With organic cleansers, we made sustainability better off while making convenience worse off. But with ASCs, we made both better off – it’s at the optimal point!

In my opinion, every product should strive to be Pareto optimal, for two reasons.  The obvious reason is that it’s the best for the customer – if you create something efficient that also doesn’t negatively affect them, it’s better for society. But the other reason is that Pareto optimal products will always dominate a market, thus leading to major profits. Of course, there are other innovation factors to consider here (like if the innovation is old enough in the trend to be developed at a profit), but usually, the first company that can reliably produce a product that is optimal on these axes is going to succeed. Therefore, if a company really wants to get ahead, it should focus on trying its best to maximize both sustainability and convenience – and to hit its Pareto optimality. 

On Meaning

Here are a few thoughts I have on finding meaning in life and work. 

Don’t make your life more productive. Make your life more meaningful. Productivity is nice when it helps get rid of or limit the amount of boring stuff we don’t want to do. But productivity is not a be all end all. Use the time you save in automation and productivity to work on the stuff that matters — whether that be the work that really benefits you, some time with your family, or even just taking a mental break. 

The story of every person’s life has at least a few good scenes. Many people get to the end of their lives and are so wrapped up in fear that they never did anything of value. As a writer I can tell you that I can write a decently good script for any person on Earth. Always strive to be better, but don’t get so worked up about what you have and haven’t done already. 

Everyday I wake up realizing I may die tomorrow. This is what motivates me to create the change I wish to see in the world. Perhaps this point is written to be a bit dramatic. The key takeaway here is that remembering that death exists (memento mori) primes life’s fragility, which causes you to focus more on the most important tasks to work on in the long-term. Those tasks are probably what you should be working on anyway. 

The meaning of life is to make the world a little bit better than it was before. This is the best definition I’ve ever come across and I really think it checks out. Perhaps it doesn’t explain why we’re here in the first place, but I’m not too interested in that question. Who knew the meaning of life could be so easy?

You’re only here for a short while. Why not make the best of it? Some people argue that Epicureanism and Stoicism are fundamentally divided philosophies. In reality, the two work together hand-in-hand. Epicureanism does not say that material is everything — it simply says that if you do have material, then use it! The use of material combined with the Stoic “I don’t need it” mindset can lead to a perfectly happy and healthy life. A little bit of emotion plus a little bit of rationality can go a long way. 

If you want a good life, make the days feel long and fruitful. Design your ideal day-to-day, and then live that as closely as you can each day. I won’t lie, I’m still learning how to do this myself — but the days I’ve stuck to a routine that made me better are some of the best days of my life.

Social Diversification

Any investor can tell you about how diversifying your assets can help you. But can diversifying your social relationships help you just as much?

In finance, diversifying assets helps to reduce risk. Having a decently-sized basket of investments allows you to have high upside potential from particular stocks, while still reducing your downside assuming one of those stocks doesn’t work out. Diversification does reduce your total upside, but this is usually seen as a good tradeoff.

Diversifying socially works in much the same way. Becoming friends and acquaintances with a wide-ranging group, with no group really knowing the other, helps protect you against social risk. Everyone has had that moment, in middle school or otherwise, where they become ostracized from the in-group because they pissed off someone within it. If all of your friends know each other, that means you’re taking on social risk. In order to reduce this social risk, you can know people outside of your in-group. When you do that, pissing off the in-group isn’t too bad – you always have someone else you can talk to.

Social diversification is special in one other way, however. Having a diverse group of friends also opens you up to a wider array of interesting ideas. In other words, it reduces your downside but not your upside! This is what makes it even more advantageous than diversification in investing – high return and low risk is possible with friends!

The Suicide Disease

Suicide is commonly referred to as an illness of the heart. But that “illness” aspect may be more true than you think.

Suicidal behavior, in most cases, isn’t voluntary. This, on the outset, seems rather counterintuitive and confusing. But let’s take some time to consider this, and make an analogy to a disease we can all agree on: the immune system attack of HIV.

HIV, in its simplest terms, attacks the immune cells in the body. These compromised immune cells then attack the immune system, and the deactivated immune system leads to even the most common and simplest diseases being life-threatening. 

Now, let’s compare this to something like depression. In depression, a chemical imbalance attacks the neurons in the brain. These compromised neurons then attack the value-of-life system, and the deactivated value-of-life system leads to even the most common and simplest depressed thoughts being life-threatening.

See the connection?

The value-of-life system is the evolutionary process that makes sure we survive and don’t do anything too stupid. It makes sure that we care about ourselves, stay healthy, reproduce, etc. etc. If this system is attacked, we suddenly begin to care about ourselves less and less, to the point of suicide. 

There is, of course, the point that people who don’t have depression still occasionally commit suicide. But just as people in certain circumstances can become more susceptive to disease (undergoing chemo, having hypothermia, being wounded), people in certain circumstances can become susceptible to suicidal thoughts. Take kamikaze pilots, for example – their value-of-life system is, in essence, deteriorated via patriotism and honor. Value-of-life can also be injured in the case of a particularly bad series of events, or if someone is under the influence of alcohol or drugs. 

Of course the helpful lesson here is that, if suicide is a disease, there could be a cure for it, just like all the other diseases we know about. Like many things in mental health, we don’t know the cure quite just yet – but we may one day come to it.

On Improving

Here’s a few thoughts I have on consistency and improvement. 

Celebrate the little wins. Momentum and consistency are key to getting anything done. Find a way to motivate yourself into those modalities. Never be afraid to reward yourself if you’ve earned it, even if it’s small.

Daily progress need not be large, only consistent. Consistent progress, over time, becomes larger than what any other form of progress can give you.

