Afghanistan

Dubai!

Genuinely Liking

The basis of economics rests on the idea that man consumes goods and receives enjoyment from those goods. Goods can be almost anything. They can be a physical product like potatoes or a service like tax consulting. They can also be abstract things like leisure time, morality or the "warm glow" of giving to charity. A person receives enjoyment from a good and goods are consumed because they are enjoyed by a person (if they not enjoyed, they are fittingly called "bads"). It is all very circular. If one sees a friend eating Doritos, one assumes he enjoys Doritos. And if he enjoys Doritos, he will try to consume them. People enjoy what they do and do what they enjoy.

But, of course, enjoyment is never that simple. Cola companies do blind taste tests all the time. In tests, about 50 percent of people prefer Pepsi and 50 percent prefer Coke. In the real world, Pepsi only sells a third of what Coke sells. What gives? That means 25 percent of society enjoys Pepsi's taste more, yet buys Coke anyway. Don't people want to enjoy themselves?

There must be another layer at play. I was surfing the net recently and saw a post that asked "Does anyone like Iron Maiden? Not in an ironic way, but genuinely like?" Enjoyment of music can involve more than simple listening? And I've met countless people who claim that they don't like Taco Bell or McDonald's. How can people not enjoy a fairly clear cut pleasure fulfilling food - fat, protein, salt and sugar. One's body has evolved to enjoy these nourishing ingredients. There are those who claim they do not like pornography and others who say they don't like alcohol. Assuming that these people are honest in their convictions, what is the second layer that makes them flip from enjoyment to unenjoyment or from unenjoyment to enjoyment?

Well, the Coca-Cola company knows that it doesn't just sell cola. It sells their brand. Advertising and packaging give people some sort of strange enjoyment other than taste when they consume the product. Perhaps Coke hits a subconscious trigger that makes someone think of a happy commercial. Maybe it makes people think of friends and family who drink Coke. Maybe it reminds people of their childhood when they drank Coke. Maybe it connects people to a celebrity who they admire who drinks Coke. Whatever-the-case, the second layer is strong enough to tip the scales from Pepsi to Coke.

This second layer is ubiquitous and comes in many forms. I know that mayonnaise tastes good, but the thought of so many extra calories makes me not want to consume it. Do I like mayonnaise? A Phish head may have such a strong connection to his friends and the shows that he begins to listen to their music. Does he really enjoy Phish? A food critic, after eating enough "complex" cuisine, may find a hamburger dull. Does he really not enjoy the hamburger?

Social reinforcement is strong and can not only alter our choices, but alter our cravings. Shying away from mayonnaise began as simply a choice, but now mayo sort of makes me ill. And we are all aware of the "acquired taste" aspect of food, music and art. Not to mention, the subtle, but powerful nature of peer pressure. If everyone else thinks bell botoms looks funny, we will; if everyone else thinks bell botoms looks normal, we will.

Still, the web poster on Iron Maiden introduced the idea that social reinforcement is not truly liking, that genuine liking is a simple aesthetic feeling and everything else is, somehow, is not genuine. But that seems awfully strong. Surely, we have preferences other than our biological responses. If that were the case, we would all only prefer the same carnal things.

But, the poster is on to something. At some point social reinforcement moves from subconsciously influential to consciencely coercive. Does one want to see a movie? What if everyone else is seeing it? What if one's girlfriend wants to see it? What if one's girlfriend insists on seeing it? What if one has a gun to their head? If one was forced to see it, did one really enjoy it? If one was subtly influenced to see it, did one really enjoy it? At some point, most of us would say that action done under coercion is not genuine enjoyment, but it is hard to pin point where. Ironic enjoyment of Iron Maiden is in that gray area.

Let's take the other extreme. Say all social reinforcement is part of our genuine enjoyment. After all, we choose our choices and we choose what pleases us the most. That includes not only the biological triggers, but the effects from society such as pleasing girlfriends and not taking bullets. Of course, if everything we did was what we liked, then we would be constantly enjoying things. At all times, we would be as happy as we could be simply because our choices were our choices.

And so the whole universe breaks down (or at least economics and our ideas of enjoyment of goods). It is difficult to determine what we truly enjoy due to social reinforcement. We do stuff because we enjoy things, maybe. But, we might actually not really enjoy those things "genuinely." And, what is enjoyment anyways?

