Hardly Rational

One would assume that individuals would endeavor to be rational and logical when making decisions, especially when the lives and fates of others lie in the balance. However, surprise surprise, this is not the case. Now you might be saying, "obviously Komma, this is nothing new, emotion tinges our decision making process!" and you would be right -- but there is more.

I am in the process of reading this article by Dan Simon and I just had to post. The idea is this: when making a decision humans do not (necessarily) follow the unidirectional flow of logical processes, from premises to conclusions etc; instead the process is *bidirectional* "premises and facts both determine conclusions and are affected by them in return".

Lets look at an example. In one experiment individuals were presented with 12 vignettes and a statement or two that could be inferred with the vignette. After reading the vignettes, the participants were asked to rate how well they agree with the 12 inferences.

Next, the participants were asked to play the role of a judge in a court case. They were then presented with 12 arguments, 6 from the prosecution and 6 from the defense -- the rub is, the vignettes and the arguments were _virtually_ identical. The facts of the case are complex, and strong arguments could be made for both the prosecution and the defense. After deciding a verdict, the participants were asked to rate how well they agreed with the arguments from each side.

Now logically, you would expect that the individuals would rate the arguments the same way they rated the vignettes -- however they didn't! There was a statistically significant difference in how a participant rated the same vignette/story from before/after the decision making process! For instance, if a participant judged for the prosecution, then the arguments for the prosecution would be rated higher than arguments for the defense, even though both vignettes would be rated about the same before hand.

Even more fun -- when participants were asked to recall their original ratings they incorrectly recalled ratings that matched their post-decision ratings. In all cases, deciding for the prosecution or the defense, the participants were highly confident of their decisions.

To make a long story short, Simon argues that for decision to be made "effectively and comfortably", individual must possess a "coherent" mental model -- one which there is strong support for the decision and weak support for the opposite decision. And when this isn't in the case, us humans go about and make it so :).

Now this paper is focused on legal decision making, but its clear to me that these types of effects seem to appear in all areas of society. I've always wondered why nearly every issue quickly becomes polarized (democrats vs. republicans, pro vs. anti abortion, pro vs. anti war; etc) and perhaps a coherence based theory of decision making can account for some of this tendency. As we make decisions, we start reducing our belief in the opposite's arguments, naturally leading us to a polarized state.

I don't know how to stop this, although Simon claims to have some ideas in mind for rectifying this situation in the context of juries, and perhaps we can't. Maybe we will just have to survive with a polarized society.

Thoughts on Grad School

This is too good (true) to be missed: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/02/03/dont-try-to-dodge-the-recession-with-grad-school/#more-2071.

Part 2: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

Adventures in Photon Land or Massive Communication Gap

Ok it’s time for a light-hearted anecdote (but it is still faithful to VERITAS).