Progress is subtle. You can’t look at how you were yesterday and see any noticeable difference. But try one year, or five years, or ten years. It starts to become more apparent. I see a lot of people make the mistake of judging their weight loss journey by how much weight they lose or gain on a weekly basis. If only our bodies made it that easy! Truth be told, there is a difference between the short-term volatility and the long-term trend. Investors know this well. You need to find the right time horizon in order to figure out what are the changes that really matter. 

The battle isn’t against others. The battle is against yourself. If life is a game, other people are NPCs. The main progress you should be worried about — the main competition you should be having — is trying to get a higher score than whatever you had previously. 

The best skill you can learn in life is endurance. If you can stomach exercising, or meditating, or building for 12 months straight, then you’re already ahead of 90% of the population. As I’ve mentioned, consistency is a key skill for getting anything done. At the heart of consistency is endurance. If you can deal with the same old routine, or fit in an exercise into a busy day, this is what really makes you consistent — and well-trained on the path to success. 

Sentience and Suffering

Do animals feel suffering – emotional pain, depression, fear – in the same way that humans do? And if so, what does that mean for us?

This conversation topic, of course, originates from a lot of the vegan moral philosophy that has occurred for quite a few decades now. Personally, I don’t really care too much about the eating thing – I just eat animals because they taste good – BUT I think there are plenty of interesting quandaries to consider here outside of any vegan v. meat-eater debate, and that’s why I’ve decided to write about it.

As to the first part of the first question I post in the intro, the answer appears to be unequivocally yes. And of course, it’s understandable – suffering as an emotion exists for evolutionary purposes. Fear makes us take fewer survival risks, depression is the flight in fight-or-flight, emotional pain gives us an incentive to avoid pain, etc. etc. But the second part begins to jinx things up: in the same way that humans do.

Well, that’s hard to say. First of all, the thing that separates humans from other animals is level of abstraction. So animals might feel suffering if they’re maltreated, but they aren’t going to do any uniquely strange human behaviors like watching Come and See so they can voluntarily give themselves a good deal of suffering. Well, the reason humans do that is because we can introspect on our emotions and abstract them out to a less real, more philosophical equivalent. We can define and quantify suffering – animals cannot. In fact, my question at the beginning of the article is a uniquely strange human question. Animals can feel pain but they can’t understand it.

That can be hard for us to get, since understanding things is of course a core part of our DNA. Let me hit at this from another angle, to hopefully make it easier to digest. You’ll notice of course that humans and animals both get physical illness. Duh. But here’s something that’s interesting: animals don’t get mental illness.

Sure, there are some weird caveats here. Dogs can get PTSD, but only if they were maltreated heavily in the past. Bugs can go insane, but only if a parasite invades their skull. These are more biological mental illnesses than, well, mental mental illnesses. On the other hand, you don’t see a cat that just gets depressed, or a crab suffering a midlife crisis, or a bird that is suicidal (well… in a traditional sense). 

“But wait!”, I hear you say. “You literally just said all these things animals felt. You literally said that animals get depression, but now you’re saying there’s no such thing as a depressed cat? What gives?”. Well, pay closer attention to the words at play. I said that depression is a natural evolutionary response in fight-or-flight – but fight-or-flight only occurs during an attack! If a cat isn’t under active assault, is there any reason for it to be depressed? As far as we know from our body of research, most likely not. 

The lesson here is that other animals think of things in the binary. When they feel pain by X, they understand that X is bad – but they don’t really stop to consider why. When humans feel pain by X, we always consider why. This is why we have long-term anxiety over things and we don’t – we think about future consequences, they live (mostly) happily in the present.

So if you don’t want to eat meat because you’re afraid it will make animals feel bad, then you’re right – it does. But if you dive deeper into the essence of the question, you can begin to understand what truly makes us human.

Moral Implications in Maximums and Minimums

One of the things I’ve noticed, in my spare time, is the moral implications of some of the maximums and minimums that exist in our world. They aren’t a particularly dense subject, but provide an interesting thought exercise. 

In our world, there are of course minimums and maximums to a wide range of subjects. The simplest example of this might be in sports standings. For example, in any given season of a sport, there is the highest-ranked team and the lowest-ranked team. There might be some ties here and there – for example, two teams are 12-0 or some such – but the idea still holds. If we expand this, we can see more “universal” applications of this rule. We can also expand this over space and time. For example, we can instead say that there is a highest-ranked team and lowest-ranked team across the entire history of the sport. A little more interesting! But if we do it across space, we can find the highest and lowest-ranked teams across the entire history of sports in general.

It’s notable that, as we increase in space and time, the terms of the definition become more and more abstract. Sports journalists debate for years what the best football team of all time is, let alone of any sport. Still, the nature of maximums and minimums point to the idea that some team of this kind must exist within the boundaries of nature.

That already implies a lot of fascinating stuff (for example, that all those journalists actually are fighting over something real). But one night in the shower I made an additional realization – you can apply moral arguments to maximum and minimums. That’s right, an old-school jacob-robinson.com recipe that you can apply right at home!

Applying morality to this case works something like follows: think about the set of all people today, whenever you are reading this. Out of all 7 billion or so of us, someone is having the best day of the group, and someone is having the worst day. Someone might have had their wedding plus a 100,000 bonus while someone else might have lost their job and then died in a horrific accident. Here’s another example: the best-raised child and the worst-raised child, of a given generation. What would the most abused/neglected child even look like? What would their growth potential be? Would they even have potential, or would they die in childhood?

The more you start thinking of things, the more they begin to devolve into these weird sorts of moral arguments (which on this blog is always a good thing). It’s a way to not only build empathy, but also serves as a thought exercise to build out your own beliefs on morality and even statistics. Worth trying, at least once.