When someone asks "Do you like it?" all we can say is "I think so."

The Flexibility of Emotion

I stood in a stairwell today and listened to a coworker as she wept. Every day her manager treats her horribly. If it were just one day, it would have been tolerable, but it is every day and the misery was building. Today, the straw broke the camel's back and waterworks came out. Later, she was embarrassed that she let it get to her. After all, it was just minor meanness from an asshole over time. Other people have it much, much worse.

We have all been there. We get upset about something that doesn't deserve the time or attention. We feel ashamed about our lack of strength over things that are objectively trivial. We also feel guilty that others have it worse and somehow still cope. The comic above concisely shows this. The woman is upset about lost love, which when compared to starvation, is absolutely meaningless. The man highlights the relative weakness and self-centeredness of the woman (who is really us).

But it's not really fair.

An old friend used to joke that no matter what the size of the suitcase, ones clothes expand to fill it, making closing a suitcase always an arduous task.

Our emotions are the same way. No matter if one's life is trivial (a large suitcase) or important (a small suitcase) objectively, our emotions fill still that life. Keeping our emotions at bay is always difficult.

Childhood is good example. Though people claim that childhood is a carefree time, it is simply not the case. I remember anxiety about toys, friends, cartoons and siblings. I remember completely losing it when my sister wouldn't let me into a cushion fort or when my brother stole a comic book of mine. In pre-school, I remember balling when my turn was skipped to lead the class to the lunchroom. Looking back, it was idiotic to act that way, but there is no doubt I felt those emotions with intensity.

My co-worker was in genuine pain as is the Indian woman who lost love (well, if she were real). It would nice if we could get our subconscience mind to instantationessly have an objective, worldly perspective, but we are mere humans who selfishly care about our subjective local lives. While perhaps the justification for feeling pain is suspect when compared to something like starvation, the feeling is without-a-doubt real.

Learning

I've been trying to learn some Arabic and, inevitably, whenever I try to learn something new, I run into someone who says some like "oh, wow, I can't do that, I'm just not a (blank) person." You hear this for almost every subject. "I'm just not a math person," "I'm just not a science person," "I'm just not a language person." And while certainly some brains do particular tasks better than others, it's hard for me to accept that this difference is really as great as people think among regular folks.

Say it takes a super-genius only one repetition to remember or master something and say it takes an idiot sixteen or so. Assuming a standard bell-curve distrabution, the average person would require around eight repetitions. Probably, roughly two-thirds of society would be within the first standard deviation from four to twelve repetitions and ninety-five percent of society would be within the second standard deviation between two and fourteen repetitions. Say one is very below average in something and is in at the bottom 5% of society. It still is only taking the person 6 more repetitions from the average, or 75% longer.

Am I not assuming a lot of numbers there? Yes, maybe I'm assuming a spherical cow (google this term if you don't know it). The point, though, is that most people are near the mean. To say we are exceptionally smart or dumb is difficult and even if we do assume we are exceptional, the effective result in the world often isn't all that great. The fastest man in the world runs a little faster than a 10 second 100 meter. Most of us can run a 15 second 100 meter and a fat ass can run a 20 second 100 meter. Doing something 50% to 100% better or worse may be the range for most things.

Considering how much wasted time we have in the day doing things like chatting about nothing, watching TV and surfing the internet, it means we are all capable of many great things, even if we are below average.

And even if the difference were large, does it really absolve people from not trying? Say it takes one person three times the time to learn a language or three times the miles to stay thin, is that justification for not doing it? I've met people who have lived in foreign countries for over ten years who have not learned the langauge because they believe their brains can't do it. I've met extremely fat individuals who believe they are simply genetically cursed. I've met people with personality flaws that are aware of them, but rather than trying to change them, they simply accept them as innate.

Again, we are all capable of great things, we just vary in the work and effort we need to expend. I am probably capable or doing an Iron Man or learning Polish, but, after weighing the costs and the benefits, I don't think it's worth it to do either. People that claim they are genetically hindered probably just don't think it is worth doing an activity and need an excuse not to do it.

Oddly, this idea of the brain innately being hardwired for certain subjects hasn't passed on to other things. When it comes to musical intruments and sports, people always say that practice makes perfect. And while often people don't put in the practice, they somehow believe that they could be great if they tried. And they are right. This attitude needs to be applied to all things.