My lab notebook is filled with sighs (“Oh God, why me ??”), curses (*$%& you too, detector! [sorry mom, but trust me it’s appropriate !] ) and monologues to my future self (“Get out here while you are still sane”). Of course there is the requisite amount of bad data, empty pages, and specifications of equipment that never meet specs, but these are for another post. Let’s go back now to that part about me-talking-to-my-future self. The most recent of these conversations started about two years ago. My past self had written down very clearly “Dearest Radzie, please don’t ever touch the allignment laser – it’s a bitch. She will not bother you, if you don’t bother her”. For those of you who don’t know about my experiment (which is everyone but me), the alignment laser is a bright red laser used to correctly position the million optics (lenses, prisms and such) in my experiment, because I can’t see the actual photons that traverse these dangerous terrain. Simply put, I use the alignment laser to visualize my photons’ adventures. Remember that this note was about two years ago. Of course 3 months after I had written that, I promptly removed(!!) the alignment laser (I hope my advisor is not reading this blog – he’d know what an idiot I am and that I write to myself, which somehow seems worse than talking to yourself even though it is just another form of communication – hmmm. Note to future self: think about why this is so). Why did I remove the alignment laser? Because it was in my way- duh! So first instance of future self not listening to past self (bad bad future-self). Let’s start keeping scores: Future Self = -1. Past Self = +1. Yes, I penalize people for not listening to me and reward those who do. Roughly a day after I removed the laser, my then-future-self but now-past-self wrote another note “ Yeah gurl, remember that note about the alignment laser – yeah very very true. Don’t ever touch that again. TRUST ME - Its really a bitch!”. Now this time, my past-self did one step better – she tried to etch into my memory the pain involved in realigning the alignment laser. She didn’t do a very good job. I promptly took it down three months later and had to tearfully realign it two weeks after that. Score: Future Self =-2. Past Self = +2. This kept happening. Fast forward to now: you’ll know what transpired in between from the latest scores - Future Self =-5 and Past Self = +5. Notes to future self are now covered in curse words, some in ALL-CAPS and some were just empty pages (an example of my past-self trying the silent treatment on the future-self – “I don’t even wanna talk to you anymore”). The last of these misadventures happened yesterday. As I was wondering how I could improve communications between these different time zones, I finally figured out why we (i.e., my past self and my future self) have such a massive communication gap. No - its not really a memory thing – I always remember the warnings and have slight forebodings of the pain involved. It is not a language problem either - I have known and will know the meaning of “DON’T”. The vile vicious virulent villain is the middle man – the present self! AKA: yours truly, ME (oh man, it sucks to be the bad guy)! The minute the thought to move the alignment laser enters my head, I start playing with the laser’s knobs (physicists like to touch knobs – to see how sensitive they are [that’s what she said!]). Of course, when things are aligned and you are turning knobs just a wee-bit, everything seems under control. The middle (wo)man gets confident. I start thinking, “oh my past self aligned optics like a little girl (the expressions somehow seems less punchy than throwing-like-a-girl, or hitting-like-a-girl. Nevertheless, it is meant to communicate the same sort of disdain). This must have looked hard to her. Haha! Look at me now – I am the queen of optics…and this is my humble subject. My wish is its command”. Then of course in my vain red-queenly manner I proceed to “chop off the optic’s head” and almost immediately conjure to disappear from the scene leaving nothing behind but a I-told-you-so past self and a very disappointed what-have-I-done future self. The problem is ME. Or YOU - if the me we are talking about is you.

We’ll turn to the moral of the story (the Duchess would have wanted this anyways) to explain the last line: turns out neuropsychology says that this miscommunication is a well known phenomenon. We all work very hard, sacrifice our youth building something that we think we would value when we turn older. Be it pulling all-nighters in college, becoming stressed-out lawyers and consultants or renouncing the castle to elope with a knight (OMG, that is so 2008!) When you get there – you aren’t any happier! Why? Because the future self isn’t really your past self. You have changed. Turns out the best way to judge whether you will be happy in a particular career, lifestyle, country is to poll multiple people doing what you want to do in the future. The chances are you will side with the majority when you get there. Only now – you can save yourself from the pain involved in getting there - if it turns out that there is not the never-never-land you were hoping for! The key is not to ask questions like “oh, are you happy you did this?”, because most people cannot be objective about their life-changing decisions, but questions about their day-to-day life and then trying to picture yourself in their shoes. I know what you are thinking “but I am not them. I am different. Smarter, perhaps prettier, but definitely better”. That’s also a known phenomenon. It’s called the middle man - you or, in-my-case, me!

Ps: Now you probably realize why I am taking so long to do my PhD. Not only do I keep doing the same things over and over again (“hey, that’s how you become an expert !”), but there are voices in my head – all competing for attention and shown in different colors. That or I have severe ADD. I don’t know – lets go ride bikes.

PPs: This post is dedicated to Alice (the one in wonderland) and Lewis Carroll. I just finished rereading it. Note to future self (both mine and yours): “It’s brilliant . Reread it in about 5 years!” :).